Just to add my own simplistic views of the situation, it is downright laughable that U.S. diplomats (and those in the west generally) firmly believe that a democratic Iran would resolve most of the outstanding issues in the region. As Dr. Walt states, the desire for a nuclear program has cut across partisan and ideological lines; both moderates and hardline Islamists in Tehran wholeheartedly support Iran's quest for a nuclear capability (whether this is civilian or not). Over the past three years, the nuclear option has transformed into something much more significant than a few uranium enrichment plants. The program is now a symbolic part of Iranian nationalism, thus making it even marker to persuade the Iranian leadership to forgo the nuclear path.

Lets say that Iran were to become a democratic state in the next decade. Would that actually ensure more compliance and cooperation with the United States? On some issues- such as human rights and economic growth- perhaps. But on issues the U.S. really cares about- like national security and oil prices- the answer is much bleaker. After all, dozens of democracies in Europe and Latin America have not necessarily helped Washington promote its personal agenda. Regardless of whether a regime is democratic or not, all states have their own interests to promote.

http://depetris.wordpress.com

Mr. Stephen Walt is, of course, right when, addressing the Iranian mess, he rhetorically asks "haven't recent events taught us that toppling foreign governments can lead to lots of unintended and undesirable consequences?"

United States should never interfere with any country's internal or external policy.

In the case of North Korea and Iran we should only destroy their nuclear weapons manufacturing capacity and nothing else. After all, different from all other countries in the world, these two are directly threatening our security and should be dealt with promptly and efficiently by our Air Force.

The time for talking is over; the time for action is upon us all, right now!

Your title should really read "Be careful what you wish for: Would ‘regime change’ help the West/US?"

You really don't give a damn about the Iranian people and their struggle for basic human rights and freedoms. what you care about is to have an isolated Iran surrounded by US clients, so that you can continue to plunder the regions Oil & Gas.

If Iran's Freedom movement overcomes the many obstacles in its path and achieves its aim of overthrowing the theocracy, thugocracy, and tyranny, that is the islamic republic, (brought to power by the carter/Berzinski and FP incompetents) and establish a secular democratic free state, then you can be sure that Iran would only serves its own national interest, and if thats does not help the west/US then so be it.

The regime change would help America quite a bit. After all We put Khomeini in power and your close friend Mr. Carter thought he was putting a Ghandi like figure in charge and we have paid for it ever since. Iran has a population very friendly to the west and Iran on our side will change the balance in the region to our favor. After all the Arabist policy that we have been following for 30 years has been a dead end. Think out of the box Mr. Walt. And by the way it would be good if you really understood Iran a bit better before talking hypothetically.

@depetris

You simplistic view of the world is indeed laughable.

I received a tweet about this article and I expected a heavier intellectual weight from a Foreign Policy writer, but maybe I was wrong!
The writer with his superfluous knowledge about Iran, especially about the recent events, camouflages his logical inconsistencies with hidden assumptions and principals.
Not much else can be expected from one who believes that US is entitled to a hegemonic role globally, yet gets to pick the regional hegemony when it suits its needs, and to prevent one nation to become one when it is in US's interests.
Regime change is good for both Iran and the US, but not to those who think that one nation's rights and responsibilities is dominant over another!
I only encourage the writer to study the "Green" movement in more depth, so that his "difficult-to-impossible" task of predicting the future events become easier!
@mrzand at Twitter

I appreciate long-term thinking as much as anyone, but you have to have a clear view of the road you're driving on before you start daydreaming about what the ultimate destination might look like. A lot is likely to change between now and the time the Iranian government changes, and in the meantime we need to be thinking about whether political developments in Iran provide us with opportunities to address immediate problems.

