To defeat Iran: Liberate the oppressed

Author’s Note: The views expressed in this article are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

On 28 February 2026, President Trump authorized Operation Epic Fury. The mission capped more than 10 months of nuclear peace negotiations that began when President Trump sent a direct letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on 12 April 2025.

Tehran has always been a notorious negotiator. Figures like Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi are almost never delegated the actual authority to deal. Iranian diplomats often function more like messengers between the Office of the Supreme Leader, IRGC, and the Office of the President.

The Ayatollah’s government rarely makes concessions without exacting a hard price; when concessions are made, they are rarely accompanied by more than a paper signature, and the regime often quietly breaks the terms of the agreement off-screen and out of immediate notice. Tehran is also notorious for dragging negotiations out indefinitely, demanding basic sanctions relief as a show of good faith and then stalling indefinitely.

In late December 2025, a series of protests flamed into a serious uprising across Iran. Demonstrators initially took to the streets protesting water shortages, a historic decline in the Iranian rial, and broader economic struggles. The movement quickly evolved into nationwide demands for fundamental political change.[1]

Iran’s security forces, led by the IRGC, responded to the mass protests with lethal force and mass arrests. Security forces also brought in assistance from abroad to help quell the unrest, including Hezbollah and allied Shiite militants from Iraq.[2] The Iranian government also initiated a nationwide internet blackout, preventing protestors from coordinating and blocking the international community from documenting the brutality of the regime’s crackdown.

Internal Iranian health officials, local doctors, and outlets like The Guardian reported that the death toll likely exceeds 30,000, citing reports of security forces seizing corpses from hospitals and burying victims in mass graves to hide the numbers.[3] Deaths were accompanied by mass arrests, and many protestors are now waiting on death row.

On 02 January 2026, President Trump issued his first public warning, threatening direct U.S. military intervention if the Iranian regime continued to deploy lethal force against peaceful demonstrators.[4] As nuclear negotiations failed to make real progress, an obvious question opened: how fragile is the regime in Tehran?

Members of Iran’s judiciary declared that detained protesters would face swift executions, and on 23 January 2026 the President announced that an American “armada” (a naval task force that included two aircraft carriers and a plethora of guided missile destroyers) was heading to the Middle East, explicitly threatening military action if the regime carried out the executions.

On 28 February 2026, both the United States and Israel launched a full-scale air campaign across Iran. The Ayatollah himself was killed in the strikes. The mission was designed to eliminate Iran’s clerical, military, and intelligence leadership systematically, mowing the lawn down low enough for a less fanatical, more pragmatic layer of government to assume policymaking.

In response to the intense air campaign, Iran declared that it would fire on any vessel attempting to cross through the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off the vital international waterway that supplies 20% of the world’s oil. The United States responded by blockading all Iranian shipping and interdicting Iranian vessels on the high seas. So, while Iran attempted to create leverage by strangling the global economy, the U.S. Navy created leverage by strangling Iran directly.

Coordinated major combat operations continued for over 40 days, targeting nuclear facilities and missile depots before an initial ceasefire took effect on April 8. The broader campaign concluded on May 5. The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was officially signed on 17 June 2026, formally ending hostilities. The MOU started a 60-day clock to negotiate a permanent peace treaty. It included a temporary end to the U.S. naval blockade in exchange for reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Islamabad MOU was meant to create a mutually acceptable status quo while time was taken for deeper negotiations, but almost as soon as the ink was dry on the agreement, surviving elements of the IRGC began testing the terms. Fast boats attempted to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Missiles were fired into Kuwaiti. Drones attacked commercial shipping.

Though the MOU was clear that sanctions and blockade relief were contingent on Iran conceding to open navigation of the Strait, Tehran abrogated the terms by creating the Persian Gulf Strait Authority. Backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the PGSA functions as a single window where vessel operators must submit paperwork to obtain authorization for passage. IRGC units intended to fire on any and all commercial vessels that refuse to be comply with PGSA navigation demands, tolls, and insurance fees.[5]

Following Iranian strikes on commercial shipping and sharp U.S. strikes in response, on 8 July 2026, President Donald Trump stated the obvious. Iran was not abiding by the terms of the MOU. The President declared that, “To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore, they’re scum… As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them.”[6] It’s unclear what the strategy is moving forward, but it’s clear that the President believes that diplomacy has run its course.

The Peloponnesian War

History teaches that despotic regimes fear their people more than they fear foreign adversaries, punitive expeditions, diplomatic isolation, or sanctions. Following the end of the brutal 27-year Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), Sparta briefly became the sole superpower in Greece. Sparta had started the war out of fear of its rival in Attica—Athens. Athens was a rising superpower in the 5^th Century BC, with a growing network of colonies throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Sparta feared that it would soon be outclassed if it didn’t cut Athens down to size.

