What We Got Wrong About Iran – Analysis

April 11, 2026 

By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh


The dust of conflict has settled. The fever of the moment has yielded to the cooler discipline of strategic reflection. It is time to ask, with unflinching clarity, what the United States and its partners should do with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Tehran’s propaganda organs were quick to claim victory. That claim, however theatrical, must be taken seriously—not because it reflects battlefield reality, but because it reveals an uncomfortable truth: the regime cannot, or will not, abandon the terrorist and extremist doctrines that have defined it for more than four decades. No amount of quiet concessions extracted in back-channel talks can alter the fact that its public posture remains implacable. Neither the nations of the region nor the broader international community can any longer pretend that peaceful coexistence with this regime is possible.

The war just concluded exposed a secret weapon the regime had wielded against the international community for years: our own ignorance of its internal workings. We had imagined its strength lay in hardware—missiles, drones, a navy, an air force, a nuclear program. Within weeks those assets were largely neutralized. Its proxy network, once menacing, lies shattered and operationally crippled. Yet the regime’s real power was never hard; it was soft. It was the architecture of influence quietly embedded in our own societies: proxies operating inside think tanks, newsrooms, and foreign-policy circles, often cloaked in the respectable garb of “Iran experts” or “opposition voices.” These networks do not fire rockets. They shape narratives. They steer decisions.

For two decades the West invested heavily in the comforting narrative peddled by these same experts: that “moderates” existed inside the regime, pragmatic figures who could be engaged, moderated, and ultimately steered toward reform. The very individuals held up as proof of this moderation later boasted in regime-controlled settings of how skillfully they had deceived their Western interlocutors—advancing missile and nuclear programs in the shadows while posing for cameras alongside leaders of Tehran’s proxy militias in state-staged ceremonies. The cost of that illusion has been paid in strategic surprise and diminished credibility.

On April 7, The New York Times reported on a telling episode. In a closed-door session with the Trump administration, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed vigorously for strikes against Iran and floated Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi as the logical successor. The suggestion was not new, but its timing was revealing—and it is worth noting that even a close ally such as Israel may have been subtly steered by the same currents of influence that have long shaped Western perceptions.


For two decades Pahlavi has issued public appeals to the Revolutionary Guards, the regular army, and security services to rise up and join the people. Those appeals have never borne fruit. In the uprisings of 1999, 2009, 2017, 2019, 2022, and again in 2026, not a single meaningful defection from the military forces materialized. Instead, the security forces answered with slaughter of unarmed citizens. Those Iranians who trusted Pahlavi’s hollow promises paid with their lives. That pattern should have served as an early warning: this is not a movement with organizational depth or a viable command structure. It is a name without any bodies on the ground.

In 2025, Pahlavi publicly claimed that more than 50,000 military and police personnel had already joined his campaign; months later, appearing on CNN with Jake Tapper, he raised the figure to 150,000. None of these assertions translated into observable shifts on the ground.

Further evidence surfaced in Haaretz, which documented a coordinated social-media bot campaign that systematically amplified Pahlavi’s image. Meanwhile, several Persian-language outlets, staffed with many reporters and editors who once worked for the Islamic Republic, have flooded airwaves and bandwidths with the same message. In a country where state television has lost all credibility, this parallel propaganda pipeline has enjoyed a near-monopoly on the ears and eyes of a frustrated population. Compounding the problem is the composition of Pahlavi’s own inner circle, which has become heavily populated by former regime advisors, state-media influencers, and journalists.


The result is not revolution but illusion. None of the promises made in Pahlavi’s name have shifted the balance of power on the ground. The Iranian people have paid in blood. American taxpayers, should Washington choose this path, would pay in treasure and strategic credibility.

The uncomfortable truth is that Reza Pahlavi has become, wittingly or not, a foreign-orchestrated project aimed at fostering instability and, potentially, the territorial disintegration of Iran. The country’s ethnic mosaic, Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Azeris, contains deep fissures. Any power vacuum created in Tehran would likely widen those fissures rather than heal them. Such an outcome does not serve American strategic interests. We do not seek a fractured Iran that becomes a new theater of regional chaos; we seek a stable, non-nuclear actor that no longer exports revolution.

Even Tehran’s own state media have not been shy about using Pahlavi for their purposes. Articles in regime outlets have portrayed him as a useful foil—an external threat that justifies internal repression and creates divisions among dissident groups. In that sense, the regime and its supposed nemesis have quietly served each other’s narratives.

All of this should recall the bitter lessons of the Iraq War. We entered that conflict on the basis of flawed intelligence about weapons of mass destruction and placed misplaced trust in figures like Ahmed Chalabi—a manufactured “opposition leader” whose assurances proved disastrously misleading. We dismantled the Iraqi state and its army, only to watch sectarian violence rush in to fill the vacuum.

The cost to the United States, thousands of American lives and one to three trillion dollars—was paid in full. Today, similarly seductive voices, cloaked in the language of friendship and expertise, risk steering us toward another avoidable catastrophe. Information that originates from elements seemingly aligned with us but in reality linked to Tehran must be subjected to rigorous, unsentimental scrutiny.

The question before us is not whether the Islamic Republic can be toppled tomorrow. It is whether we will allow ourselves to be guided by illusion rather than reality. Strategic prudence, clear-eyed intelligence, and a refusal to outsource American decision-making to convenient proxies remain the only viable course. Anything less would repeat the costliest mistakes of the past, this time on an even larger scale.

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. X: @Dr_Rafizadeh