Iran is never a simple subject in Washington. It is easy to point to Tehran’s own failures and stop there. But that move turns every American threat into a moral project by default, and it lets policymakers avoid a harder audit: what US pressure does in practice, and what it reliably produces. 

Right now, that audit matters. The US says it wants diplomacy with Iran, with indirect talks in Oman restarting after the June 2025 Israel-Iran conflict and subsequent US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. At the same time, US force posture around Iran has visibly thickened: a carrier strike group, additional destroyers and an expanding mix of aircraft at regional bases. Even when officials insist the goal is “leverage,” a buildup is still a buildup — and it changes incentives on all sides.

Freedom as framing

American officials often speak about Iran in the language of solidarity. During recent unrest, Washington again reached for familiar lines about standing with the Iranian people and supporting their rights. The sentiment is understandable. It is also politically convenient: it turns a complex society into a single moral symbol, and it allows coercion to be sold as compassion. 

The problem is not that freedom is an illegitimate concern. It is that the freedom frame, on its own, does not tell you what tools will actually help. When the loudest policy instrument is pressure — sanctions, threats and military positioning “support” can become something else: a signal to Tehran that outside powers are investing in escalation, and a signal to Iranian activists that help is coming in the form of confrontation they do not control. 

When violence is already unfolding in the streets, external cheerleading can harden the state’s security logic and raise the stakes for protesters. And when the crackdown is used to justify military options, the public is asked to believe a comforting fiction: that force will punish rulers while sparing society. 

Logistics speak louder than slogans

War talk is dramatic. Logistics is boring. But logistics is what makes wars possible — and what makes them last. In recent weeks, open-source tracking, satellite imagery and official statements have pointed to a broad US effort to “set the theater” in the Middle East. Reuters reported the arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln and supporting warships in the region. Whatever the administration’s intent, a buildup of this kind expands the menu of credible military options.

Around that wider picture, a more specific claim has circulated: that C-17 cargo traffic into the region has surged to unusually high levels. The exact number is disputed and does not need to carry the argument. The point is what such a surge would mean. Strategic airlift is not a photo opportunity. It is how you move munitions, air-defense components, spare parts, fuel bladders, engineering gear, medical capacity and the mundane necessities that turn “options” into executable plans. 

A posture built for “deterrence” can quickly become a posture built for action. Once assets are in place, the threshold for using them drops — not because leaders become reckless overnight, but because the system rewards readiness. If you have paid the political and financial cost of deploying, you are more likely to reach for the deployed tool when diplomacy stalls. 

Negotiations under the shadow of force

The United States and Iran returned to indirect talks in Oman in early February. The Associated Press described a process focused, at least formally, on the nuclear file, with Tehran seeking sanctions relief and Washington pressing for broader constraints. Both sides have incentives to keep the channel open. Neither side trusts the other enough to make the first large move. 

In that environment, “diplomacy plus pressure” is sold as a balanced strategy. But balance is not guaranteed. The pressure side tends to grow faster than the diplomacy side, especially when domestic politics rewards toughness and punishes compromise. 

When talks are paired with visible deployments, diplomacy can look less like a route to de-escalation and more like a stage-setting exercise: negotiate if you accept our terms; if you do not, the machinery is already in motion. Even if that is not the intent, it is the message that is received. 

The result is a familiar spiral. Tehran reads the buildup as preparation for an attack and doubles down on survivability. Washington reads Tehran’s hardening as proof that pressure must increase. The space for genuine bargaining shrinks, and the probability of miscalculation rises. 

A recent reminder of who pays in war

It is tempting to talk about “limited strikes” and “surgical options.” The June 2025 Israel-Iran conflict should have killed that temptation. In those 12 days, civilians in both countries learned a lesson that strategists often abstract away: modern war bleeds outward. UN human rights officials warned that Israeli strikes and evacuation orders drove large-scale displacement, with many fleeing Tehran. 

The Evin Prison strike, which occurred on June 23, 2025, during the 12-day war, underlined the same point. Reuters reported Iranian officials saying at least 71 people were killed there, including staff, detainees and visiting family members. Human Rights Watch later called the attack an apparent war crime, arguing it struck a civilian facility with no evident military target. 

On the Israeli side, Human Rights Watch documented Iranian missile strikes that hit civilian areas, causing deaths, injuries and displacement. None of this is surprising. It is what happens when states trade fire at scale. It is also why the claim “we will only hit the regime” rarely survives contact with reality.

Some politicians tried to wrap that conflict in emancipatory language. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked Iran’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement while talking about regime change; women’s rights observers warned that co-opting a grassroots struggle to justify external aggression can backfire, associating an internal movement with a foreign military campaign. Meanwhile, Iranian women and activists were left navigating a landscape that was both more violent and more securitized. 

That is the pattern worth underlining. When outside powers promise liberation through coercion, they often hand domestic hardliners their favorite tool: a security narrative. The immediate victims are civilians. The longer-term victims are the political spaces that dissent needs in order to survive. 

The Maduro template: law-and-order language, military reality

In January 2026, a US operation ended with the capture of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro, framed as law enforcement with military backing and condemned abroad (including in a UK Parliament research briefing). Critics called it abduction. Venezuela is not Iran, but the method travels: moral urgency and legal packaging can make force look procedural. Iran should not be the next test case.

What a pro-Iranian-people policy would actually avoid

None of this requires romanticizing Tehran or ignoring Iranian state violence. It requires separating two questions that are too often fused together: whether Iran’s political order is unjust, and whether American coercion is therefore democratic. 

A policy that genuinely prioritizes Iranians would do the opposite of what escalation does. It would reduce the likelihood of war. It would treat civilian harm as central, not as collateral. And it would be honest about the record: wars sold as moral interventions do not reliably produce freer societies, especially when the intervening power defines freedom as compliance. 

That starts with discipline: if negotiations are real, deployments should not outrun them. Washington should state what it is deterring — and what it is not — and define “limited” for the civilians who would bear it. There are tools other than threats: a narrow, verifiable nuclear deal with reciprocal relief; humanitarian carve-outs and back channels that cool the theater; and support for independent information flows without turning protest into a proxy battlefield. Freedom is a powerful word. But in Iran policy, the revealing one is “pressure” — and pressure, paired with logistics, ends in rubble and displacement.

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.