Ceasefire with Tehran doesn’t end the regime’s war on Iranians By Janatan Sayeh

JNS : A state with public backing does not flood its cities with checkpoints, expand executions and shut down the internet. Born and raised in Tehran, Janatan Sayeh is the Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focused on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic’s regional malign influence. Previously, he held various research roles at the International Republican Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the American Enterprise Institute.

Tehran responded to the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign by targeting civilian infrastructure across the region, including firing cluster munitions at Israeli residential areas and striking hotels and energy facilities across the Persian Gulf. It also moved to choke the Strait of Hormuz, seeking to raise political costs for the Trump administration by driving up global oil prices. This has now given way to a fragile truce, with Tehran and Washington negotiating over Hormuz, the nuclear file and proxies, while the regime’s repression at home remains absent from the agenda.

Iran’s primary military leverage—its missile production, launch capacity and stockpiles—has suffered a heavy blow. But airpower alone only becomes existential if it creates space for Iranians to shape outcomes on the ground. Aware of that vulnerability, Tehran has used the ceasefire to tighten its grip at home. With fewer external pressures, authorities have escalated executions, extrajudicial killings and arrests, while deploying Shia terror proxies across Iran to reinforce control and deter potential unrest.

Leaving the people of Iran out of the equation is not just a human-rights concern. It risks alienating the regime’s true existential threat: the largest pro-American and pro-Israeli population in the Middle East, which, if it prevails, could reshape the world order. It also stands in contrast to the messaging that casted the campaign as enabling Iranians to reclaim their country.

In fairness, progress was underway toward those promises, but the timeline was abruptly shortened. Israel struck the infrastructure of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its subordinate Basij and local law enforcement, all units that have fired on unarmed protesters since 1999. But dismantling repression requires degrading personnel, not just facilities. Even estimates of more than 5,000 killed since Feb. 28 pale against the hundreds of thousands across security forces.

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