Regime Change or Regime Compliance?

What is the point of Operation Epic Fury? What's the endgame? Great name aside, President Donald Trump's statements don't exactly offer perfect clarity — and there are perhaps solid reasons to maintain strategic ambiguity.

But that also means that conservative milbloggers like CDR Salamander have every right to say, as Sal did on Saturday, "I hope this ends sooner more than later. We’ve made our point, whatever that is."

Whatever it is.

Here are the justifications Trump has given in the 72 hours or so since ordering GO! on Epic Fury :

"Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime."
"They can never have a nuclear weapon. I'll say it again. They can never have a nuclear weapon."
"All I want is freedom for the people. I want a safe nation, and that's what we're going to have."
"When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take."

As stated at least, those goals are all a bit nebulous, and please note that at no point did Trump say that the U.S. would engage in top-down regime change. He merely promised to set the stage for the Iranian people to "take over your government."

That is exactly as it should be. "We’ve done plenty of punitive expeditions in our nation’s history, CDR Sal noted on Monday, "but in the last few decades, as a certain pedigree of policy maker held sway over our national security doctrine, it fell out of favor."

Trump brought it back, bigly.

Epic Fury is not a "forever war," much as I despise that lazy phrase, and the U.S. will not put boots on the ground (aside, I presume, from some very sneaky special operators and intelligence spooks), and we will not indulge in another endless round of impossible nation-building. Besides, unlike Afghanistan or Iraq, Iran already is a nation with a strong national identity and a history stretching back millennia.

If there's to be a better Iran, that's up to them. We can create the conditions, we can (again) set back the Mullahs' nuclear ambitions, but we cannot and should not attempt to do more than that.

We still have the question, though, of what Trump's actual endgame is.

And Another Thing: Note that I did not say "exit strategy." That's code for bugging out — see Afghanistan, 2021 — and is typically thrown around by Democrats uninterested in winning. But when we don't have an achievable endgame in mind, we shouldn't bother.

If I had to guess — and for now, at least, I do — here's what I think he might be up to.

Based on Trump's stated goals, his longstanding convictions against hubris and overreach, and his recent history, maybe Operation Epic Fury is more like Operation Absolute Resolve Writ Large.

Two months ago, U.S. forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to face American justice. We did not, however, topple the regime. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez stepped up, read the altered global situation, and has proven mostly compliant with American interests. And that, frankly, is as much as we require.

If the people of Iran take their government and create a decently run constitutional republic — or perhaps even a constitutional monarchy — that's friendly to the West as it was under the Shah... well, that'd be nifty. Unlikely, perhaps, but nifty indeed.

Thankfully, Trump doesn't seem to count on the unlikely.

If some general were to step up to run things — or perhaps a colonel, as quickly as Tehran is running through flag officers — and promise good behavior under American auspices, that might be as nifty a result as we require. We might prefer free elections or the restoration of the monarchy under Reza Pahlavi, but I imagine Trump would happily settle for a local Rodríguez.

It's the difference between regime change and regime compliance. Or as Sal put it, "Nation building OPLANS again? No. Not any more. Breaking their things and killing their worst leadership that endangered the USA and her allies? I’m in."

"Regime compliance" might just be the ultimate expression of the Trump Doctrine, but for now, we'll have to wait and see.

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