Iran is already a thoroughly integrated and educated nation-state under the repressive rule of the ayatollahs.

The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier accompanied by guided-missile destroyers, has boosted US striking power in the Middle East. President Donald Trump has hinted at military action to support Iran’s latest protest wave, at times even using the sensitive term “regime change.” But the legacy of bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan arouses fears that the fall of Iran’s clerical regime could unleash even more violence and extremism.

This analogy rests on a poor understanding of Iranian society after half a century of Islamist rule. It obscures how fundamentally different Iran is from the Iraq and Afghanistan of two decades ago. Iran’s anti-regime movement is inherently anti-Islamist; Iranians possess a strong and ancient national identity; the economy would not be structurally dependent on foreign aid once sanctions are lifted; and society is well-versed in the mechanics of elections despite decades of clerical control that rendered them neither free nor fair.

For the United States, Iran offers something Iraq and Afghanistan never did: a chance to gain a durable ally in a turbulent region without requiring a troop deployment or costly reconstruction. If US military action tipped the scales, empowering the Iranian people to overthrow a hated dictatorship, the result could be transformative, and the costs to Washington limited.

Unlike Iran, the main anti-regime currents in Iraq and Afghanistan had deep Islamist roots. Saddam Hussein suppressed both Sunni and Shia jihadists as threats to Baathism, but together they formed an Islamist opposition that surged after his fall. In Afghanistan, Islamism crystallized into Jamiat-e Islami and Hezb-e Islami by the early 1970s, including a failed 1975 uprising against the Daoud Khan government.

Iranian society is increasingly moving away not only from political Islam but from the religion itself. Surveys across ten Middle Eastern countries showed Iran had the lowest mosque attendance in the region. This decline in religious observance was reflected in the regime’s 2023 complaints that roughly 50,000 of Iran’s 75,000 mosques were closed due to a lack of worshippers. 

A leaked 2024 regime survey revealed that 85 percent of Iranians had become less religious than five years earlier, with only 11 percent attending prayers.  During the first days of the ongoing movement, protesters deliberately targeted mosques and Shia shrines as embodiments of Islamism.

Iranians are filling that identity void with nationalism rather than sectarianism, like Iraq, or tribalism, like Afghanistan. In 2016, crowds gathered at Pasargadae to chant pro-monarchy slogans at the tomb of Cyrus the Great. By 2023 and 2025, Persepolis and other landmarks had become the country’s most-visited heritage sites, a trend that clashes with the regime’s Islamist project.

Despite the presence of armed separatist movements in Balochistan and Kurdistan, Iranian national identity has overridden ethnocentric grievances. During protest waves, non-Persian regions have not rallied around separatism but instead echoed nationwide slogans such as “death to the dictator,” “long live the king,” and “Pahlavi will return,” reflecting a shared political and national frame rather than ethnic fragmentation.

Iranians have preserved a continuous language and culture; even under Turkic, Mongol, and other non-Persian dynasties, Persian remained the official and administrative language. The people of Iran increasingly view their pre-Islamic past as a foundation for the future, and in their political imagination, national identity precedes sect or tribe.

Without that same sense of identity, Afghanistan reverted to tribalism, and Iraq turned to sectarianism. Although Saddam Hussein sought to appeal to Iraqi nationalism by invoking ties to ancient Babylon, the reality was that modern Iraqis differ in language, religion, and culture from the empires that once ruled the same territory. As a result, Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds developed distinct and often competing identities that the Iraqi leader used to divide and rule. If there was any hope for a peaceful transition, it died with the decision of Sunni extremist insurgents to target Shia civilians and provoke a civil war.

In Afghanistan, where the country’s ethnic and tribal structures shape politics, Pashtun elites sought to impose their language and social mores on others, resulting in a country that splintered as the United States invaded. It is a country united solely by force.

Another factor that bodes well for Iran’s independent economic future, once the theocracy is out of the way, is education. In Afghanistan, 52 percent of men are literate, while only 23 percent of women are. Iraq has just over 100 universities and technical colleges for a population of 46 million people, compared with more than 2,500 universities and a population that is more than 90 percent literate in Iran.

Iranians are familiar with the mechanics of democracy, even though elections in the Islamic Republic are a facade. The Guardian Council, appointed by the supreme leader, vets candidates to enforce regime loyalty. Yet the system still holds regular elections and exposes citizens to campaigns, party formation, institutional competition, and the language of checks and balances, with democratic forms ultimately repurposed for authoritarian rule.

Another concern in Washington is the financial cost of post-collapse involvement in Iran. From 2001 through withdrawal, Washington spent roughly $140 billion on foreign aid in Afghanistan, with total war costs exceeding $2 trillion. Similarly, from 2003 through the US drawdown, the Iraq war cost roughly $2 trillion overall, with estimates of over $60 billion directed toward reconstruction.

But, achieving US goals doesn’t have to involve boots on the ground, which nobody wants, inside or outside Iran. It requires air support, targeted strikes against the repression apparatus, and a disciplined messaging campaign that synchronizes military pressure with action by Iranians on the ground, allowing them to mobilize once the leadership is neutralized. As for post-transition aid, the Trump administration has dialed back foreign assistance. In Iraq and, to a degree, Afghanistan, the feeling that America broke it meant America had to fix it. That would not be the case in Iran.

Iran clearly has the means to finance its own recovery from decades of corruption and mismanagement. Iran ranks second in natural gas and among the top four in petroleum reserves, and even under sanctions, earns nearly $50 billion annually in oil export revenue. With sanctions relief and investment in extraction and transport, those revenues will rise significantly.

Unlike Iraq, Iran’s wealth extends well beyond hydrocarbons. Manufacturing accounts for roughly 15 percent of GDP, industry employs over 30 percent of the workforce, and Iran has been a leading automobile producer in the region. Services employ about 50 percent of the workforce and include education, health care, engineering, finance, and logistics, reflecting a sizable skilled labor pool, with roughly 1.5 physicians per 1,000 people and about 2,200 researchers per million residents.

This is not to say change would come easily. The Islamic Republic has its own stakeholders, and those who have benefited from enforcing the regime’s will. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is unlikely to yield easily, both because of its loyalty to the current regime and because it is the main beneficiary of Iran’s economy.

For now, it is true that the mass slaughter of protesters—with estimates of the death toll running as high as 36,000—beat back the wave of protests that crested in early January. Yet, even if street protests have waned, the movement is not defeated. Strikes continue, the country remains in collective mourning, and everyday life has not resumed and may never entirely do so.  Missing the current momentum risks alienating the Middle East’s most pro-American population and squandering a rare opportunity to cultivate a strategic ally.

About the Author: Janatan Sayeh

Janatan Sayeh is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies focused on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic’s regional malign influence. Prior to joining FDD, he was the research lead at the International Republican Institute, where he also worked on countering China’s authoritarian influence globally. Sayeh has previously contributed to research on US policy towards Iran at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the American Enterprise Institute. Born and raised in Tehran, Iran, he studied Hebrew and Arabic at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received his BA in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Image: Pcruciatti / Shutterstock.com.

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