It’s One or the Other…

It’s one of two things: either the United States and Israel have painted themselves into a corner with their war against Iran, or this war was necessary, and we must hope that it leads to an outcome favorable to the United States, Israel, and the entire Western world, even if that outcome is not the immediate fall of the mullahs’ regime.

Some military experts and political leaders view this war as a colossal mistake that will lead the United States straight to a crushing defeat and lasting weakness. They predict—or hope for—a military withdrawal as quickly as possible and a return to diplomacy; this is notably the position of Emmanuel Macron. Others hope that this war will put an end to a terrorist regime that oppresses its own people, has destabilized the region for 47 years, and threatens all democracies—not to mention the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Admittedly, criticism of this war seems amply justified in light of the initial setbacks suffered by U.S.-Israeli forces, the gross underestimation of Iran’s military stockpiles, and, even more so, the indecipherable and erratic behavior of Donald Trump, who one day threatens to “send Iran back to the Stone Age” and the next suggests he will withdraw his troops as long as shipping is restored in the Strait of Hormuz! Between Trump’s whims, a Secretary of State who acts more like a tabloid journalist than a statesman, and the purges within the military, there is cause for concern regarding the American leadership’s ability to wage a war—this one or any other. The fact remains that this is an ongoing war, the outcome of which is uncertain: no war (any more than an election!) is won or lost until it is over.

While the clash between these two positions is legitimate, it is regrettable that it too often takes place in a climate of detachment from reality. As if this war were a detached event, viewed in isolation from its consequences, which are and will be global. Amid all the concern sparked by the United States’ grotesque drift and its improbable alliance strategy—basically, no to NATO, yes to Putin—we no longer see that this war is part of a global confrontation, which began not on February 28, 2026, but on February 24, 2022. Indeed, the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was the starting point of an anti-Western crusade launched by Russia and backed by China. Yet Iran is the strategic link in what must be called a new alliance¹. It is so by virtue of its geographical position at the crossroads between the Middle East, Central Asia, and Asia; by its military industry and energy resources; and, last but not least, by the imperial aggressiveness inherent in this regime, which was born to seize hegemony over the Muslim world and bring down the West. Those who already take perverse pleasure in the prospect of an American defeat seem to ignore the ruinous consequences of such a defeat—for Ukraine, for Europe, for the world.

It is therefore no exaggeration to speak of a world war, even if our enemies today do not possess the same level of commitment and coordination of their forces as the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) did during World War II².

Unfortunately, highly questionable arguments stand in the way of a clear understanding of the global nature and stakes of the war in Iran.

I am referring here to the most prominent one, which I will call the specter of regime change³.

It is rightly pointed out that attempts at regime change through bombing have always failed, as evidenced by the successive failures of the United States in Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan. But, contrary to what Renaud Girard⁴ repeats ad nauseam, no one has said that the goal of this war is to establish democracy in Iran—as was the intention of the 2003 Iraq War, with the disastrous results we all know. The purpose of this war, perfectly clear to Israel if not to the United States, is to bring about the regime’s downfall. Far from the utopia of the neoconservatives’ “booted Wilsonism⁵”, the current war fits into a pattern that was repeated many times at the end of the 20^th century: the peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy. According to this pattern, the fall of the dictatorship ushers in a transitional period during which the former ruling elites give way to new elites, following a process that is more or less lengthy and turbulent but avoids descending into civil war, and which culminates in the stabilization of a new regime. These transitions are successfully completed with the assistance of democratic countries (constitutional expertise, economic aid, etc.). In Europe, the first of these transitions began with the nearly simultaneous fall, in the summer of 1974, of the regime of the colonels in Greece, Francoism in Spain, and Salazar’s Estado Novo. A global wave followed, culminating in the dissolution of the USSR in 1991⁶. Most of these transitions took place peacefully, but several followed a war (Portugal, Argentina). With the exception of Russia, all these countries became democracies and remain so today.

It is therefore simplistic, if not false, to claim that if the Iranian regime does not collapse under the blows of American-Israeli forces, it will be a massive victory for the mullahs.

The grain of truth in this argument is that the destruction of Iran’s capabilities to cause harm (military nuclear, missiles, drones) will serve little purpose if the regime does not fall, because it will want to and will be able to rebuild these capabilities sooner or later, as that is its nature. However, the fall of a dictatorship is not an instantaneous event resulting from a single cause—a fortiori an external one—but a process caused by a combination of conditions. Whether Trump understands this or not makes no difference to the matter. It matters little that he failed to keep his promise to help Iranian protesters in January 2026, or that he cares more about oil and his personal fortune than about the freedom of Iranians. The effectiveness of the combination of destroying military capabilities, weakening the regime to the point of loosening the grip of repression, and the popular uprising depends neither on the virtue of the Americans nor on coordination with the internal opposition. In reality, the key objective is, or should be, the dismantling of the apparatus of repression—which is the key obstacle to transition—before the destruction of military capabilities.Furthermore, the prospect of a transition in Iran has a real chance of success because the rift between the people and the regime reached a breaking point with the December 2025 uprising and the bloody repression that followed. This was not the case in Iraq or Afghanistan. In reality, the Iranian regime has relied from the outset on the sacrifice of the population—plunged into poverty and corruption—in order to divert all the country’s resources toward its apocalyptic goal. As noted in a recent article published by Telos, “political history shows that regimes rarely fall solely under external pressure. They collapse when society ceases to believe in the narrative of their necessity. Today, the mullahs’ regime still retains instruments of power […]. But it seems to have lost something more fundamental: the ability to produce a credible narrative about itself and the future it claims to embody⁷.”

Philippe De Lara

Lecturer at the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas. Teaches philosophy and political science.

1. In this issue, Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier analyzes the West’s difficulty in recognizing the existence of this alliance.
2. A few years ago, I spoke of the war initiated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “puzzle-like world war.”
3. Another dubious argument weighs in this debate: the idea that this war is contrary to international law. Those who assert this absolutize international law, as if it were a set of immutable commandments, and they reduce the concept of just war to that of military intervention authorized or decided by the UN. Yet the United Nations, now in deep trouble, has never claimed to abolish war and replace it with international police operations under its auspices.
4. Senior correspondent and international columnist for Le Figaro.
5. This expression by the late Pierre Hassner aptly describes the illusory ambition of the neoconservatives.
6. The most significant transition is, of course, the collapse of the European communist system, culminating in the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, but we must also mention the fall of military dictatorships in Latin America from 1978 to 1990 (in chronological order: Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile).
7. Kristian Feigelson and Ibrahim Salimikouchi, “Iran: The Beginning of the End?”, Telos, March 1, 2026.