Regime change in Iran, or weakening its capabilities, will not address the underlying causes of turmoil in the Middle East, Frederic Wehrey, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has argued. The true sources of regional instability lie within Arab states themselves - in authoritarianism, corruption, and inequality that predates Iran's influence.
Writing in Time, the Carnegie fellow - who served as a U.S. intelligence officer in Baghdad - said these problems "are the product of internal failures, not the creation of any external enemy," "Hvylya" reports.
For years, Arab autocrats invoked the specter of a militant Iran to explain away domestic unrest, deflect attention from their own shortcomings, and win greater American support. Iran's interventions across the region gave this narrative a veneer of credibility, but the reality is less convenient: Tehran exploited deep divisions that were already there.
The Arab revolutions of 2011 offered the clearest evidence, Wehrey wrote. Protesters in Cairo, Tunis, Tripoli, and Damascus were driven by indignity and injustice at home, not by foreign incitement. The civil wars that followed were ignited by violent crackdowns from autocratic rulers, even as outside powers - including Iran in Syria - intervened to prolong the fighting.
More than a decade later, the governance failures that ignited those uprisings persist and in many cases have worsened. Youth unemployment across much of the Arab world still hovers around 25 percent. Corruption remains entrenched, repression has deepened with new technologies, and inequality is widening. The compounding pressures of climate change, the energy transition, and artificial intelligence are adding new strains to already fragile societies.