Name: Walter Russell Mead on Developments in Iran
Uploaded: 2026-03-01T20:36:00Z
Duration: 15 min 27 s
Description: WSJ's Elliot Kaufman speaks with Global View columnist Walter Russell Mead about the unfolding situation in Iran.

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WSJ's Elliot Kaufman speaks with Global View columnist Walter Russell Mead about the unfolding situation in Iran.

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260301/97245e09-f5ac-4b6f-a000-b7055886c47f/2/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Walter Russell Mead on Developments in Iran

Maybe we can start with the big picture here. I just wanna ask you, why is the US at war with Iran right now?

Well, short answer is because President Trump decided to do it now, and so we need to ask why he thought this was the time and why things were, you know, in such a shape that war was the best answer. I think you would say that probably this is the weakest the Iranians have been in a very long time. In the 12-day war last summer, Israel with an assist from the US really took down a lot of their air defense systems. Their economy is on the ropes. They've actually ordered some fairly significant weapons from Russia and China, but those haven't been delivered yet. So there might well have been a sense in the White House that Iran is only going to get stronger, and as it gets stronger, it's gonna be even less amenable to the kind of negotiations we would like to see to that they may have just seen an opportunity right now.

If it was a strategic opportunity, in that sense, does this play into criticisms that this was really a war of choice, an unnecessary war, there were, you know, other options? What do you think about that line of arguments?

I said, first of all, I've never been that comfortable with the war of choice, war of necessity argument, because almost all wars are wars of choice in the sense that you always have the choice, you can surrender. So the Germans can come across Belgium and Belgium can surrender, and France can surrender. And very, very definitely, when Churchill said, "We're not surrendering," that's a war of choice. Hitler was offering a peace deal. So that I think is just sort of fog that needs to be cleared out. But this is an offensive war in that Iran was not at that moment contemplating or carrying out major military action either against the US or against Israel. So this is very much, in that sense, a war that you initiate rather than a war that you respond to. And that, I think, politically, it's a real double or nothing kind of thing for the president. If this thing ends badly, it's a quagmire, or the repercussions are terrible, it sets off some kind of regional chaos and instability that maybe then affects oil markets and raises prices for the long term, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of people are going to say, "Well, Mr. President, why did you decide, why did you wake up one morning and start this stupid, stupid war?" On the other hand, if it's pretty quick and there's a good result, there'll be a lot of people saying, "Well, Mr. President, what a genius you are." So it's a real gamble.

What would it look like for this war to succeed? What are some plausible victory scenarios do you think?

Well, you've got what you might call the Venezuela option where elements within the regime decide that at this point, it's better to work with the United States than against it. And in a sense, the US then uses Iran's access to world oil markets as a point of leverage to keep the government moving in what Americans think of as the right direction, away from nuclear weapons, away from ballistic missile programs, away from subversion of its neighbors. And I think that is probably quite acceptable to the White House. They would score that one as a win. I suspect the Israelis might score it as a win. You could also see, perhaps on a more optimistic note, you know, there's a great popular revolution in Iran. The fury against the mullahs erupts and Iran emerges with a very different kind of government, one that is aligned with the West, not out of necessity, but out of the choice of the Iranian people. That's probably the best possible result. I would not argue that it is the most likely result, but either of those two would probably score as a win in the American political context. A loss, how about long civil war in Iran that creates millions of refugees that engulfs Iraq, that starts having a big impact on the security of oil flows, perhaps stimulating the return of jihadist ideology among Sunnis who feel threatened by everything that's going on there. Iran's uranium gets leached out to various groups that are even more radical than the current government. You think of a million ways this thing could go badly wrong.

And it seems like so much of the debate has revolved around the word "regime change," both from supporters and also opponents. But when I heard you lay out the two victory scenarios, even the more limited one sounded like, if not a full change of regime, a shift, a transformation, a change in behavior that maybe gets to a change in character. I wonder how you think about that question and how much the regime can actually be changed.

I have absolutely no idea. I don't think many other people do either. I doubt that the people in Iran do. This is the thing about history, you know? You take decisions based on information that you yourself know at the time is less solid than you would ideally want. And then you live with the consequences and deal with them as they come. Presumably, President Trump has calculated that the odds of a successful outcome are big enough and are favorable enough and the payoff is big enough to justify the enormous political risks that he's running. But again, I don't think President Trump cares at all, at all whether Iran becomes democratic, whether there's an ideological change. He's entirely focused on the external behavior of the Iranian government. And if the current government would behave the way he wants, he'd be fine with that. I don't know that you can really fault him for that unless what you want to do is have US troops involved in fighting, you know, another war to set up a democracy in a Middle Eastern state. And I honestly don't think that even President Trump could whip up enough enthusiasm in American public opinion to sustain a war of that kind.

