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As a Republican who was broadly onboard with toppling Iran well before the most recent flare up, I would like to offer an alternate narrative to the one about Trump is a Joe-Biden-esqe meat puppet being controlled by a zionist cabal, that seems to be the popular consensus here.
First off what does winning look like, in the eyes of team Trump?
Ideally, Iran makes a credible and verifiable commitment to dismantling their nuclear weapons program and stop supplying arms to HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russian Federation, Et Al. Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one. If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.
Importantly we are not going to do the Clinton or Obama thing where we give them a whole bunch of cash and trade concessions in exchange for a pinky-promise not to act up again and then sit on our thumbs when they renege on those promises 6-monthes later. While I'm not privy to the specifics my guess is that the plan is to hold Kharg Island hostage to force Iranian compliance.
How is this in American interests? I think it is just as valid to ask as how is it not?
While there is something of an isolationist streak present in the online right the prevailing attitude amongst the wider GOP is that if the US is going to occupy the role of hegemon we must play the role.
First, I think it needs to be pointed out that, with the Biden-era environmental limits removed the US is once again a net petroleum exporter and the US economy is much better situated to weather possible energy-trade disruptions than say China is.
As the global hegemon, international trade flows freely (and for the most part safely) largely thanks to guarantees that are enforced by the US Navy. If the US is the world's cop, Iran is not some innocent brown kid who got shot for no reason, they're the habitual bad actor with dozens of prior complaints and arrests.
From my perspective democrats' attitude towards the Iranian regime seems to echo their attitudes towards illegal immigration, violent crime. If you ask them if they want violent schizophrenics on the train they'll answer "no", but at the same time they will vehemently oppose anyone who looks like they might try to stop violent schizophrenics from stabbing people on trains. They seem to view the occasional train stabbing or ballistic missile attack as simply the price of doing business.
They've always been a bit vague on that. My guess is what they want is to use people from Iran's existing regime to run the country but take orders from Washington, similar to what the US did in Venezuela. As long as they stop selling weapons to terrorists they're free to run the country as they see fit, though of course we'd like to see some progress on human rights too. It's a good strategy, it just doesn't sound good in a press briefing.
So not "unconditional surrender" but more like what we saw in Japan post WWII: the Emperor stays, but the rest of the constitution is written by the United States.
Something like, Iran is still an Islamic Republic run by a supreme leader Ayatollah, but one neutered and friendly to US interests?
Sounds good to me. And there's no need to rewrite their constitution- they already have some democratic elements on paper there.
I've actually long been an admirer of the Islamic Republic's constitutional system, since learning about it in AP World Gov in high school.
Iran is a democracy, full stop, with certain elements that manage democratic change, similar for the most part to the US Judiciary. The Supreme Leader is chosen by the Assembly of Experts, who are directly elected. The Guardian Council, which vets candidates (including the Assembly of Experts) are appointed by the Supreme Leader.
The only real difference between our Constitutional Scholars at SCOTUS and their Islamic Jurists is the kind of law and tradition they study.
The actual government leaders, the parliament and the president, are elected by the people. The candidates are vetted by the Guardian Council.
It's a system designed to manage change and create stability.
That it has evolved (under pressure of repeated invasion, blockade, sanction, outside subversion against Iran and its neighbors) into a mix of theocracy and military state is unfortunate.
The ideas themselves aren't per-se bad. A similar system that produced a Supreme Leader that happened to be exactly to my tastes and values, and where the Supreme Leader held himself more aloof and less involved, would seem ideal for producing a consistent state and reduce values drift over time.
One can easily fantasize about an American Supreme Leader, the living embodiment of American values, who doesn't act day to day to carry out governance, but gets involved when the current government drifts out of line with core values. Or an American Guardian Council, which vets candidates to keep those out of line with American values from reaching the voters, demagogues and radicals. Eventually, if America shifts enough, both are subject to democratic change, but slowly.
That does not sound particularly democratic. It sounds vaguely reminiscent of "democracy" in the Soviet Union, where you could vote for any Communist-approved candidate you wanted and all actual power routed through unelected figures in the Party or executive.
What is your standard for democracy that this system as written fails? Technically, the constitution vests sovereignty in God, but all power follows from elections. The Supreme Leader is appointed by a group of elected experts (see eg our own Doge system). The guardian council vets candidates, but the guardian council is half appointed by the supreme leader and half by Parliament, so itself it has a democratic base.
There are obviously problems with how it has developed, but many of them can be analogized to undemocratic or dead hand problems with the American conditional order. They have one supreme leader who serves for life appointed by 14 elected experts, we have nine supreme court justices chosen by one president and 100 senators.
Iran is an illiberal democracy. They don't have free speech or freedom of expression. They have a significant dead hand problem of an entrenched set of interests which steer the country through approval of candidates. But then, so do we, through other means, and it's tough to look at our candidates sometimes and not wish for Guardian Council to protect me from them.
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Interesting. I don't really know much about their system, just that they have a "president" who doesn't do much and a "Supreme Leader" who sounds scary. But that all sounds pretty good. Just more evidence that Iran has some really good parts under the surface, its just ruined by an oppressive government.
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