Background:
During the final days of 2025, the Iranian currency, the rial, collapsed amid severe international sanctions, plunging the country’s economy into uncharted territory. Iranians responded by protesting en masse across all 31 provinces, with economic anxieties mixing with general discontent at the oppressive Islamic Republic regime that has governed the country since 1979. The government responded with equal determination, using mass violence to dispel the protests, leaving an estimated thousands dead in their wake. While US President Donald Trump promised support for the protesters and intimated US military action should the repression continue, there has yet to be any intervention at the time of writing, and the protests appear to have largely died out. Nonetheless, reports continue to spread that the White House is contemplating military action. This column debates what its authors have gauged to be the primary subject of these discussions: a limited military campaign against the Iranian regime.
In favor:
In politics, there exists an archetypal popular revolution against an autocratic regime: a grassroots movement that evolves from small demonstrations by protestors into an uprising that forcefully overthrows a tyrant. In a despotic regime, a picturesque revolution like this is possible, but only under certain circumstances; namely, protestors usually require military support, either from within or without, to successfully topple a dictator. If the dictator’s army is unwilling to turn around and point their guns in the opposite direction (like the guards of the Bastille did in 1789, turning the tide of the French Revolution), a foreign army may be the only force with the manpower and weaponry to aid a revolution (like the British Navy did to Haitian revolutionaries in 1803).
Conversely, a grassroots movement without armed support can be easily suppressed by an autocratic regime, and the results are often bloody for those opposed to the regime. In 1944, the Polish Underground launched the Warsaw Uprising, with the goal of ending the Nazi occupation of the city. However, the Soviet Red Army reneged on its plan to assist the revolutionaries, the uprising collapsed, and hundreds of thousands of Poles were killed while Warsaw was razed to the ground by the Nazis. The following decade, in 1956, student protestors led by Imre Nagy began the Hungarian Revolution, in the hopes of overthrowing the country’s Soviet-backed dictatorship with American support. But this American support never came, and the uprising failed, resulting in the execution of thousands of Hungarian reformers. Right now, the United States once again stands at this very crossroads, between intervening on behalf of reformers, or consigning them to a grisly fate.
For the last month or so, millions of people have taken to the streets in Iran to protest against the regime—led by fundamentalist Islamic cleric Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—that rules over them. Spurred by a hyperinflation crisis caused by severe economic mismanagement, coupled with continued repression against women and opposition figures, these protests are believed to be the largest anti-regime demonstrations since Iran’s current government came into power in 1979. In turn, the protests have been met with a brutal crackdown by the Ayatollah’s regime, which has killed as many as 30,000 people.
The Iranian security forces are unlikely to turn their guns back on their own leadership, and the regime has peddled the theory that the U.S. and Israel are instigating the protests in order to ensure their troops have the will to fight on and continue shooting fleeing college students in the back. Thus, if the protestors are to receive armed support, the onus falls upon a foreign fighting force to assist them. But much like we failed to assist brave Hungarian reformers in 1956, the U.S. has indicated it will likely not give support to the brave Iranian reformers seeking to bring democracy to their country. This is despite the fact that President Donald Trump previously told Iranian protestors that he would come to their “rescue” if they continued to demonstrate. By giving these protestors seemingly false hope, President Trump—if he does indeed renege on this promise—will have the blood of thousands of Iranians on his hands.
The current Iranian regime, for the sake of the Iranian people, the Middle East, and the rest of the world, must come to an end. The people of Iran live under a religious fundamentalist dictatorship, which subjugates women, LGBT people, religious minorities, political dissidents, and others to a degree that virtually no other government on the planet does. At the regional level, the Iranian regime is a destabilizing force, and it has utilized its proxies to instigate deadly engagements in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. And on the global stage, the Iranian regime has allied itself with other despotic regimes that seek to end the liberal rules-based international order, such as Russia and China. Sadly, as we speak, the Trump administration is squandering the best opportunity that the U.S. has been presented with since 1979 to liberate Iran, the Middle East, and the world from the Ayatollah and his brutal regime. America must not make that mistake.