One of these is our chronic shortage of information about how decisions are made within the Iranian government, and about how this is changing. Another is our (equally chronic) inability to respond to the Iranian government's provocations in language that means something to people in Iran, as opposed to boilerplate long accepted in Washington policymaking circles. A third is our difficulty deciding whether we are dealing with an Iranian regime secure in its power and certain of its ambitions or one within months or a few years of collapse; the events of 2009 should have led us to the conclusion that we are facing neither of these.

The endgame in chess generally commences when most of the pieces have left the board, with a minority of the remaining pieces being of supreme and overriding importance. We're not there with Iran yet, and may not be for many years. Yet the game has obviously changed recently, in important ways that may help us manage the problems presented by a regime hostile to the United States and potentially threatening to many of its neighbors. I'm content to deal with "regime change" in Tehran -- whatever form that eventually takes -- when it happens; for now, we've already gotten what we needed in Iran. The question is what we do with it.

many were hoping for regime change in the usa and voted in obama on the basis of this... as it turns out, it's no regime change but more biz as usual... this leaves many of us still hoping for regime change in the usa... meanwhile we're stuck with what it is which is more of the same...

To begin I agree that a change in Iranian leadership couldn't be expected to automatically shift interests in favor of the United States. Quite a bit of longterm efforts in Iran has in fact been to set itself against the United States (not that I can honestly blame them for it) and even when governments are changed policies are not so easy to alter.
However I'm not certain that a change in government would mean a stronger Iran. Several of the most important areas that I would promote for a powerful economy; firm rule of law, diversification of the economy, and encouraging far more women to enter the job market, seem to be anathema to Iran. Rule of law only extends to where the government doesn't interfere, the economy is even more dependent on oil than Saudi Arabia's, and Iran's take on women in power is well known. Could Iran emerge from all this as the dominant power in the Middle East? Perhaps, but if so then only because of fortune and her neighbors not seeing fit to make their own reforms.

This would be a good response to an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post about Obama has ignored human rights, especially in Iran.

I know you don't want to respond to Rothkopf's hit job because that would look petty....but can you at least clarify that "ditching Israel" is not really the CENTRAL objective of ALL realists? I would say some realists do not completely agree with the Israel Lobby thesis (i.e. that it has overridden a realist view of U.S. foreign policy), and also, even those that do agree like yourself and Prof. Mearsheimer would say that it's merely one objective in a much more broad strategy of pulling back to being off-shore balancer and letting people take care of some of their own problems. Would that be a reasonable answer?

Iran will always be the regional power. There's no real way of stopping it. Its an inevitability of geography, demography and history.

The whole nuclear debate just makes that something the US has to deal with now, rather than 50 years from now. However, I have no idea why everyone seems to be convinced that the moment Iran gets nukes its going to use them.

We know for a fact that any soveriegn state, except the US, with nuclear weapons has never used them in anger. Any state, including the US, with nukes has never nuked another similarly powered state.

The mullahs may be religious but they aren't crazy. The last thing they want is to nuke Jerusalem (holy site no.2 in Islam) and have several nukes heading their way in retaliation.

The green movement will do exactly the same. Most of its leaders aren't nuts either.

I would like to draw attention to the terrible Iran-Iraq war that left more than 1 million dead and (how many?) wounded.

I have heard Mearsheimer and Walt call it an arch-example of realism (ie. to let the two fight it out) - but every time they say this, it strikes me as cruel, and have they really thought about who were the hidden instigators of this policy (about letting the two wear each other down)?

It seems to me that the obvious answer is that it was the usual culprit - Israel and its powerful backers in Washington in the form of neoconservatives.

