By William F. Wechsler

Since first taking office, US President Donald Trump has been right on Iran more often than his critics care to admit.

From the outset, he recognized the threat posed by the regime and its nuclear program, necessarily expanded US sanctions to disrupt Iran’s malign activities, and sought a stronger nuclear deal than the imperfect one negotiated by his predecessor. The Abraham Accords that Trump announced near the end of his first term allowed for significantly improved military coordination between Israel and the Gulf, including critical efforts to improve defenses that proved invaluable when Iran twice attacked Israel directly during the Biden administration.

Trump also has made a number of correct calls on the most difficult questions involving the use of US military force against Iran, often overruling his advisors. Sometimes he has properly been more cautious; other times he has appropriately been willing to take calculated risks. In 2019, for instance, he wisely rejected a Pentagon recommendation to strike Iran directly in response to the shootdown of a US drone, which would have been a disproportionate and thus potentially dangerous response. Then, in 2020, he shocked the Pentagon by ordering the killing of Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, which materially diminished Iranian capabilities and did not immediately provoke the wider war that many had feared at the time. That risk was mitigated when Trump refused calls to escalate further after Iran retaliated against US forces. Most significantly, Trump made the right decision last year to bomb Iran’s nuclear program, reversing his administration’s prior decision to distance itself from Israel’s earlier strikes.

Trump hasn’t gotten everything right on Iran, of course. In 2018, he unwisely withdrew altogether from former US President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement instead of leveraging its strengths, such as its provisions to “snap back” sanctions. In 2019, he failed to respond when Iranian proxies attacked Saudi energy facilities Since his first term he has repeatedly questioned whether the United States should protect the flow of energy from the Gulf, arguing that “we don’t need oil” and therefore “don’t have to be patrolling the straits.” And he even began his second term by eliminating security details for those who served him previously and were targets of Iranian assassination plots.

Still, as this year began, it was reasonable to believe that Trump was well-positioned to develop a new set of policies toward Iran to advance US interests. Indeed, circumstances might have never been more advantageous for a shrewd combination of US power and diplomacy. Tehran’s geostrategic position had been sharply diminished in the wake of Israeli military successes against Iranian partners Hamas and Hezbollah, the fall of Iran’s ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Israel’s destruction of Iranian strategic air defenses, and the damage done in 2025 to Iran’s nuclear facilities. Perhaps most importantly, there were signs that the Iranian people were poised to once again rise up against their oppressors. It was a moment to leverage US strengths in coordination with regional partners to diminish the Iranian regime’s ability to threaten both the Middle East and its own citizens.

Unfortunately, Trump did not learn from his own experiences with Iran and take advantage of this generational opportunity. Instead, he repeated many of his predecessors’ mistakes by launching a misguided war and compounding the error by agreeing to a deeply flawed ceasefire agreement.

Nevertheless, there remains a way to salvage the situation. To avoid dangerous, predictable outcomes in the months and years ahead, Trump should embrace a new negotiating approach, a new emphasis on regional security and deterrence, and a new commitment to preparing for the future—all of which could attract bipartisan support in Congress.

A misguided war, echoing history

Novel miscalculations in the conduct of foreign policy are understandable; repeated errors are not. US policies toward Iran this year have included a series of decisions that failed to apply lessons that should have been learned from previous mistakes by Trump’s predecessors.

Like Obama—who publicly declared a US red line regarding chemical-weapons use in Syria, erroneously imagining that the threat alone would compel compliance—Trump on January 2 demanded that the Iranian government not attack its peaceful protesters, threatening that “we are locked and loaded and ready to go.” Then, like George H.W. Bush and Dwight Eisenhower, who called on Iraqis and Hungarians respectively to rise up against their oppressors and then stood by when they were massacred, Trump on January 13 called on the Iranian people to “keep protesting” as “help is on its way” before they were left helpless and butchered by the regime, likely by the tens of thousands.

Like George W. Bush, who launched a misguided war of choice to achieve regime change in Iraq with rosy assumptions of low costs and unrealistic outcomes, Trump on February 28 began his war against Iran by promising to “destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground,” “ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region,” and “ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.” None of these specific objectives has yet been accomplished. Moreover, in contrast to Bush, who overthrew Saddam Hussein and installed a new system of government, Trump has not achieved his stated goal of regime change, managing instead to only decapitate its leadership. The Iranian security forces did not comply with Trump’s demand to “lay down your arms,” so the Iranian people were unable to “take over your government,” as he had urged.

