Iran isn’t moving toward a deal — it is hardening into a new junta

The most important issue in any negotiation over Iran is not uranium, sanctions or military de-escalation — it is the political will of the Iranian people. That will has been expressed repeatedly, in wave after wave of anti-regime protests, in a single demand: regime change. No durable outcome can ignore this central reality.

Yet this central fact remains largely absent from talks held in places such as Pakistan. Nearly 90 million people have lived under repression for 47 years, and still their political will is treated as secondary to the diplomatic process. The question is not only what Tehran wants or what Washington wants. It is what becomes of the Iranian nation. This is not only a moral failure—it is a strategic one.

The bitter truth is that the Iranian people have no defender but their own will. Since 1979, they have risen repeatedly against religious despotism. By many counts, there have been 19 major uprisings, each crushed with force. The latest crackdown, in January, reportedly left more than 40,000 dead. The protesters were not demanding that a religious tyranny be replaced by a military-style junta ruling through fear. They were demanding liberty, dignity and democratic change.

Today, many Iranians are no longer thinking about reform—they are thinking about decisive confrontation.

President Trump may be focused on Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium and on preventing a nuclear weapon. That concern is understandable. But the theocracy in Tehran is playing a deeper game. In political terms, these negotiations are already dead, because the leadership is unwilling to sign any agreement that could be framed as........

© The Hill