BEHIND THE IRAN HEADLINES Series, October 14, 2025, Alireza Jafarzadeh, NCRI-US Deputy Director
Lasting Peace in the Region Runs Through a Free Iran
As the world is taking major strides toward peace in the region, one regime stands in growing isolation – the clerical dictatorship ruling Iran.
Across the globe and the region, people are welcoming the Gaza ceasefire and the peace summit as the beginning of a long-awaited new chapter. But for Iran’s rulers, this is a nightmare.
For decades, Tehran has built its survival on two pillars, internal repression and export o terror and war abroad. Externally, the regime has relied on development of nuclear weapons and destructive missile, exporting chaos and extremism, fueling proxy wars, and keeping the region divided. Now, the very foundation of that policy is crumbling. With the end of Gaza war at sight, as the Associated Press wrote, the Iranian regime “finds itself at one of its weakest moments” since the 1979 Revolution.
The consequences for Tehran are profound: its terror-driven deterrence has collapsed, its proxy network lies in ruins, its principal regional ally, Assad, is gone, and its two-trillion-dollar nuclear weapons program has gone up in smoke. The world has witnessed the vulnerability of the Iranian regime preceded by several rounds of major uprisings demonstrating the rejection of the regime by a vast majority of the Iranian people in all 31 provinces of the country.
Just as the regime has thrived on war and chaos, peace is detrimental to its very survival.
In fact, the prospect of ending the bloodshed and war in Gaza through President Trump’s plan offers renewed hope that a just and lasting peace could soon take hold in the region. Yet there is no doubt that Khamenei and the ruling religious dictatorship in Iran will stop at nothing to derail peace and spread war and chaos for as long as they cling to power.
Indeed, the road to lasting peace in the region runs through a free Iran, one where war, terror, and repression no longer serve as tools of survival for a dying dictatorship.