When a regime is confident, it governs. When it’s frightened, it reaches for the truncheon and the blackout switch. That is where Iran is today: credible reporting describes a nationwide communications shutdown — not a glitch, but a deliberate attempt to isolate the population, prevent organisation, and conceal the scale of repression. A regime that has to pull the plug to survive is not strong. It is cornered.

None of this is a case against Iran. Quite the opposite. Iran is one of the great civilisations of human history — a nation that has contributed to the world’s literature, architecture, statecraft, science and art over millennia, and whose people have every right to a normal, prosperous future in the community of nations. Persia’s rightful place is not as a hostage to a theocratic security state, nor as a permanent exporter of crisis. The Islamic Republic is not “Iran”. It is a regime that has hijacked Iran’s name, throttled its talent, and traded a proud civilisation for fear at home and confrontation abroad.

The question, then, is whether the West has the self-respect — and the strategic seriousness — to behave as though it understands what this moment means. Because our current posture is the worst of all worlds: loud enough to irritate Tehran, soft enough to invite contempt, and too timid to deliver meaningful help to the people risking everything in the streets. “Concern” is not a policy. It is a coping mechanism.

If we are honest, there are two reasons to act. The first is moral: a nation should not be abandoned to a theocratic security state when it is visibly fighting for its freedom. The second is cold national interest: the Islamic Republic is not merely a domestic tyranny; it is an exporting one.

Iran’s model of power is not simply repression at home; it is leverage abroad. The regime has long relied on proxies and aligned armed groups to inflame conflict while maintaining deniability. That is why the Middle East repeatedly finds itself stuck in a pressure-cooker: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen all bear the marks of a strategy that prefers permanent instability to genuine settlement. This is not a “regional dispute” to be managed with polite diplomacy; it is a system that survives by exporting confrontation.

Nor is this malign reach confined to the Middle East. Iran’s proxy ecosystem intersects with criminal-finance networks that thrive in permissive environments far from the region. You do not need to claim that Venezuela is some single command centre for Iranian money laundering to make the broader point: where corruption becomes policy and state institutions rot, hostile networks find space to move money, people, and kit. Maduro’s Venezuela has been exactly that sort of permissive environment — useful to criminals, useful to extremists, and useful to anyone needing darkness to operate.

Now add the geopolitical picture. Iran is not operating alone; it is anchoring itself to an authoritarian rear-guard. China provides economic oxygen and diplomatic cover when it suits Beijing; Russia provides military partnership and sanctions-world companionship when it suits Moscow. The Islamic Republic’s “eastward pivot” is not a mystery. It is survival. Two sanctioned, embattled regimes can find common cause very quickly, and that relationship has become sharper and more consequential in recent years. Meanwhile, Tehran continues to test the West because it has learned that Western resolve is too often rhetorical.

So what should a Western response with a spine actually look like — honest, principled, and hard?

At this point some will want to see arguments for military intervention, and I understand and sympathise with that view. When people are being beaten in the streets and the regime is visibly panicking, there is a natural instinct to demand an end to talking and to start striking. But the West should be clear-eyed about what “intervention” actually does to the political battlefield. The moment Western missiles enter the story, Tehran’s greatest gift arrives: the ability to rebrand an Iranian-led uprising as a foreign assault. A regime that is already cutting the country off from the world to suffocate civil resistance would seize on an external attack to declare a permanent emergency, justify mass arrests and executions, and portray every opponent as an “agent”. Recent reporting on the severity of the communications blackout only underlines how quickly the regime reaches for extraordinary measures when it feels threatened.

There is also a practical reality the West too often forgets: you do not get to choose the next chapter after the first strike. Iran’s retaliation options are broad and asymmetrical — proxies, maritime disruption, cyber attacks and intimidation abroad. Britain is already dealing with an elevated Iranian state-threat picture; ministers have said MI5 has had to respond to multiple Iran-backed plots in recent years.  So any intervention would not be a clean “one-off” demonstration of strength. It would be the start of an escalation ladder in which Tehran chooses the scene and we could endanger many British lives as a consequence.

That does not mean the West should do nothing. It means we should do what is harder, more disciplined, and ultimately more damaging to the regime: wage a campaign that attacks the Islamic Republic’s real foundations without hijacking Iran’s revolution. Keep Iran connected. Shut down the regime’s money and procurement networks with relentless enforcement. Make Western jurisdictions poisonous to regime-linked cash and its professional enablers. Treat Iranian hostile activity on Western soil as a national security threat and close down the intimidation networks that sustain fear at home. And publish a defection pathway — isolation for perpetrators, but safety and due process for those who refuse illegal orders and break with the machine. That is what spine looks like: not theatre, but sustained pressure that helps Iranians win their freedom without handing the regime the propaganda lifeline it craves.

Start with the objective. If the Iranian people are driving towards regime change, the West should stop talking as though the Islamic Republic is permanent. Regime change must be Iranian-led — not because we are lilly-livered, but because legitimacy is the prize.

Tehran’s oldest trick is to reframe dissent as foreign interference. The moment the story becomes “the West versus Iran”, the ‘Devil’ and the ‘Little Devil’ seeking to interfere, the regime gets its propaganda lifeline. Our job is not to hijack Iran’s struggle. Our job is to tilt the operating environment so the regime’s foundations crack – its information control fails, its money dries up, its intimidation loses reach, and its internal cohesion fractures.

That begins with communications. The blackout is not a footnote; it is the regime trying to suffocate civil resistance. In the modern age, connectivity isn’t entertainment, it’s organisation. When Tehran shuts down the wires, it is preventing coordination, hiding evidence, and isolating communities from one another.