[Iran was in the process of getting its system working after the revolution, and surely could not be a threat to anyone - indeed has never made deliberate aggressions against other countries for hundreds of years. Iraq needed not to be so strong - it was American (and to a lesser extent British and West German) weapons, technique and money that made it strong - to an extent at which it in 1989 - when the war with Iran was over - got an appetite for Kuwait. But there is no proof that it would ever dream of going further - like to Saudi Arabia, which for sure would have provoked war with the West. They took Kuwait because they regarded it as a lost Iraqi province, and because they thought they could get away with it]

Incidentally the two countries were Israels two biggest strategic foes on the planet (after it had made peace with Egypt). I think this period is underdeveloped and we could do with a book from Mr. Walt about this subject. This was before the internet, and before the massive spotlight on the neoconservatives and their ties to Israel, which -- since the disastrous Iraq War that they initiated -- has been at the forefront of political debate. This war meant the downfall from grace for the neoconservatives, and it seems to me that now is the right time to expose what they were doing in the 1970'ies and 80'ies.

I have already in this space put forward my theory that they artificially prolonged the cold war, which was in a thaw in the beginning of the 70'ies. Then came pressures from 'Scoop' Jackson and his two assistants, Volfo-witch and Perle, to put pressure on the Soviets in order to get some travel permits for Jews.

And it is my new theory, that these neoconservatives also were at the forefront in this policy about delivering weapons to first one, then the other. Remember Rumsfeld was in Baghdad in 1983, and a few years later it was Iran who was at the receiving end. And indeed the Iran-Contra affair (which was only one of many such transports, but the one that got exposed) involved shipping American weapons from stockpiles in Israel. So here you actually have proof of Israel's physical involvement, a fact that was largely hushed up at the time, by a compliant press.

The power of the US is in long-term decline, for a single reason.

Value-adding economy is migrating overseas. The prosect of domestically sited exports are narrow and growing narrower.

The US is dominant in a smaller and smaller sliver of enterprise.

The location of large corporate entities are largely irrelevant in a world of fluid capital. There is no "American" oil company, nor "American" car company. All large entities are owned by combinations of domestic and foreign instutitional finance and private equity funds.

Our economic costs are high fixed costs, so siting domestically even for domestic markets is swimming upstream.

Political power follows economic.

Be careful what you wish for: Would ‘regime change’ help Iran?
why be careful. Everyone has their own political views.prom dressesknockoff handbags

Clear thinking by U.S policy makers will always lead U.S to ONE fact - Iran will be much more responsible regional power than Pakistan ever will be. Iran has better geography, better educated people, vast resources of oil & gas and more important long and impressive history. Many educated Iranians have belatedly realized the folly of handing power over to Mullahs & Republican guards, who have a vice like grip on all aspects of their lives. In any case, Iran will have to spend bulk of its efforts in competing with S.Arabia, Turkey and neighbouring Gulf-States to remain relevant in the Sunni dominated region.

Ever since the declaration by President Obama that the US is extending to all those who have unclenched their fists, the media has been generally awash with speculations on Iran. First and foremost, the Obama administration extended a hand only on the TV screens. The cladestine US subversion of Iran has never paused let alone stop. In the same breadth, the issue of iranian nuclear enrichment became a front burner topic with the US threatening all optiona are on.
Could the US if they were in Iran position ahve accepted this outright 'take it or leave it: olive offer (if t were one)? There is very little democracy in the middle east and certainly it is more democratic than Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even Jordan. Come to think of it, it is even more liberal when it comes to human rights when compare to Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Yes, the US can engineer hostilities and sometimes even overthrow of regimes that do not agree to her world view but that does not it correct.
Today Iraq stands as a telling indictment of American interference in the middle east. There is no war nor peace in Iraq; thanks to US war on Saddam!

Ever since the declaration by President Obama that the US is extending to all those who have unclenched their fists, the media has been generally awash with speculations on Iran. First and foremost, the Obama administration extended a hand only on the TV screens. The cladestine US subversion of Iran has never paused let alone stop. In the same breadth, the issue of iranian nuclear enrichment became a front burner topic with the US threatening all optiona are on.
Could the US if they were in Iran position ahve accepted this outright 'take it or leave it: olive offer (if t were one)? There is very little democracy in the middle east and certainly it is more democratic than Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even Jordan. Come to think of it, it is even more liberal when it comes to human rights when compare to Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Yes, the US can engineer hostilities and sometimes even overthrow of regimes that do not agree to her world view but that does not it correct.
Today Iraq stands as a telling indictment of American interference in the middle east. There is no war nor peace in Iraq; thanks to US war on Saddam!

