The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Then open. Then closed again. Confused? Welcome to 47 years of failed Western policy toward Iran.
For 47 years, Western leaders have played a high-stakes game of trial and error with the regime in Tehran, trying almost everything to keep the peace. The only problem? Nothing has worked.
For most of these five decades, Washington and European capitals defaulted to economic concessions and diplomatic indulgence, punctuated only by the occasional threat of force. When direct military strikes hit Iran’s state and military infrastructure over the past year, it merely proved what many of us have known all along: whether you sign treaties or drop bombs, neither will ever turn a religious dictatorship into a peaceful neighbor.
The foreign policy establishment fell for a dangerous myth. They believed sanction relief would somehow nurture moderation inside the ruling elite. Instead, Tehran took those financial lifelines and bankrolled domestic repression and regional proxies. On the flip side, military strikes can shatter hardware, but they can’t construct a free society. By constantly choosing between negotiating with the mullahs, threatening them, or bombing them, global leaders completely ignored the real key to Iran’s future: the Iranian people.
Right now, Tehran is in absolute panic. The regime is crumbling from within, wrecked by economic collapse and widespread public anger. To stay alive, it is turning its violence inward on its own citizens in a desperate, bloody spree. Execution rates are skyrocketing, with scores of political prisoners, activists, and dissidents hanged on fabricated security charges. The regime is even carrying out secret executions and burying young protesters in remote deserts, denying families a final goodbye just to prevent funeral gatherings from turning into fresh uprisings.
Make no mistake: this relentless killing spree is not a display of power. It is pure panic. Tehran doesn’t fear foreign diplomats, and it has learned to maneuver around military strikes. What terrifies this dictatorship to its absolute core is its own population, organized and rising up against tyranny.
Decades of appeasement failed, and military action cannot build a democracy. The only viable path left is the one Western powers have ignored for nearly half a century: backing the Iranian public and their right to fight for a free country. Iranians across every city and region have made their demand loud and clear. They reject both the current religious autocracy and a return to past monarchical dictatorship. They want a modern, secular, democratic republic.
That democratic alternative already exists. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and their Ten-Point Plan for a free Iran offer a clear roadmap as the only viable alternative—calling for a non-nuclear nation, the complete separation of religion and state, gender equality, the abolition of the death penalty, and peaceful coexistence with the world.
It is time for Western governments to throw out 47 years of failed policy. That means maintaining maximum economic pressure to choke off the regime’s terror budget, holding human rights violators accountable on the global stage, and formally recognizing the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom and the legitimate resistance of the Resistance Units of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Neither concessions nor air strikes will bring freedom. The time has come to pursue the only strategy left: standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Iranian people as they reclaim their nation.
Jila Andalib of Storrs in a member of the Organization of Iranian American Communities – CT.