We've seen already some US casualties, I believe right now it's three American soldiers killed and five seriously wounded. What signs are you looking for in how this goes to influence whether President Trump decides to go long or wrap this up relatively quickly with some sort of deal?

Again, I think that would largely depend on what kind of deal is he being offered. As I understand it, before the negotiations, before the attacks, the Iranian position was, "Okay, fine, we're gonna be a little bit more forthcoming than we have been on the nuclear file, but we're really not giving up long-term our rights for enrichment and on the ballistic missiles and the support for proxies go fish." So you know, that was not a very forthcoming view. It represented a very small change from their long-term position. And I think president seems to feel that he needs more on ballistic missiles and he needs more on Iran's sort of non-subversion or Iran limiting its political activities to within its own frontiers. So we'll see, you know, what are they gonna offer. I do think on the Iranian side, there's a very strong awareness of the political constraints under which the president operates that he can't just keep doing this indefinitely. And they're likely to say too that there's kind of diminishing returns to these air attacks. You take out the best targets on the first three days and then you have to start going after the lesser and lesser targets 'cause you've already destroyed the other ones. And so the longer it goes, the less damage the United States can do to Iran. So they are probably gonna try to spin it out, make it last forever. Maybe they'll offer some sort of, you know, slightly better looking negotiations but pull it back or whatever because they're pretty darn sure that President Trump can't fight a long war. And so that actually gives them a stronger negotiating position than it may appear. Now, against that, these early attacks have been, I think, toward the absolute top range of what you could expect. Essentially, the top leadership of the Islamic Republic is gone. The demonstration effect that it has, not only does it have no power to defend itself against air attacks, but that Israeli intelligence with help, I think, from the CIA has completely penetrated Iran. You put those things together, plus on the other hand the discontent on the streets, and so it's not a sure bet by any means that the longer this crisis goes on, the more it favors the mullahs. They've got problems too. And sort of the question would... One of the questions would be whether using air power to weaken the regime can push it toward collapse, you know, enable the people on the street to think, "Okay, now is our chance to win in a rebellion against the regime," which many people hate. Although we should not forget that it still does have a base of popular support. So there's that possibility. In a sense, what's interesting there is that that somewhat longer scenario commits the administration a bit more to regime change. If the Iranian government, what's left of it, comes in in the next few days with an offer that seems to give Trump more or less everything he's wanted, then regime changes, you know, maybe stopped right there. But on the other hand, if the war is going on, Trump will need the internal opposition to win more in order to get a positive result before his timetable expires. So in that sense, the longer this goes on, the more the US is committed, I think, to a more radical version of regime change.

How does Iran's retaliation so far play into that? Because yes, it's fired at Israel and it's fired at US troops, but what seems most notable about it is that it's fired at these third parties, Gulf Arab states, other Arab states, just about every neighbor it has, it seems like. What is it going for there? How does it try to influence those outcomes that you were laying out?

I think we should remember that most of those attacks have been on actual US military bases in other countries. So the Iranians, you know, can say, "Hey, the US is attacking us, we are attacking US regional facilities," so the base may be located in Bahrain or in Kuwait or whatever, but we're not attacking Kuwait, right? That's a fig leaf that I think they can and will use. Now some of the attacks against the, you know, particularly against the Emiratis have hit civilian facilities and non-US facilities. There it gets harder, but again, you know, the Iranians are pretty good at playing divide and rule here too. And so saying to some people, "Well, we're only gonna attack the US military facilities in your country and then to others, we're attacking you more broadly," is interesting. But I would also note that on the whole, the Iranian retaliation so far has been less than overwhelming. They have attacked in Tel Aviv, at least one of their missiles has hit civilians and you know, done damage on the ground. They've also demonstrated a capacity to stop air travel, which is, you know, a big deal because the Middle East has become a real hub for global travel. So they're causing a lot of grief and anxiety. And that says something. I think we should probably not forget that up until now, the US and Israel have not touched Iran's oil refining facilities, most of which are concentrated in a very small area and which are an extremely vulnerable target. Again, that would be a sign that that might to some degree deter Iran's retaliation because if they retaliate too hard, the US and Israel have the option of taking out those oil facilities, which would basically block Iran from world oil markets for months, even years, given the limits on their ability to do repairs thanks to sanctions, et cetera. So the Iranians may be struggling with two different views here, you know, two different options. Also, I would say as long as we are not hitting those refineries, we seem to be looking at a compromise. The door is open to a compromise with the current regime, that an attack on those facilities would be a significant escalation in the campaign and would tell us that things were entering a different stage.

WSJ Opinion: Walter Russell Mead on Developments in Iran

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