Bryan Brulotte: War with Iran Represents a Necessary Strategic Risk
War clarifies intentions and strips away illusion. The conflict between Iran and Western powers has escalated beyond shadow warfare through proxies and covert operations. A joint American and Israeli campaign is now directly targeting Iran's military infrastructure, command networks, nuclear facilities, and senior leadership figures within the Islamic Republic.
The Flawed Assumption of Stability
Critics question whether such strikes risk destabilizing Iran, expressing concerns about potential chaos, fragmentation, and the absence of a clear post-conflict plan. However, this perspective rests on a flawed assumption: it presumes that the status quo was stable. In reality, the Iranian regime has spent decades exporting instability throughout the Middle East through its proxy militias and nuclear brinkmanship.
Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, militia networks in Iraq and Syria, and Houthi forces in Yemen are not spontaneous movements. They are instruments of state power coordinated through Tehran's security apparatus. Leaving the regime intact would allow it to steadily expand its nuclear capabilities and proxy reach. Disrupting it, conversely, could neutralize a threat before the cost of reversal becomes prohibitive.
Separating Rhetoric from Operational Reality
It is crucial to distinguish between political rhetoric and operational reality. Public statements about regime change may capture attention, but strategy is revealed through actions. The current campaign is not characterized by large-scale mobilization for territorial occupation or political reconstruction. Instead, it features targeted strikes against leadership nodes, military infrastructure, and nuclear assets.
This pattern suggests a narrower objective: degrade capabilities, disrupt coordination, and restore deterrence. Within this framework, three plausible outcomes emerge.
Three Potential Scenarios
- Regime continuity under intensified securitization: The most probable outcome is that the Islamic Republic survives but becomes more militarized. This regime has endured sanctions, internal unrest, targeted killings, and economic isolation for decades. Its resilience relies not merely on clerical authority but on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which functions as a military force, intelligence service, and economic power center.
- Consolidation rather than fracture: External attacks can consolidate such systems rather than fracture them. National identity may fuse with regime preservation, emergency powers could expand, and dissent might become indistinguishable from disloyalty. If the security apparatus remains cohesive, Tehran will likely emerge damaged but intact, potentially more hostile toward the United States and Israel.
- Continued calibrated escalation: In this scenario, Iranian retaliation would persist through measured escalation. Missiles, drones, and proxy operations would impose costs without triggering overwhelming retaliation. Maritime pressure in the Strait of Hormuz could become a lever of economic coercion, with survival rather than victory as the strategic objective.
No serious strategist imagines that risk can be eliminated entirely; it can only be redistributed. The benefits of preventing a hostile regime from crossing the nuclear threshold and destabilizing the international order may outweigh the risks of military action, according to this analysis.
