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 not a minority on the margins. They are, in truth, the majority.
No serious American should forget what kind of regime this is. Tehran’s hostility is not rhetorical. It is written in blood. The Beirut barracks bombing of 1983 killed 241 US service members. In Iraq, Iranian-backed networks and Iranian-made weapons killed American troops. This is a regime whose proxies have murdered Americans, targeted US interests, and made terrorism an extension of foreign policy.
The Gulf states understand this better than most, because they have lived under the Iranian threat for years. And now Tehran has crossed still more red lines by directly targeting countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—states whose offense, in the eyes of the regime, was choosing peace, prosperity, and regional cooperation through the Abraham Accords. Iran has launched missiles, drones, and direct attacks against these countries. These are direct attacks on sovereign states that chose a future beyond revolutionary blackmail.
That matters because the war has now moved beyond the familiar exchange of strikes and reprisals. The real pressure point is the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has shown that even when under pressure, it can still menace one of the world’s most vital maritime chokepoints and threaten the global economy. The issue is no longer only Iran’s missile arsenal or proxy network. It is whether the regime will be allowed to turn geography into a permanent instrument of blackmail.
That is why this conflict cannot drift into an endless half-war. A cornered regime is often more reckless, not less. If Washington stops at partial military degradation without achieving the larger political objective, the damage from such an outcome may soon outweigh the temporary gains. Iran would emerge bloodied but not broken, eager to prove that it can still intimidate Gulf states, threaten Israel, disrupt trade, and extract concessions through fear.
The global economy would remain hostage to a regime that has already shown it is willing to weaponize insecurity. That is not stability. That is strategic paralysis by another name.
So the objective should be stated plainly: no more negotiations that give Tehran time to regroup, no more cosmetic arrangements, and no endless war without a political endgame. The objective must be decisive defeat of the regime’s coercive machinery and, ultimately, the collapse of the system—or what remains of it—that has exported fear, terror, and disorder for nearly half a century.
But military power, however necessary, cannot by itself write the last chapter. That chapter belongs to the Iranian people. The regime is fragile. It is under military pressure from outside and suffering deep exhaustion from within. Years of repression, corruption, economic hardship, and political brutality have hollowed it out. Women have been brutalized, students silenced, workers crushed, families impoverished, and dissidents imprisoned. The Iranian people have paid the price for this regime for far too long.
That is why the next phase must be both political and military. Once core military objectives are credibly achieved, the pressure should shift inward—toward the Iranian people and against the surviving organs of repression. The world should speak not only to the regime, but past it: to women, students, workers, professionals, dissidents, and all those who know that Iran deserves better than permanent captivity under clerical violence.
Military action is essential, but it must remain tied to an outcome. Once the regime’s coercive power has been broken to the point that it can no longer threaten the region with the same impunity, the center of gravity must shift toward internal political change. At a moment when the regime is fragile, the Iranian people must be given time, space, and every lawful means of support to reclaim their voice and finish what outside force alone cannot.
That would be the true strategic victory: not merely damaged runways and destroyed launchers, but an Iranian regime unable to recover, a stronger regional alignment among responsible states, restored deterrence in the Gulf, and an Iranian people emboldened to reclaim the country that was stolen from them.
The United States has already shattered the myth that Tehran is untouchable. Now the job is to ensure that Iran does not survive this war as a more serious threat in an altered form. The regime must not be allowed to emerge from this confrontation claiming endurance as triumph. And once the opening is created, the Iranian people must be given their chance to decide the future of their nation.
That is how this war should end: not with another illusion, not with another pause, and not with a regime of terror left standing to threaten the region again—but with a historic opening for a different Iran, and a different Middle East.
About the Author: Ahmed Charai
Ahmed Charai is the publisher of The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune and serves on the boards of directors of the Atlantic Council, the International Crisis Group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Center for the National Interest.
