The America-First Case for Iranian Regime Change
A free, secular, pro-western Iran is good for the whole world. It would also end much of the turmoil that keeps American forces perpetually in the Middle East.
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NOTE: My friend Mike Phillips is a first-rate mind across a wide range of topics, and it is a joy to bring his writing to The Rod Martin Report.
Also, be sure to see my short video update on the Iran situation. — RDM
by Mike Phillips
February 17, 2026
Regime change in Iran is a clear America First policy: only the means are debatable. The notion that America can allow a regime sworn to its destruction to survive for decades more — always being deterred and never figuring out how to achieve its aims — is suicidal hubris.
Let’s examine the reasons why regime change in Iran places America first, and why it is dangerous and derelict to miss this moment.
1. Iran’s Main Goal is Death to America and the Shiitification of the Planet
As Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei has repeatedly proclaimed, “Death to America is not a slogan: it is policy.” And as the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini explained, even if Iran is destroyed through war with the United States or Israel, it is a price well worth paying because Muslims elsewhere will live on.
In the hierarchy of Iran’s priorities, the United States is regarded as the Great Satan, whereas Israel is only regarded as the Little Satan. Therefore, Iran would not like to go down in flames without ensuring the Great Satan also goes down with it. Indeed, Iran’s efforts to build an ICBM can have only one purpose, which is the delivery of a nuclear weapon to the United States.
Therefore, any compromise deal that does not foreclose equally on Iran’s missile program, and even its biological weapons program, while only focusing on Iran’s nuclear program, would be naïve and myopic. Sadly, an inadequate deal perfectly fits America’s overfamiliar pattern of declaring “peace in our time” prematurely.
2. The Islamic Republic is Governed by “Twelvers”
The Twelvers are a sect of Shiites whose members believe they must pro-actively bring on Armageddon, their only means of bringing their savior’s return and thereby redeeming their own prior failure to protect both the Twelfth Mahdi and Ali. However difficult it may be for a Western mindset to comprehend, this worldview among Twelvers is sincerely and deeply held. As the great Bernard Lewis explained, to the mullahs and Ayatollahs, “mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent, but an inducement” and, therefore, containment can never work.
It bears noting that Bernard Lewis is widely regarded as the world’s foremost Islamic scholar, with deep scholarly knowledge of 15 languages and a focus on Islam for well over 80 years, active in scholarship until his death 12 days shy of his 102nd birthday.
Supporting Lewis’s contention, according to Congressional testimony by former CIA Director James Woolsey, the Islamic Republic twice tested atmospheric detonations on missiles launched from barges off U.S. shores to demonstrate its ability and will, once nuclearized, to execute an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the U.S. Such a strike would knock out all electricity in the U.S., resulting in the death of half of all Americans by starvation, freezing, dysentery, cholera, and lack of medical care and supplies.
Such a weapon would only require a short-range ballistic missile, and can be transported to the Atlantic coast with a launcher hidden in a shipping container. As a result, the scope for America’s concern with Iran’s missile program must extend to all ballistic missiles, not merely long-range.
3. It’s Only a Matter of Time Until the Islamic Regime Will Buy a Nuke from Pakistan or North Korea
Even if they cannot reconstitute their nuclear program, the Twelver regime has other means to achieve this, at least prospectively. Indeed, in the past, Iran has tried to purchase a nuclear weapon outright from Pakistan, and it was only due to a last-minute veto by then-head of Pakistan’s military that the deal fell through. Any other Pakistani or North Korean leader may equally decide to agree to a sale, keeping in mind that the 1990 deal very nearly got done. This danger rises to a near-certainty should the Taliban gain control in Islamabad.
Consequently, the mere survival of the Islamic Republic regime poses an existential threat to the United States.
4. The Iranian Regime Has Been Murdering Americans For Decades
In 1983, Iran blew up our Marine barracks and embassy in Lebanon killing hundreds of Americans. Iran killed at least 20 percent of the U.S. forces we lost in Iraq through its IEDs and Shiite militia. And, while there was never any evidence connecting Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to the September 11th attack, according to a finding by Judge George Daniels of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Iran trained two of the four 9-11 pilots in Tehran on flight simulators, and its paid proxy Hezbollah knew of the 9-11 attack beforehand, with neither Iran nor Hezbollah ever having been held to account.
Iran tried to kill President Trump in a plot arranged by IRGC Afghani asset Farhad Shakeri, and Iran has threatened to try again, bragging “this time it will not miss the target.” Iran has also attempted to kill former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Advisor John Bolton, all on U.S. soil.
It would reveal shamefulness and fecklessness for us to respond to Iran only in the minimalist manner we have in the past and would be sheer stupidity on our part to allow the Islamic regime to try again and again, sending a provocative signal to all our adversaries. Seizing damages for affected families is a bare-minimum America-First action. The U.S. Treasury’s longtime failure to track down and seize the Ayatollah’s $300 billion personal horde has long placed America last, every bit as much as Barack Obama’s 2016 transfer of billions of dollars to the Iranian regime, $400 million of it in unmarked bills.
