Even as Washington and Tehran continue to intensify strikes against each other's assets across the Persian Gulf, the key lesson of America's ongoing conflict with Iran is inescapable.

There can be no reform. No tinkering with this theocratic regime. The only durable solution to the 47 years of terrorism, kleptocracy and repression the Islamic Republic represents is its complete dismantlement.

President Donald Trump has done more than any predecessor to make that outcome possible. He should not stop before this goal is reached.

To achieve an end to Tehran's current regime, the Trump administration needs to focus on the one element that has largely been absent since the latest round of fighting broke out at the end of February: the Iranian people themselves.

The plain facts are telling. What they reveal is a leadership in Tehran that long ago gave up on consent, surviving on fear alone.

The last elections in 2024 witnessed the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic's history. Some analysts estimate that up to 70 percent of Iranians either stayed home or rejected the regime outright.

This is consistent with recent patterns. The intervals between nationwide uprisings are becoming briefer while their geographical spread is more extensive.

The 2017 protests in the Persian month of Dey, which corresponds to late December and early January, erupted in more than 80 cities. Two years later, protests over rising gasoline prices manifested in more than 100 locations.

In 2022, the Women, Life, Freedom uprising triggered by the murder of the young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, at the hands of the so-called 'morality police' spread to more than 160 cities, towns and villages.

The most recent revolt at the beginning of this year, in which up to 40,000 people were killed by regime forces, left its mark on over 200 cities across all 31 provinces – the largest such outburst since the regime took power in 1979.

Labor unrest is compounding the anger: between 2021 and 2024, documented strikes quadrupled, spanning oil workers, truckers, teachers and nurses among other sectors.

Skeptics will say that the brutal crushing of the latest protests should dampen our expectations of a next round of revolt. But what this view ignores is that the people filling the streets are the young, the unemployed, the hungry, the persecuted and the marginalized – and the regime's own bankrupt economy manufactures more of them every month.

Moreover, the regime's bravado masks a system that watched helplessly as its sacred figurehead – Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – was eliminated in February. True, Iran's leaders survived this winter's uprising and subsequent war, but at the cost of seeing the depth of its people's hatred up close, in every province and all at once.

And the guns are not held by aliens. Both the regime's Basij paramilitary foot soldiers and everyday conscripts come from the same broke, squeezed families as the protesters they are ordered to shoot on behalf of a regime that increasingly cannot pay or feed them.

The next wave of protest is not a question of if, but when – and it will most likely come before Trump's term in office expires.

Trump has assembled the most powerful military and economic leverage ever brought to bear on this regime. What he lacks is the third leg: a concrete, operational strategy to stand with the Iranian people when they rise in order to minimize bloodshed and maximize the odds of successfully overthrowing the mullahs.

Even as the missiles keep falling, Trump should direct his intelligence community to build that plan now, with the assistance of Israel's Mossad agency and the services of America's regional and European allies. 

The tools are known and ready.

Break the information blackout. Issue a White House ultimatum: sever your people's internet again to slaughter them in the dark, and we take down your private intranet (used by the regime to stay online).

Then, with the aid of private sector companies like SpaceX, flood the country with connectivity, from smuggled Starlink terminals to robust cell service linking smartphones directly with satellites. Ultimately, a 90million-person market could emerge once Iranians are free to join it.

Blind the machinery of repression. American-led offensive cyber operations should degrade the regime's command and coordination centers during a crackdown – and knock the regime's propaganda off the airwaves when it matters most.

Protect the protesters. Contingency planning should include limited air options to disrupt regime units as they move to massacre civilians, which can be the difference between a crackdown that succeeds and one that fails.

Fracture the regime from within. Engage quietly with regime elites, commanders and ambassadors so that they abandon this sinking regime, rather than dying for it. Start with the regular army before the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and offer mid-level officers and Basij commanders a structured pathway out, such as amnesty for defectors.

None of this requires American boots on the ground or handing a single dollar to the mullahs, as rounds of US-Iranian negotiations have suggested. All that is needed is the same foresight Trump showed when he revoked Tehran's oil export waivers in June, a financial lifeline it could never have won on the battlefield. 

The terrorists in Tehran do not negotiate their way to reconciliation. They extort. Cut off the extortion, as Trump has grasped, and the mask falls. But timing is everything and the time to act is now.

This piece was co-authored by Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and Miad Maleki, an FDD senior fellow.