People walk past an anti-US billboard on a street in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 3, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

The historic alliance between the US and Iran was built on deep economic, military, and institutional trust.

In 1957, the United States chose Iran as one of its primary partners under the “Atoms for Peace” program, which established the Tehran Nuclear Research Center in 1967. This equipped the Persian state with an American-supplied reactor and civilian scientific training.

On the intelligence and strategic front, American and Iranian forces operated joint signals intelligence installations along the Soviet frontier — such as Project Dark Gene and Project Ibex — effectively securing NATO’s critical southern flank.

Following the 1972 “Twin Pillars” policy, Iran was granted access to advanced defense hardware available nowhere else outside NATO.

Iran became the only country in the world permitted to purchase the top-tier F-14 Tomcat fighter jet, armed with long-range AIM-54 Phoenix missiles. This was far more than a standard military exchange: The Shah’s historic order of 80 F-14s and his vital financial guarantees in the mid-1970s literally saved Grumman, the legendary American defense contractor, from bankruptcy. These monumental agreements directly supported tens of thousands of high-paying jobs across the United States.

By 1978, more than 40,000 American military advisors, engineers, technicians, and their families were living and working in Iran — reflecting a level of industrial and human integration unmatched anywhere else in the region, apart from Israel.

Iran repeatedly proved its value as the anchor of regional stability. Iranian forces deployed to assist in ending the Soviet-backed insurgency during the Dhofar Rebellion in Oman, maintaining peace in the Gulf and keeping the Strait of Hormuz open. During the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, Iran stood firm, refusing to cut off oil supplies to the West or Israel.

Simultaneously, Iranian students formed the largest foreign student population on American university campuses, building organic, enduring, ties between both societies.

The 1979 revolution replaced a key partner with an oppressive cartel. Today, the regime in Tehran does not act as a sovereign state protecting its citizens. Instead, it operates as an armed mob wearing religious robes, designed to siphon national resources to fund foreign violence and domestic oppression.

The core of Iran’s economy — energy, telecommunications, banking, and international trade — is monopolized by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its industrial arm, Khatam al-Anbiya. This explains why standard diplomatic incentives fail: A military cartel will virtually never negotiate away the structural foundation of its own power.

If Western decision-makers are serious about achieving a durable resolution, they must address the practical realities of a regime transition. Any realistic plan for what follows the Islamic Republic must answer four decisive operational imperatives:

• Popular Mobilization: Who commands real, organic support inside Iran — whose name has been passionately chanted by citizens across streets and university campuses throughout decades of anti-regime uprisings, rather than someone promoted in foreign think-tank panels?
• Ideological Orientation: Whose platform offers a secular, constitutional, and liberal framework — guaranteeing human rights, free markets, and law — while actively rebuilding strong diplomatic and economic relationships with the US, Europe, and the Middle East?
• State Integrity & Transition: Who possesses the standing to preserve national integrity during the moment of regime collapse — someone regular military officers would respect, preventing civil war or ethnic fragmentation?
• Regional Security: Whose transition strategy would completely eradicate the jihadist and proxy funding networks Tehran has established across the Middle East, rather than merely re-labeling them?

Before rushing to generic conclusions, Western analysts and policymakers must face an uncomfortable reality: Name a single alternative candidate or group currently elevated in Western media or think-tank panels that satisfies even one of those four essential criteria — let alone all four.

When examined closely, the alternative choices pushed by foreign institutions remain largely out of touch. For years, Western panels have recycled the same rotation of discredited reformists, exile factions, and outdated ideological groups who possess no real base inside Iran. Some continue to promote discredited Marxist-Islamist ideas; others favor dividing Iran along ethnic lines — concepts overwhelmingly rejected whenever Iranians express their true desires in the streets. Yet these discredited voices dominate foreign policy circles, falsely telling Western leaders that no viable alternative exists.

The claim that “there is no alternative” has caused immense strategic damage, offering policymakers a justification for passivity and fear of change. This myth is not an accident; it is a deliberate narrative cultivated by the regime’s propaganda machinery to buy survival time. Declaring that no alternative exists is a dishonest tactic meant to protect a tyrannical regime that cannot endure honest scrutiny.

When you listen directly to the Iranian people, a clear choice emerges. One name repeatedly chanted across nationwide uprisings in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Mashhad is Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. When ordinary citizens risk their lives to declare his name, it represents a clear, calculated judgment on who might be able to hold the nation together. We do not advocate the installation of the Crown Prince. We only predict that when democratic elections take place, there is a good chance he could take office.

The benefits of a liberated Iran are undeniable. For the Iranian nation, overthrowing this regime means ending decades of poverty, ideological terror, and severe environmental damage — allowing an ancient civilization to rejoin the world economy. For the US and its allies, facilitating this transition solves the nuclear crisis at its source, cuts off funding to regional terror proxies, and restores a powerful strategic partnership. The Iranian public remains one of the most pro-Western and secular populations in the Middle East.

At the present time, the vision of an amalgamation between the US and Iran looks like the ravings of a madman. However, at one time in our not-too-distant past, the relationship between America on the one hand and the Axis Powers on the other was nothing to write home about either. Nowadays Germany, Italy, and Japan have strong and mostly flourishing relations with our country.

So let us be of good cheer in the hope that in the foreseeable future, the US and Iran will be more than merely at peace with one another.

Walter E. Block is the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans. Hushang Manuchehri is the pseudonym of an independent scholar and dissident who now lives in a country where free speech is restricted.