Many observers seem genuinely surprised that the Iranian regime is showing no sign of blinking in its high-stakes game of chicken with the US. They also ask: why are there no visible civil defense preparations nor civilian education campaigns despite the mounting threats of confrontation with the world's strongest army? Others note Donald Trump’s own reported surprise: with all the military posturing and credible threats, why does the Iranian government display no willingness to compromise or back down? And still others express astonishment at Trump’s apparent hesitation to launch military action against Iran, even after significant buildup and rhetoric of imminent war: why would he refuse to risk even a single American life in the pursuit of regime change in Iran?
These reactions, while understandable on the surface, reveal a deeper misapprehension. Viewed through the lens of human rights declarations or moral outrage alone, the regime's calculus appears inexplicable: why are some lives worth more than others? However, the explanation is rather economic and institutional: in a political system where elections are theatrical, and votes carry no real weight, human lives carry little weight either. Civilian lives are cheap, not because the rulers are inherently callous (though some undoubtedly are), but because the fate of those in power is decoupled from the fate of those they rule. When political survival does not hinge on accountability, the human cost of brinkmanship becomes an externality the regime can readily ignore. Evidence? Just look at how comfortably Iranian authorities talk about the human toll of the recent uprising in Iran.
The same logic illuminates Trump's caution. A leader in a functioning democracy operates under constraints where the loss of American lives would impose immediate political costs in the form of electoral backlash, eroded legitimacy, and fractured coalitions. The regime in Tehran faces no such constraint. Its calculus is one of raw power preservation, untempered by mechanisms that make civilian (or even military) deaths politically expensive.
This disconnect is not accidental; it is the predictable outcome of institutional design or the lack thereof. The real question, then, is not why the regime behaves this way, but how any political order can be structured to ensure that human lives matter not merely as rhetoric in international charters or lofty preambles, but as costly realities for those who wield coercive power.
Symbolic declarations of adherence to human rights offer no reliable safeguard. Words on paper do not constrain ambitions of arbitrary power; incentives do. The path to making human lives truly expensive lies in constitutional design: a system where power is divided, checked, and made periodically removable through genuine contestation. Healthy rotation of elites, enforced by free elections embedded within a broader framework of limited government, rule of law, separation of powers, and independent judicial oversight, creates the accountability that aligns rulers' interests with the welfare of the ruled.
In such a system, reckless escalation becomes prohibitively costly, not because leaders suddenly become more virtuous, but because ignoring the human toll threatens their own tenure. This is the via negativa of good governance and democracy: design institutions that penalize political malpractice and disregard for life, rather than relying on perpetual moral exhortation or benevolence.
Iran's tragic history underscores the urgency of this lesson. Without robust constraints on arbitrary power, regimes, be they revolutionary, republican, or monarchist, drift toward treating lives as expendable currency in the pursuit of dominance. The current impasse is but one symptom of that deeper institutional failure. As we contemplate Iran's future, let us resist the temptation of quick fixes or moralistic appeals. The enduring solution resides in patient institution-building: one that imposes real costs on those who would gamble with others' lives. Only then can human dignity move from aspiration to enforceable reality.
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