The Iranian regime is now at the weakest point in its vicious history. It no longer survives through genuine legitimacy, ideological loyalty, or a credible vision for Iran’s future, but through terrorism and repression, propaganda, and networks of operatives and loyalists beyond its borders. A Shia regime that once claimed to embody a revolutionary Islamist model for the Muslim world has been reduced to defending its existence through coercion, intimidation, disinformation, and the intelligence institutions protecting the ruling clerical establishment. If Washington is ever to take regime change in Iran seriously, this is the moment. The opportunity should not be squandered through another cycle of hesitation, containment, and strategic ambiguity.
The United States, particularly the CIA, should therefore begin developing a sustained strategy aimed at regime change — not nation-building. Iran is already an ancient, cohesive nation with a powerful historical identity, sophisticated society, and deeply rooted tradition of statehood. Nor should Washington manufacture another artificial opposition abroad and convince itself that it represents Iranian society. What is required is political will. The determination to pursue the end of the Islamic Republic must be unmistakable in Washington and Langley; without it, American policy will remain an exercise in managing the same problem rather than resolving it.
Any serious strategy must begin with an honest assessment of the Iranian opposition. Among the manufactured, discredited, and self-appointed groups that have emerged over the years, only one political figure has the potential to unite significant numbers of Iranians beneath a national banner: His Royal Highness Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. Washington may ignore this reality because it challenges old assumptions about Iran, but that will not make it disappear. Iran’s future cannot be built around organizations based principally abroad, factions inflated by foreign funding and media exposure, or ideological movements with little meaningful constituency inside the country. A transition requires a national center of gravity, and Pahlavi remains uniquely positioned to provide one.
For the same reason, investing in separatist movements and armed ethnic organizations will lead nowhere. Iran is multiethnic, and every citizen — Kurd, Baluch, Azeri, Arab, or otherwise — must enjoy equal rights after the Islamic Republic. But equal citizenship is not the same as empowering separatist organizations that threaten Iran’s territorial integrity. It is not in America’s interest to replace a hostile Islamic Republic with a fragmented Iran consumed by ethnic warfare and competing militias. The objective should be the collapse of the regime, not the disintegration of the Iranian state.
The history of American engagement with notorious villain Kurdish organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan should provide a useful warning. Washington has repeatedly seen how resources intended for supposed partners can become entangled with networks linked to Tehran and its security establishment. Some organizations have maintained relationships with Iranian power centers while simultaneously treating the U.S. as a source of money, weapons, and political support. The Trump administration was right to question whether such partnerships actually served American interests. Washington cannot develop a serious strategy toward Iran by relying on smugglers, Marxist-Leninist factions, separatists, or actors compromised by relationships with the Revolutionary Guard or other extremist organizations such as the People’s Mojahedin Organization. That road does not lead to Tehran; it leads to another American intelligence and policy failure.
Nor should Washington place its hopes in the political descendants of groups that participated in Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution. Many remain deeply unpopular because Iranians remember where that revolutionary romanticism led. Organizations and personalities that helped destroy the previous political order, embraced Khomeini, or contributed to the catastrophe of 1979, cannot simply rebrand themselves decades later as the natural custodians of Iranian democracy. Their historical associations with the revolutionary politics represented by figures such as Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, Cuban President Fidel Castro, and Libyan Prime Minister Muammar Qaddafi are not irrelevant footnotes; they belong to the political genealogy of the disaster Iran is still struggling to escape.
Washington should stop confusing fluency in the language of Western political institutions with the possession of an authentic constituency inside Iran.
This is also the time to abandon the mythology surrounding 1953. American policy in 2026 cannot remain psychologically imprisoned by a 73-year-old narrative portraying Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh as an innocent democratic saint overthrown by an omnipotent CIA. Mosaddegh was a demagogic and increasingly authoritarian prime minister who challenged the Shah while seeking extraordinary political authority. Many currents that later transformed him into an icon ultimately supported Khomeini and participated in the revolutionary upheaval that produced the Islamic Republic. Whatever debates historians continue to have about 1953, Langley should not allow the mythology of the past to paralyze American thinking about the Iran that exists today.
The central question is not whether America should manufacture a new Iran, but whether it is prepared for the Iran that may emerge when the Islamic Republic collapses. Around Crown Prince Pahlavi, a serious cadre of Iranians committed to nationalism, territorial integrity, secular democracy, and preventing a security vacuum should gradually emerge. Washington and the intelligence community should develop institutional familiarity with credible figures capable of preserving order and continuity after the regime falls. The purpose is neither to create another security dictatorship nor to select Iran’s future rulers in Langley, but to ensure that the collapse of the Islamic Republic does not become the collapse of Iran itself.
That distinction is critical. Regime collapse and state collapse are entirely different events. The first would end a system that has devastated Iran and destabilized the Middle East for decades; the second could plunge a nation of more than 90 million people into chaos. A serious transition strategy must preserve territorial integrity and essential state institutions while facilitating the emergence of a secular, democratic order. Iran must remain Iran after the Islamic Republic is gone — not descend into civil war, competing militias, separatist enclaves, or another ideological experiment.
Washington should therefore distinguish now between national forces and political opportunists, between those committed to preserving Iran and those seeking to fragment it. Waiting until the regime collapses would be strategic negligence. America need not decide Iran’s future, but it should understand the forces that will compete to shape it.
The Islamic Republic’s weakness should not be mistaken for its inevitable disappearance. A regime can lose its legitimacy and still survive through terrorism, propaganda, intelligence penetration, and the organized use of violence. Tehran still possesses all of these instruments, including a security establishment that has spent decades learning how to suppress dissent and protect the clerical system. That is exactly why the present moment matters. The regime is weaker, but the machinery that keeps it alive has not vanished. If Washington merely waits for history to solve the Iranian problem on its own, it may discover that another historic opportunity has been lost.
The time for half-measures, artificial opposition projects, unreliable armed factions, and endless guilt over a fictionalized version of 1953 should therefore be over. The CIA is not supposed to build an Iranian nation; the Iranian nation already exists. Nor should America determine the political future of the Iranian people. What Washington can do is recognize the historic opportunity before it, respect Iran’s territorial integrity, identify the national forces capable of preventing chaos, and stop wasting time and resources on groups with neither credibility nor meaningful support inside the country.
Now is the time for serious work. The Islamic Republic is weak, its legitimacy is shattered, and much of what keeps it alive is its apparatus of terrorism, propaganda, and coercion. Opportunities of this magnitude do not remain open indefinitely. If the U.S. genuinely believes that the Islamic Republic represents a strategic threat and that a free, secular, democratic, and territorially intact Iran would fundamentally change the Middle East, then it should finally act intellectually and strategically on that belief. The will for regime change must no longer be whispered around Washington as an uncomfortable possibility. It should be heard clearly in Langley.
In 1978, the CIA failed to heed the warnings of its trusted patriotic friends within SAVAK — and America paid dearly: its embassy was later seized and ransacked, its intelligence presence was devastated, and Moscow and the KGB gained opportunities in the revolutionary chaos as Soviet-aligned and Russophile forces expanded their influence. This time, Langley must approach clandestine operations with its eyes and ears open — and learn to recognize the sincere, loyal, and credible Iranian analysts who understand the battlefield from within. History has already presented the bill for strategic blindness once. America cannot afford to pay it again.
Erfan Fard is a counterterrorism analyst and Middle East studies researcher based in Washington, with a particular focus on Iran, Islamic terrorism, and ethnic conflicts in the region.