Editors note: This is the first essay in a symposium on the Iran War and Americas role in the Middle East.

　　The US-Israeli war against Iran was fought for unclear purposes, with a vague strategy, towards an ambiguous end. That does not mean it contributed nothing to US interests. The world is safer with a weaker Iranian regime whose nuclear sites are buried under rubble and whose terrorist proxies are dead or hiding. There is still an opportunity to use the war—however foolishly started—to consolidate those gains, pry open the Straits of Hormuz, and achieve some measure of good.

　　Specifically, the United States should pursue a two-pronged approach. First, it should give a list of clear demands, safety guarantees, and realistic off-ramps to the existing regime to keep alive the possibility that the current Iranian leadership might adjust its behavior in ways more amenable to US interests in the region, especially about nonproliferation, terrorism, and freedom of navigation. The US’s interests in the region remain the same as they have been for decades: regional stability, the free flow of energy to the global market, and an end to terrorism that threatens the US and its allies. A weakened Iran conduces to each of these.

　　Second, and simultaneously, the US should help prepare the ground for a new regime by hosting a conference with opposition leaders outside Iran and providing communications equipment to dissidents inside Iran.

　　Together, the two approaches maximize the chances that the US will be able to use the aftermath of the war well and lay the groundwork for a postwar scenario that serves American interests.

　　List of Demands

　　The US and Iran are reportedly exchanging demands in negotiations to turn the ceasefire into a permanent settlement. But it is not clear that the US has approached the negotiations strategically. The US should deliver to Iran a list of maximal demands that could be bargained down to America’s most essential interests. These demands would communicate to Iran the terms for a stable postwar regional order.

　　The maximal demands should include that Iran: accepts unconditional, unlimited, indefinite IAEA inspections of all nuclear sites; signs and ratifies a verifiable arms control treaty limiting its ballistic missile arsenal; ceases attacks on shipping through the Straits of Hormuz and affirms the Straits as an international waterway; publicly condemns terrorism and terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and Hamas by name; disbands the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij militia; arrests and holds trials for the perpetrators of the January massacres; and signs the Abraham Accords.

　　This list goes far beyond the reported list of demands the US recently delivered to Iran. The current regime will never accept that list because it is tantamount to surrender. The list violates everything for which the regime has fought for nearly five decades. Agreeing to it would amount to an admission that the very nature of the regime—the foremost state sponsor of terrorism and most dangerous threat to the nuclear nonproliferation regime in the world—is guilty of international irresponsibility, and that it has forfeited the right to sovereign control over its foreign and defense policy.

　　The US should make those demands anyway.

　　Why make a list of impossible demands? For two reasons: first, it clarifies what the war was about. Demands help clarify how to prevent the war from restarting and what sort of peace we aim to build in the aftermath. Right now, during the tenuous ceasefire, the war has not truly ended. All wars must end, and to genuinely end this war, the US must communicate to the Iranian regime what war-ending conditions it must meet.

　　Second, a list of demands gives the United States something to bargain towards and something to bargain with—something the administration did not give itself with its existing list of demands. By starting with a maximal list, the US could give up its demands on human rights and the Abraham Accords, for example, in exchange for commitments on nuclear weapons and terrorism that most directly affect American security.

　　Risks of Ambiguity about Goals

　　The Trump administration seemed to want the opposite. It offered a series of shifting and inconsistent statements about their war aims. Is it regime change? Non-proliferation? Counter-terrorism? A humanitarian intervention? Preemptive defense against an imminent attack?

　　One advantage of keeping the goal vague is that Trump could declare victory whenever he wanted, by whatever standard he wanted. He can rightly claim that Iran’s military has been defeated; that it effectively no longer has a navy, air defenses, or ballistic missile launchers; that the regime’s infrastructure lies in ruins; and that its nuclear program is much closer to being truly “obliterated,” as he claimed last summer.

　　But the Trump administration is also running high risks by keeping the goal vague. There are four major disadvantages: low legitimacy, a chain-gang risk, a credibility trap (or mission creep), and protracted war and state collapse in Iran.

　　Helping reopen Iran’s information environment could completely alter the strategic picture by turning the fabled Iranian street from an idle hope to a strategic reality.

　　First, without clear goals, the operation had low legitimacy at home and abroad. Voters and international partners are confused about what the war was about, and the Trump administration has made surprisingly little effort to explain or sell the war. That is why, domestically, the war is unpopular. Moreover, Congress has not passed an authorization for the use of military force.

　　That is also how the US ended up going to war without a single NATO partner. This may be the first major US military action undertaken without active British participation since the Vietnam War. For those who care about the United Nations (I do not), there is also no UN Security Council resolution authorizing the war. Low international legitimacy constrains US options and hurts its ability to leverage cooperation in future endeavors.

　　Second, without clear goals, the US risks being “chain-ganged” into Israel’s goals. It is unclear if Israel is a party to the current negotiations between the US and Iran, and it is entirely possible that Israel may reject its terms and continue the war and drag the US back into the fighting unless the US is both clear and firm about the goals for which it is willing to fight. Israel’s goals are probably both more maximalist (regime change) and also more permissive, in that they would probably settle for state collapse in Iran. Regime change may become necessary, but the US should only fight that war on its terms and by its choice. State collapse has its own risks (see below). Regardless, the US cannot and should not let allied nations determine its war aims or foreign policy.

