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By Karim Sadjadpour
Mr. Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Donald Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities is a once-in-a-generation event that could transform the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, the effort to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and potentially the global order. While its full impact will take decades to understand, it raises a more immediate question today: Will this extraordinary act of war strengthen Tehran’s authoritarians or hasten their demise?
The direct origins of the U.S.-Iran conflict date back to the 1979 revolution that replaced Iran’s U.S.-allied monarchy with an anti-American theocracy. Since then the Islamic Republic of Iran has vowed to end U.S. imperialism and eradicate Israel. Now, the United States and Israel are waging a military campaign inside Iran with a stated goal of destroying its nuclear capability — though the regime’s collapse, while not the declared objective, would be a welcome outcome for both nations. But while military strikes may expose an authoritarian regime’s weaknesses, they rarely create the conditions necessary for lasting democratic change.
