How a Regime Change in Iran Would Transform the World

“The Iranian people may need to wade through mountains of rubble to rebuild and count the cost in blood and wealth for some time, as the Iraqis have. But they will, at long last, get a clear path to freedom. Is it better to be freed by the horrors of war than to suffer endless, hopeless repression and torture?”

Melik Kaylan

June 26, 2010

Imagine how regime change in Iran would utterly transform the world. So many knotty, insuperable obstacles all overcome in one stroke. Let us consider the benefits. They are so glaring that you can be sure President Obama and his advisors have chewed on them at some length.

As Reza Kahlili pointed out in this publication recently, a tremendous amount of U.S., European and Israeli naval hardware is heading to the Persian Gulf at this time. Are we on the brink of war? The time couldn’t be more propitious. The Middle East’s Sunni states are terrified of Tehran’s lengthening shadow. They’re begging for an intervention. They will likely even help finance it, as they did the first Gulf War. The Obama administration could use a distraction from oil spill woes and Afghan stalemates. Think of it this way: For each plus regime change would bring, there’s an implied minus if the regime endures. The president may have no option.

So how would the world change if Iran were transformed?

–Supply lines to Afghanistan. No more strategic heart attacks whenever Kyrgyzstan convulses or Uzbekistan closes a U.S. base. Iran abuts the stable, Taliban-free western Afghan provinces. With a compliant Tehran, the U.S. can supply the Afghan war straight up from the Persian Gulf through Iran.

–No more toadying to Moscow. Russia holds an effective veto over U.S. supply bases in Moscow’s former Soviet colonies bordering Afghanistan. Russia also holds a gun to our heads whenever we need help over curbing Iranian nukes. With a transformed Iran, the U.S. can say no to Moscow’s leverage. As a result, from Poland to Georgia a whole swath of the world will finally get U.S. support to complete the process of liberation from Russia.

–Nuclear presence. The Iranian nuke threat will disappear, as will the prospect of the entire Middle East shopping for nuclear deterrents against Iran’s threat.

–A freer Iraq. The grisly spectacle of Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish politicians shuttling to Tehran for patronage will abate. Tehran will cease to meddle in Iraqi affairs. The number of car bombs in Baghdad will decline–not least because the regional Sunni fear of Iran will cease to be played out in Iraq.

–A freer Lebanon. No more Hezbollah state within a state. At present Iran buys a distant border with Israel through its Hezbollah clients in southern Lebanon. A twitch from Tehran and Hezbollah fights a war with Israel, thereby destabilizing Lebanon and incessantly roiling the Arab street in the Middle East.

–A securer Israel and freer Gaza. The Iranian regime’s support for Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon perpetuates strife in Palestine and gives Israeli hawks a legitimate excuse to postpone peace.

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–Cheaper oil. With sanctions gone, Iranian infrastructure can be updated and oil pumped out to the world in vastly increased volume. Absent the constant Iranian threat of blocking the Straits of Hormuz, oil prices will settle for the foreseeable future.

–A freer Central Asia. The enormous reserves of oil and gas on the other side of the Caspian Sea will finally reach the world through a peaceable Iran. Central Asia’s access to the West is geographically walled off by Iran and Russia; they have exploited their strategic position in tandem to keep the ’stans impoverished and dependent. Azerbaijan had to build the expensively circuitous Baku-Ceyhan pipeline to circumvent the blockade. Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan still pay to use Russian pipelines to sell their oil and gas. All that will change.

–Imperial power. Russia’s imperial power will diminish further as oil prices decline and its former Central Asian republics trade with the world directly. Moscow’s meddling in the Middle East–selling weapons and building nuclear power stations in Syria–will shrink back to pre-Iraq war size.

–Iran finally free. The Iranian people may need to wade through mountains of rubble to rebuild and count the cost in blood and wealth for some time, as the Iraqis have. But they will, at long last, get a clear path to freedom. Is it better to be freed by the horrors of war than to suffer endless, hopeless repression and torture?

We are lucky in the West that we don’t confront such absolute choices in our homeland. We help others confront them at unavoidable points in the world’s history. Or so we like to see it. Was the Iraq war unavoidable? We will, no doubt, debate away for decades. But it must be said that a conflict with Iran seems far more inevitable–and necessary–than the one with Iraq. One should remember that such wars are visited on countries by their own leaders who oppress their people, threaten others and hinder global stability. A fair definition of the Tehran regime?

As things stand, President Obama can reorder the world’s alignments back in the West’s–and America’s–favor and give his own tenure a vital boost by confronting Iran directly. Not to do so would seem like cutting off your nose to spite your face. We can add one more, perhaps conclusive, item to the list above, one that never gets mentioned. An Iranian nuclear detonation in the Straits of Hormuz would cause exponentially greater damage there, and chaos to the world’s oil tanker lanes, than the conventional capability the regime now wields. The economic fallout would last for years. If you were the president, what would you do?

Melik Kaylan, a writer based in New York, writes a weekly column for Forbes. His story “Georgia in the Time of Misha” is featured in The Best American Travel Writing 2008.

Source: Forbes