By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

It is hard to think of a country that has lost as much influence in as short a time as Iran. Until recently, it was arguably the most important regional actor in the Middle East, more influential than Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey. Yet in a matter of months, the edifice of Iranian influence has come crashing down. Iran is weaker and more vulnerable than it has been in decades, likely since its decade-long war with Iraq or even since the 1979 revolution.

This weakness has reopened the debate about how the United States and its partners should approach the challenges posed by Iran. Some see an opportunity to take care of all dimensions of the threat—both Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and its malign regional activities—in one fell swoop. Others would add precipitating the end of the Islamic Republic altogether to the mix. Yet experience counsels caution about what to expect from the use of military force or economic sanctions, as well as from efforts designed to oust the existing political system and replace it with something better.

At issue is not just objectives but priorities, as tradeoffs are unavoidable: the issue is what to put first. But when it comes to means, the choice is less between diplomacy and coercion than it is how to marry and sequence the two. The most promising approach is one that would pursue the ambitious objective of reshaping Iran’s national security policy through diplomacy—but diplomacy carried out against a backdrop of the ability and willingness to use military force if Tehran refused to adequately address U.S. and Western concerns.

The stakes are great. What is decided will have major implications not just for the Middle East but also for the rest of the world, including energy markets. And for the United States, it will help determine the extent to which it can finally make good on a long-discussed pivot and shift military resources away from the Middle East toward other priorities, above all deterring Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

 

Rise and Fall

Tehran’s regional influence flowed largely from its funding and arming of terrorist groups and militias, in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and beyond. These proxies opposed Israel (and any accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians) and threatened U.S. and Western interests. More broadly, they were the means by which Iran sought to shape the Middle East in its image. This indirect strategy multiplied Iranian impact throughout the region while allowing Tehran to avoid or at least minimize direct retaliation.

In Iraq, Iran was a major beneficiary of the United States’ 2003 war, which, by removing Saddam Hussein from power, also eradicated a Sunni-led Baghdad that was willing and able to balance Shiite Tehran. Iran was able to leverage the chaos of the invasion and an affinity with Iraq’s Shiite majority to replace the United States as the external force with the greatest influence within the country.

Iran has long enjoyed a strong foothold in Lebanon, which had a Shiite plurality if not majority (it’s been decades since the last census). Tehran’s proxy Hezbollah, a major recipient of Iranian assistance of every sort and thus better equipped than its local rivals, acted with near-total independence within Lebanon—it was the proverbial state within a state. Owing to its military assets, above all its tens of thousands of missiles, and its proximity to Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, Hezbollah deterred Israeli action against Iran, as Israel had to account for the terrorist group’s ability to retaliate against its citizens and territory.

Then there was Hamas. For several decades, despite the fact that the group is Sunni, Iran supported it with cash, training, and arms, aiming to increase the odds that rejectionism rather than accommodation would dominate the Palestinian approach to Israel. In 2006, Hamas triumphed over the Palestinian Authority in elections in Gaza, giving it and Tehran a base for both military operations against Israel and for challenging the PA.

In Syria, Iran, along with Russia, went all in to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime when it teetered on the edge of collapse in the wake of the Arab Spring. The regime survived for over a decade, which kept the principal land route for sending arms to Hezbollah intact. And it kept Israel surrounded by hostile forces over which Iran wielded considerable influence—a Shiite crescent, stretching from Iran to Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza.

Iran also invested in developing the strength of the Houthis, a Yemen-based Shiite group that has been a protagonist in that country’s civil war (fighting not just the government but also the forces of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates). Since the start of the war in Gaza, the Houthis’ missile attacks on ships in the Red Sea have disrupted global commerce, forcing cargo ships and tankers to take the longer and more costly route around Africa. The Houthis have even on occasion attacked Israel directly and have attempted to strike U.S. Navy ships.

