For decades, Western policy toward Iran has been shaped primarily by concerns over nuclear proliferation, missile capabilities, sanctions, and regional deterrence. These issues have dominated diplomatic engagement with Tehran.
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Human-rights abuses—including executions, political imprisonment, internet shutdowns, and the systematic suppression of dissent—were repeatedly condemned, particularly through United Nations resolutions. Yet they rarely became a determining factor in shaping Western strategy toward Tehran.
That was not simply a moral failure. It became a strategic miscalculation, because it overlooked the central role that domestic repression plays in sustaining the Islamic Republic’s regional behaviour.
By treating domestic repression as peripheral rather than central, Western governments underestimated one of the principal foundations of the Islamic Republic’s regional behaviour.
The Islamic Republic has never treated domestic control and foreign policy as separate spheres. Executions, censorship, and the suppression of organised opposition are not merely internal practices. They are among the principal instruments through which the regime preserves the political stability necessary to sustain its regional ambitions.
By underestimating this relationship, Western governments also underestimated one of the political foundations of Iran’s regional behaviour. The consequences have extended well beyond Iran, contributing to repeated cycles of regional instability, growing geopolitical risk, threats to maritime security, and persistent uncertainty in global energy markets.
Military pressure has sought to alter Tehran’s external behaviour, while diplomatic engagement has attempted to moderate it through negotiation and economic incentives. Yet neither approach has fundamentally challenged the mechanisms that enable the regime to preserve power, because its greatest strategic asset is not simply its missile arsenal, proxy networks, or nuclear programme—it is its ability to maintain political control over its own society.
A more effective Western strategy therefore begins with a different question: Rather than asking only how to change Iran’s external behaviour, policymakers should ask how the regime preserves power at home—and whether that system of control can be weakened without another military confrontation.
One Strategy, Two Fronts
The Islamic Republic does not separate domestic control from foreign policy. Its regional posture and internal repression reinforce one another. Executions intimidate potential dissent. Internet shutdowns prevent citizens from organizing. Regional confrontation helps justify both. This relationship is neither accidental nor temporary; it lies at the heart of the regime’s strategy of survival.
Authoritarian governments often invoke external threats to consolidate power at home. The Islamic Republic has elevated this logic into a governing strategy in which domestic repression and regional confrontation reinforce one another. Periods of heightened regional tension have repeatedly coincided with intensified domestic repression, creating a political climate in which broader repression can be justified as a matter of national necessity. That is why Iran’s human-rights record cannot be understood separately from its regional behaviour.
Executions are not simply judicial punishments. They are political signals. Internet blackouts are not merely technical restrictions. They are instruments designed to prevent collective action. Together, they reduce society’s capacity to organize against the state.
That internal architecture matters well beyond Iran’s borders. A government that governs through fear at home enjoys greater freedom to pursue confrontational policies abroad. Conversely, a government that finds it increasingly difficult to repress its own society also faces growing constraints on its regional ambitions.
Seen in this light, domestic repression is not simply a human-rights concern. It is a strategic variable—and one of the missing links in Western policy toward Iran.
By treating regional security and domestic repression as separate issues, Western governments have underestimated the extent to which each reinforces the other. A strategy that addresses one while neglecting the other is unlikely to achieve lasting results.
Executions as an Instrument of Governance
If domestic repression is central to the Islamic Republic’s strategy of survival, then one instrument deserves particular attention: the death penalty.
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Iran does not merely execute more people than most countries. According to Amnesty International, it accounted for roughly 80 percent of all recorded executions worldwide in 2025. That is not only a disturbing human-right statistic. It also offers an important clue to how the regime maintains political control.
Executions in the Islamic Republic serve a broader political function than criminal punishment alone. They reinforce fear, discourage collective action, and signal that organized resistance carries the highest possible cost. For that reason, the gallows are not only an Iranian human-rights issue; they are also a strategic issue.
A government’s heavy reliance on executions reveals a fundamental vulnerability: coercion remains indispensable to maintaining political control.
The same logic applies to information. During major nationwide protests, the authorities have repeatedly slowed or shut down internet access—not simply to censor information, but to disrupt collective action. Like executions, internet shutdowns have become one of the regime’s principal instruments of domestic control.
Understanding this relationship leads to a different policy conclusion. Western governments have generally treated executions as a humanitarian issue to be condemned after they occur.
But if executions are also one of the regime’s principal instruments of governance, then limiting its ability to rely on them should become not only a moral objective but a strategic one.
That does not require abandoning diplomacy. It requires integrating domestic repression into diplomacy, rather than treating it as a separate issue.
A government that pays a tangible diplomatic, political, and economic price for every politically motivated execution will find it increasingly difficult to rely on executions as a low-cost instrument of political control.
That is where a more effective Western strategy toward Iran begins.
Why the West Misread Iran
If this analysis is correct, then one conclusion follows: The principal weakness of Western policy has been not an excess of diplomacy or pressure, but a misunderstanding of what keeps the Islamic Republic in power.
For decades, engagement with Tehran has largely separated diplomatic relations from the regime’s domestic repression. Executions, political prisoners, and internet shutdowns were frequently condemned through resolutions, public statements, and targeted sanctions, yet they rarely became decisive factors in shaping the broader relationship with the Islamic Republic. As a result, a government that pays little international price for governing through fear has little incentive to abandon one of its most effective instruments of control.
This is the real meaning of appeasement.
Appeasement is not diplomacy. Diplomacy remains an indispensable instrument of statecraft. Appeasement begins when engagement treats domestic repression as peripheral rather than central to the relationship.
The result is a strategic contradiction: governments seek greater regional stability while leaving largely untouched one of the principal mechanisms that enables the regime to pursue confrontation abroad.
The question, therefore, is not whether governments should negotiate with Tehran, but what those negotiations are intended to change.
If domestic repression remains disconnected from diplomacy, the central mechanisms sustaining the regime will remain intact. A durable strategy cannot separate the regime’s internal methods of survival from its external behaviour. They are parts of the same political system.
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