Table of Contents
Stephen D Cook
Stephen D Cook is a retired US Army Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel with 25 years of service. He is a combat veteran decorated for both heroism and valor.
In the deep tunnels beneath Isfahan, the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to safeguard what the latest assessment from the International Atomic Energy Agency describes as the majority of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Despite nearly a month of American-led blockade operations that followed sustained precision strike operations, the regime has not been forced to relinquish its most dangerous assets.
This is the urgent reality facing the United States. The administration has repeatedly declared that Iran will never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. Yet declarations alone do not secure outcomes. As I warned in two earlier op-eds for RealClearDefense, the window for decisive action is closing. Even if the regime were to sign a new “nuclear-free” agreement tomorrow, history shows its word is worth less than the paper it is printed on. Half-measures and standoff tactics have bought time, but they have not eliminated the threat. If “never” is to mean never, Washington must move beyond denial of materials and confront the regime’s center of gravity: its ideological hold on power. The path forward begins with the Iranian people themselves.
The current posture – maritime interdiction, airstrikes on enrichment infrastructure, and sanctions – reflects a sound instinct to prevent breakout. Yet it cannot succeed on its own. Material denial has never defeated an ideological adversary. The theocratic regime draws its strength not primarily from centrifuges or stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, but from its claim to divine legitimacy rooted in Shi’i Islam.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution succeeded because a disciplined network of clerics, students, and bazaari merchants gave structure and direction to popular anger. Today’s protests, by contrast, are nationwide but remain leaderless and episodic – pop-up demonstrations that flare and fade without coordination or protection. Economic despair, compounded by years of mismanagement and isolation, has created fertile ground for unrest. The Generation Z youth who filled the streets of Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz during the 2025–2026 wave of protests possess raw energy and moral clarity. Without organization, however, that energy risks dissipating or being hijacked by more radical elements. History shows that revolutions without structure collapse or are co-opted. The United States cannot afford to wait for either outcome.
The urgent course of action is therefore clear: prioritize the construction of a credible internal resistance before any further escalation of kinetic pressure. The CIA and Israel’s Mossad must intensify human intelligence operations to identify, protect, and connect emerging leaders among the urban youth protesters. These are not abstract revolutionaries: they are university students, young professionals, and women’s rights activists who already demonstrated their willingness to risk everything in the recent unrest. Protecting them from the regime’s Revolutionary Guard and intelligence services is the foundational step. Once a core of leaders exists, external support can help them scale.
Starting points for this effort already exist within Iran’s fractured opposition landscape, but they must be approached with clear-eyed realism. Networks such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq and its political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, possess decades of organizational experience and claim active resistance units inside the country; they can serve as an important organizational backbone, not the public face, under emerging Persian-youth leadership. In the northwest, Kurdish organizations, including the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran and the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, bring experienced fighters and have shown recent success in coordinating protest activity.
These assets are real and valuable. Yet they cannot become the sole foundation of American strategy. Many Iranian Kurds, like their ethnic kin I worked with in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, view the present moment as an opportunity to advance long-standing aspirations for greater autonomy or even independence. That energy is understandable and should not be dismissed. However, any perception that the United States is endorsing ethnic separatism would hand the regime a devastating propaganda victory. It would alienate the urban Persian youth who formed the backbone of the 2025–2026 protests and who remain essential to any hope of nationwide change.
The goal cannot be a patchwork of ethnic enclaves. It must be the creation of a credible, nationally oriented resistance that channels the legitimate anger of Generation Z protesters in Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz into a unified alternative to theocratic rule. This resistance must speak to Persian national identity, not fragment it – reclaiming the pre-revolutionary cultural and historical pride that the 1979 theocracy deliberately subordinated to its ideological project. It must offer a vision of a secular, representative government that respects Iran’s territorial integrity while ending the export of revolution and the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Only such a movement can command the broad legitimacy required to topple the mullahs from within.
A parallel and equally high-priority line of effort must focus on peeling away portions of Iran’s regular armed forces, known as the Artesh. Numbering roughly 350,000 personnel, the Artesh is significantly larger than the ideologically committed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It is more professional and nationalist in orientation, with a high proportion of conscripts serving mandatory 18- to 24-month terms and lower- to mid-level officers who routinely feel like second-class citizens – receiving lower pay, older equipment, and less prestige than their Guard counterparts.
Recent reporting from March and April 2026 paints a picture of concentrated morale collapse and desertions within these units, driven by hyperinflation of the rial and chronic pay delays for conscripts. Conscripts have abandoned posts, refused orders to fire on protesters, and in some cases publicly burned portraits of the Supreme Leader. Commanders have been documented fleeing barracks during strikes or protests, leaving rank-and-file soldiers exposed. Analysts consistently note that the Artesh identifies far more strongly with the Iranian nation than with the theocratic regime. This makes it the military element most likely to stand down, defect, or even join a resistance movement – if it perceives a viable, credible alternative that looks capable of winning or at least offering protection to defectors and their families.
Both the CIA and Mossad have already demonstrated the penetration required to make this outreach feasible. Their track record includes targeted killings of nuclear scientists, the 2018 theft of Iran’s nuclear archive from the heart of Tehran, and repeated sabotage operations. Public reports from the same March–April 2026 period confirm that Mossad agents have directly contacted Iranian commanders urging them to stand down or defect, while the CIA has run parallel messaging campaigns to encourage defections. Lower-tier Artesh officers and conscript-heavy units are the logical targets: their loyalty is pragmatic rather than ideological, driven by survival, family safety, and resentment over the regime’s favoritism toward the Guard.
