The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier accompanied by guided-missile destroyers, has boosted US striking power in the Middle East. President Donald Trump has hinted at military action to support Iran’s latest protest wave, at times even using the sensitive term “regime change.” But the legacy of bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan arouses fears that the fall of Iran’s clerical regime could unleash even more violence and extremism.

This analogy rests on a poor understanding of Iranian society after half a century of Islamist rule. It obscures how fundamentally different Iran is from the Iraq and Afghanistan of two decades ago. Iran’s anti-regime movement is inherently anti-Islamist; Iranians possess a strong and ancient national identity; the economy would not be structurally dependent on foreign aid once sanctions are lifted; and society is well-versed in the mechanics of elections despite decades of clerical control that rendered them neither free nor fair.

For the United States, Iran offers something Iraq and Afghanistan never did: a chance to gain a durable ally in a turbulent region without requiring a troop deployment or costly reconstruction. If US military action tipped the scales, empowering the Iranian people to overthrow a hated dictatorship, the result could be transformative, and the costs to Washington limited.

Unlike Iran, the main anti-regime currents in Iraq and Afghanistan had deep Islamist roots. Saddam Hussein suppressed both Sunni and Shia jihadists as threats to Baathism, but together they formed an Islamist opposition that surged after his fall. In Afghanistan, Islamism crystallized into Jamiat-e Islami and Hezb-e Islami by the early 1970s, including a failed 1975 uprising against the Daoud Khan government.

Iranian society is increasingly moving away not only from political Islam but from the religion itself. Surveys across ten Middle Eastern countries showed Iran had the lowest mosque attendance in the region. This decline in religious observance was reflected in the regime’s 2023 complaints that roughly 50,000 of Iran’s 75,000 mosques were closed due to a lack of worshippers. 

A leaked 2024 regime........

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