A dear friend recently asked me, “How will the war end in Iran?” I’m not an oracle, and despite having spent a full career as a soldier, I, like many of you, consume what I read and hear from the news and draw conclusions about what will happen. I suppose the best way to assess Iran’s future is to see things as they are.
Let’s start with how we got to where we are. In the Cold War era following World War II, the world was dominated by a powerful US and the Soviet Union. Both were the prominent survivors of that war and almost immediately began competing for domination in what they felt were their spheres of influence. The American monopoly on atomic weapons would soon be challenged by Russia’s acquisition of an equally deadly nuclear arsenal. The “hot” war would now be a “cold” one. It was a time when global conflict was largely bipolar, that is, characterized by the US-Soviet competition for regional dominance internationally.
That struggle would get very “hot” in Korea and Vietnam as the US and other Western powers opposed the spread of Russian and Chinese-supported communist movements. But in the Middle East, the violence that followed WWII brought much trouble to the world. When the modern state of Israel was founded, the Arab-Israeli conflict threatened peace worldwide as the US and Russia took sides. Almost everyone knows that history well. But what of Iran?
During the 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1978 wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Iran was led by its Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who distanced himself from those conflicts, preferring to align himself with US goals to keep the Persian Gulf open to world commerce. He was the perfect ally for the US while Washington was focused on Vietnam or standing by Israel. When the Shah fell in 1979, all of that changed. Iran was no longer an ally, but a bitter enemy, then ruled by radical mullahs who hated Israel and sought to propagate the Iranian revolution throughout the region.
Iran would wrongly hold the US embassy hostage for 444 days while inspiring terror attacks against US Marines in Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 brave Americans. The die was cast. Iran was at war with the US.
When the Soviet Union fell in December 1991 after a US-led coalition defeated Saddam Hussein and his army, the world was no longer bipolar. The emergence of a multipolar competition would be a new threat. Smaller countries seeking long-desired regional influence characterized a new political-military competition. Among them was Iran, whose hatred of the US and Israel fueled their desire to push the former out of the Middle East and destroy the latter.
Again, most people are well aware of the violence and terror that Iran has sponsored in the years since the First Gulf War, the one I fought in and wrote about. All of that history has led us to where we are now. And where we are is facing an Iran that is in the process of collapsing as a nation-state.
Since Operation Epic Fury began on 28 February 2026, US and Israeli forces have struck over 7,000 targets and destroyed the Iranian navy, all toward dismantling the regime’s security apparatus. Meanwhile, the Iranian leadership has been decapitated, and more of that will follow. How will this end?
I’m not sure. But I do know this. Iran will be in shambles. Its economy will collapse, its military will be defanged, its ballistic missiles and nuclear ambitions crushed. And then the US will withdraw, wisely not willing to re-engage in the national-building miscalculations of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Iran has paid a deserved price for the years of terror and violence it visited on the region and on its own people. This is not a war of choice, but a war of necessity. Iran’s demonic regime needed to be defenestrated. Now it will fall on the Iranian people to find the will to set their nation on a path to peace that its former tyrannical leaders eschewed.
The theocratic tyranny of the Islamic Revolution was untenable, maybe suited for a 7th-century world, but not for the present. The primary US strategy is to decisively terminate Iran’s ability to project violence and terror. Hopefully, a more moderate regime will emerge and reject radical hegemony for rational coexistence. But the Iranian people have been so abused by their repressive terror mullahs for the past 47 years that a new regime will not be formed overnight. After all, the former regime murdered protesters in the streets. For that reason, the wrong sort of leadership should be eliminated.
The best outcome may be the obvious one at this point—a demilitarized and defeated Iran, but one eager for positive change.
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