Hesitant. That’s me when it comes to parroting an Axios report that a major war with Iran’s imminent, or at least “closer than most Americans realize.”

Since most Americans are clueless about foreign policy, “closer than most Americans realize” is a very low bar, and although Donald Trump’s demonstrated a penchant for military projection this term, he’s aware of the contradiction between foreign wars and his “America first” mantra.

That said, if Axios is correct to report that war is indeed “close,” I’d be remiss not to offer a preview. The Axios piece was published Wednesday amid delicate nuclear talks in Geneva, where Abbas Araghchi’s trying to gauge the prospects for diplomacy. The small US delegation’s led by — difficult as this is to accept — Jared Kushner, flanked by Steve Witkoff, who Trump (mis)takes for a regular Henry Kissinger.

There were some positive soundbites out of those meetings earlier this week, but I think it’s fair to call Trump trigger happy, both vis-à-vis Iran and just in general. The use of military force is intoxicating, and Trump seems well on his way to addiction.

He was on the brink of striking Iran last month during two weeks of protests, but ultimately held off. In recent days, he ramped up the rhetoric again and also deployed more military assets to the region including a second aircraft carrier. More warships, fighter jets, air defense systems and troops are en route.

On Monday, the IRGC held a dress rehearsal of sorts in the Strait of Hormuz — a hopeless attempt to dissuade Trump by implicitly threatening to close the world’s most important oil chokepoint. There was a time when that threat had some cachet with markets. That time’s long since passed.

By now — which is to say having seen the IDF dismantle Hezbollah and humiliate the IRGC in last year’s short-lived war, and having looked on as Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear sites with impunity — the whole world knows Iran’s a paper tiger.

It’s actually worse than that. Iran was a paper tiger, past tense. Now, with its proxies devastated, its missile arsenal depleted and the IRGC’s ranks hollowed out at least three tiers down, the regime in its current form cannot survive. It’s over for the theocracy. The only question is what comes next.

A joint US-Israeli campaign to deliver the coup de grâce would probably last two weeks to two months in my estimation which, while not informed by any military expertise per se, is informed all the same. I’ve been an avid follower of the region, and specifically the regime in Tehran, for over a decade now.

The US and the IDF would bomb anything and everything to do with Iran’s ballistic missile program and likely decimate the IRGC’s naval assets. The clerical ranks would be considered legitimate targets as well. Regime infrastructure in Tehran, including the propaganda broadcasting apparatuses, would come under heavy bombardment.

To be absolutely clear: The IRGC stands no chance in such a campaign. None. It’d be over before it starts, and as such, I’m increasingly surprised that the military hasn’t staged a coup. They control everything anyway, and at this point, Ali Khamenei’s an 86-year-old liability. If you’re the IRGC, there’s nothing but downside to letting him carry on.

But if Axios‘s reporting on Wednesday is accurate, it might be too late. “By delaying and bringing so much force to bear, Trump has raised expectations for what an operation will look like if a [nuclear] deal can’t be reached and right now, a deal does not look likely,” the linked article reads, adding that although “both sides said the talks ‘made progress,’ the gaps are wide and US officials aren’t optimistic about closing them.”

The planned operation, should it come to that, could commence within weeks or even days. It would look quite a lot like a full-on war, although Trump probably wouldn’t use that word. Maybe he can take a page out of the Kremlin playbook and call it a “special military operation.”

The outcome of such a campaign isn’t in doubt at least as it relates to which side will prevail. Again: The IRGC’s defenseless. The issue — and I’ve been over this a dozen times this year already — is that the opposition in Iran is so splintered that it doesn’t even make sense to talk about it as a “movement.”

There are ethnic constituencies, there’s a middle-class, there’s a moderate faction among the civilian government, there are different kinds of rights groups and then there’s the diaspora, some of whom harbor a nostalgic affinity for the monarchy. There’s no unity there whatsoever. No organizing principles, no points of agreement, nothing.

That means that if the IRGC’s summarily routed and scattered by the US military and the IDF, Iran risks becoming a failed state, at least for a time.

That’d be a terrible tragedy because the country has a very long history of coherent statehood and, crucially, a functioning civil service. This isn’t some backwater. It’s a more or less modern state. There’s no reason why this has to devolve into chaos, but without the IRGC, it (almost) invariably will.

I’m sure that’s occurred to the White House. If Trump’s devil’s bargain with Delcy Rodríguez (and I’m not sure who the devil is in that deal) is any indication, it’s probably not lost on him that the simplest path to regime change goes through preserving the regime, just stripped of the theocratic element.

In any event, if Trump takes the plunge on a war with Iran, it’ll define his foreign policy for the remainder of his second term. For better or worse.