Amr Hamzawy and Sarah Yerkes
With popular protests in Iran receding rather than escalating, the United States faces a narrower but still consequential set of policy options. The experience of the Arab Spring underscores that external military intervention amid domestic upheaval rarely produces democratic breakthroughs and more often entrenches disorder. In Syria, Libya, and Yemen, foreign military involvement during moments of popular mobilization destroyed already fragile state institutions, militarized political competition, and generated prolonged civil wars whose regional spillovers continue to destabilize the Middle East. These cases suggest that even when regimes face legitimacy crises, intervention does not translate social protest into political reform. Instead, it collapses the political arena into armed conflict.
Equally important, threatening military action against a regime confronting internal unrest tends to harden authoritarian behavior rather than moderate it. When rulers interpret external pressure as an existential threat, they are more likely to frame domestic opposition as an extension of foreign hostility and to treat politics as a zero-sum struggle for survival. The Arab Spring offers ample evidence that such dynamics intensify repression, close off space for reformist actors within incumbent regimes, and marginalize nonviolent opposition. In Iran’s case, U.S. military threats risk reinforcing the security establishment’s dominance and legitimizing harsher internal controls, even as popular mobilization loses momentum.
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