Against:
A long-time Iranian opposition leader in exile, pleading with the U.S. to give him a chance, trying to persuade a presidential administration that a new regime would not challenge them. An administration criticized for its policy, and opaque about its action. The transmission of critical resources—particularly information. The rise of a new government, thanks to the role of Washington. To modern readers, this may seem to offer a hopeful view of a new Iran, led by deposed Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s last shah. To those familiar with history, however, it is simply a dark reminder. These words don’t describe the dreamed-of end of the comic book villain-esque Ali Khamenei and the brutal regime he leads, but some of the circumstances that contributed to its rise.
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter attempted to moderate tensions in Iran and his administration outwardly expressed support for Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a loyal ally. Privately, they kicked the door in just wide enough to allow a changing of the guard, crucially informing Ruhollah Khomeini that military leaders in Iran were not strictly opposed to change. Just a few years later, this same regime enabled by Carter, a Democrat, quietly paid for illegal weapons transfers from the administration of President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, with the proceeds used to supply anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua.
U.S. intervention then led to a disaster, not only for subsequent generations of Iranians, but for the U.S. and its allies across the world. Iran has threatened Israel with hypothetical nuclear weapons, supplied Russian forces with Shahed drones to use against Ukraine, and— through its Yemeni proxy, the Houthis—disrupted global supply chains. The last time the U.S. intervened in Iran to create a more domestically tolerable, U.S.-friendly government, in short, it led to disaster.
All of this is to say that U.S. intervention in Iran, particularly without a clear plan of action for what comes next, and how to influence it, is a terrible idea. When the US invaded neighboring Iraq in 2003, giving little thought to long-term consequences but seeing an opportunity to depose a nuisance, it created the very regional power vacuum that allowed Iran to become so powerful and so threatening in the first place. Now, it continues to face down a destabilizing dictatorship in Iran whose path to chaos it has continuously helped pave. If history suggests that short-sighted intervention in Iran is a bad idea, it must exclaim it unequivocally against the backdrop of the current crisis: with Washington already having given drastically mixed signals, pledging protesters support before reneging, promoting diplomacy while threatening aggression, and insisting that it remains unprepared for a long-term military commitment.
U.S. intervention in Iran has historically proved a negative and dangerous path. Now, with the protests seemingly put down, the prospect of new intervention becomes even more alarming. The US struck Iranian nuclear facilities last year, but failed to put the issue of Iran’s nuclear program to bed. This leaves the suggested target, the regime and its security forces—including the aggressive Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a core instrument of oppression, even more dangerous, like a cornered beast. To strike the regime but fail to replace it could only lead to a more aggressive and hostile reprisal in a region where so much U.S. interest is at risk. To successfully replace it, as illustrated above, could yet prove even more deadly.
The Iraqi democratic system installed by the U.S. after the fall of Saddam Hussein, under the leadership of then-U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, alienated huge swathes of his population, and in both his divisiveness and his weakness, gave rise to the Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL). Should a post-Khamenei Iran fail to move in a decisively pro-democracy fashion as a consolidated society, it risks already radical, violent forces arising both under the leadership of whatever remains of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s brutal structure, and from violent external regional forces. Thus, to strike Iran is a dangerous decision which could risk the lives of American servicemembers, diplomats, and allies.
Readers may remember Iran’s military responses, both in the aftermath of the nuclear facility strikes last summer and after the U.S. assassination of IRGC chief Qassem Soleimani in 2020. To strike and fail to institute regime change could create a more violent, hostile enemy in a profoundly sensitive region. To strike and succeed could yet be the most dangerous approach of all. Democratic and Republican administrations alike have consistently failed to appreciate the dangerous repercussions of intervening in Iran. Should the current administration resolve to continue following in their footsteps, it should expect to pay similar prices.
Qualifier:
On the Other Hand is a recurring column in The Hoot, which seeks to promote critical approaches to the issues of our time and respectful dialogue. The arguments made here should not be taken as the views of The Hoot and its staff, or even as those of the writers, unless explicitly stated. In this edition, Jack wrote in favor of intervention, while Stephen wrote against. They decline to state their personal views.