A credible, nationally focused resistance – anchored in urban youth leadership and augmented by the organizational backbone of the Mujahedin-e Khalq – creates precisely the ‘viable alternative’ these soldiers need. When they see disciplined, protected leadership emerging from Tehran and other Persian-majority cities, rather than ethnic fragmentation in the periphery, the calculus shifts. Defections would not only swell resistance ranks with trained manpower and equipment – they would also deliver local intelligence, operational know-how, and a powerful signal of regime fragility that accelerates further collapse. Critically, a flipped Artesh would also neutralize the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ ability to coordinate effectively with its regional proxies during the transition. Because the Artesh controls much of the conventional logistics and border security that those proxies rely on, such defections would amount to a logistical death sentence for groups like Hezbollah or the Houthis – severing the regime’s external lifelines at the moment it needs them most.
Once a protected base of operations exists inside Iran – bolstered by these Artesh elements – United States Special Forces can play a limited but critical combat advisory role. Their mission would be training in secure communications, operational security, and basic tradecraft, as well as coordinating close air support, to keep leaders alive and their cells connected. Building on the Starlink terminals already operating inside Iran and the ongoing strikes against regime jamming networks, this advisory effort would ensure the resistance maintains resilient command and control links essential to scaling operations nationwide. The presence of American advisors, alongside defected Artesh units, would signal seriousness to both the resistance and the regime without committing large ground forces prematurely. This resistance-first sequencing, targeted Artesh outreach, and combat advisory role for US Special Forces all align with historical precedents (e.g., the 2001 Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and US Special Forces advisory operations with partner forces against ISIS in Syria and Iraq). Economic despair and the lingering momentum of recent protests make the moment uniquely viable. Without structure and military heft, however, the same conditions could breed despair or radicalization. The resistance-first approach – youth leadership, existing networks, and targeted Artesh outreach – is therefore not optional: it is the only way to convert popular discontent into sustainable pressure on the regime.
With a viable resistance taking shape and incorporating elements of the Artesh, the military component can shift from attrition to enablement. A limited, decisive ground operation to seize and secure the Isfahan nuclear complex would represent the logical culmination of this sequenced strategy. The objective would not be indefinite occupation, but a swift, surgical removal mission: locate, secure, and extract the highly enriched uranium stockpiles through sensitive site exploitation before withdrawing. Leveraging defected Artesh personnel and resistance guides familiar with the site’s recently backfilled tunnel entrances and internal layout, American and partner forces would move under the protective umbrella of overwhelming air and naval dominance, which has already proven capable of neutralizing Iran’s remaining drone and missile threats. Iranian air defenses have been systematically degraded – its proxy militias are overstretched. The regime’s ability to respond effectively to a focused strike package – now supported by local resistance guides and defected Artesh personnel providing real-time intelligence and safe passage – would be greatly minimized, though not without great risk.
Sequencing is everything. Resistance organization, including Artesh defections, must come first. Only after a credible internal partner exists can ground forces operate with the necessary intelligence, local support, and political cover. The protected base created by the Isfahan operation would then serve as a magnet and safe haven, allowing the resistance to expand its reach, distribute aid, broadcast its message, and begin governing pockets of liberated territory, with defected Artesh units serving as a provisional security guarantor to prevent any failed-state vacuum – rather than forming a permanent military junta. To forestall the kind of resentment I witnessed in Mosul in 2003 – where an Iraqi lawyer warned that failure to restore basic services would drive people back to insurgency – early humanitarian and economic stabilization measures must accompany any liberated areas, ensuring electricity, medicine, and jobs reach civilians before chaos fills the void. This linkage turns military action into a catalyst for regime collapse rather than a standalone raid. The United States would not be installing a government; it would be creating the conditions under which Iranians themselves – Persian youth, defected soldiers, and organized opposition networks – can finish the job begun in late 2025 and early 2026.
As Carl von Clausewitz understood, decisive outcomes in war are achieved by striking the enemy’s true center of gravity with coordinated political and military means, not through perpetual peripheral attrition. Critics will warn of escalation, quagmires, or unintended consequences. These concerns deserve respect, particularly as many Americans – exhausted by prolonged engagement – already believe this conflict should be declared ‘over.’ That sentiment is human and understandable. Yet a premature declaration of victory would be dangerously illusory. This effort will take time, but true victory – ensuring the theocratic regime truly never pursues a nuclear weapon again – requires more than standoff operations, economic collapse, or a worthless document. The course of action outlined here alone removes both the enriched uranium stockpiles at Isfahan and the ideologues committed to clutching them, even at the devastating cost of crippling their own nation and impoverishing the Iranian people. Because the United States has publicly committed itself to ensuring Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon, we have a strategic and moral imperative to finish the job properly and deliver the declared end state to the letter. Standoff power alone has already failed to alter the regime’s behavior. Sanctions fatigue is real. Proxy attacks continue. The ideological engine of the theocracy remains intact. Only by combining a credible internal resistance – with newly acquired Artesh muscle – with targeted external enablement can the United States translate its “never” policy into lasting reality.
The protests of 2025–2026 demonstrated that the Iranian people have not surrendered to the mullahs. Their courage, now paired with the realistic prospect of military defections, created an opening wider than any in four decades. It is now America’s imperative to provide the structure, protection, and sequencing that can turn that opening into irreversible change. Isfahan is not merely a target: it is a pivot point. By building resistance first – youth leaders shielded, networks professionalized, and Artesh pragmatists flipped – and then enabling a decisive operation at Isfahan, the United States can finally make “never” mean never. The alternative is to watch the tunnels of Isfahan become the birthplace of the next nuclear crisis. History will judge whether we chose the harder, necessary path or settle for familiar long-term failure.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
