Both Sides Need This War
The United States is not trying to dismantle the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic is not resisting the United States. Both sides need this war. Both sides benefit from it. And both sides are waging it against the same people: the 90 million Iranians trapped between them who have been fighting for their own freedom longer than either side has been fighting each other.
The US was already crumbling.
Before the first bomb dropped on Iran, the US government was losing its own people. The Epstein files were threatening to expose the rot at the center of the political establishment. The alliance with Israel had split the Republicans, split the Democrats, and shattered the illusion that the two-party system represented anyone. Americans were watching their tax dollars fund free healthcare and free education in Israel while they drowned in medical debt. ICE, trained by the IDF, was being used to make the US more authoritarian at home. More Americans were waking up to what their government was doing in their name and refusing to accept it. People were disillusioned. People were losing faith. The empire was crumbling from the inside.
Then the war happened. A wartime president does not answer questions about Epstein. A wartime budget does not get scrutinized the same way. A country at war does not ask why its ally gets more than its own citizens. The war gave the US government what it could not generate from its own population: a reason to look away.
The Islamic Republic was already drowning.
Eight weeks before the strikes, the regime was losing a war against its own people. The largest uprising and massacre in recent Iranian history. The regime killed tens of thousands of Iranians. Snipers on rooftops. Hospital raids. Execution shots on wounded people. An internet blackout to hide the killing. The regime’s legitimacy with its own population was zero.
And despite everything the regime invested in controlling the narrative on Iran, despite successfully infiltrating academia, mainstream media, think tanks, and capturing the entire leftist narrative on Iran, the regime could not make its propaganda stick. Because the people of Iran kept rising. Every time the regime built a narrative, the Iranian people ruptured it. The regime spent billions on force, control, and information warfare, and the people shattered it by standing in the street and chanting: death to the dictator. The Iranian people are the seeds rupturing the illusion of the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy, a legitimacy that is only existent through recognition by other states. That is why the regime’s number one fear is its own population. That is why it has the highest rate of executions per capita in the world. That is why it is working with the US and Israel in orchestrating this war. That is why it has always benefitted from sanctions and nuclear negotiations. All of it gave it legitimacy through recognition as Iran’s representative.
The war helps the Islamic Republic remain. The war did not save the regime’s legitimacy with the Iranian people. The people still reject this occupying regime. But the war saved the regime with the rest of the world. It gave the regime the costume of a state under foreign attack instead of what it actually is: a state at war with its own people who is propping up the illusion of legitimacy through participation in the war that all sides need for the preservation of the illusion of their own legitimacy. The internet blackout imposed by the Islamic Republic to hide the massacre is now justified as wartime security. And the US, who claims to be on the side of the people of Iran, has not laid a finger to help Iranians get back online or just be able to communicate with each other. No, every side benefits from Iranians denied safeguarding of their universal human rights. And the repression is now framed as national defense. The world was silent on Iranian uprisings, they didn’t talk about the regime’s massacre of innocent citizens, but everyone started talking about the missiles and conflating the occupying regime with Iran, making it seem like they’re a resistance regime standing strong against Israel and the US axis.
The “resistance” lie.
The left believes the Islamic Republic is a resistance regime. This is the lie underneath everything.
The left is not arguing that the regime is good to its own people. No one argues that. The left is not arguing that the regime cares about Palestinians. No one argues that either. The argument is simpler and more dangerous: the Islamic Republic is the placeholder. It is the thing standing between the US-Israeli axis and total domination of the region. No matter how brutal it is, it is still resisting. And resistance, in the left’s framework, is enough.
But the Islamic Republic is not resisting the US-Israeli axis. That is a complete lie, an illusion. And I want to help you break free from it. The regime in Iran is fighting for its own survival. Just to continue being recognized by other states as the official representative of Iran, because it has zero legitimacy with its own people, who if they had self determination, would not choose the Islamic Republic. They have made it clear by repeatedly erupting in mass uprisings across the country risking death and worse to tell the world that this regime doesn’t represent them and that they don’t want this regime. They literally chanted to Obama in 2009: Obama, you’re either with us, or you’re with them. And Obama chose the Islamic Republic, because he too is stuck inside the regime framework, despite all his wonderful and deceitful slogans of yes we can, extracting people power to disempower the people, to make them feel hopeless. Because that is the only feeling possible under the regime framework.
The regime is currently allowing the US and Israel to kill certain people and keep others alive. The war was premeditated. The IRGC apparatus is being kept intact. Yahya Rahim Safavi, Khamenei’s senior military advisor, has walked through two wars untouched. His son has been publicly narrating the transition since September 2025. The insiders are already negotiating what comes next. The regime is not resisting. It is restructuring. And the restructuring is being done in coordination with the US and Israel, not against them.
The sanctions work the same way. Sanctions do not weaken the regime. Sanctions weaken the people. They lose access to medicine, food, and economic opportunity. Sanctions make the people more dependent on the regime, not less.
