The most famous query in the history of modern warfare came from David Petraeus, then a major general, in an interview with Rick Atkinson, then a reporter, during the initial assault on Iraq: “Tell me how this ends.”
When it comes to the war in Iran, there are, broadly speaking, four possible scenarios.
Regime change is the most optimistic one. Some imagine it will take the form of the resumption of the mass demonstrations that the regime bloodily stamped out in January — millions of Iranians marching in dozens of cities, joined by police officers and soldiers and commanders from the conventional army, emboldened by American and Israeli air support, rising to tear down their rulers’ enfeebled apparatus of repression.
Nobody should discount this scenario, especially if Iran continues to be battered militarily and politically, perhaps with the loss of additional echelons of leadership. Nobody should count on it, either, at least not in the short term. However incapable the regime may be of defending its airspace, it remains terrifyingly capable of killing its people. And with so much blood on its hands, it has every incentive to hold on to power.
Regime modification — that is, a regime that stays in place but complies with U.S. and Israeli demands — is another optimistic scenario. It’s doubtful that Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader, will agree to surrender Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and cease support for regional proxies like Hezbollah. But the new Khamenei’s reign may be very short-lived. And whoever runs the regime next will have to come to grips with its vulnerability and isolation.
That isolation will be especially pronounced if U.S. forces seize Kharg Island, 15 or 16 miles off the Iranian coast in the Persian Gulf, which serves as the terminal for roughly 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports. American control would give the administration the whip hand over most of the regime’s remaining revenues, including its ability to pay salaries for soldiers and civil servants alike. That could help clarify to even the most hard-line elements in the regime whether it is really worth it to enrich uranium or send more munitions to Hezbollah in Lebanon so they can be destroyed by Israel.
But perhaps the regime refuses to yield and the war carries on in much the same way for another two or three weeks before some sort of mutual cease-fire declaration, probably before President Trump’s planned visit to Beijing on March 31.
In this third scenario, all sides declare their own sort of victory and none of them quite believe it. Trump will not have achieved anything like Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” much less had a hand in choosing the regime’s next leader. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel will have fallen short of his decades-long dream of toppling the mullahs. And Iran’s leaders will crow that the “Resistance” they supposedly embody proved stronger than the Great and Little Satans combined.
Reality, however, will catch up. The sanctions that have already crippled the regime economically will not be lifted. It’s hard to imagine the war ending before the United States and Israel attack Iran’s remaining nuclear sites, including its buried (but accessible) stores of highly enriched uranium. And any efforts by Iran to conduct spectacular terrorist attacks in the vein of Libya’s 1988 Lockerbie bombing, or to mine the Strait of Hormuz, will only result in another war. The era in which Iranian leaders thought themselves invulnerable is over.
What this third scenario suggests is that the regime will only survive in a zombified state. That could, in turn, lead to an eventual regime change in a few years’ time, possibly because of infighting within leadership ranks, or possibly from another popular revolt. In either case, its days are numbered.
This scenario has an ugly cousin: not regime change, but state collapse. The most worrisome form it could take would resemble Syria during its 13-year civil war, in which the regime would survive in some areas of Iran, fall in others, invite foreign intervention and lead to killing on an epic scale. Along with that killing would come waves of refugees throughout the Middle East and into Europe and Australia.
No wonder Trump dissuaded Kurdish forces in Iraq from crossing the border into Iran. But those forces may not sit still if a weakened Iranian regime starts massacring restive Kurds within Iran’s borders. Much the same could go for Iran’s Baloch minority in the southeast and Iranian Arabs in the southwest.
The Israelis may not entirely mind that scenario, on the theory that a fractured Iran is someone else’s problem. For the United States and our Arab allies, it’s a different story: Long-term infighting in Iran may mean an end to the nuclear threat, but it gives us no rest from Mideast problems.
What, then, should the Trump administration do? My prescription: Seize Kharg Island. Mine or blockade Iran’s remaining ports. Destroy as much Iranian military capability as possible over the next week or two, including a second Midnight Hammer operation to destroy what’s left of Iran’s nuclear capacity and know-how. And threaten the regime with further bombing if it massacres its own citizens, mounts terrorist attacks abroad or returns to nuclear work.
That constitutes the most realistic path to victory at the lowest plausible price in lives, risk and treasure. And for all its admitted dangers, it gives Iran’s people their best chance of winning their freedom. Not bad for a one-month war its critics warned would be another Iraq.
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The post How Does This End? Four Scenarios for What Comes Next With Iran. appeared first on New York Times.
