Following the widespread protests against the Ayatollah regime that began on December 28, 2025 in Iran by millions inside the country, US and European news outlets and Middle East analysts have failed to discuss the numerous positive ramifications following the collapse of the Islamic regime in Iran. Such individuals and news outlets have instead focused on the possible negative outcomes of the regime’s demise such as refugees, or the regime’s potential attacks on its neighbors or immediate impacts to international oil and energy prices. This negative outlook is unhelpful and only shamefully serves to help the regime’s propaganda efforts to avoid their imminent collapse.

When one explores the numerous positive future outcomes from the collapse of the Islamic regime in Iran, they outweigh the negatives and there is a case to be made for militarily helping the people of Iran to topple this totalitarian regime that has held them captive for nearly 50 years. With the Ayatollahs removed from power and a secular democratic government in place in Iran, the Middle East and the entire world will benefit from the following;

Greater peace and relative stability in the region
Increased trade and commerce
Increase in regional tourism
Stability in the flow of oil and energy from the Middle East to the world
Increased scientific and technology research/advancement
Iran becoming a hub for international finance and a transit point for transportation of goods between the West and Asian markets.
Remove the needs for large America or Western military forces in the Middle East
A higher quality of life for people in Iran and the Middle East
A new renaissance of Iranian and Middle Eastern arts, sports and entertainment.

PEACE & STABILITY

Since 1979 the Ayatollah regime in Iran has been funding and arming countless terrorist activities in the Middle East and the entire world in an effort to spread their form of radical Shiite Islam with the goal of spreading their radical Islamic ideology to the world. Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the Houthis have for years received billions of dollars from the Islamic regime in Iran as well as weaponry. These terrorist groups have brought nothing but death, destruction and chaos to the entire Middle East. With the Ayatollahs ousted from power in Iran, the substantial financial lifeline to these brutal terrorist groups will dry up overnight and they will be greatly weakened.

Likewise, the Ayatollah regime has exported its terrorism to Central and South America via Hezbollah who has helped expand the regime’s narcotics trade in the region. Without funding from their mullah overlords in Tehran, Hezbollah’s narco-terrorism in also decimated in the Americas. Without a doubt, the elimination of the Islamic regime’s funding and arming of terrorism will save millions of lives in the Middle East and in the world. With greater peace and stability in the Middle East, commerce, trade and investment in the region will blossom. Additionally with peace and stability in the region, the flow of energy from the Middle East to the rest of the world will be uninterrupted and benefit all of humanity.

At the same time, with the collapse of the Ayatollah regime in Iran, we will mostly likely see a secular democratic government set up in the country that will not only stop all hostilities towards Israel, but instead sign the Cyrus Accords for peace with Israel. Many forget but prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran and Israel had strong ties and prosperity together economically. Iran’s primary opposition leader, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, has many times in recent years indicated that a future democratic Iran would promptly sign a peace agreement to normalize relations with Israel. Without a doubt, an Iranian-Israeli alliance in the Middle East would have a domino effect on the neighboring Arab and Islamic countries in the region who would likely also seek to normalize relations with Israel for fear that they may be left behind economically and technologically if Iran benefits exclusively from Israel’s hi-tech and scientific advancements. Iranian money and investment in Israel’s advanced hi-tech sector could transform both nations into the two most powerful nations in the Middle East and offer humanity remarkable life-altering new discoveries.

Lastly, with the Ayatollah regime gone for good and new secular democratic government in its place, the people of Iran will also enjoy peace, stability and economic prosperity. For the last 47 years the population in Iran has not only suffered humiliation and a lack of freedom under the yoke of the mullahs ruling them with an iron fist, but the corrupt regime’s leadership has used the nation’s wealth for their own elite families or to fund terrorist groups in the region. The hope is that a future secular democratic government in Iran will enable and enrich the people of Iran to enjoy in their country’s wealth from the abundant natural resources and also enjoy freedom to live their lives in peace without fear from a religious Islamic dictatorship.

My upcoming pieces will explore how Iran without the Ayatollahs in power will be transformative for trade, tourism, energy and technological advances in the Middle East and worldwide.

Karmel Melamed is an award-winning internationally published Iranian American journalist based in Southern California; He is a member of the Speakers Bureau of JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa