March 1, 2026 | The Wall Street Journal
Iran’s Regime Is Down, but It Isn’t Out
Will a mass uprising cause it to fall? If not, America and Israel will have to remain vigilant for years.
March 1, 2026 | The Wall Street Journal
Iran’s Regime Is Down, but It Isn’t Out
Will a mass uprising cause it to fall? If not, America and Israel will have to remain vigilant for years.
Excerpt
With his decision to bomb Iran again, Donald Trump finally put the nail into arms-control diplomacy with Tehran. Negotiations started in 2002, when an Iranian opposition group revealed the clerical regime’s previously clandestine nuclear-weapons program. The French, British and Germans, fearing that George W. Bush might try to down another member of his “axis of evil,” started talking. The Iranians joined. They, too, feared Mr. Bush.
For Tehran, nuclear diplomacy had overwhelmingly been about deterring the U.S. and Israel—and acquiring sanctions relief and the time required to build long-range ballistic missiles, a well-armed proxy empire, and industrial-scale uranium enrichment. They got all of the above through Barack Obama’s nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.