Trump has missed the window on Iran

IRAN

US airstrikes could once have aligned with mass protests. Now, with the streets now quieter and the regime back in control, military action would be more likely to stabilise Tehran than weaken it.

FOR several days this month, US airstrikes on Iran appeared imminent. Tehran closed its airspace, Washington surged assets into the region and commentators speculated that military pressure could finally tip Iran’s protest movement into something decisive.

That moment, however, has passed.

According to analysts tracking events inside Iran, US strikes now would be more likely to clear the streets than fill them, potentially stabilising the very regime Washington seeks to weaken.

“The window for US intervention to dovetail with protests has passed,” says Megan Sutcliffe, who contributed to a recent Sibylline assessment of Iran’s internal stability.

“The frequency of the protests has significantly decreased, the scale of attendance has substantially decreased.”

After an initial decision to allow protesters to vent, the regime responded to mourning demonstrations with a brutal and effective crackdown, said to have claimed as many as 5,000 lives, with particularly heavy casualties reported in Kurdish regions.

This was accomplished through a highly organised, IRGC-directed security architecture.

Under the command of the Tharallah Headquarters in Tehran, Basij units deploy motorcycle teams to rapidly fragment crowds and intimidate demonstrators, while embedded intelligence officers identify organisers for arrest and layered security cordons prevent protests from regrouping or spreading.

Crucially, these security forces have held together.

“The regime managed to execute that without a significant fracture in the security forces that they deployed,” says Sutcliffe, Principal Middle East Analyst at Sibylline.

“That speaks to how loyal those forces are to the orders that they are given.”

This matters because the logic underpinning airstrikes as a tool to aid protesters depends on momentum.

When demonstrations are large, frequent and nationwide, external pressure can add strain to an already overstretched system. When they subside, however, the same pressure can have the opposite effect.

One reason is geography.

The facilities most likely to be targeted – IRGC, Basij and intelligence sites – are often embedded in urban areas.

“They tend to be quite nestled within cities,” Sutcliffe notes.

“And so then that means you’re having airstrikes within cities. And that can be a real concern for people.”

Rather than creating political space, urban strikes would probably empty it as civilians run for cover and public mobilisation collapses.

The second risk is political.

While some Iranians would welcome US action, others would see it as confirmation of foreign interference – allowing the regime to reinforce its narrative that domestic dissent is being driven externally.

“There’s a potential for an external enemy being identified,” Sutcliffe says, “and therefore triggering a rally around the flag.”

It is for this reason, analysts believe, that Israel has been cautious about intervening directly. Any overt strike risks reinforcing claims that unrest is foreign-engineered.

“The accusation would be that this is just Israel trying to bring down Iran – not an organic protest movement that speaks to opposition to the Islamic Republic,” Sutcliffe says.

The irony is that Washington appeared closest to striking precisely when intervention might still have mattered.

Iran’s temporary airspace closure suggested real anxiety in Tehran. But the US ultimately stepped back, with
Donald Trump later claiming that Iranian executions had been halted as a result.

For analysts watching closely, that explanation rang hollow.

“As soon as he said that Iran had communicated that it was not going to execute protesters, that straight away to us was he’s created an off-ramp for himself,” Sutcliffe says.

The more likely calculation was strategic.

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states were quick to share their anxiety about the ramifications for oil prices.

More importantly, the ebbing of protests removed the possibility of extracting concessions – particularly on missiles and nuclear negotiations – without triggering regional escalation or an oil price shock.

As protests ebbed, the leverage value of strikes simply diminished.

That does not mean Iran is stable.

The country’s economic trajectory remains perilous, and analysts continue to watch the currency closely. If the rial were to fall below around 1.55 million to the dollar, the political calculus could shift sharply.

“At that point,” Sutcliffe warns, “Iranians might feel they just have nothing left to lose.”

Such a collapse could reinvigorate unrest and increase the risk of elite infighting or even civil conflict.

In those circumstances, a new window for airstrikes could emerge.

For now at least, the most likely outcome of US strikes would be counter-intuitive: a quieter street, a tighter security grip, and a regime buying itself time.

In that sense, Trump’s dilemma is not whether to strike, but whether striking now would achieve anything at all.

The moment when airpower might have aligned with internal pressure has slipped away – and using force after the fact risks reinforcing the very system Washington wants to weaken.