OPINION:
America’s “forever wars” are sustained by a “forever complexity” trap: Experts keep multiplying symptoms, policymakers keep fighting them and the root cause remains untouched.
The mullahs draw their political authority from something more fundamental: The public acceptance of Shariah as divine law governing all aspects of life.
The 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that 83% of Iranians supported Shariah as the law of the land, while 82% said that Iran’s laws already follow Shariah. That level of acceptance produces a predictable political result: 66% of Iranians supported a political role for religious leaders.
Iran is not an exception. Pew data across 20 diverse countries and territories with significant Muslim populations — from Kosovo to Afghanistan and Turkey to Pakistan — show that public support for Shariah and clerical political authority move together with striking consistency.
Iran’s ideological foundation has remained intact, continuously regenerating clerical authority that justifies proxy warfare and exports instability to Israel’s borders and beyond.
Stabilizing Gaza requires more than governance arrangements. It requires addressing the Shariah platform that would undermine any such effort.
Turkey shows what a root-cause intervention looks like. After World War I, the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, systematically dismantled the institutional authority of Islamic law in public life. He removed Shariah from governance, placing mosques under state supervision and contesting the clerical establishment’s claim to divine authority.
The result was decades of relative stability and measurably lower radicalization compared to many surrounding countries. The intervention worked because it targeted the root cause rather than its symptoms.
In practice, Shariah is not a fixed, divine code operating by itself. It is a highly subjective and often self-serving clerical interpretation.
Reduce public acceptance of that platform and clerical authority weakens structurally at the root.
That is the way to undercut the mullahs’ hold on power in Iran, weaken the ideological engine of radicalization worldwide and move America and its allies out of the “forever war” trap.
MOORTHY MUTHUSWAMY
Leesburg, Virginia
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