Peloni: Iran’s opportunity to free itself from its chains of oppression by the Mullahs and the IRGC is something which only the Iranian people can achieve. With proper conditions and international support, the people can choose their path forward, all of which I hope to see as being more than an empty promise in the coming days, weeks or months.
By | April 10, 2026
By Elke Wetzig (User:Elya) – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikipedia
Analyst Zvika Klein thinks regime change will come to Iran only after the hot war is over, and it will be a task for the Iranian people alone to undertake, as they yet again go out into the streets to protest against a regime that is now a shadow of its former self.
The war that the United States and Israel have been conducting against the Islamic Republic of Iran since February 28 with huge success has now been put on pause, for two weeks. We will now see if Iran will do the most important thing it is obligated to do, according to the terms of the ceasefire, and open the Strait of Hormuz. More on what’s been achieved by the U.S. and Israel, and what’s to come inside Iran now that the regime has been so weakened, can be found here: “Israelis wanted the regime to fall. They may have gotten something better – comment,” by Zvika Klein, Jerusalem Post, April 8, 2026:
Everything now turns on the Strait of Hormuz.
In 39 days, the US-Israeli campaign killed Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, wrecked its ballistic missile infrastructure, and forced a regime that spent decades projecting invincibility to accept a ceasefire brokered by Pakistan.
Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA) has confirmed at least 1,221 military deaths. Iran International puts the security forces toll at 4,700. The navy in the Gulf of Oman is finished. The nuclear program has been struck twice in under a year….
The same nuclear sites — at Fordow, Natanz, and in Isfahan — have again been struck by the Americans using bunker-buster bombs, in the hope that those Massive Ordnance Penetrators, now dropped into the craters previously created by the initial bombing of the same sites, will now land directly on top of the nuclear enrichment sites and this time, demolish whatever remains.
The military victory that the US and Israel achieved together in six weeks has been devastating to Iran — with its navy sunk, its air force reduced by many dozens, hundreds of the senior commanders and thousands of its combatants, both in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and in the Basij force, killed — has made the regime much weaker than before. Regime change must now come from inside Iran, from people who, keenly aware of what a battering those forces of repression have taken, are willing to take to the streets again, fortified by defectors from the security services.
Iran is already claiming that the terms of the ceasefire obligate Israel to stop its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both Israel and the U.S. have promptly denied this. And to make that point very clear, within a few hours of the ceasefire’s announcement, for the Israeli pilots and planes, it was still bombs away over Beirut.
Israeli pilots have been operating continuously since October 8, 2023, beginning in Gaza against Hamas, then in addition bombing Lebanon against Hezbollah, and then, in June 2025 and since February 2026, against Iran as well. They are exhausted. Two weeks of a ceasefire, whatever happens at the end of that period, will provide them with what those pilots, and ground crews, all need so badly — a complete rest. The planes, too, can be given a thorough examination to make sure that they are in perfect shape to resume their tasks when either the Iranians violate the ceasefire terms, or when the ceasefire comes to its natural end after two weeks.
At the end of this two-week ceasefire, the final terms that are agreed upon must include a halt to Hormuz being weaponized. If Iran fails to yield on this central demand, the military victory that the U.S. and Israel have achieved since February 28 will soon lose its efficacy. It will be back to more battering of Iran with no guarantee that the fanatics in Iran, who are willing to see their country destroyed, can be made to relinquish their stranglehold of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump and Netanyahu did not tear down the Islamic Republic. They made it impossible to maintain. Whether the walls actually fall depends on what happens inside Iran, and on whether the diplomacy in Pakistan is prosecuted with the same nerve as the war. The operation was a success. The recovery is someone else’s fight.
That “someone” is the people of Iran. After 47 years of enduring oppression, this is their chance.
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