The War’s Central Mistake
How Trump empowered a defeated Islamic Republic by opening talks
This war, if it ends here, will be remembered not for what it destroyed, but for what it failed to change. The Islamic Republic is weaker, but it remains the same regime. At the decisive moment, the campaign changed course. An opening had begun to emerge for the Iranian people. Then it was closed. That may prove to be the war’s central mistake.
Islamabad talks, at least in their first round, failed. It is still unclear whether there will be another. Iran’s IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency says Tehran has no plans for a new round of negotiations.
That may be a bluff. We will know soon enough. But even if talks resume, the chances of success remain low. The main reason is simple: the Islamic Republic believes it won the war. As long as that belief holds, serious negotiations will be difficult. A breakthrough would require the United States to lower its demands, and that seems unlikely.
“This war, if it ends here, will be remembered not for what it destroyed, but for what it failed to change.”
That is the outcome. But it was not always the picture.
Less than a month ago, the regime did not look like a power that believed it had won. Until about March 15, it was frightened. It felt exposed. It was under pressure not only militarily, but politically.
Then Trump began speaking about negotiations. At that moment, the administration did more than open the door to talks. It changed the meaning of the war.
That was the central mistake.
A Regime Under Pressure
Until then, the war had seemed to carry a political logic. It was not only a campaign against missile sites and command structures. It also appeared to be creating an opening inside Iran. The pressure on the regime was weakening not just its military capacity, but its grip on society. For a brief period, the war seemed to create conditions in which the Iranian people could act.
Then that opening was closed.
What had looked like a moment of danger for the Islamic Republic became a moment of recovery. What had looked like weakness became survival. And survival, in the regime’s own political language, became victory.
That is why the regime is now celebrating. For the Islamic Republic, survival is enough. It does not need a clear triumph. It only needs to remain standing. Many outside observers seem to accept that same measure. They treat the regime’s continued existence as proof that the United States and Israel failed.
But that outcome was not inevitable. It was the result of a political choice. Halfway through the war, Washington changed course. At the decisive moment, agency was taken away from the Iranian people and handed back to the regime that had created the crisis.
“What had looked like weakness became survival. And survival, in the regime’s own political language, became victory.”
To understand why that matters, it helps to go back to the beginning of the year.
On January 8 and 9, the Islamic Republic faced the largest protest in its history. Millions took to the streets in response to a call from Reza Pahlavi. The regime responded with a massacre. According to some reports, between 30,000 and 40,000 people were killed in the deadliest massacre in modern Iranian history.
That massacre shook Iran. It also helped prepare the ground for the joint U.S.-Israeli military operation that followed.
The Opening
From the start, the operation carried a strong political message. Trump told Iranians that the help he had promised during the protests had arrived. Netanyahu said the campaign would create the conditions for Iranians to take their destiny into their own hands. The idea was not that bombing alone would change Iran. It was that military pressure could create the conditions for the Iranian people to rise up against the regime.
In its early phase, the war followed that logic in practice. The campaign did not focus only on missile sites. It also heavily targeted the IRGC and Basij repression apparatus, the machinery the regime uses to keep society fearful, divided, and under control. Strikes on Tharallah headquarters, police stations, and neighborhood Basij bases hit the very structures that had crushed a nationwide uprising two months earlier.
After many police stations and local IRGC and Basij bases were destroyed or abandoned for fear of attack, regime forces were pushed into the streets and forced to operate from tents. By March 11, strikes had shifted to patrol stations in Tehran and other cities. The public signal seemed clear: the streets were being opened.
Many Iranians had been waiting for that moment.
Throughout the first half of the war, people were repeatedly told to stay home and wait. Many believed the moment would come on Chaharshanbe Suri, the Festival of Fire, a few days before Nowruz. They expected a joint call from Trump and Netanyahu, and many also expected Reza Pahlavi to call for a nationwide protest on March 17, the day of Chaharshanbe Suri.
Sources close to decision-makers in Tel Aviv and Washington told me the plan was shelved because President Trump opposed it.
“The public signal seemed clear: the streets were being opened.”
The same period also saw another idea being dropped: the possible use of Iranian Kurdish armed groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the time, multiple media reports suggested that Washington had sent arms to these groups and was considering using them as the coalition’s ground force inside Iran. That idea was revealing. It showed that the war was being considered not only as a campaign of punishment, but also as one that might produce political change on the ground.
In practice, however, the Kurdish option was always limited. At most, it could plausibly have affected only Iran’s Kurdish regions. It was also certain to trigger immediate controversy among many Iranians, who would have seen it as an effort to facilitate Kurdish secession in western Iran, regardless of its true intentions. Washington and Israel may have wanted Kurdish forces to serve as their ground force towards Tehran. Kurdish actors, however, wanted the United States and Israel as their air force for consolidating control over Kurdish-populated areas in western Iran. Kurdish groups made clear that they would not move beyond those areas. Washington and Israel understood the implications and dropped the idea.
One can argue about how practical this Kurdish option ever was. That does not change the larger point. Its emergence and disappearance coincided with the broader moment when other regime-change options were being explored and then dropped.
“Washington and Israel wanted a ground force for Tehran. Kurdish actors wanted an air force for western Iran.”
But shelving those options was not the only problem. Ambiguity was another. Before the war, Trump’s contradictory messaging may have helped keep the Islamic Republic off balance. Once the war began, however, that same ambiguity became a liability. No one knew what outcome Trump actually wanted, what he would accept, or where he intended to stop.
That uncertainty may have had some external advantages. It may have helped calm markets, limit oil shocks, and preserve room for de-escalation. But inside Iran, it encouraged hesitation. As long as regime insiders believed the campaign might still stop short of a decisive outcome, defections were less likely. Political figures, military actors, and ordinary citizens could not be sure that American pressure would last long enough, or go far enough, to make the risks of taking a side worthwhile.
