The idea of sending the troops to invade and occupy Iran resurfaced in Washington in recent days, following the idea that emerged in the Trump era of maximum pressure on Iran. The idea of sending the US Army to fight another war abroad and expecting to have the upper hand is an outdated view of war and of modern armies’ capabilities.

Although the US has the most powerful armed forces in the world in terms of firepower, surveillance, networking and communications, it does not mean that it can send its troops to a foreign country such as Iran and occupy it without encountering many obstacles. The Trump administration wanted to send troops to the region to destroy the Iranian infrastructure. Still, it knew that such a step would have a negative reaction in the region and internationally. The US can win the war against Iran, but it may lose the peace.

When U.S. warplanes first hit their targets inside Iran, the primary goal would be to shock and destroy—meaning thousands of guided bombs and thousands of missiles would be detonated in a attempt to annihilate whatever pieces of Iran’s air defenses and parts of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that Washington and its allies are looking to destroy. In theory, the U.S. should have the better of it. However, it’s important to keep in mind that Iran is not an easy-to-overrun country like Afghanistan was in 2001 or Iraq in 2003. Iran is a sizeable nation, made up of a variety of different ecosystems and containing rich political, social and cultural systems that, though contested by the population, have evolved to such a degree that they can withstand an immense amount of outside pressure and remain intact. The IRGC, the Basij and the regular armed forces may be completely disrupted and annihilated as organised forces, but they will break up and regroup into guerrilla and terrorist organisations, and begin to launch cyber attacks as part of a multi-pronged campaign that was planned for many years. The U.S. may win the first battle, but it will lose the war.

There are many more factors to consider. An attack on Iran won’t stay within its borders. “In the case of an attack on Iran, it won’t be only Iran that will burn,” said an experienced senior official in a long conversation late into the night. In recent years, the regime in Iran has been gathering around itself an impressive array of alliances and proxies throughout the Middle East. From Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Iranian-sponsored militias in Iraq, to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. It is unclear whether Israel would be able to withstand rocket attacks from these areas, and the American bases in the Gulf are likely to come under fire as well. A closure of the Straits of Hormuz, the artery for the world’s oil trade, could last for weeks if not months. A wrong move could set the entire world economy on fire. The US won’t be able to contain this unfolding crisis.

The biggest misconception of the whole “regime change” debate is the assumption that, once the regime is overthrown, everything will be fine. This is a fantasy. The Islamic Republic is not a dictatorship of the type where the President is Saddam or Assad and can be replaced, and the regime will carry on. It is a complex system with a delicate balance of power between the clerical class, the military and the bureaucracy. So the Supreme Leader is removed, and what? Washington will have succeeded in enabling a transfer of power to a new government dominated by the IRGC, and that will be it for the revolution of the “interventionists”.

Over the past month or so, I’ve come across several regime change advocates in the Iranian diaspora who’ve advocated bringing back the Pahlavi monarchy under Reza Pahlavi. The idea of bringing back a king or a queen to power doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. The Shah of Iran is highly unpopular with the people of Iran, and the nostalgia for him and his era is limited to the grandparents of today’s youth. Moreover, his coronation would be through foreign invasion, and so he would inherit a structural legitimacy problem in Iran that would be hard to surmount. The IRGC, the clerical regime, and also nationalists and secularists of all sorts would resist him at every turn. Any foreign power, including the United States, would not be able to impose a king or a queen on the people of Iran. The imperialist method of trying to impose a constitutional monarchy by gunboat diplomacy would also be politically and structurally impossible.

It is difficult to predict with certainty the aftermath of a dictatorship being toppled. There is, however, a high degree of probability of instability and fragmentation. This is due to ethnic minority groups, which include Kurds, Baluch, Arabs and Azeris, and the potential for violence when a government loses control. The unstable nature of a regime change in Iran could result in a very unstable and complex multi-party conflict, similar to what has been seen in Syria, but potentially worse. Similar to Syria, multiple foreign powers will attempt to impose their influence, while various militias and terrorist organisations will make their way to the region to carry out attacks in a country with undefined borders. The result may be a humanitarian disaster of a magnitude unseen in decades. The United States would then have a difficult decision on its hands, as it would be forced to choose between occupying the country for an unspecified amount of time or allowing the country to plunge into chaos.

The answer to the question in two words is disorder. Force can topple an autocratic government, but it cannot construct a state. The wreckage of Iraq and the debacle in Afghanistan are eloquent illustrations of this truth. An invasion of Iran would almost certainly encounter a more determined population of IRANIANS WHO FEEL THEIR NATIONHOOD FEELS PROFOUNDLY ASSESSED, a country with a slightly more developed set of institutions and a much greater number of international linkages to its neighbours. An attempt to use force to overthrow the clerical regime would inevitably be followed by insurgency, governmental failure and a massive release of highly volatile and contentious regional issues that would be a never-ending drag on American power and resources.

There is a far more plausible and less sensational alternative to the revolutionary turmoil now sweeping the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rather than a revolution that potentially destabilises the existing regime and may lead to a radically different relationship with the West, the United States can attempt to contain the country, negotiate with its new leadership, and reduce overall tensions in the Middle East by pursuing containment, engagement, and regional defusion. Efforts to promote Gulf security through the prevention and resolution of conflict, as well as multilateral talks on nuclear and regional issues, are slow-moving, frustrating business—but they have thus far served to prevent an uncontrolled descent into turmoil in the region.

An invasion of Iran by the U.S. Army is not a bad option. It is not even a bad idea. It is not even an option. It is simply a mind-bogglingly bad, impossibly terrible, and utterly insane option. The U.S. might be able to blow up the regular army of the Islamic Republic, but it will never be able to destroy the thing that truly makes the regime work, the system of emotional and ideological underpinnings, such as Iranian nationalism, the institutions of the past, and the hundreds of social networks that are formed almost instantaneously behind the waves of incoming missiles. And, as disastrous as it would be to try to impose Reza Pahlavi as the Shah of Iran, things would be reduced to the level of farcical anarchy in no time at all.

The attempt to turn Libya into a democracy, which failed when Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011, is clear evidence of this. What we now see is a failed state with foreign powers all trying to gain power and influence in a nation which has descended into thirteen years of unrelenting warfare and bloodshed, and this was a relatively stable, more populous, diverse and central nation to the Middle East than Iran. Iran would almost certainly devolve into an even more complete and intractable disaster than Libya has. What the U.S. needs to do regarding Iran for the foreseeable future is to practice what might be called patience, self-restraint, and deliberateness, by aiming to foster dialogue between the U.S. and Iran while at the same time containing the actions of the Islamic Republic and at the same time reducing tensions in the Middle East. Any other course of action that the U.S. might take regarding Iran during the current time would be a recipe for potentially catastrophic disasters not just for the Middle East, but also for the United States itself, and potentially for the world, with consequences that may well be irreparable.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own.

                                                      Reference

Marzbanmehr, A. (2026). Strategic escalation and conflict sustainability in the US-Iran war. Doha: Al Jazeera Centre for Studies.

Alexander, Kristian Patrick. (2026). Scenarios for Iran’s future and implications for GCC security. Washington, DC: Stimson Center.

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