On Wishing Power To the Persians

I’m not a foreign policy expert, and I don’t pretend to have answers here. I’m very aware that situations like this are complex, and that well-intentioned ideas can have unintended consequences. What follows isn’t a proposal so much as a set of thoughts I’m still turning over.
Watching what’s happening in Iran has been unsettling. From the outside, it looks like people are taking enormous personal risks to oppose a regime they no longer—if ever—felt truly represented them. That alone makes it hard to look away, even while knowing how little clarity distance provides.
The first comparison that came to mind was hitting the beaches of Normandy unarmed, but the more I think about it, Tiananmen Square feels closer—not because history repeats cleanly, but because of the imbalance. Ordinary people standing exposed before overwhelming state power. That kind of courage is difficult to process, and it deserves seriousness rather than slogans. It also deserves caution. It shouldn’t be ignored—but it shouldn’t be casually manipulated either.
I don’t want the United States directly intervening, and I’m wary of the idea that outside powers can meaningfully shape another country’s internal reckoning without distorting it. History gives us plenty of reasons to be skeptical of that impulse. At the same time, it’s hard not to wonder whether the threat of involvement—carefully calibrated and largely indirect—can sometimes matter without becoming ownership.
If leverage is applied at all, it seems worth asking whether moments like this are ones where very limited actions might have outsized effects, rather than sweeping interventions. Authoritarian systems rely heavily on isolation—on cutting people off from one another and from the outside world. When communications go dark, it’s not just about control; it’s about making dissent feel solitary and invisible.
I don’t know what the right response is. I only find myself thinking that enabling people to see, speak, and bear witness feels fundamentally different from steering outcomes or trying to author a revolution. One removes pressure; the other applies direction. That distinction matters, even if it doesn’t resolve the dilemma.
It would also be disingenuous to pretend that outcomes abroad never intersect with American interests. They do. But acknowledging that reality doesn’t require pretending that every interest must be pursued, or that influence must always be exerted. Sometimes restraint is a choice, not a failure.
These aren’t conclusions—just reflections. I’m trying to sit with the tension between moral instinct, historical caution, and strategic uncertainty, knowing that none of them offers a clean answer on its own.