World peace depends on ending Iran's dictatorship, not on winning the war against it.
By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 29/03/2026
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The US and Israel's war with Iran has already been won militarily, with the Iranian force reduced to the level of a terrorist operation. However, strategically, world peace depends on ending the theocratic dictatorship. If the war is won without eliminating the criminal group that subjugates Iran, the threat to international peace and security will have been merely postponed, and the fanatical aggression seeking a world war will soon persist.
Throughout the 21st century and before, Iran's theocratic dictatorship has deceived and manipulated while pursuing a frenzied arms race with nuclear objectives. The ayatollahs' quest for nuclear power is not defensive or deterrent; it is essentially aggressive due to its theological, cultural, and strategic underpinnings. The West and the world's democracies have been slow to grasp this and are paying the price for their indecisiveness, for failing to identify as an enemy a counterpart that has designated them as enemies to be eliminated since seizing power.
While the world's democracies measure the confrontation with the Iranian dictatorship in terms of casualties, oil prices, market fluctuations, and the duration of the conflict, the radicalism of the theocratic dictatorship measures it in dogmatic and confessional terms. Iran is a theocratic state that defines itself as an "Islamic republic," established after the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979, with a "Muslim confessional state" whose constitution "defines the social, economic, and political order of the State based on Shi'ism, specifically the Imam school of thought."
Rationality, economic measurements, growth and price forecasts, markets, and the rules of the globalized capitalist world versus the heartless theocratic fanaticism that exercises state terrorism against its people and organizes, promotes, and sustains global terrorism, hybrid warfare, and all forms of dismantling those who think differently. It's not a good equation.
Under these conditions, the Iranian dictatorship has become the global leader of dictatorships, subordinating Russia by supporting its invasion of Ukraine, manipulating oil dependency on China, penetrating Africa, operating terrorism in the Middle East, and using the 21st-century socialist or Castro-Chavista dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and their para-dictatorial governments throughout the Americas as platforms for its dominance. The proof of this leadership is the current subordination of all these satellites to theocratic survival.
If the Iranian dictatorship ends, so too will Russia's invasion of Ukraine, because the end of this center of dogmatic global terrorism will eliminate support for violent projects aimed at disrupting peace. Fundamentally, it will end the possibility of a third world war, because while the realm of democracy and freedom is peace, fundamentalism thrives on violence, bloodshed, and war. The hard truth is that neutralizing this danger requires the use of force.
What is happening with the US and Israeli military operations against the Iranian dictatorship, besides being an inevitable process of maintaining international peace and security, is the urgent liberation of the Iranian people who, subjected to state terrorism, have no possibility of freeing themselves on their own.
While Western democracies negotiated and tried to control Iran's nuclear growth, the theocratic dictatorship became a center for the manufacture and development of missiles, drones, hybrid warfare, terrorist support, and more, expanding through penetration and cultural warfare in Europe, with a physical, religious, and military presence in the Americas through the 21st-century socialist dictatorships that, under Cuba's command, handed over possessions in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, and more.
The end of the Iranian dictatorship will lead to the restoration of sovereignty to countries and territories worldwide, including its influence on the domestic politics of the United States. It is all too easy to exploit freedom in a democracy to poison and attack freedom and democracy itself, and this is precisely the expertise the Iranian dictatorship employs, which must cease.
The actions of the United States and Israel are of global benefit, and many democracies around the world are lagging behind and wrong in their strategic positioning.
The Strait of Oman has become a tool of extortion that democracies should transform into an internationally controlled and administered zone while the people of Iran regain their freedom and democracy. The sooner they understand this and implement it, the better for the world.
Agreements that allow the survival of the criminal and dictatorial regime in Iran will only bring more serious problems in the short term, with greater costs in lives, prices, markets and freedom in the medium and long term.
*Lawyer and Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy
«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».