The beginning of the end of Iran’s regional primacy arrived, ironically enough, with what seemed like a triumph for the regime: the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. The extent of Iran’s involvement in the attacks remains unclear, but the massacre, which led to some 1,200 Israeli deaths and the seizing of some 200 hostages, could not have happened without Iran’s long-term involvement with and support of Hamas. The attack, which embarrassed an unprepared Israel and for a time allowed Hamas to claim that it was the one Palestinian entity willing and able to take on Israel, was a boon not just to Hamas but to Iran, its principal backer.

A little over a year later, that tactical win for Iran has ended in strategic defeat. Sustained Israeli military operations have degraded Hamas to the point it is no longer an effective fighting force that could mount anything like another October 7. Israel has followed this up with a variety of attacks on Hezbollah that have eliminated its leadership and its weapons caches, leaving it far weaker and forcing it to drop its long-standing insistence that any cease-fire with Israel be coupled with one in Gaza.

These developments facilitated Assad’s ouster. Hezbollah was no longer in a position to buttress the regime, which relied heavily on the group to retain power. With Russia focusing its resources and attention on Ukraine, anti-Assad forces, led by Islamists and backed by Turkey, quickly routed the dynasty that had ruthlessly ruled Syria for more than half a century. With Syria in disarray, Israel also took the opportunity to eliminate much of Assad’s military hardware.

Iran itself is also now more vulnerable than ever. Twice in 2024 (first in April, then again in October) it attacked Israel directly with a mix of drones and missiles in response to Israeli strikes on Iranian outposts in Syria and its assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran. Iran’s attacks caused little damage. And twice Israel responded, destroying air defenses, munitions stockpiles, and critical elements of Iran’s defense-industrial base, all while demonstrating an ability to operate militarily over Iran with near-complete freedom.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, December 2024

 

What You Want, What You Need

Yet despite these setbacks, three areas of Iranian behavior offer continued cause for concern. The first, its support for proxies, has garnered the most attention over the past 15 months. The second is its nuclear program. Iran has increased both the amount of enriched uranium in its possession and the level of enrichment. It is probably just weeks away from being able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to fuel as many as a dozen nuclear weapons. It would require more time (an estimated six months to a year) to field actual weapons, although that could be accelerated by assistance from experienced partners such as China, North Korea, Pakistan, or Russia.

The third concern is the internal situation in Iran. Iran’s leaders rule through coercion. Elections are conducted but would-be challengers are screened and many disqualified. Ultimate authority is in the hands of unelected clerics. Political rights are severely circumscribed for all Iranians, the Internet is managed by the government, regime opponents are subject to arbitrary arrest, and women are singled out for special controls. Ideally, U.S. policy would seek to address all three areas of concern, aiming to curtail the provision of military support to proxies; place a ceiling on Iran’s nuclear program, one that would be verifiable and that would provide ample warning if Iran were to try to move toward nuclear breakout; and create greater political and personal space for Iran’s citizens.

Aiming for success in all three domains—seeking an end to the government’s nuclear program, military support of proxies, and repression of the Iranian people—would, however, almost certainly fail. Foreign policy must reach for the doable as well as desirable, and an approach of such ambition would be unrealistic, in part because what would likely be essential to realizing one or two of the goals would be incompatible with accomplishing the third.

The nuclear program ought to be the highest priority for American policymakers. An Iran in possession of nuclear weapons and a range of delivery systems would be in a position to pose an existential threat to many of its neighbors and close U.S. regional partners, above all Israel. It would also be able to act with greater aggressiveness—including through its proxies—in the belief its nuclear might would make others hesitate before attacking it directly. There is also good reason to believe that an Iran with nuclear weapons would prompt several other regional states, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to develop or acquire nuclear weapons of their own. Such a development would increase the odds of conflict in the region (if only to stop such efforts) and increase the odds that nuclear weapons might actually be used. It would be far more difficult to create and sustain stability if the number of decision-makers multiplied and nuclear inventories were vulnerable to a first strike.

