Lisa Daftari, investigative journalist and political analyst, is director and founding editor of The Foreign Desk news website and host of its podcast. Daftari spoke to a July 13 Middle East Forum podcast (video). The following summarizes her comments:
Despite the U.S. strikes, “there are no reformists,” and it is still the hardliners, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) militia at their core, who are in control.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism worldwide, and “their deadly ideology is still at the center of their governance.” There is no deal to be had because the regime’s existence depends upon the targeted programs. Its modus operandi for survival is to “play out the clock.” China and Russia, along with their proxies, are extending the regime’s hold on power by providing technical know-how to the regime which enables it to avoid some of the punishing attacks from the U.S.
Critics of Trump call this a forever war. “Quite the contrary. If you’re against forever wars, this is the war to fight to the very end so that we do not have any more forever wars, that we don’t need [a] presence in the Middle East.” The ayatollahs have led the chant, “Death to America and death to Israel,” for five decades, and they are acting on it. The revolution within Iran that installed the regime is not limited to that country. “They wanted to export that revolution, their brand of Shiite Islam around the world.”
Although the regime is gambling that the domestic pressure on President Trump from the midterms will pay off, so far the targeted strikes have not rattled the markets, and the price of gas is down. The administration’s strategy is now to steadily degrade the regime without escalating to a “full blown-out war.” The regime is doubling down, becoming emboldened by their threatening rhetoric aimed at the U.S. and their death threats against Trump.
U.S. intelligence predicted that the Strait of Hormuz would be used by the regime as a lever of escalation. The decision-makers in Iran may believe that they can intercept the administration’s pronouncements to de-escalate by claiming victory for themselves. To gain control over the negotiations, “narrative warfare is their [the regime’s] number one tool.” It is a predictable play, based on how the mullah’s negotiators “[ran] circles around” Presidents Obama and Biden in the past. The Trump administration’s MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) may well have been a “false flag by the U.S.,” given that it was such a bad deal and completely counterintuitive to the very rationale for America’s strategic imperative.
The recent targeted strikes will soon reveal if the regime chooses to escalate or “play that cat and mouse game again” in a scenario of high-stakes brinkmanship.
The July 4 five-day funeral in Tehran for Khamenei, Iran’s second supreme leader killed in the February 28, 2026, U.S. and Israeli airstrikes, was not only the regime’s “narrative warfare” against the U.S. on America’s 250th anniversary. It was also an undertaking to intimidate and silence the opposition within Iran. The regime actually flew in “hundreds of American influencers” to exploit the “useful idiots” with their millions of followers on Tik Tok and Instagram. “Their narrative warfare that they have launched on American soil is real, whether it’s at the universities, the K-12 level, on social media, in our labs, in our think tanks, in the White House. Their lobbies in Washington are real. This is something we have to take very, very seriously.”
The opposition within Iran is sizable. Whether the million people who were broadcast attending Khamenei’s funeral were incentivized with free food and transportation or were AI generated, this number only constitutes slightly more than one percent of Iran’s total population of 92 million. Regime operatives eliminated significant numbers of protesters who took to the streets in early January, killing tens of thousands of them with live ammunition just in a 48-hour period.
When the U.S. stopped Israel from targeting regime individuals that Israeli intelligence had pinpointed, the Trump administration missed an opportunity to achieve a turning point in the war that avoided having to put “our boots on the ground.” Targeted operatives become paranoid, and that is when mass defection is possible. Rather than staying Israel’s hand, the missed opportunity “really would’ve been a game changer here.”
The Iranian protesters feel helpless and were told to “stand down until it is safe for them to come out.” They felt betrayed when the ceasefire was announced. Their sentiment was “if you’re not gonna finish the job, don’t start the job,” because a wounded regime will unleash even more vengeance on the populace. The Iranian people want freedom and a prosperous economy. Largely secular and educated, they want to “break out of these theocracies and dictatorships” and join the modern world. “This is all in line with the future of the Middle East, which will be a future of the Abraham Accords and the Cyrus Accords.”
The administration has to improve its messaging that winning the war is a strategic imperative for America’s homeland security.
The strategic communications on America’s domestic front must be more robust because, with their anti-American messaging, “more than half of the news outlets in this country haven’t played along.” The administration has to improve its messaging that winning the war is a strategic imperative for America’s homeland security. Although Israel, the Middle East, and the Iranian people themselves stand to benefit from America’s actions against Iran, it is America that ultimately benefits because the Iranian regime “has American blood on its hands.” Americans will remain in the regime’s crosshairs, “and this is our most opportune moment to get rid of this threat once and for all instead of passing it on to the next generation.”
