Mike Baker

Having said that, the U.S.

is moving a carrier group out to the Middle East.

Just saying.

Now, this doesn't mean the crisis is over, of course.

It means both sides may be recalibrating or one side, meaning the U.S., may simply be doing a head fake.

But here's the part that can't be lost in the fog of diplomacy and messaging.

While Tehran is now claiming it won't execute protesters, something that President Trump seems ready to possibly take at face value, that's speculation, it's already executed thousands of them in the streets.

That's not speculation.

The absence of gallows in a public spectacle does not actually equal restraint.

The regime doesn't need to show trials anymore if fear has already done the job.

Live ammunition, mass arrests, bodies on the streets, and disappearing citizens can be just as effective, often more so, than public hangings.

And the Internet blackout ensures that whatever is still happening remains largely unseen.

So when officials say the protests have, quote, abated, it's worth asking what that really means.

Public resistance didn't collapse because the people no longer want change.

It's more likely that the consequences are becoming unbearable.

The regime didn't regain any legitimacy with its violent response to the protests.

It simply regained control.

History suggests that repression can't quiet streets without extinguishing resentment.

Movements don't always disappear.

Sometimes they go underground, and sometimes they wait, although the cycle of protests followed by brutal repressions of those protests has a depressing and exhausting history under the mullahs and the IRGC.