The Peloponnesian War would become a uniquely cruel conflict. All those involved wished it had never begun, but neither side could back down.

Athens was the preeminent naval power of Greece. The great statesman Themistocles had convinced the Athenian Assembly to invest in a fleet in 482 BC, preparing the small city-state for an imminent Persian invasion. It was this specific decision that transformed Athens into a maritime superpower. By the latter half of the 5^th Century BC, Athens had assembled a maritime empire of colonies that paid tribute in grain and gold.

Alternatively, Sparta’s (Lacedaemon) fabled army was the envy of the world. Spartan boys were taken from their mothers at the age of 7 and immersed into a life of violence in a training regime called the Agoge. Spartan soldiers that survived the training process were renowned as the finest soldiers in the world, and Spartan armies were regarded as invincible in equal combat.

The Spartans presided over their own land-based empire—an organized network of forced conquests and subjugated neighbors known as the Peloponnesian League. The Peloponnesian League included minor city-states like Messenia, Corinth, Elis, the Arcadian city-states Mantinea and Tegea, Sicyon, Epidaurus, and Phlius.

Knowing that the Spartan army was unlikely to be defeated in the field but they had almost no capacity for sustaining a large-scale siege, Athenian statesman Pericles advocated for constructing heavy walls around the city and port. The Athenians would hide behind their walls during campaign season, supported by their overseas network of colonies. Alternatively, the Spartans had no real capacity for a navy. This created a horrible paradox where each side could only attempt to gain advantage by butchering the other’s allies. The war gained a viciousness that the Greeks had not known in prior conflicts.

The Nature of Sparta

It was the Athenian General Demosthenes who came closest to a winning strategy.

Similar to the Antebellum South in the United States, the Spartans were men of leisure. Under the Lycurgan constitution, Sparta had two Kings who wielded executive authority. The Spartan Assembly of Peers was a quasi-legislative body of full-citizens (Homoioi) who had graduated from the Agoge, married, and served for 10 years in the ranks of the Army. At the age of 30, men left the barracks to live with their wives on landed estates. A committee of five Ephors (Ephoroi) was annually elected from among the Peers to supervise Sparta’s two Kings.

A second tier of non-citizen free-men called the Perioikoi constituted Sparta’s merchant class.

A third tier of non-citizen slaves formed the agricultural foundation of the Spartan way of life. The Spartans had subjugated the Messenians to the West, using Messenian serf-slaves called Helots (Heilotes) to work the fields of their estates. Where the men of other city-states had to plow, plant, and harvest their farms, the Spartan Peers (Homoioi) were at leisure to train for war.

In describing the Battle of Platea, Herodotus documents an elite Spartan army of 5,000 Peers (Homoioi) accompanied by 35,000 lightly-armed Helots, giving basis for a historical 1:7 ratio of Spartans to Helots. Late in the Peloponnesian War, some estimates placed the Helot population at close to 200,000. This made the Spartans perpetually fearful of a slave revolt. In fact, there is good evidence to suggest that the elite Spartan army was maintained not to protect Sparta from invaders, but to ensure that Messenia would always be subjugated.

The Krypteia served as a sort of elite Spartan secret police, targeting any potentially rebellious Helots for assassination in the night—control through terror. The Spartan Peers legally declared war on the Helots every year so young Spartans could assassinate them without incurring religious guilt.

Demosthenes rightly perceived that the Helots were Sparta’s Achilles’ Heel. In 425 BC, he landed with a small contingent of troops on the western coast of Sparta’s Peloponnesian Peninsula. The landing point was a small rocky promontory called Pylos on the coast of Messenia, and Demosthenes quickly established a fortified base of operations. His explicit goal was to use this forward military outpost as a safe haven for any Helots that wanted to rebel from Spartan control.

Runaway Helots flooded into the Athenian fort. The Athenians armed these escapees, who then conducted devastating guerrilla raids throughout Laconia. This induced mass panic in Sparta, as the Spartans were terrified of an all-out internal Helot uprising. It successfully forced Sparta to withdraw its army from Attica (Athenian territory) to deal with the domestic threat.

In 409 BC, a large Spartan army cut off Pylos from the rest of Messenia and a small naval task force ensured that no relief could come by sea. An Athenian relief fleet would have broken the siege, but it was forced to turn back due to a storm. Out of supplies and facing starvation, the garrison could no longer hold the walls. Instead of fighting to the last man, the remaining defenders negotiated a conditional surrender. Under the terms of the truce, the Spartans allowed the surviving defenders to lay down their arms and safely leave the Peloponnese.

