An ounce of internal dissent the best medicine

Mark Steyn might be on to something here:

The majority of Iran's population is younger than the revolution: whether or not they're as "pro-American" as is sometimes claimed, they have no memory of the Shah; all they've ever known is their ramshackle Islamic republic where the unemployment rate is currently 25 per cent. If war breaks out, those surplus young men will be in uniform and defending their homeland.

Why not tap into their excess energy right now? As the foreign terrorists have demonstrated in Iraq, you don't need a lot of local support to give the impression (at least to Tariq Ali and John Pilger) of a popular insurgency. Would it not be feasible to turn the tables and upgrade Iran's somewhat lethargic dissidents into something a little livelier? A Teheran preoccupied by internal suppression will find it harder to pull off its pretensions to regional superpower status.

Who else could we stir up? Well, did you see that story in the Sunday Telegraph? Eight of the regime's border guards have been kidnapped and threatened with decapitation by a fanatical Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan. I'm of the view that the Shia are a much better long-term bet as reformable Muslims, but given that there are six million Sunni in Iran and that they're a majority in some provinces, would it not be possible to give the regime its own Sunni Triangle?

Destabilization is never a very paletable option in international relations for the West. The West prefers stability as it offers predictability. Also, there is no guarentee that the destabilization of Iran would work, or even get off the ground. I remember an article from about a year ago where some Iranian young adults where quoted as saying that they wished the American troops had gone through Iraq and kept going into Iran. To me, that says that while Iran's youth may not like their current regime, they don't have much interest in taking things into their own hands, either. Still, this idea of Steyn's may be the best option available to the West when it comes to restraining Iran's nuclear threats.