I suppose so long as we don’t talk in terms of the alleged Churchillian dictum of “ feed the Arabs, starve the Persians”, anything we all say is passable.

One agrees with the gist of Prof. Walt’s message, that the problem with Iran is not really in whether this regime stays or is overthrown by outside machinations or internal revolution, rather, with the manner Iran has defined its national strategic interest, and the manner it will continue to do so.

For the first time, the world; especially the superpowers, witness a new phenomenon in which a Near Eastern country, actually defines its national strategic interest beyond the circumference of its neighbourhood. The closest any country from the region came to doing that, was Hashemite Iraq, when late prime minister Nuri al Saeed defined Iraq’s national interest extending to the borders of the Soviet Union. Even Nasser’s United Arab Republic did not come close to the ambitious definition of Iran regarding its national interest.

Therefore, in this respect one believes that, Iran is truly a new phenomenon on the international scene, moreover, it is acting with the pretensions of not only a regional power, but also a super-power. It is not only a Gulf power, but actually is also a Mediterranean power now, with an arch that envelopes all the oil rich Arab states within its Shiite Crescent, threatening at the same time the national security of Jordan, Egypt and Israel, and with potential capability to expand its influence to the “Stans” of the ex-Soviet Union, as well as Afghanistan.

A regime with such an extension and influence, is not likely to give up such gains merely because others wish that to happen. Also, it is a folly to think that the current regime in Iran will be willing to negotiate its nuclear programme, which is essentially, the leitmotif of the status of a super-power. In addition, any regime which potentially replaces the current one, will not give up on the gains made by the current regime, nor will negotiate its nuclear programme. Therefore, the only two options for the US are, either accept Iran as a partner, and build its foreign policy on the basis of such realism, or, go to war against Iran and hit it hard, to make it impossible for Iran to pick the pieces of power after that, and even, make it more impossible for any replacement of the current regime to be able to contemplate any such current pretensions.

At the same time, what is the status of the institution of Velyati-Faqih in all this?. I don’t think anyone can seriously think that, a change of regime, or the current regime would change its nature, so long as the leadership of Veli-Faqih remains as the main arbiter in Iranian politics. However, the Mullah vs. Mullah conflict which is still going on in Iran, indicates that the position is no longer held as, sacrosanct any longer. As a matter of fact, and one is making a wild bet on this, I dare say that Ayattullah Khamina’I is most likely to be the last office holder in this institutions, because Iran will gradually slip into a military and security controlled regime, with a religious veneer only. Even any potential replacement, I don’t think will be different to the character which the current regime will evolve into.
Khairi janbek.paris/france

in other words, the United States has sought to maintain a balance of power in the region and make sure that there is no "regional hegemon" there.

But there IS a regional hegemon, it's Israel.

Other specialists have posited a situation in which the development of Nuclear Weapons is actually a terrible strategic option in Iran's power calculations.

It's hard to imagine the current regime using such weapons against Israel unless there was a particularly belligerent air strike in the making, but the natural result of nuclearization in Iran would be proliferation amongst its neighbors.

Saudi, Jordan, and Egypt would immediately ratchet up their attempts to nuclearize. And they'd use Iran as the basis for their efforts. That really puts the US in a tough bind. After 3 decades of maligning the Iranian regime and then fostering a bloody Sunni-Shiite civil war in the region, how can we possibly say no to our allies in the Gulf or Egypt when it comes to helping them develope a nuclear deterrent?

And if its neighbors proliferate, then Iran's considerable conventional warfare advantage diminishes vis-a-vis Saudi and the rest.

End-game scenario? Every major power in the region has a nuclear deterrent, hence it's no longer a unipolar subset of the world where only Israel can throw its weight around.