“Before the war, Trump’s contradictory messaging may have helped keep the Islamic Republic off balance. Once the war began, however, that same ambiguity became a liability.”
Then Trump began speaking about negotiations with what he called the “new regime”. We do not know whether the Islamic Republic offered talks or whether the United States proposed them. Either way, the effect was the same. The regime, already alert to the possibility of political change, drew a simple conclusion: Washington had decided it could not win the war and was looking for a way out.
The Reversal
That reading changed the atmosphere at once.
Until then, Iran’s state television had been broadcasting direct threats. Night after night, it warned that anyone who came into the streets would be killed. Parents were told that if they let their children join protests, they would have to search for their bodies in morgues. After Trump began entertaining negotiations, those broadcasts stopped.
Soon after, Israeli strikes on neighborhood Basij bases and patrol stations also stopped. I understand that this, too, happened at the request of the White House.
This was the turning point. The war ceased to be about opening political space and became, instead, an effort to preserve enough of the regime to manage the endgame.
The change was visible in the treatment of the political elite as well. After the killing of Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, on March 17, no other political figure was targeted. Instead, names such as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament, began to circulate as possible counterparts for negotiation.
That is why talk of a “new regime,” as if regime change had already happened, is misleading. More than 50 senior IRGC commanders were killed during the war, but the regime’s political heart survived. Only two figures from the top political tier were gone: the Supreme Leader and Ali Larijani.
The Islamic Republic is not merely a set of military assets. It is a political order held together by an ideological core of men, networks, and institutions. Damage that leaves that core intact is not transformation. It is attrition. In the end, Washington gave the regime what it needed most: the chance to survive, and therefore to claim victory.
Attrition, Not Transformation
I have argued before that this war was part of a coercive sequence: terms, then pressure, then a pause before renewed demands. That may still be the case. The ceasefire may yet prove to be only one step in that sequence. But it is also increasingly possible that the war ends here. If it does, the campaign cannot be called a success.
“The Islamic Republic is not merely a set of military assets. It is a political order held together by an ideological core of men, networks, and institutions.”
The reason is simple. The regime’s apparent resilience was not an accident. It was the survival strategy it had prepared all along. The Islamic Republic never believed it could defeat the United States in war. Its aim was to endure long enough for the United States to stop. If the war ends here, the regime will conclude that this strategy worked. It will study that lesson and build on it.
The regime’s broader deterrence strategy did fail. Its proxies and its nuclear and missile programs did not prevent war. But if the war ends here, it will still conclude that escalation worked as leverage, especially through the threat centered on the Strait of Hormuz. As long as the Islamic Republic survives, and as long as oil moving through the Strait remains vital to the global economy, it will continue to use that pressure point.
For the same reason, ideas such as an oil blockade of Iran should be treated with caution. If Iran’s oil exports are fully blocked, the Islamic Republic is unlikely to allow others to move oil freely through the Strait of Hormuz. It will not easily abandon a strategy it believes has worked.
What Comes Next
None of this means the regime has emerged strong. It has not. Even if the war ends now, the Islamic Republic will still face deep problems. The economy will remain under severe pressure. Succession in wartime, combined with social unrest, political unrest, and a deeply hostile population, will add to the strain. So the regime may survive the war and still fail to survive the consequences of its own survival.
But that is also the point. If the United States and Israel stop here, they will have given up a rare chance to produce meaningful change in Iran. Many Iranians supported this war because they believed it might open a path for action. Instead, Washington chose to engage elements of the regime rather than activate Iranian society.
The result is a regime that is weaker, but not transformed. It will try to rebuild, reassert control, and secure a stronger shield. Deal or no deal, whatever its terms, once politics shift in Washington after Trump leaves office, the Islamic Republic will return to its familiar strategy and revive its nuclear and missile programs.
For the Iranian people, who briefly believed that history might reopen, the conclusion is bitter: once again, their role has been suspended, and the fate of their country has been handed back to the very structure that brought it to ruin.
One final possibility should also be considered. Washington may not simply have chosen to stop. It may have been constrained. If that is true, the implications are even more serious. The lesson of this war would then be not only that a political opening in Iran was closed. It would also be that the United States may no longer be able to deal kinetically with regimes like the Islamic Republic in the way it once could.
“For the Iranian people, who briefly believed that history might reopen, the conclusion is bitter: once again, their role has been suspended, and the fate of their country has been handed back to the very structure that brought it to ruin.”
Beijing and Moscow would read that lesson carefully. They would see not only American caution, but possible limits on American power. The consequences would reach far beyond Iran. It would not only embolden the Islamic Republic. It would embolden China and Russia as well.
True, it's an ambiguous situation. But one aspect is not: the economic impact on Iran. Much is made about fuel prices in the U.S., but the impact is trivial compared to what's happening in Iran.
In 2025, Iran cleared $40 billion in oil revenues net of expenses. That's $3.3 billion a month. Some of those expenses are the amortization of equipment; in cash flow terms, they cleared $4 billion a month. That income is now zero. The loss amounts to 13.5% of GDP. That's looking at it narrowly, as if there aren't spinoff effects, not to mention the losses from U.S. and Israeli attacks.
One way to look at those talks is that they were a figleaf for the U.S. to say it tried to negotiate. The current activity in the Strait looks very much like a dare to Iran to attack the U.S. Navy and reap the whirlwind, the whirlwind being American seizure of Kharg, the terminals, and the oil fields.
I don't know how it will go, nor do you. I wouldn't jump to conclusions, nor would I ignore what the interruption of Iran's oil sales is doing to their economy, which was already under great pressure.