The day after Israel began to strike Iran on June 13, the Islamic Republic ratcheted up its crackdown on the captive Iranian people The only activity at which Iran's regime seems to excel is brutally attacking its innocent, unarmed population.
Since then, at least 1,295 people have been arrested on security-related charges, including "espionage for Israel," according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. In addition, it noted, "at least 301 individuals were detained nationwide for sharing content, expressing opinions, or participating on social media."
The Iranian regime also began to round up its Jewish citizens and other minorities. They interrogated at least 35 Jews over their ties with Israeli relatives, while security forces raided at least 19 homes of the minority Baha'i community. Fox News reported that "in the past 48 hours, the Iranian Regime has executed more of its own civilians than were killed in the entire Twelve-Day War with Israel."
According to Mahmood Amiry Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Organization:
"After the ceasefire with Israel, the Islamic Republic needs more repression to cover up military failures, prevent protests, and ensure its continued survival... Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of prisoners might be at risk of executions."
Executions of political prisoners, minorities and others are a daily occurrence in Iran, which has reportedly executed 1,700 people in 2025 alone -- and it is not even August.
The head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, said that arrested Iranians should be "very swiftly tried and punished according to wartime conditions," while Iran's parliament approved two "urgent" bills prescribing the death penalty for "espionage or collaboration with hostile states, including the US government."
US President Donald J. Trump deserves every credit for bombing the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan uranium enrichment plants. However, forcing Israel to terminate its "Operation Rising Lion," just as it was finally giving the Iranian people a glimpse of hope for freedom in the course of destroying Iran's nuclear program and its key institutions of oppression, was a terrible move. It left Iranians abandoned to a gruesome fate under a regime that had been likely weeks away from facing total destruction. Why? For another 46 years of "fake talks"?
Trump's decision, taken at the height of Israel's impressive campaign, literally saved the Ayatollahs' regime, called by the US State Department the worlds leading state sponsor of terrorism, 39 years in a row, since 1984. Trump seems to think that Iran's mullahs might be interested in becoming their own direct opposites in everything they have stood for since 1979, the year Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei led the Islamic Revolution in Iran while promising "full rights for religious and ethnic minority, and a reduction in military spending."
Iran's regime, unable to put up any resistance to the Israeli strikes on its military and nuclear facilities, found itself abandoned by its allies, China and Russia, which refused to intervene on its behalf. The regime also found itself abandoned by its own terrorist proxies, notably Hezbollah, which is in no shape to take Israel on again. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, apparently aware of the probability of meeting his end in the war, cowered in a bunker, its location known to Israel and the US. He had named three possible successors.
Iranians, probably still leery, were secretly celebrating the imminent demise of their Islamist tormentors. The Israel Defense Forces destroyed the entrance gate to Tehran's notorious Evin Prison where thousands of political prisoners are held – and then Trump swooped in with his untimely demand for a ceasefire.
Trump first said he did not want regime change in Iran; then tweeted that he might want regime change if it could "Make Iran Great Again: MIGA!!!" Then, he imposed a ceasefire.
Now Iran could very well get worse.
Qatar, the master-funder of virtually every Sunni Islamic terrorist organization and, through its Al-Jazeera broadcasting empire, the megaphone of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, whose doctrines underpin effectively all of the Sunni Islamic terrorist organizations from ISIS to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, remains a close ally of Iran.
The Trump administration cannot thank Qatar enough for "helping" to negotiate every transition. Qatar is doubtless delighted to help, to make sure that none of its well-funded clients gets hurt. Qatar does not want regime change in Iran. Qatar has also promised Trump more than a trillion dollars in investments in the US.
Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani reportedly spoke with Trump shortly before the president called off the Israeli strikes, imposed a ceasefire, and then, unbelievably, drew a false moral equivalence between Iran and Israel, likening them to fighting children whom he had to straighten out. Iran, however, has been the naked aggressor for nearly half a century, attacking Israel non-stop both directly and through its proxies, culminating in the seven-front war it launched through Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Iran has also been attacking the US since 1979, starting with taking 66 members of the US Embassy staff hostage in 1979, then, in 1983, bombing the US Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 Americans. In just the last four years, Iran has launched 350 attacks on American troops and assests in the Midde East, without America lifting a finger in protest.
