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Source: https://thedispatch.com/article/iran-regime-change-nuclear-deal-strait-of-hormuz/
A Long-Term Strategy to Deal with Iran
(Dispatch) Jonathan Ruhe - No diplomatic agreement is going to end the war between Washington and Tehran. Revolutionary Iran's fundamental purpose is defined by combating American influence, both real and perceived, at home and abroad. The war will truly end only once the Islamic Republic disappears. Seeking to avoid this fate, Iran's leaders are refusing any meaningful or binding concessions. After surviving the worst their mortal enemies could throw at them - and gaining a new feel for deterrence and leverage in the process - the country's new leaders act even more emboldened and defiant than their predecessors. Once again, Tehran is angling for major sanctions relief in exchange for cosmetic concessions that do not prejudice its capacity to make nuclear fuel on its home soil. Even if the Trump administration gets everything it claims Iran has agreed to, the regime will emerge with the presumptive ability to covertly produce every component of a bomb. Tehran currently believes that reopening the Strait of Hormuz is ultimately its decision and so is any future decision to reclose it. If it remains unchallenged, Tehran's control over Hormuz gravely undermines the decades-old U.S.-led regional security order premised on freedom of navigation upheld by American naval supremacy. The U.S. clearly needs an effective and sustainable plan to reopen Hormuz without Tehran's sufferance, defend against aggression from a more militarized and risk-tolerant Iranian regime, and foster the conditions to collapse an Islamic Republic whose claims of recent victory do not negate its profound, enduring, and irreparable internal weaknesses. The writer is a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.