Like Lyndon Johnson, who failed to anticipate enemy action before the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, Trump didn’t plan for the predictable Iranian response of targeting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. In contrast to Johnson, however, Trump and his advisors had easily available to them the results of countless war games over the decades that foresaw this Iranian reaction.

The recent memorandum of understanding with Iran also has unwelcome historical parallels. Trump has repeated Woodrow Wilson’s central mistake with Germany by signing an agreement at Versailles that increases the likelihood of another future war. And Trump’s fourteen points (the number itself providing another ironic Wilson echo) includes provisions that provide for Iran to be paid through sanctions relief, reconstruction funds, and almost certainly some form of transit fees. In this respect, Trump has repeated Thomas Jefferson’s critical error when he went to war against the Barbary Pirates to end mandatory US tributes, but in the end agreed to “ransom” payments that set the stage for the Second Barbary War.

A flawed agreement, empowering Iran

Trump’s approach to his fourteen-point agreement with Iran mirrors his previous twenty-point agreement on Gaza. There are some positive commonalities. Each usefully halted fighting, allowed for a renewed transit of critically needed goods, and began wider negotiations between warring parties. They also share challenges. From the beginning, for example, most observers didn’t believe either would proceed far beyond the first of the many points listed.  

But that’s where the similarities end. The twenty-point agreement required Hamas to immediately release its hostages—the living and dead Israelis kidnapped by the group when it launched its war against Israel. But the fourteen-point agreement instead strengthens Iran’s control over its hostage, the Strait of Hormuz, which was taken only after the US launched its war. Iranian leaders certainly appreciate this fact, which explains their decision to move rapidly to enforce their control over Hormuz—an action that triggered the latest military exchanges between Iran and the United States.

Furthermore, while the twenty-point agreement came after Hamas was militarily defeated, the fourteen-point agreement leaves Iran victorious. Despite the damage done by the US and Israeli air forces, the Iranian regime remains in power and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps appears to have further consolidated its internal position both within the government and over a cowed population.

More significantly, the regime, following its longstanding approach, has successfully created a “new normal” in which Iranian actions that would have previously been considered casus belli now have been redefined below the threshold of war. Every US president since Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan determined that the United States would use military force to ensure freedom of navigation from the Gulf through international waters, but now Trump has, in effect and in writing, accepted de facto Iranian control over a vital maritime chokepoint. This is a stark contrast from when Obama directly but privately threatened Iran about any attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz—and a complete reversal even from Trump’s April 1 address to the nation in which he promised that “when this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally.”

In recent decades, the United States had built so much trust with its Gulf security partners that leaders in the United Arab Emirates felt they were abandoned by Joe Biden after a comparatively modest Houthi attack in 2022, requiring the US to work hard to mend diplomatic relations. That experience is quite a distance from where we are today, when Trump openly dismisses Iranian direct hits on Emirati vital infrastructure as “not heavy firing” and defends the existence of Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles—a message that was undoubtedly heard loud and clear in both Tehran and Abu Dhabi. A new normal that allows Iran to supplement its ability to project power indirectly through proxies with an accepted ability to strike its neighbors directly as it desires cannot possibly be in US interests.

This new normal formalized in the memorandum also has enabled Iran to officially link its interests in two theaters—the Gulf and Lebanon—and to divide the United States and Israel diplomatically, both longstanding Iranian strategic objectives that previous American presidents had denied. Trump’s memorandum of understanding empowers Iran to pressure the US to halt Israeli military operations targeting Hezbollah. We should expect Iran’s most recent use of this leverage to not be close to its last.

There’s another core difference between Trump’s Gaza and Iran ceasefire deals. While we should hope that all twenty points in the Gaza deal are fully implemented, we should hope that all fourteen points with Iran are never implemented.

It is reasonable to be deeply skeptical about whether the twenty points and Trump’s Board of Peace will ever be successful, but Palestinians, Israelis, and the entire region would be much safer and more prosperous if they are. The plan’s aspirations include demilitarizing Hamas and blocking it from governance, preventing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, blocking Israeli occupation or annexation of Gaza, providing security with an international force, mobilizing a global effort to ensure reconstruction and economic development, prioritizing deradicalization to encourage tolerance and coexistence, and establishing a Palestinian state that poses no threat to Israel. Only the most extreme Palestinians and Israelis could possibly object to this vision.

