Can the Iranian regime be unequivocally brought down, and at what price?

One of the subjects that lead to the most lively comment threads here at LITD is what to do about Iran. The LITD position has hewed pretty closely to that of Michael Ledeen: make it official US policy to maximize contacts with groups, formal or informal, within Iran (and in exile) interested in bringing down the regime.

After reading this piece by Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute at Commentary, I'm rethinking the efficacy of that approach. He says it may not be enough, for the reason that the mullahs and the IRGC don't care how much blood they have to spill to stay in power.

Strain's observations and conclusions are couched in a comparison with the way the US won the Cold War against the Soviet empire. He points up four types of differences between the USSR scenario and the Iran scenario: personal, ideological, structural and institutional. His analysis is deep and consideration-worthy, but what I'll share is the portion of his essay in which he offers recommendations for what indeed ought to be done:

Isolating Iran from external resources and forcing the regime to concentrate on controlling its own population would be major accomplishments that would transform the Middle East. The centers of gravity in this effort are:

• Separating Iran’s external supporters and suppliers from the Islamic Republic;
• Preventing Iran from gaining and using control of resources beyond its borders (particularly in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq);
• Inflicting defeats on the IRGC in critical theaters (Syria and Iraq especially) to discredit the organization’s internal narrative supporting its supremacy in national-security policy;
• Disrupting Iran’s efforts to secure the material required to build its nuclear arsenal and expand its conventional military capabilities;1
• Encouraging domestic dissatisfaction with the Iranian regime within Iran (but without expecting that dissatisfac- tion to lead to regime change in any particular period of time);
• Encouraging and enhancing dissension within the regime over the desirability of continuing aggressive policies of regional expansion; and
• Taking advantage of the trauma of the upcoming supreme leader succession, which will be akin to the death of Stalin and the most meaningful transfer of power since the death of Khomeini.

Even this, which is less abrupt than the foment-unrest-and-the-regime-will-quickly-fall approach, is going to take all US allies being on board:

A long-term approach would focus on building a consensus among America’s allies about the need to implement the Victory Strategy. It would deter the Russians and Chinese from stepping in to keep Iran alive. It would disrupt the supply chain of strategic materials Iran needs to advance its nuclear and conventional military capabilities. And it would force Iran to fight hard for its positions in Iraq and Syria while simultaneously pressing the Iranian economy in every possible way. Such a strategy would almost certainly force the Islamic Republic back in on itself, halt and reverse its movement toward regional hegemony, exacerbate schisms within the Iranian leadership and between the regime and the people, and possibly, over time, and in a uniquely Iranian way, lead to a change in the nature of the regime.

I just don't know if that kind of unity of purpose is possible within the West at this point. Consider how Europe reacted to the US pulling out of the JCPOA. And the juicy contracts to be had on the business level are hard for corporations to leave on the table. That's why we're so entangled with China.

I'll be keeping my eye out for reactions to this approach. As of now, it strikes me as an assessment based on thorough study of the nature of the Iranian regime.

Something in me, though, intuitively objects to approaches (remember Kissinger's policy of detente toward the Soviet Union?) that leave bad actors in place. Not just because they're distasteful, but because they want us gone.