AMBASSADOR (RET.) YORAM ETTINGER -- While regime-change entails cost, it would be dwarfed by the following cost of shying away from regime-change
The uprooting of the Ayatollah regime, which has been, since 1979, a chief epicenter of anti-US terrorism, civil wars, drug trafficking and money laundering in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and US soil, is a prerequisite to ending wars.
- Refraining from regime-change in Iran – which uproots and disavows the Ayatollah ideology educationally, constitutionally, politically and militarily – would severely erode the US posture of deterrence, irrespective of US victory pronouncements, and notwithstanding opinion expressed by the “elite media,” which has been systematically at odds with Middle East reality, in general, and the Ayatollah regime, in particular.
- The failure to realize a thorough regime-change would embolden China (in the Pacific Basin, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East), Russia (in the Baltic region and East Europe) and Turkey (Erdogan’s vision to resurrect the Ottoman Empire), eroding the state of the US economy and national and homeland security.