Exclusive: US pressure strengthening Iran’s regime, expert warns

Shafaq News– Washington

The United States’ strategy of forcing Iran back to nuclear negotiations through military pressure, economic strain, and domestic unrest risks backfiring by entrenching Tehran’s leadership rather than weakening it, an Iran policy expert said on Saturday.

Ivan Sascha Sheehan, an Iran specialist and interim dean of the College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore, told Shafaq News that President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be pursuing a coercive diplomacy approach aimed at raising the cost of resistance to a level that would compel concessions or fracture Iran’s ruling elite.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington have escalated since protests erupted across Iran on December 28 following the collapse of the national currency. The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) claimed that at least 6,100 people were killed, while Iranian authorities have acknowledged about 3,000 deaths, prompting Washington to intensify pressure on Tehran through sanctions enforcement, military deployments, and warnings of possible strikes.

However, Sheehan said Iran’s political system has historically proven resilient under prolonged external pressure, cautioning that economic collapse and protests alone are unlikely to bring about regime change without an organized domestic alternative capable of translating public anger into political leadership.

Military escalation also carries significant risks, he told our agency, noting that external attacks often trigger a rally-around-the-flag effect in highly nationalistic societies, enabling authorities to suppress dissent and portray opposition forces as aligned with foreign powers. A strike, he added, could even stabilize the regime in the short term, undermining Washington’s objectives.

As alternatives, Sheehan pointed to non-military tools including sustained sanctions enforcement, diplomatic isolation, international legal mechanisms, and the formal terrorist designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The United States designated the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2019, while the European Union followed suit on January 30, 2026.

Ultimately, he said, Iran’s political trajectory will be shaped primarily by internal dynamics. “External pressure may accelerate [change], but it cannot replace it.”

For Shafaq News, Mostafa Hashem, Washington, D.C.

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