Some policymakers and analysts have argued instead for prioritizing regime change. The logic to this argument is that a democratic and pro-Western Iran would forswear nuclear weapons (and mean it) and back away from supporting proxies. Yet while there is validity to this logic, there is little reason to think that Washington could facilitate regime change with any degree of assurance, and certainly not on a clear timeline, no matter how weak the Islamic Republic may appear at the moment.

Authoritarian systems come in many shapes and sizes. Not all are equally brittle. Those that are—Syria under Assad comes to mind, Iran itself under the shah, Libya under Qaddafi, Iraq under Saddam—tend to have certain traits in common: rule by an individual rather than collective leadership, a lack of institutions, dependence on coercion more than widespread loyalty, the absence of widely accepted mechanisms for succession, security forces focused more on warding off coups than fighting traditional wars. Present-day Iran is different. To be sure, the leadership is currently unpopular, with polling suggesting a majority of Iranians oppose the regime. There are reports of notable public criticism of all that was done and spent on behalf of the Assad regime while everyday Iranians suffered. It is an energy-rich country suffering from an energy shortage. But that is not the same as saying that the government and the political system it represents lack substantial domestic support. More importantly, the regime has real bases of internal support willing to use violence to protect it. Iran also has an elaborate set of overlapping institutions, including a consultative assembly, an assembly of experts, a guardian council, an expediency council, a judiciary, and so on. This year, succession was relatively orderly after the president died in a helicopter crash.

A policy of regime change could in principle employ sanctions, clandestine economic and military support of regime opponents, nonrecognition of the regime and recognition of a political alternative, the use of media and social media to affect the information environment, and armed intervention. But history shows there is no assurance that such tools will achieve the desired effect, especially if success is defined by replacing existing authorities with something better (even if better only means aligned with U.S. interests) within a specific time period.

In the meantime, stopping Iran’s nuclear program and its support for destabilizing proxies will remain urgent priorities. As with Washington’s containment strategy during the Cold War—which, though focused on shaping Soviet foreign policy, did contribute to the collapse of the Soviet system after four decades—the priority must be limiting Iran’s capabilities and shaping its external behavior. Such efforts may also have an effect on internal development, but this should be a lower priority.

 

False Choices

Debates about how to achieve these objectives often present diplomacy and the use of military force as if they were mutually exclusive alternatives. Yet it is more constructive to think of them as complementary, to be used in coordination. Diplomacy backed by a credible use of force has a much better chance of succeeding than diplomacy absent such a threat, while the use of military force has a much better chance of being supported at home and internationally if it is introduced after diplomacy judged to be reasonable was rebuffed. As George Kennan, the author of the containment doctrine, once wryly noted, “You have no idea how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a little quiet armed force in the background.”

Diplomacy should explore the potential for a grand bargain: Iran would have to agree to an open-ended, verifiable ceiling on its nuclear program, limiting the amount of enriched material it could possess and the level of enrichment, and ensuring that any proscribed nuclear activity or capacity would be discovered long before it could produce a nuclear device. The agreement would also rule out Iranian military support for nonstate actors such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. And it would put constraints on Iran’s ballistic missile program. Such an arrangement would thus differ in significant ways from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which put time limits on nuclear restrictions and ignored Iran’s regional behavior.

Under such a deal, Iran would be able to maintain a nuclear energy program, albeit under severe constraints and intrusive monitoring, and it could provide political and economic (but not military) support to regional actors. Economic sanctions would be significantly eased (and even those sanctions that remained could be relaxed or removed if Tehran granted greater freedom to Iranians). And the United States would accept and be prepared to recognize the current Iranian government, forswearing attempts at regime change. Washington should be willing to present this arrangement to Congress as a formal agreement, to reassure Iran that the accord would remain in place even after a change in administration.

