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Kelly McParland: Trump seeks an off-ramp in the war with Iran

The prospects of the regime living to see its 50th anniversary are looking increasingly likely

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Of all the things that might or might not happen as Israel and the United States continue their pounding of Iran, the one that looks least likely is an end to the regime.

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There’s no question that millions of Iranians would welcome a change. Yearn for it, in fact. That’s obvious from the escalating succession of protests, swelling in size and determination with each iteration, that have crowded Tehran’s streets as the aging tyranny tormenting the country approaches its 50th anniversary.

Kelly McParland: Trump seeks an off-ramp in the war with Iran Back to video

Ordinary Iranians have risked arrest, imprisonment, torture and death to demand greater freedom, fewer restrictions and an end to the corruption, repression and economic hardships they face. Yet far from eliciting concessions, each outburst has been met with a matching rise in the government’s response, with increasingly ruthless crackdowns, massive arrests and rising loss of life.

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The estimated death toll since the joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes began a month ago pales next to the slaughter unleashed on protesters in the most recent street demonstrations. Estimates suggest that tens of thousands, perhaps as many as 30,000, demonstrators were killed for daring to challenge the regime earlier this year, many of the victims being hunted down and murdered as state-backed security forces used the opportunity to eliminate trouble-makers. It’s entirely possible that when the war eventually ends, the combined forces of Israel and America will have killed fewer Iranians than Iranians killed themselves.

Authoritarian states seize so readily on organized repression largely because they have to, as tyrants understand people won’t willingly subject themselves to prolonged abuse without eventually objecting, and have to be forced or frightened into collective obedience.

Few regimes have demonstrated as fierce a determination to retain power as Iran’s, whatever the price in blood. The country endured as many as of 500,000 deaths in its 1980s war with Iraq without flinching; it’s unlikely to show any less resolve now, when the cost of defeat would be the dictatorship itself. “The Islamic Republic came to power through the blood of several hundred thousand honourable people and it will not back down in the face of those who deny this,” the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared in January at the peak of the protests.

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While Khamenei lost his own life in the first wave of U.S.-Israel bombings, there’s been nothing to suggest that the remnants of the ruling class are any less committed to continuing the fight. If Washington needs an example of how crushingly difficult it is to uproot even the most malignant of powers, it only need turn to its partner in the Iran venture. Decades of struggle to secure its own safety have yet to free Israel from the dangers of either Hamas and Hezbollah, two terror groups camped right on its borders.

Its response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack has been both ferocious  and unrelenting, yet two-and-a-half years into the offensive, Hamas not only continues to operate but has reportedly met representatives of U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly created Board of Peace to discuss easing restrictions on the embattled territory. Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble, Israel controls half the land and Israeli troops continue to operate across broad swaths of the Strip. Yet anything resembling a reliable peace remains as elusive as ever.

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Israel’s determination to insulate its northern border has been no more successful. Since it launched its latest attempt to neutralize Iran’s Hezbollah proxies, fighting has been so fierce that Lebanese authorities fear a full-scale invasion is imminent. Some 800,000 people have been forced from their homes, depopulating much of the southern part of the country,  yet Israeli Gen. Eyal Zamir said Sunday that the incursion had “only just begun” and could continue indefinitely. Still, as with Hamas, there’s no real prospect that Hezbollah can be permanently put out of business.

Gaza is a tiny territory caught between Israel and the sea; Lebanon is a narrow strip of land less than half the size of Israel. Iran, in comparison, is an enormous country more than twice the size of Texas with triple the population. The allies’ strategy so far has been to bomb it into submission. While both have the capacity to do spectacular damage from airstrikes alone, without significant ground operations to support the attacks the prospects of regime change are frustratingly finite.

Even with ground troops the likelihood of success is open to doubt. The U.S. spent 20 years in neighbouring Afghanistan with hundreds of thousands of troops, a network of allies and a vast support structure, only to stage a humiliating exit and a return to power of the brutal, fundamentalist Taliban.

Regime change requires patience, careful planning and a willingness to endure, none of which President Trump is famous for. Already he is talking of “winding down” the war. U.S. gas prices are approaching $4 a gallon, the stock market has tanked, MAGA is divided over Trump’s foreign adventures and midterm elections are just months away. What he needs is a suitable excuse to claim victory and call the troops home.

Conveniently for him, an opportunity exists: by never clearly establishing the goals of the incursion he has managed, in his usual way, to entirely befog the matter, enabling him to seize on the campaign’s one clear achievement — further degrading Iran’s nuclear capabilities — and head home. The fact he declared the country’s nuclear sites “completely and totally obliterated” just nine months ago would hardly represent an impediment in this White House.

The U.S. president is back to being a peacemaker. Numerous reports speak of back-channel contacts. “They want to settle,” Trump maintained on Monday. There have been “major points of agreement,” he said, though with who remains unclear. Just a few days before, he downplayed the prospect of talks. “All of their leaders are dead, as far as we know,” he said at the time. “We don’t know who we’re dealing with.”

Evidently someone popped up between Friday and Monday with a willingness to chat, as the Associated Press reported a 15-point demand list had been delivered by Washington via Pakistan. Though full details weren’t revealed, broad outlines included sanctions relief, nuclear restrictions, weapons limits, restraints on radical proxies and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. There was no indication that whoever received the document would also be expected to dispose of themselves.

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