Why Donald Trump Must Finish the Job in Iran

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The Iranian people must be given the chance to end the Islamic Republic following the completion of US military objectives.

The Iran War has settled one question once and for all: the regime in Tehran is not a difficult negotiating partner or a misunderstood regional power. It is the most persistent source of organized instability in the Middle East. For decades, the Islamic Republic has threatened the United States, targeted Israel, terrorized its Arab neighbors, armed militias across the region, and treated chaos as a tool of statecraft. What we are seeing now is the result of a regime built on intimidation, expansionism, and ideological aggression.

President Donald Trump now faces a moment of strategic clarity. The United States and Israel have already inflicted serious damage on Iran’s military infrastructure, command networks, and aura of invulnerability. But if this war ends now with a battered regime still standing, still armed, and still capable of threatening the region, then Tehran will do what it has always done: present survival as victory, rebuild its machinery of coercion, and return even more dangerous. 

Worse still, what remains of the regime—an organized apparatus of repression and terror more than a legitimate state—will claim renewed legitimacy before part of the population. Its agents will use that manufactured triumph to intensify the persecution of Iranians who oppose clerical rule, terrorizing, imprisoning, and killing those who aspire to freedom. And those Iranians are........

© The National Interest