Israel’s military strike on Iran in mid-June, “Operation Rising Lion,” alongside U.S. attacks on nuclear sites, exposed the Islamic Republic’s military vulnerabilities and proved the regime to be a paper tiger. But this success has triggered a dangerous response: Tehran is now striking back—not just with missiles and threats toward its neighbors, but with mass arrests, executions and repression at home.
From Azerbaijan and Iraqi Kurdistan to the streets of Tehran and Baluchistan, Iran’s targets are not random. They are chosen to signal strength, distract from weakness and restore control—whether through violence, propaganda or both. The regime sees its enemies as foreign and domestic, and often treats them the same way.
To prevent a wider crisis, Washington and Jerusalem must act quickly to deter further repression and aggression.
The United States and Israel can help prevent these potential disasters through different strategies. Washington should threaten further sanctions against Iran. For its part, the Jewish state can expand its publicized “enforcement plan,” which already includes preventing nuclear advancement, missile production and support for anti-Israel proxies, to include repression of the Iranian people or attacks on Azerbaijan or Iraqi Kurdistan.
Washington could bolster Kurdish defense with radar systems and pursue trilateral security ties with Israel and Azerbaijan, an idea proposed by Israeli parliamentarians and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in the past.
By protecting neighboring states, Washington and Jerusalem can strengthen alliances in the region and further deteriorate Iranian influence by subverting its policy of belligerence.
Iran’s targets are often chosen not because of their actions, but because they are convenient. When weakened at home or abroad, the regime frequently lashes out to reassert deterrence, whether by bullying neighbors or cracking down on its own people. For example, following an Islamic State attack in Kerman that killed 100 Iranians, Iran launched missiles against a Kurdish businessman in Iraqi Kurdistan and Baluchi separatists in Pakistan. Likewise, a month after the start of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in the fall of 2022, Iran staged large-scale military exercises on the Azerbaijani border that included practicing crossings of the Aras River that divides both countries.
Regime officials have threatened Azerbaijan and Iraqi Kurdistan, while state media have published a flurry of articles agitating against both. But the most pressing threat is to the Iranian people.
Iran has already begun a brutal crackdown. Nearly 700 people have been rounded up and several executed after being accused of spying for Israel. Iran’s judiciary also announced changes to its espionage laws to remove constraints and allow judicial, military and intelligence agencies to take “more sweeping actions.”
Led on by their government, Iranians might be encouraged to see their country as isolated and reviled by the rest of the world. Defending the Iranian people could show them this is not the case. It’s less a strategy of directly advocating for regime change, but of winning the hearts and minds of Iranians by showing them that they have allies should they choose to take to the streets.
Former President Joe Biden missed this opportunity in 2022. As protesters were gunned down, he offered little beyond pledging “solidarity with Iranian women.” Regime forces faced virtually no consequences for the 551 protesters killed and more executed.
The Iranian regime is long infamous for using torture, forced confessions and faulty evidence. The goal of this recent crackdown is not only to catch Israeli spies but to show its population that the mullahs are still in control. In the past, Tehran has fiercely repressed its population in response to military and intelligence humiliations.
Many Iranians are old enough to remember how, in 1988, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini executed 30,000 political prisoners, including children as young as 13.
This was his response to the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, in which hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed, millions fled, and Khomeini’s “Jerusalem through Karbala” strategy of establishing zones of influence to strike Israel seemed to crumble. At the time, Khomeini famously said agreeing to a truce was like “drinking from a poisoned chalice.” This past week, related media associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called for a repetition of the 1988 executions.
Today, the most vulnerable Iranians are the more than 45 million inhabitants who aren’t Persian, as well as refugees.
The Islamic Republic has turned its minority populations into internal enemies—persecuting them not just economically and politically, but as a matter of identity. In times of unrest, their suffering often deepens. When protests erupted after the killing of Jina Mahsa Amini, it wasn’t Tehran but the Kurdish, Baluchi and Azerbaijani regions that bore the regime’s harshest violence, where security forces operated as if no one was watching.
The regime already appears to be preparing for such a crackdown. State media has accused the large Azerbaijani population of working as spies for the Mossad, and the government has rounded up Kurds in the Kermanshah province. On July 1, the IRGC staged a “counterterrorism” operation in the Baluch majority province of Sistan-Baluchistan, allegedly targeting “mercenaries of the Zionist regime,” even though “Operation Rising Lion” was reportedly not carried out in the region.
In addition, the regime has ramped up its forced deportation of Afghans and Pakistanis, driving out 90,000 people since June 22.
Iran’s weaker neighbors are also in the firing line.
From the start of the war, Iranian state media have accused the Azerbaijani government of taking part in Israeli operations by recruiting ethnic Azerbaijanis to act as spies or allowing Israel to strike Iran from Azerbaijani territory. Following the ceasefire, President Masoud Pezeshkian called for an investigation into whether Israel used Azerbaijani territory to strike Iran. Representative of the Supreme Leader Khojat al-Islam Sarai said Tehran may attack “American” bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, “West Asia” or Azerbaijan, apparently ignoring the fact that there are no U.S. military bases in Azerbaijan. Tehran has often used to pretext of “American” or “Israeli” bases to justify threatening or attacking Iraqi Kurdistan and Azerbaijan. When Iran launched missiles at Iraqi Kurdistan last year, it claimed to have struck a “Zionist spy HQ.”
Following the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh last August, Pezeshkian recommended strikes on “secret Israeli bases” in Iraqi Kurdistan or Azerbaijan. Already, an Iranian-backed Iraqi proxy launched an explosive-laden drone at Erbil’s airport.
Preventing these strikes would solidify relations with key allies on Iran’s borders while sending a message to the region that Iranian bullying will no longer be tolerated.
Washington and Jerusalem must recognize that Iran’s external and internal aggression is part of the same strategic pattern. Tehran’s regime uses repression at home and threats abroad not as separate tactics, but as a unified show of force to compensate for battlefield humiliation.
Preventing the Islamic Republic from turning its people and neighbors into scapegoats is not just a moral imperative—it’s a strategic one. By standing with the Iranian people and protecting regional partners, the United States and Israel can prevent escalation, shore up alliances and ensure that “Operation Rising Lion” doesn’t just end with a tactical victory but a meaningful strategic shift.
