One of the most persistent and dangerous misreadings of the confrontation with Iran is the stubborn confusion between a brutal ideological regime and the people it has oppressed for nearly five decades.
This is no accident. Tehran has long understood that its best defense is not its missiles or its proxies, but its control of the narrative. In Western capitals, where moral clarity too often yields to political expediency, this confusion produces a strange paralysis: the fear of “hurting the Iranian people” serves as an excuse to tolerate a regime that has hurt them far more cruelly and systematically than any outside power ever has.
