The Middle East Forum has written the report that has been needed. It is a plan for actually succeeding in getting a friendly Iran out of this war.

The report is here. It cites a bunch of our best think tanks, praising them for doing good work in gaming out every detail of this war. It then politely reminds them that they – we – still need to get to the real question. It proceeds to provide the core question and, on point after point, the bulk of the answer in its report.

The others, it warns, have all ended up instead with plans for how best to limit our effort to one of “mowing the grass” and getting out – till the grass grows up again and we are hit with another, even round of Iran-based attack. Which would be a disaster.

This report doesn’t stop at accepting that disaster. It goes on to do what all those other think tanks should have been doing.

Hopefully it will provide a spur for our officials and our quasi-official think tanks to develop their own versions of a program for completing the job for real.

The One Point We Must Add to the MEF Plan

For a victory program to work, one more thing must still be added to MEF’s report. It needs to add a solid scenario, or scenarios, for actually eliminating on the ground the Islamic Republic regime, and replacing it with another regime.

Regimes exist on the ground. They are structures of authority on ground, with relations of control and subordination between individuals and institutions. Air power is ever more important, and same with information; but the power network of people on the ground is still crucial.

MEF’s section about drawing together the internal and emigre oppositions is an important part of building the new authority, but only a part. It is necessary also to have clear scenarios for organizing the oppositions to act as an authority, and to establish them as the authority on the ground. Scenarios such as:

* Helping to organize the oppositions into a cohesive responsible authority structure in real time.

* Arming this structure.

* Helping it overcome the remnants of the old regime and its enforcers on the street.

* Helping it gain control in crucial places in Iran – psychologically and politically crucial areas. Protecting it there, so it can proclaim the new government from there.

* Helping it expand its area of control, and to receive the surrender of old regime military and militia units.

No one had any doubt in 1945 that the authority should be concretely changed on the ground in Germany. Nor that it would be done. Our troops and tanks were rolling in.

We ourselves gained tremendously from this. Gained for more than half a century thereafter. MEF recognizes this.

We need to do no less in Iran. MEF recognizes as much. We need to act on it in full, with what MEF proposes and more.

The dangerous fear of discussing this

Our problem is that no one seems even to be contemplating doing this in Iran.

Instead, every analyst who goes partway there proceeds to pull back. They all find ways to accommodate to the regnant prejudices against carrying through for real on the ground.

Even MEF falls short of clarity on this. It risks vitiating the entire excellent rest of its plan.

It is important to stop relying on vague idealistic assumptions for this central point. It’s too risky to trust that the old regime’s authority will simply collapse and the people will replace it, without our taking the trouble to interpose militarily on the ground. That is a new, even worse version of Donald Rumsfeld’s position on Afghanistan and Iraq — that the Afghan and Iraqi people will self-form into good new democratic power structures, once the tyrannical power of the old regime over them is removed.

And if the people can’t do this? If they’re rightly too intimidated, after we let them get massacred in the tens of thousands by the regime enforcers on the ground just a month ago?

Then we console ourselves with rhetoric, saying it’s their fault and none of our business.

It is cheap democratic idealism to talk and act this way. It pretends to pure idealism. It in reality betrays our friends and our ideals. All for the sake of trying to do everything on the cheap.

The cheapness is not just financial. It’s also the political cheapness of avoiding the burden of doing what’s needed despite the rhetorical taboos

This leads today to an even worse conclusion than Rumsfeld’s: this time, it’s the dream that we won’t need to have a major organized military intervention on  the ground for eliminating the regime in crucial locations and for making it safe for a decent replacement regime to  establish itself in those locations. At least we did that much in Iraq. Now we’re saying that we should never in principle do such a thing. Suddenly it’s been turned into supposedly not the American way to do that; forgetting that we’ve been doing it ever since 1607.

At root, there’s an assumption that we shouldn’t propose a serious ground action, discuss it constructively, and refine it to succeed, for a truly petty reason: that it’s politically risky to say things like this out loud. It’s been ruled out too heatedly by the rhetoric of both rival elites over here in the USA.

Hopefully some officials are still loyal enough to the basic interests of the USA to let them prevail when it conflicts with petty rhetorical positioning.

We have to think about the real needs for winning on the ground seriously, so we can win effectively, and not again whittle them down to fit the taboos the prevent this. We must do this, notwithstanding the surface-level consensus for washing our hands of it – the consensus in most of the rhetoric of Vance and Hegseth on the one side, and the media and Democrats on the other side; and too often, Trump also.

The Iranian people are the only ones who seem to support a wholesale victory for us without any of these self-restricting prejudices. We risk disastrously disillusioning them if we don’t follow through.

Trump’s Constructive Ambiguity

At least Trump has proved far more flexible than this rhetoric of his in practice, on one point after another in this war. He remains ambiguous, which means there’s hope. His nationwide address on this on April 1 was sober and avoided all the traps. He saved his space for doing the right thing.

What does he need to become serious about doing the right thing? Things from his subordinates: to get serious about the full strategy. And things from us Think Tankers: to propose a strategy that is truly adequate, that has consistent good sense and courage about this, and that can gain backing from the right people, whether in other think tanks or in the Administration itself.

What is meant by an “adequate” policy here? It means there must have many or most of the points of the MEF report, and must also have a spinal backbone, a central point – actual regime change on the ground – that is strong enough to link all the other good peripheral points. The backbone provides the context the other points need to make them adequate.

MEF is excellent in addressing all those other points. We need only add the central spine, the actual replacement of the evil enemy regime on the ground by a normal friendly one.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)