By Dr Tamanna Khosla
US-Israel strikes on Iran and its targets. The US administration points to three reasons for its aggressive stance toward Iran and its preparations for attacking Iran. First, there are uncorroborated assertions that Iran is rebuilding its nuclear program, which Trump said the U.S. “obliterated” last June. Thus far, the administration has provided no proof that this is the case.
Second, the U.S. has always been concerned about Iran’s missile arsenal and development. Here, too, however, proof has been missing. And third, Trump encouraged Iranian protestors throughout their demonstrations and basically called for regime change. A likely fourth reason for U.S. actions is to pressure Iran in the negotiations being held under Oman’s auspices. The bottom line is we don’t really know why the U.S. appears to be preparing for war with Iran. Trump has not yet briefed Congress or spoken to the American people about a possible military action that could inflame regional tensions and spark a bloody conflict.
Trump said the campaign’s military objectives include: Destroying Iran’s missile capabilities. Target Iran’s navy. Disrupting Iran-backed armed groups in the region.Making sure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. Democracy and Iran. Iran stands at a historical fork. One path leads toward democratic rupture; the other toward bloodshed that could freeze society into silence for years. For those of us who once stood at another such crossroads, this moment is painfully familiar.
Scholars often speak of social, economic, and cultural preconditions for the democratization of authoritarian regimes. These factors matter, but they rarely decide outcomes in revolutionary moments. Drawing on lived experience from Tiananmen, on decades of post-Tiananmen efforts to advance democratization in China, and on lessons from democratic revolutions across regions and eras, I have come to believe that four concrete conditions determine whether an autocracy like China or Iran has a genuine chance of meaningful democratic change. First, there must be deep and widespread dissatisfaction with the existing political order, accompanied by a clear demand for change. Second, a viable democratic opposition must emerge from that dissatisfaction. Third, a political rift must open within the ruling regime itself, whether among elites, institutions, or the security apparatus. Fourth, there must be effective international support, rooted in universal liberal values and reinforced by strategic calculation, based on a belief that the democratic opposition is credible and viable.
In Tiananmen, we had the first condition in abundance. We also had the third to a surprising degree, as internal divisions paralyzed the Chinese Communist Party at critical moments. We arguably possessed the second condition as well, though in an embryonic and fragmented form. What we decisively lacked was the fourth. Many governments expressed concern and sympathy, but no country, including the United States, believed we were close enough to victory to justify robust support. That hesitation proved fatal.
Iran today clearly satisfies the first condition. The protests cut across class, gender, ethnicity, and generation, signaling a society that has withdrawn its consent from those who govern it. Iran also appears, unusually, to possess a significant measure of the fourth condition. Democratic governments have spoken with an uncommon degree of clarity, and Trump has issued blunt public warnings to Tehran that mass repression will carry consequences. Such external signals matter profoundly, because they shape calculations within authoritarian elites about the costs of violence and the prospects of survival.
Iran may also be on the threshold of the second condition, though this remains uncertain. Courage is everywhere, but coordination is not. What Iran has not yet shown clearly is the third condition: an open and visible rift within the regime. Senior clerics, commanders, and political figures have thus far closed ranks, at least publicly. Without elite defection or institutional fracture, even the most heroic mass protests confront a brutal ceiling.
If international democratic forces genuinely wish to help Iran avoid catastrophe and move toward freedom, their efforts must focus relentlessly on strengthening the second and third conditions. Authoritarian regimes do not collapse simply because crowds gather; they collapse when loyalty fractures. The task, therefore, is to make defection thinkable and repression costly. This requires raising the personal and political price of violence for those who order it, while lowering the risks for those who refuse.
Subsequent debates in Washington over linking trade to human rights, championed by figures such as Nancy Pelosi and George Mitchell, reflected a deeper strategic reality: given the enormous economic power and international influence of the United States relative to China at the time, Washington possessed substantial leverage to pressure Beijing through trade and market access to improve its human rights record and move, however haltingly, toward political liberalization. The collapse of that effort, when President Bill Clinton reversed course, demonstrated how quickly such leverage can be surrendered. The lesson is concise and sobering: early reassurance to repressors entrenches repression.
Role of Russia and China: No clear support
Furthermore,apart from democratic movement, the regime’s weakness at home has been matched by increasing weakness abroad. Iran’s terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, have been severely damaged by the Israeli counterattacks launched in response to the terrorist attack on 7 October, 2023. Then, in 2024, came the fall of Tehran’s close ally in the region, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It doesn’t seem that the theocrats can rely on their supposed allies in Russia or China, either. In June 2025, when President Trump launched military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, neither country came to the aid of the mullahs—even though the Islamic Republic provides military assistance to Russia, and exports oil to China. If Khamenei’s regime were to start crumbling, it’s clear that neither Putin nor Xi would come to his rescue.
Iran may be weak. But it still has ways to inflict real pain on the United States—and much more incentive to try than it did before. If Trump wants to maintain the playbook that has worked for him, he will need a decisive and low-cost end to this saga. But powerful forces, both within him and external to him, have led him to dismiss the many off-ramps he already had. Iran hawks such as Senator Lindsey Graham are urging Trump not to “talk like Reagan and act like Obama,” a comparison Trump hates and fears. It may seem implausible that Trump, who promised his supporters an end to forever wars, would take out Iran’s leaders or commit ground troops to regime change and nation building. Yet he has come this far. He may well be pushed onward, regardless of the cost. He also has to ensure democracy , minimum harm to civilians and sooner end to war.
(The views expressed are solely those of the author.)