In contrast, the vision underlying the fourteen-point Iran plan is a nightmare for vital US national security interests—something many still haven’t fully appreciated. Should the agreement’s provisions ever become realities, it would fundamentally reshape the balance of power in the region to Iran’s benefit and the United States’ detriment.

Just a few clauses buried in the fourteen points tell the whole story. On the military front, Trump has committed to a Middle East in which the US will “remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and “will not deploy additional forces in the region.” On the face of it, this will lead to a US military withdrawal—a policy that I have been repeatedly warning against despite its appeal to many on both sides of the political spectrum. Most importantly, this is a Middle East in which the Iranian regime is clearly allowed to domestically enrich nuclear materials. The memorandum refuses to signal otherwise, instead affirming that “the Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program.” As every US administration—both Democratic and Republican—has concluded for decades, that nuclear program is a weapons program. That’s what “maintaining the status quo” really means.

On the financial front, this is also a Middle East in which the United States unfreezes Iranian funds and explicitly agrees that they can be “fully usable for payment to any ultimate beneficiary designated by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” That would include rebuilding Iran’s threatening arsenals and expanding its financial support to Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and proxies in Iraq. In addition, the US would be committed to ensuring that Iran receives the mind-boggling sum of “at least” $300 billion, granting “all required licenses, waivers, and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions” without any qualification for abiding by US laws in the process. That’s the same amount as Iran’s entire current gross domestic product. But it’s not enough money for the regime, so furthermore “the United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” apparently including those imposed for any purpose whatsoever, and, explicitly, “the United States of America will not impose any new sanctions.” This goes light years beyond the Obama nuclear deal, which lifted US sanctions imposed on the nuclear file but permitted sanctions related to other malign Iranian activities, such as support for global terrorism, to continue.

On the diplomatic front, this is a Middle East in which the US is publicly committed to preventing Israel from retaliating against Hezbollah’s direct attacks and terrorism. It is important to recall that Hezbollah voluntarily initiated its war with Israel in 2023 in order to support Hamas in the wake of Hamas’s terrorist attack on civilians within Israel. At the same time, the US has agreed to allow Iran to “conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz.” There won’t be “tolls,” but instead there will be security fees, administrative charges, environmental levies, supplemental insurance programs, and every other synonym one can imagine. If current trend lines hold, it’s only a matter of time before Trump flips longstanding US policy on its head completely and commits to being a party to Hormuz tolling. Indeed, one of the president’s latest statements on the subject seemed designed to lay the foundation for that final capitulation.

The fourteen points begin (point two) with a pact that the US and Iran will cease “interfering in each other’s internal affairs”—a complete American abandonment of the Iranian people that must have the victims of January’s massacres or the previous Woman, Life, Freedom movement rolling in their graves. And to wrap this all up in a bow, Trump would commit the US to include all of this in “a binding [United Nations Security Council] resolution,” thus enshrining these provisions into international law and tying the hands of his successors.

A dangerous future …

This misguided war and flawed agreement have placed the US and the Middle East on the precipice of a very dangerous future. One can foresee three negative scenarios and only one relatively positive one.

In the first scenario, the US could strike an agreement with Iran in the coming weeks to implement the vision laid out in the fourteen-point plan. This would be a historic disaster, as described above.

In a second scenario, the follow-on negotiations now underway could eventually fail and the US could then rush back into war with Iran. This could also be calamitous, as it might precipitate a global recession if negotiations fail before today’s low levels of oil reserves are restored. The resulting violence could easily destroy energy and water facilities on both sides of the Gulf.

In a third scenario, the US could avoid both those traps but nevertheless set the stage for yet another US-Iran war in the future—either under Trump or a successor. It could come after Iran has steadily rebuilt its forces and extended its influence while the US has allowed its military posture within the region to slowly deteriorate. That would result in Iran acting in more emboldened and aggressive ways, US partners being more pliant and risk-averse, and the US losing the next war not only diplomatically but militarily as well. Since some in the Gulf today already seem on the path to Finlandization—bending diplomatically to acquiesce to growing Iranian power—and since the bases of both US political parties right now seem to share Trump’s inclination toward military withdrawal from the region, this is the most probable outcome if nothing changes.