5. Iranian Proxies Like Hezbollah Have Murdered Even More
So long as the Islamic Republic regime survives, Hezbollah will continue, alongside China and the Mexican cartels, playing an essential role in the killing of over 100,000 Americans annually via the fentanyl trade out of their Latin American strongholds. That’s more American dead just since 2020 than all American combat deaths since Pearl Harbor.
Despite President Trump’s action against former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Iran’s Hezbollah proxy remains active in Venezuela, Cuba, and other Latin American countries.
6. It’s a Shot Across China’s Bow (and Maybe a Kill-Shot for Russia)
Nothing sends a louder shot across China’s bow, nor better enables a China pivot for our military, than the fall of the Islamic Republic. Having already cut off China’s oil supply in Venezuela, President Trump’s disruption of the “Shadow Fleet” poses an even bigger threat. China gets 40 percent of its oil by these means, including half of Russia’s oil and an incredible 90 percent of Iran’s, all at steep discounts. Despite sanctions, China thereby bankrolls both Russia’s and Iran’s wars while subsidizing its own exports.
All three countries operate as global criminals, using their illicit profits to undermine and attack the West and, above all, America. Disrupting the Shadow Fleet, and eliminating Iran as a key component of that system, doesn’t just change the map. It forces Russia into financial cataclysm and China into a need to obtain its energy through legal means at market prices.
It also raises the stakes for any future invasion of Taiwan, both by proving American resolve and by greatly reducing the need for U.S. forces in the Middle East. By contrast, so long as the Islamic Republic regime stands, America’s military has fewer resources available to counter China.
7. Proving American Resolve Matters
President Trump has always been willing to use the military for rapid, ultra-brief, acute strikes, including against the Russians in Syria, IRGC head Soleimani, Nicolas Maduro, and Operation Midnight Hammer at Iran’s nuclear sites. This mirrors Reagan’s use of force in Grenada and Libya: kinetic action without long Vietnam- (or Iraq-) like commitments. Reagan won the Cold War, but thankfully not on a European battlefield.
Unfortunately, this posture leads some to question the President’s resolve, or perhaps more precisely, his willingness to see his own strategy through. The good news is that there were no American deaths in Caracas. The bad news is that some in Beijing and elsewhere see that not as efficiency and prowess but squeamishness.
Decapitating Iran’s evil regime and empowering its people to take back their country would leave that narrative in the dust.
8. Trump Already Promised That “Help Is On The Way!”
The President’s promise emboldened the hundreds of thousands of protestors Reza Pahlavi called into the Iranian streets. At least 30,000 of them have been murdered so far, and the death toll is rising.
America has an extremely soiled record with this. George H.W. Bush utterly betrayed the Iraqi Marsh Arabs: 300,000 were killed. Barack Obama even more tragically promised help he did not provide to Syria’s Sunnis, Yazidis, Christians, and Kurds, resulting in 500,000 dead. In both cases, chemical weapons were used. Congressional Democrats cut off all the aid promised to our South Vietnamese allies as part of our peace treaty ending the war, resulting in the fall of their country just two years later: 600,000 dead at the hands of the Communists, 400,000 more dead fleeing in the South China Sea, as well as the famed “killing fields”, where Pol Pot, the man Democrats had hailed as “the George Washington of Cambodia”, murdered one-third of his nation’s entire population in just under three years.
Then Joe Biden sold out Afghanistan.
Rod Martin and others are convinced that Trump’s negotiations with the Iranian regime are not exactly for show, but also not exactly for real. The President has articulated three non-negotiable deal points, all of which the Iranians have pronounced non-discussable. There’s certainly not much future in that, and meanwhile, a second Carrier Strike Group makes its way to the Persian Gulf. Days ago, Trump told reporters that regime change is “the best outcome”.
On the other hand, if negotiations somehow produced a deal, it is hard to imagine a deal that would not leave the oppressive mullahs in place, keeping the Iranian people in poverty, under shariah oppression, at risk of dying of thirst due to severe drought, and with Iran prioritizing WMDs and proxy wars over basic water management. The Ayatollah’s personal wealth is estimated at about four times Iran’s annual government budget; he is certainly not the only Iranian theocrat with an offshore stash. The justification for such a deal would be that it is in America’s interests to remove Iran’s nuclear capacity, not to engage in nation building. But the justification would be rightly obscured by not just the optics but the horrifying reality.
The man who would be king, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah, assures us that while American help is needed, Iranians themselves are the “boots on the ground”. There’s no question “help is on the way”, with the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group on station, the USS Gerald R. Ford CSG on its way at breakneck speed from the coast of Venezuela, and countless military transports ferrying a staggering amount of equipment into the region.
The question remains what Trump will do with it. But this much is certain: a promise is a promise. The world has become accustomed to Democrats (and RINOs) betraying our friends. The President must not join them.
