For a government whose survival depends on mobilization, sustained external conflict serves a function that peace agreements cannot replace. Dr. Majid Sadeghpour, political director of the Organization of Iranian-American Communities and a human rights activist, told Fox News Digital that Tehran's leadership views continued confrontation with the United States and its Gulf neighbors as a mechanism for managing domestic pressure, and will likely extend the standoff as long as it can.
U.S. forces have launched airstrikes against Iran following a brief pause in hostilities, with renewed flare-ups running through the Strait of Hormuz.
The threat Tehran actually fears
Sadeghpour's analysis centers on behavior that reveals the regime's real priorities. Washington had offered Tehran guarantees that the U.S. would not seek regime change. Iran attacked ships anyway, and struck U.S. bases in Jordan and Bahrain after those assurances were extended. That pattern, he told Fox News Digital, points to where the genuine threat sits. The regime fears its own population, worn down by economic collapse, high inflation, and deepening discontent with the government's strict religious governance, more than it fears any external military strike.
"For a regime that's militarized and requires friction, its survival now depends on that friction," Sadeghpour said.
Iran has faced major uprisings in recent years. The government has responded with deadly force, along with arbitrary arrests and detention, according to human rights observers. War with the U.S. helps the regime, Sadeghpour argued, by pulling the Iranian public's attention outward. His concern is what happens when the exhausted population quiets. It will turn toward the question of how to remove the government and who might help it do so. "And so that is what the regime is afraid of," he said.
The Strait and a shrinking position
Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that Iran has continued targeting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz in violation of an agreement not to do so. His read on Tehran's strategic standing was blunt: "I think that they're losing their capabilities by the day. I think they're realizing that their control over the Strait of Hormuz is effectively gone, and it's a diminishing asset."
President Trump, writing on Truth Social on Wednesday, said he is not focused on bringing Tehran to the bargaining table. He described any deal Iran might sign as "worthless." "They are just playing out the inevitable," Trump wrote. "When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?"
Sadeghpour's prescription is that U.S. policy should direct pressure toward the Iranian population, because the regime's calculation is to sustain external friction for as long as it can.