If the West wants to help the Iranian people, the first act of seriousness is to help keep Iran connected – resilient communications, anti-censorship capability, and secure pathways for information to reach the outside world. This is not romanticism. It is operational reality. A movement that cannot communicate cannot coordinate; a regime that cannot conceal repression loses room to manoeuvre.

And yes — without pretending to know what intelligence agencies are doing day to day, it would be negligent if the West were not already leaning forward, in Iran and around the world, to constrain the Islamic Republic’s external machinery. We are dealing with a regime whose hostile activity does not stop at its borders; ministers have said the UK has had to respond to 20 Iran-backed plots since 2022 presenting potentially lethal threats here at home.  In that context, intelligence-led disruption is not “escalation”. It is basic national self-defence by other means.

So I would hope — and I think the public has a right to expect — that MI6, the CIA and allied services, alongside partners in the region, are already working to disrupt the IRGC/Quds Force ecosystem wherever it operates: mapping and choking off procurement and finance routes, degrading intimidation networks abroad, protecting dissidents and journalists, and blocking the regime’s ability to move money, kit and people through front companies and criminal proxies. Parliament’s own intelligence oversight has warned about the sharp rise in the threat from Iran across the full spectrum, including intimidation and physical threats. 

But intelligence work is not a substitute for policy — it is a force-multiplier. If leaders want “spine”, they must provide political cover and resources for sustained disruption, while simultaneously backing the Iranian people in the most practical way imaginable: keeping information flowing when Tehran tries to suffocate civil resistance through blackouts. The regime’s communications siege is a feature of its survival strategy, not an inconvenience. 

The next step has to be relentless enforcement. Broad economic pain may make Western leaders feel righteous, but it does not necessarily bring security states down. A regime like this will happily let ordinary families suffer so long as the coercive apparatus remains funded and loyal. Real toughness is enforcement and focus by targeting the machinery of repression rather than the public’s ability to put food on the table.

That means treating sanctions evasion and hostile-state finance like an organised crime programme with a single outcome – the regime’s coercive organs lose access to money, logistics and procurement. You target front companies, procurement chains, shipping networks, laundering routes, and the professional enablers who make modern sanctions-busting possible. Every time an Iranian enforcer finds a quiet bolt-hole, every time a regime-linked fortune finds a cosy parking place in the West, we send exactly the wrong message: carry on, it’s manageable.

A serious Western stance is simple – if you serve the machine, you do not get the benefits of the free world. No discreet reputational laundering. No comfortable property portfolios. No “second homes” for families of officials whose job is to beat and imprison fellow citizens. If we want “spine”, this is where it shows — not in grand speeches, but in the dull, relentless mechanics of enforcement.

At the same time, the West must treat the regime’s overseas operations as a national security issue, not a diplomatic irritation. Intimidation of dissidents abroad is not incidental; it is central to how the regime maintains fear at home. A system that can reach into London can convince people in Iran that resistance is futile. Conversely, a system that is blocked, exposed and punished abroad looks weaker at home. Disrupt intimidation networks, prosecute facilitators, protect activists and journalists, and deny operating space to hostile-state assets. That isn’t escalation, it’s basic statecraft.

There is another lever Western governments routinely neglect which is incentives inside the regime. Regimes don’t fall only because crowds are brave. They fall when insiders decide the system will not protect them. That requires a clear message to those who direct repression. They should be in no doubt that they should expect isolation and pursuit; those who refuse illegal orders, protect civilians, or provide credible evidence should see a pathway to safety and due process. This is not softness. It is a wedge — raising the cost of obedience and lowering the cost of defection.

Of course, there are risks. Anyone who says otherwise is being dishonest.

A post-Islamic Republic Iran could move in several directions. In the best case, a successor government seeks legitimacy through recovery and normal relations, and the proxy model withers because it is no longer the organising ideology of the state. In the muddled middle, the clerical layer fades but the security apparatus tries to inherit the state under a new brand — fewer religious slogans, same coercive instincts. In the worst case, collapse brings fragmentation, internal conflict, and a scramble over weapons and borders, which could spike regional instability and bring real second-order effects to Europe: energy volatility, migration pressures, and opportunistic criminality.

But here is the uncomfortable truth: inaction has risks too, and they are not hypothetical. A regime that survives this moment learns the lesson that brutality works and the West will always blink. It will tighten repression at home, sharpen coercion abroad, and continue to operate through proxies and criminal networks. It will remain embedded in a Russia–China-tolerated sanctions world. And it will keep testing Western resolve because it has learned our reflex is to de-escalate ourselves first.

That is why the West needs a stance that is both principled and hard-headed: maximum support for connectivity and civil resistance; maximum financial and legal pressure on the coercive machinery; maximum protection against the regime’s reach abroad; and a credible transition offer that is conditional rather than naïve — so Iranians can see a future beyond collapse and fence-sitters inside the regime can see a future beyond obedience.

The West should also remember what is at stake if Iran is freed from the Islamic Republic: not merely the removal of a hostile regime, but the return of a great nation to its rightful place in the world. A normal Iran — trading, travelling, studying, building, creating — would be a cultural and economic powerhouse, and a stabilising force rather than a generator of proxy conflict.

The Iranian people are not asking to be rescued; they are asking not to be abandoned. When we support them, we are not imposing a foreign blueprint. We are backing the restoration of Iran’s dignity and its civilisational inheritance — the very thing the regime has spent decades trying to erase.

A world without the Islamic Republic could be safer and more stable, or turbulent in the short term. But the present world, with the Islamic Republic intact and emboldened, is already a generator of instability.

The only serious question is whether we want to shape the end of this regime with discipline and clarity — or drift into the next crisis pretending we didn’t see it coming.