The Iran War Is in America’s Interests

Those who make this claim tend to focus on a few other purported rationales for this war, as well as America’s broader involvement in the Middle East. Some center the idea that the United States is an imperialist power, interfering in far-off regions for nakedly exploitative purposes, and that this war is just the latest manifestation of that desire. This perspective, primarily espoused by the political left and foreign actors aligned with Tehran, finds wide purchase across an online ecosystem already ideologically predisposed to accept its premises. Others claim that America’s involvement in the region is something akin to a religious crusade, pushed by American evangelicals in the hopes of fulfilling Biblical prophecy, having been at best co-opted and at worst manipulated by the nefarious Israeli government and American Zionists. This argument—at heart both a conspiracy theory and a declamation of American interests vis-à-vis Iran—is being pushed by a range of critics on both left and right, including the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent. Each of these purported rationales is false. The imperialist angle falls flat due to Washington’s clear disinterest in remaking Iran in our image, instead focusing exclusively on neutering Tehran as a threat to American security. Despite all of the talk about regime change—and it would indeed be a boon to the US, the region, and the Iranian people—the White House never made toppling the mullahocracy a war aim. Any seizure of territory would be in service of our concrete military objectives, not an attempt at territorial aggrandizement or economic exploitation. The religious angle inverts reality; it is, in fact, the Iranian regime that has been waging a religious war against America for 47 years, not the reverse. The mullahocracy—a totalitarian, millenarian, theocratic regime—orients itself geopolitically around its apocalyptic theology, with the U.S. as its Great Satan. The ‘crusade’ claim also overemphasizes the political influence of the particular subset of Christians in question, laying a great deal of blame at the feet of a relative paucity of individuals. The Israel argument removes agency from American decision-makers, suggests that any U.S. interest in the Middle East is purely a sop to Jerusalem, and often devolves into rank antisemitism, including unsupported claims that Jews control the American government. What’s worse than the blatant falsehood of these spurious arguments is their failure to comprehend the true reason behind this conflict: that defanging, destabilizing, and defeating the Islamic Republic of Iran falls directly within core American interests. The mullahocracy that currently runs Iran overthrew the Shah’s regime 47 years ago; they have been attacking America, our citizens, and our interests ever since. One of the first major acts of the then-new regime was taking dozens of Americans hostage at our embassy and holding them for 444 days. They have illegally interdicted neutral shipping in international sea lanes, going as far back as the 1980s, attacking oil tankers and shooting at U.S.-flagged vessels. The regime is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, dispatching its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) across the region and wreaking havoc around the world. They have funded and supplied Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, various Iraqi militias, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and Gaza. They have directed terrorist attacks on nearly every continent—including against American embassies. They were the architects of the 1982 Beirut barracks bombing that killed scores of U.S. troops. And they were the primary supplier of the IEDs that killed hundreds and maimed thousands of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Islamic Republic’s hands are drenched in the blood of Americans. The mullahocracy has only accelerated its dangerous and destabilizing behavior in the past decade. The regime has been racing toward a nuclear weapon, only slowed by American sanctions, Israeli assassinations, and the joint U.S.-Israel attack on the program in June 2025. It ramped up its ballistic missile program, seeking to build an arsenal of short, medium, and long-range projectiles, essentially trying to replicate the North Korean playbook. Simultaneously, it has created a sizable suicide drone industry, using them against regional targets and proliferating them to its ally, Russia, for use against Ukraine. It used its proxy force in Yemen to forcibly shutter the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait via drone and missile attacks in late 2023, choking off global access to the Suez Canal via the Red Sea. It launched a multi-front war against Israel that began with the worst antisemitic pogrom since the Holocaust, one that resulted in dozens of American deaths and hostage-takings. It has planned assassinations on U.S. soil, ranging from the Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad to the current president of the United States. It is the world’s hub for sanctions evasion, aiding many of the world’s bad actors in lessening the sting of America’s powerful economic penalties. Perhaps most importantly for America geopolitically, Tehran is aa key player in the range of powers arrayed against America. Iran sells a great deal of oil to China at a discount, avoiding sanctions and cementing the bilateral relationship. China, in turn, sells Tehran weaponry that it uses to carry out its aggressive regional aims. One of Russia’s biggest supporters against Ukraine has been Iran. Until the defenestration of Nicolas Maduro, Tehran and Caracas were tightly aligned, especially on the sanctions evasion front. Iran cooperates militarily with North Korea, often buying Pyongyang’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile technologies. And before the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Iran was that dictator’s closest ally, helping kill hundreds of thousands of Syrians in the past decade alone. In short, Tehran is a key player in the alliance of authoritarian states seeking to overturn the U.S.-led world order. The idea that America should tolerate a regime that explicitly declares itself our enemy consolidating its power, pursuing nuclear weapons and their delivery mechanisms, and killing our citizens is absurd. Leaving that regime with the ability to attack its neighbors, close the Strait of Hormuz at will, direct global terrorist activity, and try to murder Americans on U.S. soil is intolerable. The Iranian regime is dedicated to destroying the United States and has been assiduously acting in service of that goal for nearly half a century. It is far past time that we return the favor.