Iran’s Islamic rulers are teetering on collapse. America must give them a final shove. Here’s what I am advising Trump’s team: MARK DUBOWITZ

For years, policymakers and analysts have wondered how the Islamic Republic of Iran might collapse.

Much less attention has been paid to the more important question: whether it is necessary.

For many of the millions of Iranians who have fled their homeland since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the answer is clear and deeply personal.

Before the mullahs seized power, Iran was a modern, secular state. Women had much more political and social freedom. Western culture was not criminalized, it was welcomed. Oil wealth fueled economic growth rather than terrorism abroad. To be honest, what replaced Iran has been a complete failure.

For some, the case against the regime is moral. Iran’s Shiite theocracy enforces a medieval interpretation of Islamic law, brutalizes women, executes opponents, and rules by fear. It is trying to export its extreme ideology far beyond its borders. This alone makes him a threat to all freedom-loving people.

But the most compelling argument is strategic and fully consistent with America First principles.

The Islamic Republic is not just a repressive internal dictatorship suspected of killing thousands of demonstrators during the largest popular uprisings since the regime’s founding. It is the world’s most aggressive terrorist sponsor state; It is the central node of a proxy empire stretching from Yemen to Lebanon, from Gaza to Venezuela.

For more than four decades, the regime and its proxies have killed and maimed thousands of Americans from Beirut to Iraq and beyond; This has made Iran one of the deadliest enemies the United States has faced since World War II.

Even today, Tehran is threatening new militia attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria, rebuilding its nuclear weapons program and building a massive missile arsenal (including an intercontinental ballistic missile capability that threatens America’s homeland, Israel, US forces and key regional allies), and supplying Iran-made drones to Russia to fuel Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

The Islamic Republic is not just a repressive internal dictatorship, suspected of killing thousands of demonstrators during the largest popular uprisings since the regime’s founding (Image: Videos show bodies of Iranian demonstrators following regime crackdown in Iran’s Tehran province on January 11)

These are not isolated actions. These are the components of a single, coherent Iranian strategy: to bleed American power, destabilize US allies, and reshape the regional order in Iran’s favor. As long as the mullahs are in power in Tehran, the United States will remain under constant threat.

No diplomatic agreement has changed this fact. The easing of sanctions did not soften the regime’s behavior. Participation did not strengthen reformers. On the contrary, any aid given to Tehran strengthened the Revolutionary Guard and expanded Iran’s external aggression.

Forty years later, the lesson is clear: Iran’s policies are not the problem. It is the Iranian regime.

Critics warn that calls for an end to the Islamic Republic risk chaos or a nationalist backlash that could support a shaky government. This fear is based on outdated assumptions.

Iranians have been filling the streets for almost two decades – since 2009 – chanting ‘Death to the dictator’ and ‘Our enemy is here’. The majority rejected religious rule, which only led to economic collapse, oppression and international isolation. The mullahs remain in power not by the consent of the people, but through violence, censorship and fear.

Supporting the Iranian people does not mean imposing a Western system or engineering a revolution. It is about aligning American policy with the clear desires of a population that overwhelmingly rejects theocracy. More importantly, Iran’s democratic opposition abroad has spent years developing a detailed and convincing plan for the day after the regime’s fall, addressing issues of governance, economic recovery, and relations with the outside world, debunking claims that collapse would mean chaos.

What will come after the mullahs? No one should claim that the transition will be easy. But the choice is not between perfect democracy and the status quo. It’s between a collapsing theocracy that exports terrorism and a post-Islamic Republic Iran that is at least no longer waging a permanent war against its neighbors and the United States.

Post-regime Iran will not need to transform into a Jeffersonian democracy to represent a dramatic strategic development. A government more accountable to its people would have strong incentives to rebuild an economy torn apart by corruption and sanctions and to divert resources from foreign militias to domestic needs.

For the first time in decades, it will be possible to reduce regional tensions.

Iranians have been filling the streets for almost two decades – since 2009 – chanting ‘Death to the dictator’ and ‘Our enemy is here’ (Image: Protests in Tehran on 8 January)

Until recently, Hezbollah’s arsenal of more than 150,000 rockets threatened Israel, Hamas’s war machine hung like a sword over Israel, and Houthi terrorists endangered global shipping lanes. The joint US-Israeli response after October 7 seriously weakened these threats. The world is safer for him; but only temporarily. Given time and space, Iran’s proxy forces will be rebuilt.

The United States does not need to invade Iran to end this threat. But the Islamic Republic must abandon the illusion that it can be reformed or ruled indefinitely.

A strategy consisting of targeted military and cyber attacks, maximum financial pressure, diplomatic isolation, information support to the Iranian people, and open political accommodation to their demands for change is not recklessness. Delayed.

Ending the Islamic Republic is not about revenge or ideology. This is about eliminating the biggest driver of instability, terrorism and nuclear risk in the Middle East.

The truth is disturbing but inevitable: As long as the mullahs rule in Tehran, the Middle East will remain a factory of terror, missiles and nuclear blackmail. Every delay adds time to the regime. Every illusion of reform prolongs the danger. The Islamic Republic declared war on the United States and its allies for 45 years, and this never meant peace.

History will judge America not by how carefully it manages this regime, but by whether it has the determination to finally end it. That moment is coming. The only question that remains is whether Washington has the courage to act before the next disaster forces its hand.

Mark Dubowitz executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies