The Ceasefire Is the Right Move: Bombs Don’t Break Regimes
Several days ago, President Trump and his national security team issued a stark ultimatum to Iran’s regime: reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face the full destructive power of the U.S. military — power plants, bridges, oil terminals, and the entire civilian infrastructure that keeps a modern society running.
To many’s surprise, the Iranian regime did not budge. Their calculation was simple: If Trump carried out the attack on the infrastructure and economic lifelines, he would risk being accused of being an international war criminal. (RELATED: A Mad Defense of Madness)
Right before the deadline of the ultimatum, the Trump administration declared a ceasefire and a decisive victory against the regime.
That is a very wise move. By stepping back from a strategy that targets infrastructure — an approach that is ineffective at subduing dictatorships — the United States avoids strengthening the regime’s narrative, limits international backlash, and preserves its leverage for more effective options. To understand this, we need to go back a little bit. (RELATED: It May Not Be a Ceasefire. It Might Be a Strategic Pause.)
When the Trump administration issued the ultimatum, the logic was straightforward and, on the surface, compelling. No government, the thinking goes, can watch its people suffer without water, electricity, or fuel and remain in power. In any civilized country, such neglect would trigger elections, impeachment, or revolution. But that assumption rests on a fatal error: it projects the moral and political constraints of a democracy onto a dictatorship that operates by entirely different rules. Iran’s rulers do not serve the people; the people serve the rulers. And history — both ancient and recent — shows that dictators will, without hesitation, let their citizens starve, freeze, or die by the thousands as long as they can maintain their control.
The Iranian regime has proven this point with chilling consistency. In November 2019, when fuel-price protests erupted nationwide, security forces killed at least 321 people in a matter of days — Amnesty International’s figure, though some estimates run higher. In 2022, after the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody sparked the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, state forces killed hundreds of protesters, including children. And in the winter of 2025–2026, as economic desperation boiled over again, the regime unleashed another severe crackdown, with reported deaths in the thousands, though exact figures remain contested. In every case, the regime’s response was not negotiation or reform but violent repression, internet blackouts, and live ammunition. The Supreme Leader and his inner circle — shielded by the Revolutionary Guard and the vast Setad economic empire, often estimated in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in assets — never missed a meal or a night’s sleep.
This is not incompetence; it is doctrine. Dictatorships view their populations as expendable resources. The Chinese Communist Party demonstrated the same calculus in 1948 when it besieged the city of Changchun. Rather than storm the Nationalist garrison, the PLA simply sealed the city and waited. Between 150,000 and 300,000 civilians starved to death until the defenders surrendered. Mao reportedly told Khrushchev that China could endure nuclear attacks, losing “a few hundred million” people and still prevail. Khrushchev, himself no bleeding heart, was stunned. These are not aberrations; they are the operating manual of totalitarians. The people are cannon fodder. The regime’s survival is the only non-negotiable.
Trump’s earlier “maximum pressure” campaign (2018–2021 and revived in 2025) offered a controlled experiment. Sanctions slashed Iran’s oil exports to near zero, collapsed the rial by two-thirds, drove inflation above 40 percent, and pushed the economy into deep recession. Yet the regime did not buckle. It accelerated its nuclear program, deepened ties with Russia and China, and enriched its proxies — Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas — through smuggling and shadow banking. The suffering fell overwhelmingly on ordinary Iranians; the Revolutionary Guard and clerical elite simply shifted into black-market profiteering. Economic pain, far from weakening the regime, became propaganda fuel: “See how the Great Satan starves our children while we stand defiant.”
[T]he only measure that has ever forced a totalitarian regime to sue for peace is the credible threat — or reality — of its own physical destruction…
Destroying infrastructure will only intensify this pattern. Power outages and fuel shortages will not topple the mullahs; they will give them fresh excuses to mobilize their loyal militias, blame the U.S., and tighten the noose on dissent. Even if American and Israeli strikes eliminate individual leaders, the system is designed for seamless regeneration. New hardliners step forward, often more radical than their predecessors. The regime’s true “center of gravity” is not bridges or power plants. It is the Revolutionary Guard, the clerical patronage networks, and the ideological apparatus that rewards loyalty with privilege and punishes disloyalty with death.
None of this means the United States should do nothing. It means that any serious strategy must discard the comforting illusion that dictators share our humanitarian calculus. Precision strikes on nuclear sites and proxy command centers remain necessary. But the only measure that has ever forced a totalitarian regime to sue for peace is the credible threat — or reality — of its own physical destruction, which, with increasing clarity, requires ground operations. Anything short of that is theater—expensive, destructive theater that leaves the real enemy alive.
Trump’s instincts on Iran have been refreshingly clear-eyed, in contrast to the appeasement of previous administrations and Europe. Yet even the clearest-eyed leader can stumble when he applies the logic of a free society to a regime that has never known one.
Dictators do not fear the destruction of their people and economy; they fear losing their power. Until American policy recognizes that distinction, no amount of bombs dropped on power grids will force the Iranian dictatorship to give up. In other words, even if we completely destroy Iran’s infrastructure and economy, it alone will not subdue the Iranian dictatorship and its military. We must first understand the logic behind dictatorships and assess what it would take to make it surrender before we take our next step. And Trump’s declaration of the ceasefire is a timely break to allow us to do just that — and precisely in this sense, it is a good idea for America.
READ MORE from Shaomin Li:
Zhang Youxia’s Arrest: Xi Jinping’s Paranoia Leaves CCP Elites in Fear
China’s Spy Network in America: A People’s War Against an Open House
Shaomin Li is a professor of international business at Old Dominion University.
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