The annual gathering of the Munich Security Conference has once again concluded beneath chandeliers and polished declarations. Yet beyond the diplomatic choreography and carefully phrased communiqués, one question lingers: how can the West claim to defend international security while shrinking from confronting the regime that remains a principal engine of instability in the Middle East?

Munich this year unfolded under the shadow of multiplying crises. War on European soil, widening turmoil across the Middle East, and a nuclear file in Tehran edging ever closer to the point of no return.

Amid the panel discussions and strategic forecasts, one reality stood out. The clerical dictatorship in Iran continues to accelerate uranium enrichment, expand its ballistic missile arsenal, finance and arm proxy militias from Lebanon to Yemen, and intensify repression at home.

If any delegate required a reminder of what is truly at stake, they needed only to step outside the conference hall. In Odeonsplatz, thousands of Iranian demonstrators gathered, not as nostalgic exiles, but as citizens bound to a homeland suffocating under nearly half a century of religious tyranny.

Their message was stark and unequivocal. In January, protests once again flared across Iran despite mass arrests, torture, and executions. The chant echoed across cities: “Down with the oppressor, be it the Shah or the Supreme Leader.”

That slogan deserves careful attention in Western capitals. It rejects both the current theocracy and any restoration of hereditary autocracy. It is a call for a secular, democratic republic grounded in law, equality, and human rights. This is not a population yearning for foreign intervention. It is demanding sovereignty over its own future.

That context matters in Washington. During his first term, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, arguing that it failed to address ballistic missile development, regional aggression, and systemic human rights abuses. The “maximum pressure” campaign that followed sought to deprive Tehran of the resources it channels into repression and proxy warfare.

Today, familiar voices are again urging renewed engagement, a recalibrated nuclear accord that would exchange sanctions relief for partial limits on enrichment. It is a seductive proposition. De-escalation packaged as pragmatism. But it risks repeating a dangerous illusion.

The Iranian regime has perfected the art of negotiation without transformation. Talks buy time, fracture Western unity, and extract concessions. Each infusion of funds has historically strengthened the very machinery of repression the West claims to oppose, from the Revolutionary Guards to the intelligence services that imprison and torture dissidents.

Sanctions relief without structural change would not moderate the regime, it would prolong its survival. More damaging still, it would send a bleak message to the Iranian people, that once again geopolitical expediency outweighs their struggle for freedom.

Munich also exposed a revealing contrast about Iran’s future. While thousands of Iranians outside the conference called for democratic change without foreign military intervention, a very different narrative was promoted in side events. 

Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s last Shah, was afforded platforms from which he advocated outright military intervention in Iran. The following day, his supporters advanced the outlandish claim that 250,000 people had rallied in his support in Munich, even though live video footage from the event, corroborated by independent observers, indicated a crowd that was only a small fraction of that number.

By the same token, inside Iran, he commands no discernible constituency, no organizational structure, and no network among those risking their lives in nationwide protests. He has no presence on the ground and no resonance among a population that has moved beyond both clerical dictatorship and dynastic rule.

Providing international platforms to the heir of a deposed autocracy is not a harmless indulgence. It risks reinforcing the regime’s propaganda that the uprising is a foreign-backed restoration project rather than an indigenous democratic movement. That narrative is false, but Western carelessness can lend it oxygen.

The broader strategic question transcends personalities. It concerns whether Western governments will once again compartmentalize Iran’s nuclear ambitions from its regional aggression and domestic brutality. If security is the objective, policy must be comprehensive. Any durable framework must rest on four pillars.

First, the nuclear threat must be addressed in full. Not a temporary freeze. Not a sunset clause. Verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of pathways to weaponization must be the standard.

Second, proxy warfare must cease. Tehran’s influence stretches from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen. Its militias have prolonged conflicts, destabilized governments, and threatened global trade routes. A regime exporting violence cannot credibly demand sanctions relief as a responsible actor.

Third, systemic repression must end. Iran remains among the world’s highest executioners per capita. Ignoring this machinery of terror in pursuit of a narrow nuclear understanding would be morally hollow and strategically shortsighted.

Fourth, ballistic missile expansion must be halted. The missile program is not separate from the nuclear file, it is its delivery mechanism. Limiting enrichment while allowing missile development to advance would be an exercise in self-deception.

Critics argue that such conditions are unrealistic, that diplomacy requires compromise. But compromise devoid of structural change is not realism, it is reprieve for a regime adept at exploiting Western impatience.

The Iranian people are watching. Every partial deal is proclaimed in Tehran as international validation. Each easing of pressure is presented domestically as proof that endurance yields rewards.

Conversely, principled firmness signals that the West’s quarrel is not with a nation, but with a regime that has brutalized its own citizens and destabilized an entire region. Security cannot be purchased with illusions. Nor can it be secured by amplifying personalities disconnected from Iran’s internal political realities.

The future of Iran will not be shaped in Munich’s conference halls or Washington’s policy seminars. It will be forged in the streets of Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, and countless smaller cities where ordinary men and women continue to defy intimidation at immense personal cost.

Democratic governments cannot, and should not, impose outcomes or manufacture leaders. But they do bear responsibility for the signals they send.

To relieve pressure without transformation is to rescue a failing dictatorship. To stand firm on comprehensive change is to align policy with principle. The test of Western credibility is not rhetorical. It lies in whether security policy is anchored in reality rather than illusion. End the nuclear threat. End proxy warfare. End systemic repression. End ballistic missile expansion.

Anything less risks repeating the miscalculations that have prolonged instability for decades and betraying those Iranians who have already paid so dearly for the freedom the West professes to defend.

Stevenson was president of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14), the Coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change (CiC). He was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014). He is an author and international lecturer on the Middle East.