The Islamic Republic is gambling on US attention on its brutality eventually subsiding.

Iran is not a conventional adversary operating within accepted rules of state behavior. It is a regime whose survival depends on repression at home, destabilization abroad, and the systematic manipulation of diplomacy. For more than four decades, Tehran has refined a strategy built on violence, delay, and deception, betting on Western hesitation, election cycles, and diplomatic fatigue to advance its objectives while avoiding consequences.

The most recent wave of protests inside Iran exposed this reality with brutal clarity. These demonstrations were not ideological uprisings orchestrated from abroad, as the regime claims. They are rooted in daily hardship. Millions of Iranians took to the streets demanding freedom, dignity, economic opportunity, and basic services that any responsible government should provide.

Instead, they live under a system where billions of dollars have been spent over decades financing foreign militias, terrorist proxies, and regional interventions, while essential infrastructure at home continues to collapse. Hospitals lack medicine and equipment. Schools and universities are underfunded. Food prices have soared. Unemployment—particularly among the youth—has reached alarming levels, eroding hope for an entire generation.

This stark imbalance between ideological ambition abroad and economic neglect at home was at the heart of the protests. The regime’s response was neither reform nor restraint. It was mass violence.

According to multiple credible human rights organizations and international NGOs, the Iranian authorities killed and executed more than 3,500 innocent Iranians during the latest unrest. Thousands more were arrested, tortured, or disappeared. These killings were not spontaneous acts of crowd control; they were deliberate, systematic decisions taken at the highest levels of the state. Repression is not a policy failure of the Islamic Republic—it is its governing method.

A regime willing to massacre its own citizens does not suddenly behave responsibly beyond its borders. Iran’s external conduct mirrors its internal brutality. Through Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and other armed proxies, Tehran has built a network designed to destabilize the Middle East while preserving plausible deniability. These groups are not defensive tools; they are instruments of regional domination.

President Donald Trump understood a reality that many policymakers have long avoided: the Iranian regime does not respond to engagement alone. Instead, it responds to pressure backed by credible consequences. When protests spread across Iran, and executions accelerated, President Trump publicly called on Iranian protesters to defy their government and warned Tehran that continued killings would provoke American action.

The impact was immediate. Planned executions were suspended. The regime hesitated. For a system built on intimidation and fear, hesitation is revealing. It demonstrated that when confronted with real pressure, Tehran recalculates. When pressure is lifted, it advances.

President Trump welcomed the suspension of the hangings, but he did not lift military pressure. He postponed military action; he did not cancel it. This distinction reflects sound strategic judgment. Deterrence is not achieved through statements alone—it is sustained through posture, readiness, and resolve.

Today, the United States is reinforcing that posture. The deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group and additional military assets to the region indicates US preparation. Iran possesses a substantial arsenal of ballistic missiles, drones, naval harassment capabilities, and asymmetric weapons that directly threaten US forces, Israel, and America’s Gulf allies. Any military response must therefore be decisive, calibrated, and designed to degrade the regime’s command-and-control capabilities.

This context also explains why repeated negotiations with Tehran have failed. The Iranian regime does not negotiate to resolve disputes; it negotiates to gain time. Agreements are used to relieve pressure, stabilize the regime internally, and resume hostile activities under new constraints. Time—more than ideology or diplomacy—is Tehran’s most effective strategic weapon.

President Trump has been right to prepare carefully. But preparation must not become paralysis. The United States has both a strategic and moral responsibility toward the Iranian people, who are paying the price for a regime that prioritizes missiles and militias over hospitals, schools, and jobs. Supporting them does not require occupation or reckless escalation. It requires denying their oppressors the ability to act with impunity.

At this critical moment, President Trump should rely on those with the deepest and most hard-earned understanding of the Iranian regime. According to multiple media reports, Mossad Director David Barnea is expected to meet with senior Trump envoy Steve Witkoff in Miami and, potentially, with President Trump himself. Barnea has spent years dissecting the inner mechanics of the Iranian regime—its command structure, decision-making culture, and strategic vulnerabilities. Under his leadership, Israeli intelligence has achieved measurable successes in disrupting Iranian networks and dismantling proxy leadership across the Middle East.

The message to Tehran must be unambiguous: the era of appeasement and delay is over. A targeted and credible response to Iranian aggression would not only constrain the regime’s ambitions but also restore deterrence, reassure allies, and reaffirm American leadership in a region where instability is quickly exploited by extremists.

Iran remains the central obstacle to any serious vision of stability, integration, and prosperity in the Middle East. No development strategy can succeed while Tehran continues to invest in repression at home and violence abroad. The Iranian leadership is betting—once again—on time, on US elections, on distractions. That bet must fail. The Iranian people deserve a future. The region deserves stability. And President Trump’s leadership demands resolve.

About the Author: Ahmed Charai

​​Ahmed Charai is the publisher of The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune and serves on the boards of directors of the Atlantic Council, the International Crisis Group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Center for the National Interest.

Image: Fotofield / Shutterstock.com.

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