Dr. Miklos K. Radvanyi
The current Iran policy situation on the White House’s side on the one hand, and Tehran’s on the other is not a random chaos – it is the collusion of competing strategies in real time, which are happening simultaneously, with shifting contradictions. At the core of this chaotic inconsistency is the White House’s active military campaign mitigated by President Trump’s claim of serious diplomatic moves toward a peaceful solution. Thus, President Trump’s Iran policy is split between military coercion and evolving diplomacy, with neither being fully trusted by the other side. Meanwhile, Tehran publicly rejects negotiations, but most probably engages in secret negotiations via intermediaries. The irony of these processes is that both sides indulge in fragmented decisionmaking. Counterintuitively, such processes are prone to improvisations with mostly irreconcilable strategic goals. As a result, conflicting strategic goals rarely fully align, which lead to frequent policy whiplashes. Most importantly, the situation appears to be chaotic because actions and statements contradict each other, multiple actors pursue different goals, and neither side fully controls escalation. Consequently, a high-risk bargaining process happening during an ongoing war – with unclear authority and no stable framework.
The fact is that the United States of America is at war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The former improvising, while the latter is resisting. Neither is governing. Yet, the question remains: What is the goal and what are the objectives? Is it to counter an “imminent nuclear threat,” or the “degradation of Iran’s military capabilities,” or “regime change”? This is not a strategy! It is a moving justification! Clearly, the end is unclear and the means are being discovered in real time. The narrative does not help. One day: threats of overwhelming force. The next: talk of negotiations. Then deadlines. Then extensions. It appears to be less like a coherent foreign policy and more like a random justification. War requires consistency. Congressional hearings are not a strategy. Resolutions are not a plan. Should the U.S. escalate? De-escalate? Negotiate? Accept partial outcomes? No clear answers. Just indecision! This is the real problem! Meanwhile, the war rages forward on its own momentum.
The Munich of 1938 is overwhelmingly remembered as a failure of diplomacy. It was not! It was a failure of judgment! Chamberlain thought he had secured peace when he had only bought time. Catastrophically, at a higher future price. The risk now is identical! When politicians who are supposed to be leaders, erroneously view temporary calm as a solution, they do not prevent future catastrophes. They postpone it, and usually on worse terms. History offers similar warnings. The thread running through all of it is not a dilemma to fight or not fight. It is a warning about clarity and judgment. Politicians who enter war without them rarely control what follows.
War is unforgiving of this kind of fake leadership. It exposes it! It accelerates it! It punishes it! The question is no longer whether errors are being made? The most relevant question is how long the United States of America can afford them? The answer is crystal clear – not too long! The redeeming answer lies in the Ronald Reagan-style leadership. Under his two terms, leadership did not equal populism. Therefore, leadership must begin with the truth. When politics is broken, democracy functions not as designed for the country, but for those who benefit from permanent instability, selective accountability, and managed public frustration. Leadership means the people following despite their initial doubts because they realize that they were wrong and the leader is right. By this standard, what politicians across the globe display today is not leadership at all. It is a reaction – policy shifting with events rather than being shaped by leaders.
The Ayatollah Ali Khomeini’s Islamic Republic is on its last legs. Its monstrous barbarism under the false political-religious ideology of the Twelter Shi’ism is in a deadly quandary. So does the state of Iran with its five thousand year history. Today, it is impossible to return to the pre-Khomeini tyrannical monarchy, yet there are great dangers in the sudden liberty that the Iranian people demand. No doubt that the need for liberty and dignity after almost five decades of monstrous brutality in the name of Allah are strong. Yet, populism is not the answer. The answer is the anchored legitimacy of the post-Mullahcracy government. In order to deal in a statesman-like way with the expected frenzy that will certainly engulf Iranian society, it is mandatory to break the bonds with which the Mullahcracy , in its terror, has bound it. The danger is that once those bonds are broken, the frenzy of revenge would again be uncontrollably unleashed upon the Iranian people. Peace, stability, and democracy is only possible under a legitimate government, whether it be monarchic or republican. Presently, only the establishment of a constitutional monarchy is plausible because the current Reza Pahlavi is not a usurper. He is the inheritor of a monarchy that was overthrown by an illegitimate revolution. He has a legal right to be a monarch under a democratic constitution.
The Trump administration needs an excellent plan to reduce the chaos in Iran, the greater Middle East and beyond by few clear and coherent principles. First, the consequential enforcement of international law. In this context, the sovereignty of Iran must be respected after the change in government. Second, stability and peace within Iranian society must require consensus. And consensus can be achieved through the strength of a newly created legal system that is capable of integrating the reconstructed Iran into the regional as well as global order. Finally, the United States of America must lead the efforts of integration by Iran both domestically as well as internationally.
In closing, the Trump administration’s Iran strategy must embrace the nuances of this complex situation. Counterintuitively, it must be devoid of bigotry too. In this manner, President Trump could end the insane expansionist threat of the Mullahcracy once and for all and empower the Iranian people to reclaim their newly civilized nation’s liberty.