The Islamic Republic of Iran deserves to fall. On that point, historian Niall Ferguson and former Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass are in full agreement. The regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons, its sponsorship of terrorist organizations, and decades of regional destabilization make it a problem every US administration since Jimmy Carter's has struggled with. But agreeing on the diagnosis, the two argued in a conversation with Coleman Hughes, does not mean agreeing on the cure.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing an interview on the Conversations with Coleman podcast, both analysts warned that the current military campaign risks inflicting more damage on American interests than on Iran's leadership.
"Foreign policy has to be feasible as well as desirable, and ends and means and costs and benefits have to be aligned," Haass said. "Does this war make that more likely? And in a word, I would say no." Ferguson echoed the concern, arguing the war would only prove beneficial "if it ends within a matter of weeks" and produces genuine regime alteration - not merely a cosmetic leadership shuffle.
The economic stakes alone make prolonged conflict untenable. Ferguson called the Strait of Hormuz crisis "a much bigger supply shock to the global energy market than the Russian invasion of Ukraine" - a shock that drove US inflation to 9% in 2022. The current disruption, he argued, comes at a time when the global economy is less equipped to absorb it, with comparisons reaching back to the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979.
Both analysts pointed to the geopolitical fallout. Every day of conflict depletes US munitions that could defend Taiwan, parks American forces in the Middle East rather than the Indo-Pacific, and hands Moscow higher energy revenues. "Every day that Patriots are being used in this conflict - if I were President Zelensky, particularly since he is offering to help us in dealing with drones, reportedly an offer we spurned, and meanwhile Russia is helping our enemy - it is quite remarkable how wrong we have gotten the US-Russia-Ukraine triangle," Haass said.
Ferguson drew a historical parallel: no previous president, including George W. Bush, was willing to take this step precisely because the risks were so obvious. "It was a monumentally risky thing to do for economic, political, and geopolitical reasons," he said. "And President Trump has a very high risk appetite."
Also read: McMaster Outlines Three Scenarios for Post-War Iran - and Two of Them Are Disastrous