The goal of US policy should be to prevent these three outcomes—and bring about a fourth scenario of greater stability for the region. Given the deep hole that has already been dug, achieving this won’t be easy. But any attempt to do so should begin with some immediate US actions and new US policies. Vice President JD Vance recently asked, “If you think this is a bad deal, what is your alternative?” Well, here it is.

… and how to avoid it

First, the US should adopt a new negotiation strategy. Trump should instruct Vance and his ubiquitous diplomats Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner that the actual objective of the negotiations in the near term should not be to reach a final deal along the lines of the memorandum of understanding but instead to draw out the negotiations as long as possible without returning to war. The sixty-day timeline should be extended multiple times by mutual consent, as allowed for in the third point of the memorandum.

This would be a complete inversion of each country’s more typical negotiating strategy, as until this point it has been Iranian diplomats who have employed every technique to stall for time—quite successfully across multiple US administrations. Witkoff and Kushner should thus be very familiar with these machinations for delay: requesting more pliable officials as mediators, shifting locations of meetings, replacing individual negotiators, focusing on lower-priority items, elongating the pauses needed for responses, requiring decisions to go back to the capital for senior review, taking offense at public statements, overreacting to external events to postpone talks, and so on. While negotiations continue, the US should encourage regional initiatives to deescalate tensions, including long-imagined efforts to build a Middle East version of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. This will help ensure that oil continues to flow to the benefit of both sides so global reserves can be replenished. US negotiators were clearly outplayed by the Iranians on the language of the memorandum of understanding; stalling for time is a much more easily achievable assignment.

Second, the United States should reinforce its military partnerships in the Gulf and restore its deterrence against Iran. Trump should make three immediate announcements about US posture, presence, and partnerships. Regarding posture, Trump should make a clear commitment that the US will consistently have an aircraft carrier strike group deployed to Central Command (CENTCOM) and positioned in or near the Gulf for the remainder of his administration. This also will require European allies—most notably the United Kingdom and France—to publicly commit to keeping their relatively modest military assets there for the same period, and Gulf partners to openly welcome this change in policy. Not that long ago this posture was routine, and it may resonate with Trump if he were to be briefed by the CENTCOM commander, who led the Naval Forces Central Command under Biden, about how often this was not the case during the last administration and how that lack of presence likely encouraged Iranian adventurism. For their part, policymakers in Tehran seem to believe that Trump will return US military posture to the especially advantageous situation Iran enjoyed back in January. They need to be rapidly disabused of this assumption.

When the Iranian people rose up in January only to be slaughtered by the tens of thousands over two days—a rate exceeding any witnessed in other recent regional conflicts—the United States had no such strike force in the region. Indeed, the US didn’t have one in the Mediterranean either, because the Trump administration had moved so many of its military assets off the coast of Venezuela. This posture was very unusual relative to the norm over recent decades. But it was in line with the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, announced only a few months before the Iran war began, which asserted erroneously that the Middle East was no longer a “potential source of imminent catastrophe” and that there was “less to this problem [of regional conflict] than headlines might lead one to believe.” This panglossian assessment aged as poorly as the Biden administration’s earlier assertion that the region was “quieter today than it has been in two decades” only one week before Hamas’s terrorist attack against Israel.

Regarding US presence, Trump should announce a plan to fully restaff, completely rebuild, and appropriately rearm all US bases in the region. Today there is great concern among US partners in the Gulf that Trump and the “restrainers” in his Pentagon will use this opportunity to “resize” the US presence in the region by permanently removing many ground-based assets. After all, the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy—issued weeks after Iran massacred its people and only about one month before the US launched this war—asserted that the “primary responsibility for deterring and defending against Iran and its proxies” lay with regional allies and partners and, implicitly, not the US. Tehran is likely encouraging Gulf concerns about American abandonment.

Nothing could be more detrimental to US interests than to signal a US withdrawal, so the immediate objective should be to clearly commit otherwise. A stated policy to restaff, rebuild, and rearm to at least the status quo ante bellum would be a good start, though rebuilding will necessarily involve designs to make US bases less physically vulnerable by both hardening targets and improving defenses against drones and missiles. For their part, Gulf partners should not only publicly support these changes to US presence but also offer to financially underwrite the construction needed at US bases.