9. Enabling Iranians to Restore Their Freedom Will Give the U.S. a Key Ally, a Close Friend, and a More Stable Middle East
If we enable Iranians to gain their freedom, Iran will be a close friend of the U.S. for the next century. This may seem far-feteched, but only to those with short memories. A modernizing, pro-Western Iran was the bulwark of America’s security in the Middle East for decades, opposing the Soviets, selling oil to America and Europe during the Arab Oil Embargoes, and maintaining cordial relations with Israel while the Arab states repeatedly attacked it.
Iranians remain very pro-American, and indeed much of the Iranian diaspora is in the United States, including the royal family itself. A restoration would bring peace, prosperity, and hope to millions of Iranians, enormous opportunities for U.S. and European investment, and an exponential reduction in the level of tensions and violence across the Middle East.
10. Iranians Are Rejecting The Regime’s Theology As Well
Perhaps these things surprise you. There’s more.
While reliable statistical data is difficult to procure, the best available studies suggest that as many as two-thirds of Iranians today reject Islam, regarding the behavior of Iranian Muslim leadership as accurately reflecting the true Islam when given free reign. Christianity is growing; so is Zoroastrianism, the pre-Islamic faith of ancient Persia. The regime itself admits that 50,000 of Iran’s 75,000 mosques have closed, and even the Iranian Ministry of Culture found in 2023 that 73 percent want a separation of religion and state.
With U.S. military backing, Iran could well become one of only a handful of countries in 1,400 years of history to regain their freedom from their Islamic conquerors.
11. Iranians Have a Leader Who Can Lead the Transition
Hundreds of thousands of Iranians in their own streets and across cities abroad consistently chant exactly one name: Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah.
The Iranian Crown Prince is mainstream, moderate, and modernizing. He’s spent the last half-century in the United States: he was educated here, his children were born here. His eldest daughter, Crown Princess Noor Pahlavi, is a New York venture capitalist. They favor an alliance with America and a rapid transition to democracy.
In this, the model is of course Juan Carlos I, king of Spain after the death of dictator Francisco Franco. The newly restored king quickly ushered in a constitutional monarchy not dissimilar to Great Britain’s, while giving the stability of history to the new era.
There are indeed other voices. In addition to the regime itself, there is the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, and its related National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). Led by Maryam Rajavi, the MEK is every bit as dangerous as the current regime, exhibiting cult-like characteristics and rooted in a blend of Marxist and Islamist ideology, though it has won American support from a bipartisan list that includes Howard Dean and John Bolton. Like most things backed by Howard Dean and John Bolton, the MEK would be a grave mistake.
12. A Freed Iran Would Be a Symbol Across the Middle East and an Inspiration for Europe
It is not necessary to continue a Twelver-led sponsor of global terrorism on a quest to burn down the world in nuclear fire. It is not necessary for Islamists to hold sway over large stretches of the Middle East. Freedom is possible, and viral.
It is also not necessary for Europe to go gently into the Islamist night.
If Europe is to be saved from its rapidly progressing conquest, an Iran freed of its Islamist overlords would serve as an inspiration. Retaining Europe as a Western ally and, as Vice President J.D. Vance recently pointed out, not having a newly Islamized UK or France’s nuclear weapons pointed at the U.S. within our lifetimes, is a clear America-First objective.
How could the U.S. aid this regime change, this “Lion and Sun Revolution”, without a Bush-style invasion? Make no mistake: U.S. boots on the ground are not required and, if they are used at all, they may be used without occupation, and only via limited operations per Maduro.
Regime change will likely require arming the protestors, ensuring Starlink via Direct-to-Cell, getting the entire nation out in the street by taking out the oil refineries and refined product depots, and cutting off the regime’s cash by stopping its oil sales and Shadow Fleet. It will also require destroying IRGC and Basij command, armories, and foreign mercenary barracks, closing Iranian airspace to prevent Chinese and Russian military resupply, taking out Iran’s navy as Reagan did to safeguard the Strait of Hormuz, and running air cover and mop-up for some period of time.
The aim is not another American nation-building boondoggle. The aim is to empower the Iranian people to take back their own country and determine their own future. There is hardly a more pro-American people in the world. Helping them “Make Iran Great Again” is the very definition of putting America First.
In 1788, U.S. Ambassador to France Thomas Jefferson queried the Barbary Pirate King why he took American ships and sailors, following centuries of his terror against Europe taking a million or more of its people into slavery. Jefferson summarized to America’s chief diplomat, John Jay, the Berber ambassador’s reply:
“It was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
While it took another 13 years after that interaction for Jefferson to become President, Jefferson waited little more than three months after his oath of office before he went to war against the Barbary jihadi king and, soon enough, the Marines went “to the shores of Tripoli.”
If the Twelver mullahs have their way, the whole world may well pay the ultimate price. For the first time in 47 years, Iranians have a real chance to take back their country. Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to draw up battle plans for “decisive” action. That decision, if carried through, might well become one of his greatest achievements.
He must not miss this opportunity.
— Mike Phillips is an itinerate writer.