Why might Tehran go along? To begin with, the government is under immense pressure. It has experienced a serious erosion in its strategic position and is highly vulnerable to military attack. Its currency has plummeted. Energy prices have fallen, while at home there is not enough energy to keep apartments warm and factories producing. Already public dissatisfaction has gotten even higher in the aftermath of events in Syria. U.S.-led sanctions have contributed to Iran’s economic difficulties, and presumably, the promise of a degree of sanctions relief could prove appealing as it would ease the internal pressure on the regime.

From Tehran’s perspective, the most important objective would be to preserve the system created by the 1979 revolution. That objective has caused policy shifts in the past: in 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini accepted an end to Iran’s war with Iraq without victory, a decision he compared to drinking poison, in order to save the Islamic Republic. The current situation is analogous: the United States would signal its willingness to live with the existing regime if it accepted far-reaching constraints on its nuclear ambitions and regional activities. There are growing signs that the Iranian regime could be open to discussing such a deal, with its new vice president for strategic affairs writing in Foreign Affairs (even before events in Syria worsened Iran’s position) that the government “hopes for equal-footed negotiations regarding the nuclear deal—and potentially more.” The new president has made clear his priority of reviving the country’s economic fortunes.

Some analysts have argued for forgoing such a diplomatic effort and opting for military force sooner rather than later. An attack would target installations associated with the nuclear program in the twin hopes of destroying much or all of the program and spurring fundamental political change in Tehran. It is true that much, if not all, of the existing nuclear program could be destroyed or at least disrupted. But even this would not be a permanent solution, since Iran has gained nuclear expertise that cannot be destroyed with force. A successful military operation could set Tehran back by several years, but it might opt to rebuild its program in more fortified positions and beyond what U.S. and Israeli munitions could reach. Such an attack would also be used by Iran as further justification of the need for nuclear weapons. And even with its proxies and defenses weakened, Iran could retaliate against Israel using its surviving ballistic missiles; against the oil and gas installations of its neighbors, many of which are critical U.S. regional partners; and against U.S. targets via terrorism. The price of oil and gas would spike, adding to inflationary pressures globally and depressing economic growth. The internal effects in Iran of such a scenario are unknowable. They could just as easily trigger a rally-round-the-flag nationalist response as encourage antiregime protests. Internationally, such a preventive attack could prove destabilizing, as others could invoke it as a precedent for taking similar action against rivals.

Still others have advocated for a policy of maximum pressure that would make even greater use of economic sanctions. But there is nothing in the history of sanctions that suggests they could be expected to achieve ambitious ends, certainly not by a given date. Again, sanctions could and should be part of a comprehensive policy, with some additional measures introduced to increase pressure on the regime while the promise of their removal could be an added incentive for behavioral change, including in the realm of human rights and internal politics.

The right approach for Washington is to start with diplomacy while holding out the threat that force will be used, and then using it, if Iran advanced its nuclear activities beyond a certain threshold or tried to resupply its proxies with new weapons. This combination would aim to address the two highest priorities for the United States when it comes to Iran’s behavior, and those most susceptible to outside influence. Offering a degree of sanctions relief in exchange for nuclear and regional restraint would likely enhance regime prospects in the short run. But that objective should rightly take a back seat to higher priorities.

 

Strategic Opportunities Don’t Last Forever

Developments over the last 15 months have created an unexpected opportunity to rein in Iran. It is an opportunity that should not be squandered. There is no little irony here, as it was then President Donald Trump who took the United States out of the 2015 nuclear accord. But negotiating a new and improved pact would be akin to what Trump did when his first administration negotiated with Mexico and Canada to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). A new agreement with Iran would also obviate the need to use military force on a large scale, something Trump has traditionally resisted.

There is urgency here. Soon, Iran will likely attempt to pick up the pieces and reconstitute its proxies in the region. And with its conventional deterrent destroyed, Iran may also conclude that only a nuclear weapon can protect it from Israel and the United States. Diamonds may last forever, but strategic opportunities do not.

 

 

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