Toppling Tehran’s Tyrants in 6 Steps

America has ample ability to topple the Islamist regime all by itself, but it would do better to do it in tandem with Israel, which will take on burdens that America doesn’t want to bear. They should, in coordination, take six straightforward steps:

1. Take out the regime first, then the nuclear program and the regional proxies. Not the other way around. It’ll be easier and more successful this way: once the regime is gone, we’ll be able to fully access and clean up the nuclear program from the ground, and the proxies will be orphaned.
2. Smash the main forces of the regime — IRGC and Quds.
3. Capture or kill regime military and intelligence personnel. Destroy their fixed infrastructure.
4. Capture or kill as much of the top leadership as we can get to.
5. Do our part to help people get a legitimate transitional national government to restore order.
6. Don’t do most of the running of the country, as we did in Iraq, and don’t do a hands off policy of abandoning it either, as we did in Afghanistan until we were forced to come back. Use commonsense. It always ends up less costly that way.

Leave it to the Iranian people to do most of the rest of the job at home – cleaning-up of the remnants of the old regime, establishing a permanent government – with just enough of our help to make sure it proceeds smoothly.

Leave it to the neighboring countries to do most of the work in cleaning up the proxies; just provide a bit of coaching and backstopping. With the Islamist tyranny gone and no longer providing supplies and reinforcements from Tehran , the proxies will be much weaker; the neighboring countries will suddenly be vastly superior to them.