For decades, Washington has viewed Iran primarily through centrifuges, missiles, proxy forces, and military deterrence. Those threats are real. But this framework obscures the Islamic Republic’s deepest vulnerability: its broken relationship with Iranian society. If U.S. policy is meant to reduce the danger posed by Tehran rather than merely destroy selected facilities, it must begin with the people the regime fears most—its own.
The Islamic Republic’s behavior reveals where it feels most exposed. During nationwide protests, authorities arrest organizers and journalists, restrict communications, and shut down the internet. These actions are not signs of a government confident in popular consent. They are the defensive measures of a state that knows citizens’ ability to communicate and organize threatens its survival.
The scholar of nonviolent resistance Gene Sharp argued that Iran’s economic crisis and public anger are not, by themselves, enough to produce political change. Citizens also need to communicate, build trust, and sustain collective action.
Hannah Arendt distinguished power, which depends on collective consent, from violence, which rulers use when genuine power is failing. That distinction clarifies Iran’s political reality. The expansion of prisons, surveillance, executions, and security forces should not be mistaken for durable strength. It demonstrates how much coercion the state now requires to govern a society it can no longer persuade.
Washington needs a different center of gravity. It should make a moratorium on executions and the release of political prisoners central to diplomacy; help Iranians obtain secure, uncensored internet access; impose targeted sanctions on judges, prison officials, and commanders responsible for repression; and support independent media and peaceful civil-society networks. Broad measures that impoverish ordinary families while enriching black-market institutions tied to the state should give way to accountability aimed at the repressors themselves.
None of this means Washington should select Iran’s future leaders or pursue regime change through invasion. The objective should be to protect Iranians’ ability to determine their own political future. Supporting communications, independent civic organization, political prisoners, and accountability for state violence strengthens self-determination without placing American troops in another Middle Eastern war.
Congress and the administration should measure Iran policy accordingly: not only by uranium stockpiles or missiles destroyed, but also by whether political executions decline, prisoners are freed, communications remain open, and officials who order repression face consequences. Human rights are not a decorative addition to strategy. In Iran, they are part of the strategic contest itself.
The choice is not between accepting Tehran’s conduct and launching an endless war. There is a more effective and humane alternative: constrain the state’s ability to repress while expanding society’s ability to organize. The decisive contest over Iran’s future will not be settled in its skies. It will be decided in the relationship between a government that has lost legitimacy and a society increasingly unwilling to submit to it.
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