The US should then be prepared to use these military assets to project power and even to engage in low-intensity conflict to prevent Iran from firmly establishing its “new normal” on the Strait of Hormuz. Whether American diplomats agree or not, the Iranian regime’s leaders have concluded that they were implicitly granted Hormuz by the memorandum of understanding. Thus, expect them to follow their consistent pattern and continue to escalate on and off in the strait until everyone behaves as though they recognize Iran’s newly privileged position. At some point in the months ahead, the US Navy should conduct a routine transit along international waters through Hormuz and into the Gulf, thus reasserting that Washington does not accept the new normal that Tehran is attempting to establish.

The final step toward reassuring friends, reestablishing deterrence against foes, and thus preventing another war is to help US regional partners reform and expand their own militaries. This is an immediate problem requiring presidential-level leadership. At present, all US partners in the Gulf have immediately pressing needs to improve their own defensive and offensive capabilities. Money is not the issue, but capacity is. Unfortunately, the US is currently struggling to produce weapons at a rate that would meet its own needs, much less those of its allies, forcing partners to expand purchases from other countries.

To its credit, the Trump administration has begun to address the specific problem and systematic challenges in the US defense industry. But it should do much more to deepen global defense cooperation for this purpose by launching a coordinated effort with allies in Europe and Asia. Like he did in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, after unveiling his twenty-point plan, Trump should call for an international conference with other heads of state of major aligned arms producers and Gulf partners, perhaps in Amman. Together with the CEOs of their defense companies, the leaders could then announce joint plans for how to meet the Gulf’s acquisition needs, including identifying constraints in each country’s military industrial bases. This would send a strong signal to Tehran that its bullying of neighbors will not be successful.

Preparing for the future: War and regime change

A new negotiating strategy designed to delay and a renewed security commitment to the region can help get the United States through this immediate period. But there is still a need to prepare for the future. That future is entirely predictable based on three truths.

First, as long as the Islamic Republic of Iran exists, it will conduct malign actions that are detrimental to US interests and directly threaten US regional partners. The US must always be willing to use military force to prevent this regime from possessing nuclear weapons—a conclusion that every US president has reached while in office and that should be unassailable now that this regime has repeatedly demonstrated its eagerness to attack all of its neighbors directly.

Second, a second US-Iran war is highly likely over the longer term. Notwithstanding the real damage they have sustained, the Iranian regime’s leaders will feel empowered by the war’s outcome, be motivated by revenge after suffering what they see as an unjust attack, and continue to adapt based on their military shortcomings in this latest conflict. While this war is not highly probable in the near term, it’s almost certain over the years and decades to come, assuming no regime change takes place in Tehran before then.

And third, the Iranian people have repeatedly demonstrated their opposition to this regime and undoubtedly will do so in the future, even though the war may have postponed that day. Therefore, the US must prepare for both another war and for another opportunity to support the Iranian people.

Preparing for a future war begins with a comprehensive, passionless assessment of US military successes and failures—both offensive and defensive—during this latest war. While reporting on these matters has been limited, it seems clear that Iran was far more successful at damaging US bases in the region than many expected. As the United States rebuilds and hardens bases that could be targeted by Iranian short-range projectiles, the Pentagon should consider expanding the positioning of US military assets farther west, including into Israel. Moreover, notwithstanding its tremendous successes in the conflict, the US military’s apparent inability to secure the Strait of Hormuz at a politically and economically acceptable cost should provoke deep self-reflection among American war planners and their commanders. Reports that it would have taken the US military a full six months to open Hormuz in a permissive environment should similarly be seen as unacceptable for future war planning. Internal targeting processes that resulted in mistakes that included bombing a school should be understood as strategic, not just tactical, failures and rectified well in advance of a second war.

Such an analysis would also consider lessons learned from Iran’s main leverage points, especially the specific time frame before worldwide oil reserves are reduced to the level that a US president would be confronted with the likelihood of a global recession. That time frame should define an outer limit for military planners to achieve both a military and strategic victory against Tehran. The assessment would also come to clear-headed conclusions regarding the actions of US partners during the latest war, including how to better engage European allies and also how to assess the deep divisions among Gulf countries, their willingness or lack thereof to go to war for their own defenses, and their reported decisions (which they have denied) to strike secret bilateral deals with Iran to avoid being targeted. By the time the next war begins, the US should be well-positioned to lead a large coalition of miliary allies rather than only Israel.

