Iran's last 'impenetrable' nuke factory exposed: Secret underground target Trump must now destroy... or we're doomed - by Middle East expert MARK DUBOWITZ

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America has been here before. A righteous cause. A brutal enemy. Military success that races ahead of political planning.

Then comes the gradual shift in military and political objectives known as 'mission creep,' followed by quagmire. 

This is what happened in Iraq following the US occupation that accompanied Saddam Hussein's ousting in 2003. The mission of regime change evolved into nation-building, with the project of de-Baathification — banning Saddam's Baath Party and purging its officials — generating the conditions for the revival of sectarian violence over the next decade.

American lives, with around 4,500 US service members killed and an additional 32,000 wounded, and American treasure, at a total cost of $2 trillion, were squandered in the process.

If it turns out that America's leaders have failed to heed these lessons from Iraq, then the same fate awaits the country in the current war against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Avoiding those errors requires something Washington has never been good at: being ruthlessly clear about the mission and then sticking to it. But, to date, President Donald Trump has shown that he has the right instinct here.

This war, he says, is not about nation-building. It's not about occupying Tehran or remaking Persia's complex society at gunpoint. This conflict is about eliminating the regime's deadly capabilities that have been used against America, Israel, its Arab neighbors, and its own people for nearly half a century.

To date, President Donald Trump has shown that he has the right instinct here. (Pictured: Trump meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office on March 3)

The mission of regime change in Iraq evolved into nation-building generated the conditions for the revival of sectarian violence over the next decade. (Pictured: Toppling of Saddam Hussein's statute in Baghdad, Iraq in April 2003)

That's the military mission right now. 

Everything else is noise.

So, what should the playbook in Iran look like?

Step one: Destroy Tehran's capabilities — and I mean destroy, not simply degrade.

In pursuit of its nuclear ambitions, the Iranian regime has spent decades burying enrichment halls deep underground, building advanced centrifuge workshops, advancing weaponization work, and assembling a missile arsenal now being unleashed upon US troops and allies.

This Iranian infrastructure doesn't just need to be set back a few years. It must be shattered beyond any realistic prospect of rapid reconstruction. America and Israel are currently taking action to eliminate remaining nuclear weapon sites, including striking both a covert nuclear weapons facility northeast of Tehran called Minzadehei and a laboratory-like building at Iran's nuclear weapons research headquarters, and collapsing entrances to Iran's already damaged Natanz enrichment plant.

The most important one still standing: PickAxe Mountain where the regime is digging deep underground to build an even more fortified facility than Fordow — the one the US destroyed in the June war in 2025. If they succeed, the Iranians will emerge with enrichment, centrifuge manufacturing and weaponization facilities that even America's biggest conventional bombs can't destroy.

Step two: Break the mullah's repression machine.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij militia and the intelligence services — the instruments that keep tens of millions of Iranians living under fear — massacred more than 30,000 brave protestors in January. As long as the architecture of repression remains in place, no popular uprising has a real chance.

Ordinary Iranians have bravely taken to the streets before: In 1999, 2009, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022-2023 and in January this year. But each time the resistance comes at enormous personal cost to those protesting.

The moment these mechanisms of terror fracture, the regime's grip may really start to slip. When those same Iranians decide it is time to take to the streets again, they will need an opening, not a firing squad.

Which brings me to step three: Trust in the Iranian people.

Regime change cannot be packaged and exported from Washington, but the White House can help make it possible by keeping maintaining pressure on the regime and flowing support to its opponents. That means driving a wedge between the regime's ideological hardliners who will never bend and the pragmatists who can read the room and want a part in what comes next.

At PickAxe Mountain, the Iranian regime is digging deep underground to build an even more fortified facility than Fordow — the one the US destroyed in the June war in 2025

It also means equipping the opposition with the tools required to stand against the regime's goons: weapons, sustained sanctions enforcement, information operations, and real incentives to bureaucrats and military officers willing to accept Trump's offer of full immunity to include safe passage out of Iran and financial protection.

The administration is reportedly now in discussions with Iranian-Kurds, operating along the Iran-Iraq border, about arming them with the aim of formenting an uprising. This is a good start.

But this mission does not call for tearing down every Iranian institution in some frenzied replay of post-Saddam Iraq. That misguided operation left a power vacuum that bred an insurgency for which America paid a staggering price to defeat.

We cannot afford to forget that.

Finally, the mission as President Trump has articulated it does not end with a thriving Jeffersonian democracy in Iran some 18 months.

Success is a regime stripped of its nuclear and missile capabilities, fractured at the leadership level, hollowed out at its base, and facing a population with a fighting chance to actually decide what comes next.

That's a real and achievable outcome — but it requires patience and discipline in equal measure.

This mission does not call for tearing down every Iranian institution in some frenzied replay of post-Saddam Iraq

The current conflict in Iran could take months; it might even take years, to reach its next stage. Though, resolution must be reached before this administration ends.

The next president from either party will not have the power and credibility that President Trump wields in the region — and in the eyes of the enemy — to see this through.

Once the regime is given time to regroup and rebuild, once it can start calculating on a different American president, the window closes.

In the end, the option for America was never really between war and peace with Iran.

The Islamic Republic has been trying to destroy the United States for decades – and it will never stop.

The real choice is between a decisive strategy with a clear endgame and the kind of strategic drift that turns a winnable confrontation into a generational mess.

Mission clarity prevents mission creep. Discipline prevents quagmire. A clear and cogent playbook will prevent Iran from becoming the next Iraq.