　　Third, and similarly, without clear goals the US may fall into mission creep out of concern for its credibility. Having staked time, money, manpower, and prestige on the operation, American leaders may find themselves digging in, looking for a satisfying conclusion, a sense of vindication, or a clear “mission accomplished” moment. Iran might be able to deny them such a moment by holding the Straits of Hormuz hostage to ongoing drone attacks while the regime leadership remains hidden, leading to a frustrating stalemate in which the US has complete air superiority and no political leverage. Sadly, given the shape of the ceasefire so far, this seems the most likely scenario. Analysts complain about the “sunk cost” fallacy, but Vietnam is an easy reminder that policymakers fall for it anyway.

　　Fourth, without clear goals, the war may resume, imposing high costs on all belligerents and the world economy. The US is best poised to bear such costs materially, but its political system is already straining, and war is never good for the health of a democratic system. The same is true for Israel, which has been in continuous war for nearly three years since Hamas’ 2023 attack. The global economy cannot easily weather months of oil supply shocks and escalating energy costs.

　　But the risk for Iran is the highest. A protracted war increases the possibility, not of regime change, but regime collapse. While Israeli policymakers might shrug at the possibility, Americans should take a longer view. Nothing good will result if Iran descends into anarchy, civil war, territorial fragmentation, or warlordism. That situation could result in a permanently constrained oil supply, mass refugee flows, organized crime and drug trafficking, and the loss or theft of Iran’s high-enriched uranium.

　　Worst of all, regime collapse could turn the IRGC into an enduring and metastasized terrorist threat. It is already one of the most professional and successful terrorist groups in history, having trained and used Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi rebels, and a wide network of proxies in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. But even then, such groups have been constrained, somewhat, by their accountability to a regime that did not want to commit itself to a suicidal course of action. But with nothing left to lose, some IRGC remnants and proxies might turn to large-scale terrorism out of revenge and apocalypticism.

　　Offramps for Iran’s Leaders

　　The Trump administration should avoid these risks by communicating a clear list of war-termination criteria to Iran’s current leaders. But Iranian leaders have no incentive to agree to any list so long as they plausibly fear for their personal safety. Having already killed former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hassan Khamenei, the commander of the IRGC, the chief of staff of the armed forces, two defense ministers, and a dozen or more senior defense and intelligence officials, the US has made it hard for remaining leaders to feel they have any guarantees of their safety.

　　The US needs to make clear that it will work with Iranian leaders who negotiate in good faith, in the same way it has left in place and worked with remaining members of Venezuela’s government after capturing President Nicholas Maduro in January. Many members of the Venezuelan government are as guilty of corruption and drug trafficking as Maduro, but the US has sent a clear signal that it will work with them so long as they prove more amenable to American demands in the future.

　　To do that, the US must be prepared for a longer, messier war, and a far more uncertain future.

　　Another possibility is to work out an arrangement for any Iranian leaders who desire to retire peacefully to Moscow or Beijing. Former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is currently enjoying his retirement in Russia alongside former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych. Former Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is doing the same in Saudi Arabia. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff splits his time between London and Dubai. Examples abound. It is unsatisfying to the victims of their oppression, but exile is often the easiest route to transition.

　　Planning for Transition

　　And transition, not merely to new leadership, but to an entirely new regime, may be the eventual end state. Trump seemed to make regime change his goal in the opening days of the war, though he seems to have walked that back in subsequent weeks, claiming (falsely) that the new crop of leadership amounts to regime change. Nonetheless, the second prong of the US strategy should be planning for the possibility of regime change.

　　Regime change would be the most reliable way to secure the US’s most important interests. So long as the Islamic Republic of Iran exists and seeks to carry on the totalitarian and theocratic ideals of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, it remains a potential threat to the United States by supporting terrorism, pursuing weapons of mass destruction, threatening US allies, and holding a Damocles’ Sword over the global economy. Regime change is the only truly lasting solution to the problem that has wracked the Middle East for five decades.

　　Planning for regime change also puts additional pressure on the existing regime to capitulate, accept US demands, or at least participate meaningfully in negotiations. If the existing regime sees a viable opposition taking shape with international support and legitimacy, coupled with the threat of more airstrikes, it may feel it has no choice but to negotiate.

　　And planning for regime change ensures the US has a seat at the table among the dissidents and opposition leaders who have been planning and acting, without US support, for years.

　　To that end, the US—perhaps with the United Nations—should host a conference for Iranian dissidents and opposition leaders, akin to the Bonn Conference that brought together Afghan groups in December 2001. Such a conference would bring together Reza Pahlavi and other monarchists; Kurdish and Azeri groups; liberal and republican opposition leaders; women’s rights groups; and any credible spokesmen with ties to the protest leaders inside Iran. A broad umbrella ensures they will disagree on plenty, but also that any agreement would enjoy legitimacy among Iranian dissidents.

　　And the US can help organize dissidents with communication equipment and other covert support. The Iranian people have not risen against the regime or flooded the streets en masse because they can no longer talk to each other, coordinate action, or get reliable news. Protesters are the missing ground component of the campaign; helping reopen Iran’s information environment could completely alter the strategic picture by turning the fabled Iranian street from an idle hope to a strategic reality.

　　Endgame

　　The US should remain flexible on the final settlement within Iran. But to do that, it should be clear and firm about what American interests are. The message should be that the US looks forward to working peacefully with any regime in Tehran that foreswears nuclear proliferation, denounces terrorism, and respects freedom of navigation through the Straits. If the current regime can do that, regime change is unnecessary, and the war might end relatively quickly.

　　If the current regime digs in despite its diplomatic isolation, economic suffering, and military defeat, the United States will be on much firmer ground to push for regime change. But to do that, the US must be prepared for a longer, messier war, and a far more uncertain future. It is not clear to me that the US has the tools, capabilities, and strategic patience and acumen for that kind of war—which is something policymakers may want to consider in the future before going to war in the first place.