For two decades the debate about Iran has revolved around a familiar set of options: strike the nuclear facilities, sign an agreement, strengthen inspections, tighten sanctions, restore deterrence.
Each proposal assumes the nuclear program is the problem.
It is not.
Destroying nuclear facilities would not eliminate the threat. It would delay it. Concrete can be rebuilt, centrifuges can be replaced, and scientific knowledge cannot be erased. A regime that views nuclear capability as essential to its survival will inevitably rebuild what is destroyed. A military strike therefore buys time but does not change the trajectory.
Diplomacy suffers from the same limitation. Agreements regulate activity but not intention. They manage enrichment levels while leaving intact the political logic that demands enrichment in the first place.
The Iranian nuclear program is not merely a weapons project. It is a governing doctrine.
For the leadership in Tehran, nuclear capability functions as insurance against overthrow, protection for regional expansion through proxies, and proof of ideological resilience. As long as that leadership structure remains, the strategic requirement for nuclear capability remains. The program is a product of the regime, not an independent policy choice.
This leads to a conclusion many policymakers resist: policies focused on centrifuges target symptoms. The cause sits in the structure of power in Tehran. Remove the structure and the strategic need for the program disappears with it.
But this immediately raises a harder issue - one largely avoided in public discussion.
What happens the morning after?
History shows removing a regime is often easier than replacing one. The real strategic challenge is succession. A vacuum in a country the size and complexity of Iran would not produce instant democracy. It would produce competition, fragmentation, and the risk of internal conflict.
That instability is not merely humanitarian concern. It is strategic risk.
Political vacuums rarely empower moderates. They empower the most organized actors. Revolutions tend to pass through chaos before stability, and chaos favors disciplined ideological forces. An unstable Iran could therefore become more dangerous than the current Iran: competing militias, radical splinter movements, or a new authoritarian power forged in conflict.
Under those conditions, nuclear ambitions would not disappear. They could accelerate.
Replacing a predictable adversary with an unpredictable one is not a solution.
Therefore the decisive question is not whether the current regime should fall, but who governs if it does.
A viable post-regime authority must possess legitimacy among the population inside Iran, not merely recognition abroad. It must control armed institutions capable of preventing disorder. It must reject ideological expansionism and commit to elections within a defined transition period.
This sounds theoretical - until recent events are considered.
During the twelve-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025, coordinated operations struck hundreds of targets and severely damaged missile production and air-defense systems.
What made the campaign unusual was not only the air strikes but the activity inside Iran itself: covert drone teams and pre-positioned explosives disabled launchers and defenses from within Iranian territory.
This was not an isolated occurrence. Over recent years, senior military leaders and nuclear scientists were eliminated deep inside the country, including multiple scientists killed during the June operation.
Earlier, vast nuclear archives were physically removed from Tehran, and long-term espionage networks operated across the country.
Each event alone can be described as an intelligence success. Taken together, they describe something larger: persistent penetration of decision-making and operational centers inside the Iranian system.
Operations of that complexity require more than intelligence gathering. They require logistics, recruitment, communication, command structure, and coordinated execution across multiple locations. These are not only characteristics of resistance networks; they are the foundational characteristics of governing authority.
In other words, what has appeared as assistance to external operations also reveals something else - an internal organizational core capable of evolving into a transitional leadership structure.
Such actors cannot overthrow the regime alone. But overthrow and succession are different tasks. External pressure can trigger collapse; an internal organized nucleus can prevent disintegration afterward.
The successor therefore does not need to be invented abroad. Its institutional embryo already exists inside Iran.
The Iran debate has been framed as a choice between a deal and a military attack. That is the wrong choice.
The real choice is between an unplanned collapse and a prepared transfer of authority.
A nuclear agreement may postpone events. A strike may accelerate them. But only preparation determines whether the day after produces order or a more dangerous regime.
The future of Iran will not ultimately be decided in enrichment facilities or negotiation rooms.
It will be decided by whether succession is ready before history forces it.