The sanctions hurt the Iranian people. That is their intention. When the people are placed under economic pressure, they rise. But the US issues sanctions confident that the regime will suppress the protests. The US knows the regime stays as long as recognition continues. That is how we know the sanctions are not for regime change. That is how we know the war is not for regime change. Because regime change does not require bombs or sanctions. It requires stopping recognition of the regime as Iran’s representative and facilitating pathways for free and fair elections in cooperation with Iranian civil society leaders. But that is not the goal. The goal is not universal human rights. The goal is not self-determination for Iranians. The goal is power and control through extraction of the power of the people. In this case, Iranians and Americans both.
And it goes deeper than that. The regime does not need sanctions relief because it is financially suffering. The regime needs sanctions relief for its legitimacy. Because sanctions relief comes through negotiations, and negotiations mean being treated as the legitimate representative of Iran. That is all the regime cares about. Legitimacy. Recognition. Being at the table. That is its number one priority at all times, because that is all it has.
The Islamic Republic does not have real power. It is weak. It is insecure. It cannot generate consent from its own population. It cannot hold the country together without force. It cannot survive without external recognition. Every decision it makes, every negotiation it enters, every war it participates in, is for one purpose: to maintain the perception of legitimacy that only other states can provide. People do not understand this. People are not focused on this. But this is the entire game.
The military strikes work the same way. The strikes are not dismantling the regime. They are dismantling the parts of the regime that the US and Israel do not need. The parts that remain are the parts that will run the next version of the same system. The war is not regime change. It is regime renovation. And the people of Iran are not part of the blueprint.
The proof is in what they will not do.
If the US wanted to end the Islamic Republic, it would not need a single bomb.
The Iranian people have been rising for over 16 years. The Green Movement in 2009. The Dey protests in 2017. The Aban uprising in 2019. Woman Life Freedom in 2022. January 2026. A freedom movement with four decades of structure, leadership, women’s rights, labor rights, student rights, civil society leaders who have organized from prison cells, one of whom has won a Nobel Peace Prize. The US is not oblivious to this. They know the freedom movement exists. They know the civil society leaders by name.
If there were political will, the international community could create mechanisms to facilitate free and fair elections in cooperation with Iranian civil society leaders inside Iran. That is all it would take. Not bombs. Not sanctions. Not regime change from the outside. Just stop recognizing the Islamic Republic as the legitimate representative of Iran and support the people’s right to choose who governs them.
The moment you stop recognizing the regime, it becomes so weak that the people become empowered enough to finish what they started. The moment recognition stops, people from within the regime and within the military have every incentive to come to the side of the people. Every regime that has fallen has fallen when recognition stopped. That is the pattern. Recognition is the oxygen. Cut it off and the regime suffocates.
But they will not do it. The US will not stop recognizing the regime. Israel will not stop recognizing the regime. No government will. Because the regime’s survival serves all of their interests. The Islamic Republic is the justification for US military presence in the region. It is the justification for Israeli expansion. It is the justification for arms sales to Gulf states. It is the justification for the entire architecture of the Middle East as it currently exists. Remove the Islamic Republic and the entire structure collapses. Not because the region becomes unstable. Because the region loses the excuse that keeps the current power arrangement in place.
That is why the US bombs Iran instead of stopping recognition. Bombs preserve the game. Recognition withdrawal ends it.
Trump told you himself.
On Day 7, Trump told CNN he is not worried whether Iran becomes a democratic state.
Read that again. The president of the United States, in the middle of a war he started that has killed over 1,300 people and displaced hundreds of thousands, said he does not care if Iran becomes a democracy. He is not doing this for the people. He was never doing this for the people. He said “help is on the way” to the protesters in January. He said “take over your institutions.” And then he bombed the country they live in and told CNN he does not care if they get democracy.
That is not a contradiction. That is the structure. The people were useful as a justification for military action. The people are not useful as an outcome. The outcome is a restructured regime that serves US and Israeli interests. The people were never part of the plan.
What both sides need you to believe.
The US needs you to believe this war is about protecting America and its allies from a nuclear threat. The Islamic Republic needs you to believe this war is about resisting imperialism and defending sovereignty. Both need you to believe there are two sides. Both need you to pick one.
There are not two sides. There are three players.
The US-Israeli axis. The Islamic Republic. And the people of Iran.
The first two are collaborating to ensure the third never gets a seat at the table. They are doing it with bombs, sanctions, propaganda, and the cooperation of every government, institution, and commentator that continues to treat the Islamic Republic as “Iran.”
The war is not between the US and the Islamic Republic. The war is between both of them and the people of Iran. It always has been. The bombs just made it visible.
What you should be doing.
Stop picking a side in a war designed to erase the people from both sides of it.
Start asking why your government recognizes the Islamic Republic as the official representative of a population that never chose it. Start asking why there are no international mechanisms in place, built in collaboration with Iranian civil society leaders inside the country, to facilitate a pathway toward free and fair elections. Start asking why 90 million people have no pathway to self-determination and nobody is building one.
The US does not need more bombs. The Islamic Republic does not need more negotiations. The people of Iran need recognition withdrawn from the regime that rules them by force and support for their right to choose who governs them.
That is the only position that is not complicit. Everything else, whether you stand with the US or stand with the regime, is participation in the erasure of 90 million people.
And both sides are counting on you to keep picking between them so you never see the third option: the people.