This ofcourse assumes that 'power' in the scheme revolves around nuclear capability. And if that's the case, then how REALLY was the US the only super power in a unipolar system these last 20 years?

Can anyone really imagine the US gearing up for a war and China or Russia or India stepping in and threatening them with a nuclear deterrent in order to prevent such a war?

It would be a grand coming out party for the next major Super Power.

The United States believes "that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Why is Walt advocating that we deny these rights to the Persians, for the sake of our own continued power?

As long as Israel is threatening to wipe Iran off the map and thumbing its nose at any pretense of law or human rights, and as long as Washington provides blanket protection for all Tel Aviv's barbaric crimes, of course Tehran will want a deterrent. All that would be just as true for any future Iranian regime as for the current one.

to jimmy w
When an argument has logical inconsistencies, it does not need to be dis proven. In fact, the professor is not proving anything to be refuted.

Tell you what. Why don't we kill every non American on Earth. Then deport every nonwhite to the depopulated Earth and attack them and kill them too. This way we will feel morally smug and also be true to our JudeoChristian values. We will feel truly safe too from a military angle as well as economic since there won't be anyone to take our jobs. Lets start with the French, but after we eat all their cheese.

And don't forget the Canadians, Australians and Kiwi's since they share some of our values. The English are suspect so kill only half of them. Don't spare any of the French though. No redeeming values there!

I think Iran has elections much more interesting than the "elections"in the "free world" including US.So what call Mr.Walt a "democracy"?Take for instance the last vote of sanctions on Iran:only 12 were against,more than 400 ,for.

But what Mr.Walt wrote on MR.Ahmadinejad is even stranger:"Instead of an Iranian leadership that gives stupid and counterproductive speeches questioning the Holocaust".The Holocaust not interest Mr.Ahmadinejad for what then happened but for why Palestinians should suffer and compensate this event.Also the transformation of holocaust in a religion has political goals.So asking about it is very natural and justified.

Mr Walt said in his book that Israellobby has a principal role in causing the Iraq invasion and here he surprisingly stated:"n particular, bear in mind that a key goal of U.S. grand strategy has been to prevent any single power from dominating the oil-rich Persian Gulf."

As long as Israel is
by phil429 on Tue, 12/15/2009 - 3:36pm
As long as Israel is threatening to wipe Iran off the map and thumbing its nose at any pretense of law or human rights, and as long as Washington provides blanket protection for all Tel Aviv's barbaric crimes, of course Tehran will want a deterrent. All that would be just as true for any future Iranian regime as for the current one.

Phil429's comment is an example of how inverted this whole debate has become, at least in part due to Mr. Walt's writings. It is Iran that has threatened to wipe Israel off the map, not vice versa. It is the Muslim jihadis who reject law and human rights, especially for non-Muslims, because it is their religion that tells them this is OK. Israel does not engage in the kinds of barbarities that are routinely directed at Jews by people who point their accusing fingers at that country. That black Muslim Darfuris take refuge in Israel totally refutes Phil429's allegation.

It is the widely-held belief that Jews are not entitled to the rights other peoples claim for themselves that has kept the Middle East conflict from a solution. There is a reason there are essentially no Jews left in Muslim countries today and why the Christian population of those countries is also going down, while the number of Muslims in Israel is going up. It might take a little brainpower to understand the implications of this for human rights claims, but you can manage it if you try.

Iran's government is finding it quite difficult with the governance of the country. They are failing to meet the basic needs that has to be carried out by the government. The frustration of the common people can be seen all over the country and with the normal functioning of the government. The observation and the views that are written here by the author clearly shows the worst of the situation a country can have. Iran also got enough problems from his neighbors too, the tension with Iraq and others also would add more pressure to the situations. Hope they would soon have a good government. Mathew of Superbowl Tickets With Artificial Plants and Snack Machines