Iran: Regime Propaganda & the Reality on the Ground is Very Different
CNN Just Admitted the Real Reason Iran’s Mullahs Are Scared to Escalate
Even CNN can’t hide the truth anymore.
In a rare moment of clarity on mainstream television, Bloomberg Editor-at-Large Bobby Ghosh told Anderson Cooper exactly why Iran’s regime is desperate to avoid real war with the United States.
“They’re fighting for their existence,” Ghosh said. “They know that if they lose this war, their biggest problem will not be American bombs from the air. Their biggest problem will be their own citizens, who will be hanging them from lampposts in Tehran.”
He continued: “They’ve done so much damage to their own country and their own people for so long that there’s a lot of resentment built up there. They can’t afford to show any weakness.”
That’s it. The mullahs aren’t holding back out of strength or clever strategy.
They’re terrified of their own people. After decades of brutal repression, stolen elections, crushed protests, and economic ruin, the Iranian street is a powder keg.
One major defeat and the regime knows the payback will be swift and final.
This is the dirty little secret the foreign policy blob never wants to say out loud: the greatest threat to the ayatollahs isn’t America. It’s the Iranian people finally rising up and settling scores.
The regime has spent years building a police state precisely to prevent exactly that outcome. Now even CNN is forced to admit the obvious: weakness invites the noose.
The mullahs aren’t strategic masterminds. They’re cornered thugs who know their own citizens hate them more than we ever could. And that fear is the only thing keeping them from going all-in.
Hundreds have been arrested as Iran cracks down on ‘traitors’ following killing of Larijani, Soleimani.
An Iranian woman walks across posters depicting images of US President Donald Trump (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as she takes part in the al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day rally, a commemoration in support of the Palestinian people, on the last Friday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, in Tehran on March 13, 2026 [AFP]
Iranian authorities have announced hundreds more arrests across the country, as well as operations to counter what they describe as “traitors” aligned with the interests of the United States and Israel.
The Ministry of Intelligence said in a statement that 111 “pro-monarchy cells” in 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces were stopped overnight into Wednesday from launching acts opposing the country’s theocratic establishment that toppled a US-backed monarchy in a 1979 Islamic revolution.
Iranians have for millennia celebrated the eve of the last Wednesday of the year with a fire festival called Chaharshanbe Suri, which welcomes Nowruz, the Persian New Year. But authorities urged pro-establishment backers this year to take to the streets and retain control while security forces arrest any dissidents, amid the US-Israel war on Iran.
The ministry claimed that a number of weapons were also discovered from arrested individuals, and renewed its call on the public to report any suspicious activity.
As Iran imposes a total internet shutdown on more than 92 million people for a third week, the ministry said 21 people were arrested specifically for sending videos to “terrorist” media outlets outside the country. It said two shipments containing 350 Starlink satellite internet terminals were confiscated while being smuggled into Iran.
The state-run Fars news agency said some of the dozens arrested in the city of Karaj near Tehran had “burned images of and insulted the martyred supreme leader”, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the start of the war on February 28. Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei has since been picked as Iran’s new supreme leader.
