Suddenly, it looks like it’s over.
The butchers of Tehran are winning.
The uprising that “felt different this time,” with millions of courageous Iranians marching for their freedom and an end to their oppression, feels like a memory.
As The New York Times reported on Friday: “A heavy police presence and deadly crackdowns on protesters appeared to have largely suppressed demonstrations in many cities and towns across Iran, according to several witnesses and a human rights group.”
Similarly, Reuters reported: “Iran’s deadly crackdown appears to have broadly quelled protests for now, according to a rights group and residents. With information flows from Iran obstructed by an internet blackout, several residents of Tehran said the capital had been quiet since Sunday. They said drones were flying over the city, where they’d seen no sign of protests on Thursday or Friday.”
Only a few days ago, with loud support from President Trump, there was still hope that these protests might finally break through and end the theocratic nightmare that has bedeviled Iranians since the mullahs took over in 1979.
Just a week ago, the president warned, “If they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots, we’re going to hit them very hard.” Earlier this week, he urged the Iranian protesters to keep at it, declaring, “Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. . . HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
And then, Wednesday afternoon, seemingly out of nowhere, Trump said he had been reliably informed that the Iranian mullahs were no longer killing people. In a follow-up post on Truth Social on Friday, he went as far as thanking Iran for cancelling over 800 executions scheduled for Thursday.
“I greatly respect the fact that all scheduled hangings which were to take place yesterday (over 800 of them) have been cancelled by the leadership of Iran. Thank you!” Trump wrote. And on Thursday, Steve Witkoff, his special envoy to the Middle East, talked about a “diplomatic path” with Tehran.
It was a cold, freezing shower on the dreams of millions of Iranians and freedom lovers everywhere, and a reminder of how the wily mullahs can run circles around Westerners.
Of course, with Trump one never knows. It’s always possible that he is playing a ruse to catch the mullahs off guard, as he did with his bombing of nuclear facilities in June. That is the protesters’ last hope.
Of course, with Trump one never knows. It’s always possible that he is playing a ruse to catch the mullahs off guard, as he did with his bombing of nuclear facilities in June. That is the protesters’ last hope.
In truth, the odds of unarmed protesters, even millions of them, prevailing over a ruthless regime were always slim.
One reality that has been underreported since the beginning of the uprising is the extraordinary power of the Revolutionary Guards. This is not just a police force—it’s an economic powerhouse that controls large swaths of Iran’s economy.
According to press reports, the 2025 state budget allocates roughly six billion dollars a year to the Guards and their six branches – nearly double the army’s budget. As Fox News reports, “No institutions matter more right now than the Revolutionary Guards and its paramilitary arm, the Basij… a nationwide population-control and internal surveillance network.”
In other words, the protesters marching on the streets of Iran were up against a formidable and ubiquitous force that has shown unlimited cruelty to crush the uprising.
Unlimited courage on one side, unlimited cruelty on the other.
This is why so many hopes rested on America and President Trump. Unlike past presidents, Trump came down clearly on the side of the Iranian people. This was his moment of truth, when he could change history by taking down the world’s #1 sponsor of terror and a mortal enemy of everything the West stands for.
“For 46 years, the Revolutionary Islamic Government has tortured the people of Iran. From the moment that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Paris, he managed to propel one of the world’s great cultures into a new Dark Age,” Douglas Murray writes in The New York Post. “Since 1979, that regime has slaughtered and executed its domestic political opponents. It has publicly hanged people convicted of ‘crimes against morality,’ including people convicted for the ‘crime’ of being gay. It has sponsored terrorism across the Middle East, Europe and America. The regime has been the biggest colonizing, imperialist power in the Middle East.”
This was Trump’s moment to help free a people craving its liberation from these religious despots.
Taking down an evil regime, of course, is hardly a guarantee of liberation. Revolutions are messy. A new leader needs moral authority and the trust of both the people and the army. It’s an uphill climb at best.
But for people who have been suffocating for so long under the thumb of theocratic zealots, with an economy in ruins, regime change is a gamble they’re willing to take.
Here in Los Angeles, where for the past three weeks the large Persian community has been following the news by the minute, it’s a disheartening time. After so many failed protests in the past, many felt that this uprising might be a breakthrough. It was impossible not to be moved by images of millions of Iranians bravely confronting a heartless regime, being massacred by the thousands, and still marching. Many are still clinging to hope that events may yet break their way.
In the meantime, if there’s any lesson to take from this moment, it is a reminder of the unlimited value of freedom.
The butchers of Tehran love their own freedom to be butchers. What they can’t seem to stomach is to give their people the same freedom to be human.
