America made regime change work reasonably well in Iran in 1953. It can do so again, if it admits what many Iranians – perhaps most – are openly saying nowadays: that it was right in 1953, the Shah was a great era for Iran, and while nothing is perfect and lasts forever, it was America more than the Shah that failed in 1979.

America’s media and politicians and colleges won’t admit this. But we can still make it work, if we clearly recognize our own interests and the similar interests of the Iranian people, and act on them.

America’s acquired allergy to affirming and acting on its interest

America’s has a vast material interest in a free Iran. It has a vast moral interest. It has an existential strategic interest. It has a quite large economic interest.

The actual problem is that America doesn’t allow itself to discuss its interest, at least not in a way that advocates for acting on it. It tells itself this would be selfish, capitalist-imperialist, etc – the whole litany of accuse-words.

This leaves America without an anchor of stable interest to keep it to its foreign policies; particularly, not to keep it to a policy of fighting consistently to free Iran of the hostile regime there. We allow ourselves to hit back at time to time and drive it back a bit, but we have given ourselves an allergy to following through and finishing the job.

We sorely need to discuss our interest positively with one another. It is the only way to put to the side the instinct in recent decades of bugging out too fast when we’re in a fight.

The imminent danger of a bug-out and an Iranian nuke

In fact, bugging out too quickly is what Trump and his aides have kept signaling for the last two weeks that we will do. This is what they say most of the time, in between the moments when Trump himself intermittently makes quite lucid observations to the contrary.

Bugging out would leave the Iran regime most likely sprinting for a nuclear weapon, with all its fissile materials and all its Russian-Korean-Chinese help. We have to avoid that outcome.

We need to get the Administration past its habit of impulsiveness. That requires making conscious its and our interests in staying serious here and now. And also providing, for the long term, the background justifications needed to stabilize public support for seriousness.

Meanwhile we keep hearing the Administration expound in favor of the habit of irresponsibility and bug-out. But then there are brief, important periods when it acts on common sense. The start of this war in Iran was one of them.

Then Trump’s entourage went back to the “in-and-out”, “one-and-done”, “no-regime-change” memes, its calling anything more than a few days a “forever war”, its consequent capricious behaviors. It’s hard to avoid noticing that these memes and behaviors have disturbingly much in common with those of rape culture.

The Saudis have been using the opposite meme: they were against starting the war, probably because they’ve come to feel that America has become like the kind of guy who can’t finish........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)