Recognizing that Athens could never be truly defeated as long as its navy controlled Mediterranean trade routes, the great Spartan officer Lysander advocated for radically changing Spartan strategy. In 407 BC, Lysander was appointed Admiral of the Spartan fleet, and he used brilliant diplomacy to cultivate a close personal friendship with Cyrus the Younger of Persia. With massive Persian financial backing, Lysander hired ship building experts. They constructed a fleet of high-quality triremes at Ephesus and lured away experienced mercenaries from the Athenian navy.

The Spartans lost almost every engagement with the highly experienced Athenian navy. Their seamanship was novice level, and they were simply outclassed and outmaneuvered. But the Spartans had the strategic depth of Persia, the limitless manpower of Messenia—and they learned from each engagement. Lysander correctly calculated that the Athenians could not replace their losses, and in each engagement the Athenians were slowly attritting into oblivion.

Finally in 405 BC, Lysander’s navy ambushed and destroyed the remnants of once great Athenian navy at the Battle of Aegospotami, precipitating the end of the war. Sparta would destroy the Athenian triremes, release all of the Athenian colonies, destroy the Athenian walls, and preside over a new empire of their own.

The Demise of Sparta

Driven by a deep hostility toward Athens and a desire to dominate its own region of Boeotia, the city-state Thebes served as one of the most aggressive members of the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League. In 431 BC, Thebes had actually fired the opening shots of the war by attacking the small Attica town of Plataea. At the conclusion of the war in 404 BC, Thebes fiercely lobbied Sparta to completely destroy the city of Athens, slaughter its men, and enslave its women and children—a proposal the Spartans ultimately rejected.

Despite this close wartime alliance, the relationship quickly deteriorated after Athens fell. Fearing Sparta’s imperial ambitions, Thebes and Corinth switched sides just a few years later, partnering with a recovering Athens in the Corinthian War (395–387 BC) and Boeotian War (379-371 BC) to oppose their former Spartan allies.

In 371 BC, in the face of a much larger Spartan army, the Theban general Epaminondas came up with an innovative battle formation. At the time, Greek combat formations placed their most reliable soldiers in the phalanxes located on the right wing of the formation. Less reliable soldiers were placed in phalanxes on the left. Epaminondas therefore knew that the elite Spartan Peers (Homoioi) would be on the right flank, the non-citizen free men (Perioikoi) would be in the center, and lightly armed Helot phalanxes would be on the left.

Epaminondas created the Oblique Order. Instead of spreading his soldiers evenly across the line, he thinned his right and center, shifting soldiers to deepen the left of his formation which would contact the Spartan right flank (where the elite Peers were located). Accounts claim that the Theban left flank may have been as deep as 50 rows. With the massive local superiority the Oblique Order provided, Epaminondas’ left flank mowed over the elite Spartan Peers whose phalanxes were the standard 12 rows. The Spartan King Cleombrotus, his elite bodyguard, and the Peers (the backbone of Spartan military power) were all killed in an utter route. Despite the Helot and allied phalanxes severely outnumbering the thin Theban center and right, when they saw the elite Spartans were completely annihilated, they all turned and fled.

The prescient Epaminondas recognized that Sparta’s military supremacy relied entirely on the slave labor of the Helots who farmed the land so Spartan citizens could train full-time for war. In late 370 BC, Epaminondas led a massive allied army directly into the Spartan homeland of Laconia and neighboring Messenia. Epaminondas declared the Messenian Helots free after roughly 230 years of Spartan servitude, and his army helped the liberated population construct the heavily fortified city of Messene at the foot of Mount Ithome—an ultimate inner stronghold and fortress-refuge for the Messenian people.

Without the Peers, the Spartans had no real means of opposing the invasion—nor were the Spartans able to coerce their allies and client states to lend troops. Spartan strength would never recover, and the Thebans would enjoy a brief moment of hegemony until Phillip II of Macedon and his son Alexander came onto the scene.

Conclusions:

Similar to Sparta, Iran is brutal, despotic, theocratic oligarchy. Iran actually has two militaries. The Artesh is the military of Iran, inherited from the Shah. The Mullahs have never trusted the Artesh, no matter how dense the indoctrination requirements are on the officer corps. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a parallel military that answers to the clerical establishment directly, and it is aimed internally at the Persian people to ensure they can never throw off the shackles of strict Islamic (Sharia) Law.

Persia is one of the world’s most ancient and sophisticated civilizations, and the geographic boundaries of Iran include dozens of ethnic minorities and peoples who are deeply frustrated with the rule of the Mullahs. Systematic mismanagement of the Iran’s infrastructure and aquifer have created water shortages across the country. Western economic sanctions have destroyed the Iranian Rial. Businesses cannot export wares, or import finished goods and materials.

