Resisting Iran Regime Change
Shortly after dinner time on Saturday, June 21, 2025, seven B-2 stealth bombers dropped fourteen massive 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs (GBU-57s) on two of Iran’s nuclear sites (Fordow and Natanz), while a U.S. submarine launched two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at Isfahan. The extent of the damage and whether the raids destroyed Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and enrichment capabilities is currently unknown. At a press briefing at the Pentagon afterwards, Gen. Dan Caine relayed details about the strike, dubbed “Operation Midnight Hammer,” asserting that “all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”
Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear sites, and the series of events that led up to it, have generated great debate and consternation among his supporters. At the first talk of overseas military strikes, some bailed; others were “plan trusters”; still others supported Trump but raised hell with how he was being manipulated and pressured by both Israel’s Netanyahu and intel abroad and also neoconservative war hawks (like Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, and John Bolton) at home.
However, with the strikes being declared a ringing success, former political officials began calling for more—for complete regime change in Iran. Even President Trump toyed with this idea by coining the acronym MIGA—Make Iran Great Again. If it turns out that the American strikes were unsuccessful, and Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and ability to enrich uranium remains undamaged, and if Iran’s Islamicist regime survives these attacks and continues to build a nuclear weapon, the talk of regime change and full-blown war with Iran will only heat up.
Foreign Slavery and Subversion
Americans are sick of foreign wars, especially those in the Middle East. The vast majority do not want war with Iran. Why is America so prone to foreign entanglements? Why must we wage war on Russia through our Ukrainian proxy, or come to Israel’s aid, or be the avowed defenders of Taiwan against Chinese ambition? The answer to this question is complex, and it is rooted in twentieth-century history and America’s pivotal role in it (i.e., “the American Century”). Yet the American people grow weary, not only because it has cost them trillions of dollars and the lives of thousands of servicemen, but also because it has led to domestic neglect. Thus, the American First MAGA movement has been an anti-war movement.
Our founding fathers foresaw these dangers and warned against them. Most famous among them is our first president, George Washington, in his Farewell Address (1796) (the address was most certainly written, or at least revised, by Alexander Hamilton). In his address, Washington was overwhelmingly concerned about establishing the new nation by creating and maintaining unity among the states and people. Becoming embroiled in foreign wars would only splinter and fracture the American people and make union all the more difficult. Thus, Washington urged the American people to “observe good faith and justice towards all Nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.” Religion, morality, and good policy all demand this of a people.
Washington set forth what he called the “Great rule of conduct” for American foreign policy: “in regard to foreign Nations [it] is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled, with perfect good faith. Here let them stop.” In other words, America should not seek to dominate other nations and peoples politically, nor intermingle America’s political system and representatives with foreign powers beyond regular diplomatic dealings. Instead, each to his own politically, while cooperating diplomatically and commercially. This would lead to national prosperity and industry without foreign subversion, collusion, or war.
To make this work, however, Washington located the source of foreign entrapment in men’s jealousies and hatreds. His warning is as clear and true as it is difficult to maintain:
In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded; and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The Nation, which indulges toward another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosities or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim.
Unfortunately, American foreign relations in the twentieth century have been nothing but oscillating antipathies and affections that have driven one ill-gotten foreign adventure after another. The result has been the loss of American liberty and the slow, but steady, growth of slavery—slavery to our passions and commitments to certain nations (Britain and Israel as “most favored nations,” Ukraine, Taiwan, etc.) and slavery to our hatred and absolute enmity toward others (Russia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea). Unsurprisingly, having tried to rule the world as a hegemon, we have invited the world to rule America: from transplanted communities of Palestinians and Somalians who elect their own to Congress, to powerful lobbies that serve the interests of other nations, America has been hollowed out domestically because of her foreign overreach and arrogance. Washington warned about this development as well:
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter. Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.
America is currently overrun with foreign influence and subversion. As a liberal hegemon, we manage both protectorates (Japan, Germany) and client states (Ukraine, Israel). This “passionate attachment” is presented to the American people as “Ukraine’s interests are America’s interests,” or “America First means bombing Iran and aiding Israel.” There must always be an explicit link to “American interests,” no matter how strained, farcical, or dubious they may be. None of this is truly about America’s interests; it is a form of slavery to foreigners and a loss of true liberty and sovereignty.
Washington’s solution to these grave national dangers was to avoid permanent alliances: “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. … Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectably defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” America today has done just the opposite, as we have permanent alliances with certain nations that have never been established by Congressional treaty. America’s liberal empire represents the rejection of George Washington’s wisdom and sage counsel, and a spurning of America’s restrained foreign policy for the first hundred years of her existence.
Destroying Monsters, Becoming Monsters
What should America’s approach to the Israel-Iranian conflict be? There are many good examples in American history, starting with our neutrality in the French Revolutionary Wars (between Britain and her allies and France). Washington famously proclaim neutrality on April 22, 1793, declaring that “whosoever of the citizens of the United States … by committing, aiding, or abetting hostilities against of the said Powers … shall render himself liable to punishment or forfeiture under the laws of nations … [and] will not receive the protection of the United States, against such punishment or forfeiture.” There were many Americans who were for anything but neutrality; they campaigned for America to pick a side. But Washington’s refusal, his determination to keep the young nation aloof from European quagmires, became the model and gold standard for our foreign policy.