Preparing for the next war also would involve further expanding US intelligence operations inside Iran to better inform operational planning and to better anticipate Iranian actions and responses. Perhaps most importantly, any preparations for the next war must include a coordinated, multi-year effort to sharply diminish the dependence of US partners and the global economy on the Strait of Hormuz. This will include building on the efforts begun many years ago in Saudi Arabia and the UAE to build redundancy into their oil pipelines and also accelerating the cross-border infrastructure required to build a network of overland corridors across the region.

The United States also should seek to be better prepared for the next time the Iranian people revolt against their oppressors. The protests in January, which came three years after the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and nine months after the twelve-day war against Iran, were the most direct threat to the regime’s legitimacy since 1979. This was well-understood by the regime itself, which explains both the unprecedented violence of its response and its recent strategic shift from religion to nationalism as its ideological core. (Even before the war, the Iranian leadership felt compelled to relax the enforcement of its draconian dress codes for women.) This shift is unsurprising since a regime that organically came to power to depose a hereditary monarchy has now established a hereditary theocracy by passing down the office of supreme leader from Ali Khamenei to his son Mojtaba, even if real power in Iran today resides with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Policymakers in Washington must understand that the center of gravity for any possible regime change in Tehran is the people within Iran, not those in the Iranian diaspora who claim to speak for them. It is difficult but not impossible for regime change to come from abroad. It is impossible, not merely difficult, for it to be imposed from the skies, as American and Israeli leaders hoped at the outset of this war.

While it is fashionable today in some circles to dismiss the possibility of the Iranian people rising up yet again after tens of thousands were killed in January, such pessimism will be perceived as sensible just up to the moment that it is proven wrong—as was the case when Washington was surprised by the Iranian revolution, the outbreak of the Arab Spring, and the eventual changes in government in Egypt and Syria. Iran today is an economic disaster, with elites siphoning off money that could be better used to manage the results of sky-high inflation, vast unemployment, a collapsing currency, and longstanding financial mismanagement. Just as George Kennan famously observed about the Soviet Union, the Islamic Republic of Iran “bears within it the seeds of its own decay,” and “the sprouting of these seeds is well advanced.” The US must be prepared when those sprouts once again begin to bloom.

Such preparation would require a far more granular understanding of opposition networks inside Iran than either the US or Israel likely possesses today. After all, if Washington truly understood the opposition, it couldn’t have possibly signed off on a plan to install former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power. This should become a top collection target for US intelligence and all of its relevant partner services across the region and Europe. With a deeper understanding, the US could draw up plans to support appropriate networks with funding, equipment, and potentially arms. It would similarly be useful to try to identify in advance any potential allies within the Artesh, Iran’s regular military, who could respond to the people’s demands when the time is right and order their guns against the regime.

The United States also should prevent the Iranian regime from again resorting to one of its most effective actions: imposing an internet blackout on its people. The next time the Iranian people are ready to rise up, the US and its partners should ensure that every Iranian opposition member has the means to provide satellite connectivity to cellphones. (In this same vein, the Trump administration’s decision to gut the Voice of America’s Persian Service and Radio Farda was a big mistake.)

The last thing Washington should do is repeat the mistake made by many past US administrations of trying and generally failing to seek out “moderates” in the Iran regime with whom the United States can work to fundamentally change Tehran’s malign activities. This led to Reagan’s disastrous Iran-Contra Affair, Bill Clinton’s failed opening to Iran in the last years of his presidency, Obama’s nuclear deal and “sharing the neighborhood” approach on regional threats, and more recently Trump’s oft-stated belief that the “new group” of Iranian post-war leaders is “far less radicalized.” While it’s always tempting to succumb to the mirage of regime moderates, US policymakers should recognize that it has never led to a sustainable solution.

Drawing out negotiations while deescalating the conflict with Iran. A new commitment to US posture, presence, and partnerships in the Middle East. A longer-term strategy to prepare to support the Iranian people if they seek to change the regime, and to succeed strategically and militarily if another war becomes unavoidable. This set of actions and policies should appeal to the Trump administration as a means of avoiding the perilous path it’s currently on with Iran. It should also resonate with Republican lawmakers with a track record of grasping the threats posed by the Iranian regime and with concerns about how the war has ended, and with Democratic lawmakers who are critical of Trump’s war and approach to Iran more broadly but also don’t want peace with Tehran at any price.

A dangerous future awaits, but it’s not destiny. US leaders have agency to avert it. And they should start doing so now.

about the author

William F. Wechsler is the senior director of the Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. His most recent US government position was deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combatting terrorism.

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