In the aftermath of Epic Fury, the IRGC quickly moved to fill vacancies in government with its people. IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi is likely the most powerful man in the country now, supported by former IRGC general Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who now heads the Supreme National Security Council. Elected leaders like Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and President Masoud Pezeshkian are functioning more as mouthpieces than men with real Constitutional authority. The new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen since the IRGC forced through his confirmation by the Guardian Council and Assembly of Experts.

The IRGC’s strategy is to survive through redundancy, dragging out negotiations and frustrating traffic through the Strait of Hormuz until the world accepts their de facto stewardship.

However, at the beginning of Epic Fury, the public was warned that protests of any kind would be interpreted as collaboration with the enemy—and shot accordingly. The Mullahs are far more afraid of their own people than they are of the United States, the UN, or the West.

This fear is not without good reason. The most infallible means of destroying the tyrannical rule of the Mullahs once and for all is to free the peoples under their boot. The United States can arm the myriad populations of Iran, including the Kurds, Baloch, Turkmen, Iranian Arabs, and even cosmopolitan elites in Tehran (who hate the Mullahs). In the 1980s, the CIA did this brilliantly against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

The lesson of fabled Sparta is that if we give the oppressed peoples of Iran the light of freedom and the dream of a future, the regime in Tehran will utterly crumble.

Bibliography:

Amnesty International. “What Happened at the Protests in Iran?” Amnesty International, January 26, 2026. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/01/what-happened-at-the-protests-in-iran/

Borger, Julian. “Iran Protests: Death Toll, Disappeared Bodies and Mass Burials as 30,000 Reported Dead.” The Guardian, January 27, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/27/iran-protests-death-toll-disappeared-bodies-mass-burials-30000-dead.

CNBC. “Trump on Iran Ceasefire MOU: ‘I Think It’s Over.’” Video, July 8, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/07/08/trump-on-iran-ceasefire-mou-i-think-its-over.html

Hanson, Victor Davis. A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. New York: Random House, 2005.

Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). “Iran Summary: January 2026.” JINSA Report, January 2026. https://jinsa.org/jinsa_report/iran-summary-january-2026/.

PBS NewsHour. “Trump Threatens to Intervene in Iran if Regime Continues to Kill Protesters.” PBS NewsHour, January 2, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-threatens-to-intervene-in-iran-if-regime-continues-to-kill-protesters.

Sayeh, Janatan. “Analysis: How the Iranian Regime’s Foreign Proxies Suppress Iranian Protestors.” FDD’s Long War Journal, October 13, 2025. https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2025/10/analysis-how-the-iranian-regimes-foreign-proxies-suppress-iranian-protestors.php

The Maritime Executive. “Iran Launches ‘Persian Gulf Strait Authority’ to Administer Hormuz Tolls.” The Maritime Executive, May 5, 2026. https://maritime-executive.com/article/iran-launches-persian-gulf-strait-authority-to-administer-hormuz-tolls

Vickers, Michael G. By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023

DISCLAIMER: All opinion expressed are

[1] Amnesty International. “What Happened at the Protests in Iran?” Amnesty International, January 26, 2026. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/01/what-happened-at-the-protests-in-iran/

[2] Sayeh, Janatan. “Analysis: How the Iranian Regime’s Foreign Proxies Suppress Iranian Protestors.” FDD’s Long War Journal, October 13, 2025. https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2025/10/analysis-how-the-iranian-regimes-foreign-proxies-suppress-iranian-protestors.php

[3] Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). “Iran Summary: January 2026.” JINSA Report, January 2026. https://jinsa.org/jinsa_report/iran-summary-january-2026/.

&

Borger, Julian. “Iran Protests: Death Toll, Disappeared Bodies and Mass Burials as 30,000 Reported Dead.” The Guardian, January 27, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/27/iran-protests-death-toll-disappeared-bodies-mass-burials-30000-dead.

[4] PBS NewsHour. “Trump Threatens to Intervene in Iran if Regime Continues to Kill Protesters.” PBS NewsHour, January 2, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-threatens-to-intervene-in-iran-if-regime-continues-to-kill-protesters.

[5] The Maritime Executive. “Iran Launches ‘Persian Gulf Strait Authority’ to Administer Hormuz Tolls.” The Maritime Executive, May 5, 2026. https://maritime-executive.com/article/iran-launches-persian-gulf-strait-authority-to-administer-hormuz-tolls

[6] CNBC. “Trump on Iran Ceasefire MOU: ‘I Think It’s Over.’” Video, July 8, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/07/08/trump-on-iran-ceasefire-mou-i-think-its-over.html

This story originally published on SOFREP.

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