Bouvard on Iran Regime Change and Diplomatic Strategy

Not wanting regime change means you will ultimately act in favor of regime preservation.

@Imperius__13 Between one regime and another? No. It will be all Islamic Republic or not at all.

@Imperius__13 Iran is a liberation theology suicide cult regime. Maybe I could imagine some other timeline in which they evolve into Unitarians, but I think that's too remote to consider.

@Imperius__13 Pitting internal factions against each other would be the only justification for a deal (other than a very narrow deal to get the uranium out)--that's one reading I've seen, and it's worth considering. That would indeed be a masterstroke.

@Imperius__13 If the goal is to turn factions against each other, then nothing else matters. That would justify even a very bad deal--indeed, maybe a bad deal would be more likely to fracture the regime. But, then, we're not really interested in a deal but in changing the regime.

@Imperius__13 What's the deal with the deal?

@Imperius__13 I'm trying to find and put into play with each other as many different arguments as I can find. My baseline is that unless the regime goes, we'll be back where we were before all this started in maybe 10 years, and I don't think that had to be the case.

@Imperius__13 Anything that breaks the regime is justified; anything that doesn't, isn't. For all I know Trump sees things that way and I have been thinking of how things that look very bad might be very good--but, first you have to notice that they look bad, even to follow the hidden logic.

@Imperius__13 All we can do is figure out what seems plausible from the patterns of facts available to us. However many levels there may be, in the end there's a public scene we can judge.

@vondienstmann @Imperius_13 That would increase the likelihood of the Islamic Republic being replaced.