If Washington (as a leader) and Hamilton (as a thinker) were the pace-setters during the founding era for a neutral, American First foreign policy that avidly sought to mind its own business and stay out of foreign entanglements, then John Quincy Adams was the frontrunner of the same during the Early Republic. Adams, the eldest son of John Adams, was not only the President of the United States from 1825-1829, but before this, he served as the Secretary of State for James Monroe (1817-1825). Toward the end of his stent as Secretary, a civil war in Greece broke out that lasted from 1821-1828. Greek rebels rose up against Turkish rule and sought to throw off their Ottoman overlords. The Americans were deeply sympathetic toward the Greeks:
Americans were drawn to the Greeks for a number of reasons. For one, the Greeks were fellow Christians engaged in a veritable “holy war” of survival against the Moslem oppressors. National pride—which fueled a burgeoning commitment to the dissemination of republican ideology—formed another source of pro-Greek thought. Having themselves risen from tyranny, Americans were not indifferent to another people striving to achieve the same liberties they had fought for and maintained.
Unsurprisingly, American sympathies led to Greek appeals for aid. In August 1823, the agent for the Greek provisional government, Andreas Luriottis, requested both financial and military aid from President James Monroe. This was followed by the U.S. minister to France, Albert Gallatin, proposing that the United States deploy naval ships to the Mediterranean to aid the rebels. In his 1823 State of the Union Address, President Monroe voiced his support for the Greek cause: “A strong hope has been long entertained, founded on the heroic struggle of the Greeks, that they would succeed in their contest and resume their equal station among the nations of the earth. It is believed that the whole civilized world takes a deep interest in their welfare.”
However, despite the President’s empathy, Secretary Adams alone stood resolute in resisting entanglement. Adams believed that any aid to the Greeks would quickly embroil the Americans in a war with Turkey, and possibly even the Barbary pirates. In August 1823, Adams wrote back to Luriottis, informing him of America’s moral support, but also her commitment to neutrality. The Americans, Adams insisted, “sympathize with the cause of freedom and independence wherever its standard is unfurled,” and they “behold with peculiar interest the display of Grecian energy in defence of Grecian liberties, and the association of heroic exertions, at the present time, with the proudest glories of former ages, in the land of Epaminondas and Philopoemon.” The United States, however, would not send aid:
But while cheering with the best wishes the cause of the Greeks, the United States are forbidden, by the duties of their situation, from taking part in the war, to which their relation is that of neutrality. At peace themselves with all the world, their established policy, and the obligations of the law of nations, preclude them from becoming voluntary auxiliaries to a cause which would involve them in war. If in the progress of events, the Greeks should be enabled to establish and organize themselves as an independent nation, the United States will be among the first to welcome them, in that capacity, into the general family; to establish diplomatic and commercial relations with them, suited to the mutual interests of the two countries; and to recognize, with special satisfaction, their constituted state in the character of a sister Republic.
In other words, America would maintain formal neutrality, even though she was fully with the Greeks in spirit and purpose. Moral support and encouragement was the only aid given; any tangible military or financial involvement would have sucked the new nation into an overseas conflict from which extraction might be difficult and costly.
Two years prior to this incident, also while Secretary of State, Adams had delivered an address before the U.S. House of Representatives on the occasion of the celebration of the Declaration of Independence. In speaking of what America had “done for the benefit of mankind,” the Secretary praised the United States for “[holding] forth to [all nations] the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.” The Americans had “respected the independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own,” refraining from “interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings.” Adams then uttered words that would make him famous:
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The fontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished luster the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.
Adams’ warning was that nations that go abroad in search of monsters to destroy will themselves become imperial monsters, grinding the bones of foreign regimes to dust while crushing dissent and perverting the spirit of liberty at home.
Resisting the Imperial City
The ominous words of John Quincy Adams over two hundred years ago pierces the American heart and casts a cold gall of guilt upon our collective conscience. For over eighty years, Americans have gone abroad to destroy monsters—monsters in Korea, in Vietnam; monsters in Kosovo, in Libya; monsters in Iraq (twice), in Afghanistan; and now monsters in Iran. Yet in the course of crushing monsters for the cause of “freedom and democracy,” America has become a monster. She is a global terror, an imperial hegemon imposing the decrepit and failed gods of an unrighteous liberalism upon those who wish to be sovereign over their own lives and countries.
At home, we have graduated from the “military-industrial” complex that Eisenhower warned about to a “military-intelligence-managerial-industrial state”—or, more simply, a total state. Others have pointed out an even more shocking revelation: that in its desire to defeat twentieth-century communism in defense of Western Civilization, liberal democracy, and freedom, imperial America has transformed itself into a mirror image of its enemy. At the heart of Washington DC lies Communist America, a state-sponsored industrial and bureaucratic leviathan, intent upon forever wars abroad in search of monsters, while oblivious of the monstrous evil festering in her chest. America is not a liberator, but a monster.
Bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities at the behest of Israel and now talk of “regime change” in Iran is simply the latest evidence of Adams’ prophecy coming true. Those who are truly America First must understand this, as horrifying and depressing as it is; then, they must act to resist foreign entanglement with every ounce of their strength, while waging a cold war against the beast that has captured this beautiful country and is shattering it brick by brick. There are foreign giants in the land, and they must be wiped out.
Image Credit: Unsplash
