The attack on Iran will likely have deeper meaning and more significant consequences across the globe than are immediately apparent. History will be the judge;
This last weekend, the US and Israel executed precision military strikes on numerous targets in Iran. Although Iran responded by launching thousands of drones and ballistic missiles against targets in Israel and in numerous nearby middle Eastern states, with only a few exceptions, most of those drones and missiles were intercepted. As expected, groups sympathetic to Iran initiated terrorist attacks in other countries, including the US. Likely, similar attacks will continue for weeks to come.
The joint attacks on Iran successfully eliminated most of the high level leadership of the Islamic regime, as well as many of the Iran Republican Guards, and numerous military supply, support, and naval facilities. The Iranian people have been called to take back their country, and the response from expatriate Iranians has been overwhelmingly positive.
All this and more was anticipated and reasonably expected. The attacks on other middle-Eastern countries might have been a bit of a surprise, but not a huge one as Iran has seen many of them to be collaborators with the US and Israel, notably through the Abraham Accords. What is not so obvious are the consequences flowing from two major aspects of Iran's activities and policies.
Iran has been a major sponsor of global terrorism, and especially destabilizing in the middle-East. The regime had sworn to eradicate Israel, and sponsored many terrorist groups, providing training, weapons, and other support in their attacks on Israel. Their efforts to develop nuclear weapons, coupled with development of long range ballistic missiles, posed a threat not only to Israel, but to most of Europe and our US allies. Without a hostile theocratic Iran, support for terrorism would be largely cut off, and the nuclear threat to Western countries eliminated. In addition, the rise of a secular democratic Western aligned state in Iran, similar to what existed before the Islamic takeover would go far toward eliminating a source of conflict in the middle-East.
Successful regime change is difficult. The sudden elimination of a prior leadership, even an unpopular one, creates a power vacuum that draws in all sorts of power seeking groups and individuals, most of whom have little interest in the good of the people in whose name they claim to serve. The continuing chaos in Libya after more than fifteen years since the elimination of Muammar Gaddafi attests to the challenges of sudden regime change. The current state of Afghanistan is a further example.
A measured decapitation of a tyrannical ruling elite, followed by support for an organic leadership with populist support seems more likely to succeed. The current situation in Venezuela where a Socialist dictator was surgically removed, left opportunity for a popular democratic leadership to assume power that many believe it rightfully deserved. In many ways, such an approach bears similarity to our own Revolution where France and other European sources provide support for the revolution without seeking to impose its own preferred leaders on the populace. Given the prior success of that model, we may hold out hope for Venezuela and now Iran.
A second, and perhaps more significant consequence of the attack on Iran is on Islam itself. It seems likely that the leadership of Iran, the Imams of Shia Islam were expecting Allah to intervene to protect them from the "Great Satan" of the US and its hated ally Israel. That he didn't was likely a great disappointment, and perhaps even stimulating a crisis of faith, at least until the bombs landed. Some in the Islamic world might see it as a final judgment on the long-standing theological divide between Sunni and Shia versions of Islam. It might appear that Allah used the US and Israel to render judgment on which version of Islam was preferred.
A deeper doubt might arise, though, about just how powerful Allah might be. After all, the US as a Christian nation, and Israel as Jewish, successfully attacking an Islamic nation might raise questions of why Allah would permit such. Indeed, it engenders thoughts of the time of the Crusades that set back the expansion of Islam by more than a thousand years. Is Donald Trump a new Frankish Charles Martel, or a Polish King Jan III Sobieski to stop the modern expansion of Islam? Defeat of Iran, and the development of a secular government there could raise many questions in the Islamic world about the foundations of their faith--questions difficult to answer by conventional doctrine.
The defeat of the theocratic tyranny of Iran's leadership, and the establishment of a true republican secular government would be a huge step toward reducing global tensions and concerns of terrorism, would offer much needed stability to the nations of the middle-East, would ensure continued supply of oil and transport of vital supplies through troubled waters, and perhaps reduce or even eliminate the incentive for migration into Europe that is engendering such difficulties between incompatible cultures.
A regime that recently murdered over 30,000 of its own citizens in order to preserve its power, has questionable claims to legitimacy in the world of today. Painful though it may be, the removal of a tyrannical elite so that freedom can flourish seems a worthwhile objective. Moreover, it sends a message to other tyrannies that the voice of the people can be ignored only at peril. It strikes a blow against the collectivist ideologies of Socialism and Islam, and supports the individualism of Christianity and Judaism. The attack on Iran will likely have deeper meaning and more significant consequences across the globe than are immediately apparent. History will be the judge.
Read next: Treat Iran Like Terrorists, Not a State
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