{"id":410183,"date":"2026-01-15T04:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T04:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/410183\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T04:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T04:56:11","slug":"irans-regime-has-already-lost-its-most-potent-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/410183\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran’s regime has already lost its most potent weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"

For all the military weapons remaining in the Iranian regime\u2019s arsenal, it has finally been deprived<\/a> of the one that authoritarians rely upon most: fear. <\/p>\n

For almost five decades, the Iranian regime has brutally repressed its own people<\/a> while sowing mayhem in the Middle East and beyond. But the regime may have finally entered a strategic crisis<\/a> from which it will not be able to escape.<\/p>\n

To ensure its survival to this point, the regime in Tehran has sought to fend off what it perceived as its two greatest threats: Iran\u2019s own relatively young, well-educated and politically engaged populace; and countries\u00a0in the region and beyond, including especially the United States, that took umbrage with the Iranian regime\u2019s nonstop threats to their interests and to regional stability.<\/p>\n

There are clear signs that fear \u2014 and the regime strategy that depends on it \u2014 has been broken.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fear has been the regime\u2019s chief instrument: whether stoking Washington and others\u2019 self-deterring fear that taking conflict with Iran too far would spark a regional war, or inspiring fear among the Iranian populace<\/a> that protests would attract only regime reprisals rather than international support.<\/p>\n

\"IraniansIranians gather while blocking a street during a protest on Jan. 9, 2026 in Tehran. MAHSA \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

But there are clear signs that fear \u2014 and the regime strategy that depends on it \u2014 has been broken<\/a>.\u00a0The United States and Israel have overcome decades of hesitation to confront Iran directly and are threatening further strikes. Iranian protesters<\/a>, buoyed in part perhaps by President Donald Trump\u2019s promises of support, keep coming out to the streets despite the regime\u2019s use of force. Whether Iranians will be able to weather the regime\u2019s brutality and continue their protests remains to be seen, but it is clear that this uprising differs from those past in its size<\/a> and in the type and range of drivers, both economic and political.<\/p>\n

At home, Iran\u2019s security services and judges have been merciless in crushing dissent, as their grim record of imprisonments and executions demonstrates and as the violent response to protests continues to show. In the region and abroad, Iran\u2019s rulers have recklessly proliferated sophisticated weapons<\/a> to groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and at times even the likes of al-Qaida and the Taliban. The point has been less to advance any ideological or geopolitical agenda \u2014 some of these groups are erstwhile enemies of Iran and of the Shia Islam that predominates there \u2014 but, rather, to keep Israel, Saudi Arabia the U.S. and other foes preoccupied far from Iran\u2019s own borders.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPlay<\/p>\n

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And for years it has worked. The Iranian regime has paid little for the blood it spilled. Iran was behind the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 and the deaths of thousands of American soldiers in Iraq from 2003 onward. It funded, trained and equipped groups including Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which have killed thousands of Americans, Israelis and Arabs. Yet Israel, the U.S. and Iran\u2019s Arab rivals were unwilling to strike back directly for fear of unleashing a wider war \u2014 a worry that the regime in Tehran enthusiastically stoked. Instead, Iran\u2019s foes have largely played by the regime\u2019s rules<\/a>: Iran attacked using proxies<\/a>, and its enemies retaliated against those proxies but never directly against the regime.<\/p>\n

This pattern was finally disrupted by Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which drove home the folly of allowing Iranian regime-sponsored threats to metastasize. After dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel finally called the regime\u2019s bluff with direct strikes last summer<\/a>, and Tehran managed scant response<\/a> as its once-vaunted proxies, air defenses, missile arsenal and nuclear program were systematically destroyed.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Singh<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Singh is managing director and Lane-Swig Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council.\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"MS<\/p>\n

\u00a9\u00a02026 Versant Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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