Iran's regime, since its inception, has actively sought global hegemony. "We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry 'There is no god but Allah' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle," said Khomeini. To that end, Iran sponsored proxy terror organizations in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, in a noose of fire encircling Israel.
The regime has made the lives of more than 90 million Iranians hell for decades, and has infiltrated the West with sleeper terrorist cells from Europe to South America and the US. Israel's attack on Iran was about making Israel and the entire world safe from Iran's Islamic Revolution.
By rescuing Iran's regime, is Trump signaling to the people of Iran that actual peace in the Middle East might be just a dream; that more than 90 million Iranian people are seemingly not worthy of the same freedom that other nations have and that they should suffer unspeakable persecution forever?
Is Trump also signaling that the Middle East should remain a hotbed of Iranian terrorist proxies, endangering not only Israel, but also the oil-rich Arab countries in the Gulf (except for Iran's consigliere, Qatar) and the places that Iran's mullahs exploit to act as their human shields: Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq?
Did Trump suddenly forget that hundreds of Americans have been killed by Iran and its proxies in recent decades?
Rescuing Iran's regime also displayed, unfortunately, that the Iranian people, who have risen up fearlessly and unarmed over the years, have been abandoned yet again by a West that seems to think that the only lives worth saving in the Middle East are those of terrorists and their paymaster, Qatar.
Had the rest of the West stood with the Iranian people and exhibited any sort of pressure on the Iran's regime, it might have prevented this confrontation -- but the West did not. Where was their intelligence sharing or cyberattacks, or taking out Iranian state media channels, as Israel did? The West, through Elon Musk, might have helped Iranians to organize themselves by supplying Starlink satellite internet terminals, in a country that barely has any uncensored internet.
The West has donated so many billions of dollars to its own demise by funding Palestinian terrorist groups in the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, but is unwilling to fund and arm those Iranians who could neutralize the regime that has orchestrated so much of the terror unleashed on the West in past decades?
Throughout the war, most Western leaders aside from Trump, from their comfortable clubs, called for "ceasefires" and "de-escalation", while Israel was fighting for its existence -- and theirs. Would they have preferred to wait for the ballistic missiles Iran was launching at Israel to be nuclear-tipped?
Iran's regime appears determined to rebuild its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Trump seems to be hoping they will prefer trade. Perhaps Iran's regime will use trade to get rich again to fund its nuclear weapons program.
"Iran's nuclear program... will proceed from now on more rapidly... [IAEA] officials will be prohibited from entering until the security of the nuclear facilities and scientists is assured," said Mohammad Qalibaf, speaker of Iran's parliament on June 25, amid cheers of "Death to America."
Defiant and delusional, Khamenei declared "victory" over Israel. Innocent Iranians are paying the price. Iran is already rebuilding and regrouping, and in the near future will again be on the cusp of acquiring nuclear weapons. Trump appears to be about to directly help the war machines of America's enemies, Iran and China, by allowing Iran to sell oil to China.
"They [Iran] just had a war. The war was fought. They fought it bravely... They're in the oil business... They're going to need money to put that country back in shape. We want to see that happen... If they're going to sell oil, they're going to sell oil," Trump said on June 25.
Iran did not fight "bravely." Iran, unprovoked, attacked Israel through its proxy Hamas on October 7, 2023, murdering 1,200 Israelis, mass rape and kidnapping, and other atrocities. Iran itself deliberately targeted and killed Israeli civilians with barrages of ballistic missiles, a war crime, and hit a hospital, another war crime. Iran broke every rule in international law.
Iran's mullahs are not going to put their country back in shape: they are going put their nuclear weapons program, war machine and private militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), back in shape. The mullahs must be congratulating themselves on how much better it is to be America's enemy than its friend.
Trump's newfound generosity towards the Islamic Republic of Iran -- whatever happened to "maximum pressure"? -- will only allow it to strengthen its hold on power, rebuild its terrorist proxies, establish additional terrorist sleeper cells in the West, continue arming Venezuela, all while the Iranian people will see neither freedom nor prosperity. In addition, it will guarantee further war later on, not only in the Middle East, but also in the West.
Robert Williams is based in the United States.
