Iran has two goals at the moment – keep the civilian population quiet by threat of imprisonment, and to hang on to their economy by their fingernails until November.

They are moving to do the former, and with IRGC chief Ahmad Vahidi now formally having “ultimate authority” granted to him by nepo baby “he’s not quite dead” Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the Iranian public is facing prison time for saying anything that would make the regime look bad in the West.

Iran’s parliament is pushing a new bill that could put Iranians in prison for up to two years just for speaking out about the country to US or Israeli media.

The bill would criminalize interviews and communications with the media deemed hostile to the Islamic Republic, according to local reports.

Under the proposed bill, openly sharing information with the world of what’s happening inside Iran that isn’t approved by the regime would result in a sentence of six months to two years in prison, the Shargh newspaper reported.

Interviews with foreign media, like the ones that have come out of Tehran during the war, would require the permission of Iran’s intelligence ministry.

The proposed crackdown on free speech for the country’s 93 million people comes amid a recent wave of reports of Iranians struggling to make ends meet as the war with the US drags on toward its sixth month.

This might be a “proposed law” right now, but the Iranian parliament is there to rubber-stamp the will of the Supreme Leader, and with Mojtaba missing in action, that means Vahidi is the de facto Supreme Leader. And the odds are quite good that anyone arrested under this law would either “disappear” while in prison, or told to recant. However, that doesn’t always work, especially when those already under arrest realize they have little left to lose.

Seyed Ahmad Seyedabdollahi, a 32-year-old psychologist and counselor from Borujen who had been living in Tehran, posted an English-language video on January 4. In it he spoke directly to Trump and urged him to act quickly on his pledge to support Iranian protesters. Young Iranians had trusted his words, he said, and those who helped the Iranian people would be remembered.

“To prove your good intentions to the Iranian people, either do something without saying anything or act very quickly on your words, because many young people trust what you say. And, as you probably know, many things are useless to people who are dead. I assure you that the Iranian nation remembers good deeds well, and they will try to repay their friends in the future.”

Ten days later, on January 14, Seyedabdollahi was reportedly arrested at his father’s home in Borujen. Plainclothes agents confiscated phones and electronic equipment. He was held in solitary confinement and at an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence detention facility in Isfahan.

Branch One of the Borujen Revolutionary Court convicted him of “engaging in media activities against national security.” He received seven months in prison and a five-year ban from government and public services. He was detained again on July 7 to begin serving the sentence and remains in Borujen Prison.

The Hana Human Rights Organization, a Geneva-registered group that monitors abuse in Iran, said Seyedabdollahi was denied contact with his family for 17 days after his first arrest and that his family initially did not know where he was being held. Iran International reported that he was denied access to a lawyer of his choosing during his detention and was at times prevented from communicating with his family.

Authorities opened a second case against him in June on a charge translated as “propaganda against the establishment” or “propaganda against the system of the Islamic Republic.” That case remains at the preliminary investigative stage.

Court documents obtained by Fox News Digital appear to detail the authorities’ investigation and contain references to alleged foreign contacts and financial transactions involving the United States and Israel. Interrogators accused him of connections to the CIA and Mossad and of receiving money for making the video, (a) relative said.

The relative also alleged that authorities pressured Seyedabdollahi to record a second video repudiating his original message and attacking Trump and Americans.

“He did not give in to numerous pressures to publish a clip that contradicted the first video,” the relative said. “He was asked to sexually insult Trump and make the American people look stupid and ignorant so that we could broadcast your clip on the national media.”

The relative said Seyedabdollahi continues to face pressure in prison after refusing the demands. “His situation in Borujen Prison is not good because he has been out of solitary confinement for a few days, but sometimes they take him to solitary confinement under various pretexts,” the relative said. Monitored telephone calls make it difficult for him to speak openly about his treatment.

We have already seen what Iran is willing to do to suppress dissent on the streets. A law like this will simply give the regime the pretext to seize anyone they deem a threat. And as the economy continues its slow-motion collapse, the people are going to get even more restless and angry. This last week, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent warned that Iran is about to become the target of “economic isolation.”

“Watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of the economic isolation of a country,” Bessent said Thursday on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight.”

While the Treasury chief did not provide details, he said the measures will mark another escalation of the administration’s effort to cut off money flowing to the Iranian government. The U.S. has already imposed a naval blockade that has cost Tehran roughly $4.8 billion in oil revenue.

Bessent said President Trump ordered the Treasury to “apply maximum pressure to the Iranian regime” as the U.S. turns to economic warfare after previous strikes and threats failed to end the nearly six-month war.

“It will be a combination of economic isolation like ‌the world has ​never seen before, ​and ​the continued blockade in ‌the Strait of ​Hormuz that will ​keep anything from going in or out of ​the ‌Iranian ports,” he told Newsmax.

Since then, Bessent said the administration has targeted Iran’s “bank accounts, crypto wallets, [and] assets around the world,” while working to cut off payments to the regime and its proxies.

Which leads to the second part of Iran’s plan – outlast President Trump until the midterms, and hope that the Democrats take back Congress. At least, that’s Newt Gingrich’s theory.

Gingrich theorized that Tehran is banking on Democrats roaring back to power and opening a bevy of investigations into Trump that will keep him distracted from achieving his military objectives.

“The North Vietnamese knew they could never defeat us militarily, but they could defeat us politically,” Gingrich

“Their whole effort was designed to get the American news media to turn against the war, and then to have the American political system break and conclude that it couldn’t sustain [the war],” he added.

“The Iranians have a strategy very much like the North Vietnamese communists. Their goal is to survive, to not give in to anything basic.”

Polls have shown that the war in Iran is unpopular, but Trump has conducted it through an air campaign rather than a full-blown invasion like the Vietnam War, which had tens of thousands of American casualties and triggered intense anti-war protests at home.

Gingrich stressed that, like North Vietnam, Iran is “focusing on trying to win in America politically what they can’t possibly win militarily.”

Trump has long declared that his chief objective of the war in Iran is to ensure that the Islamist regime does not obtain a nuclear weapon.

In response to the war, Iran has wreaked havoc in the Strait of Hormuz, where nearly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil supplies once flowed annually, causing gas prices to spike heading into the midterm elections.

We already have candidates who are highly sympathetic to Iran, like Abdul El-Sayed and all the new DSA candidates who are poised to be going into the House. These candidates loathe Trump and the West, and are not shy about their leanings. Bill Maher pointed out one candidate who didn’t make it past the primary in Washington state, Melissa Chaudhry. She is a Muslim convert, married to a Muslim man, and she lost her primary race because she and Kshama Sawant (yes, THAT Kshama Sawant) split the radical DSA/communist vote between them, and allowed incumbent Representative Adam Smith to win his primary in the 9th Congressional District (which encompasses the south Puget Sound area) and his Republican challenger to take the second spot (Washington state has a “top two” primary system, which could have set up a Democrat versus DSA fight in the general election). Maher noted that Chaudhry merely said the quiet part out loud.

Bill Maher: “A liberal Democrat named Melissa Chaudhry running for Congress in Seattle was asked, ‘Why, among the many liberal causes listed on her website, LGBT rights was conspicuously absent?’

"Because she said, ‘a lot of Muslims do not feel that way, unfortunately.’”

“Is… pic.twitter.com/trWdK3XBnM

— Ari Hoffman (@thehoffather) August 16, 2026

This should be a wake-up call to those who pride themselves on their “liberalism.” But in the same vein of “Queers for Palestine,” the left has no thought to what happens AFTER those who support the regimes who execute gay people get power. So yes, if the Democrats do take control of Congress during the midterms, President Trump will indeed be tied up by the side far more sympathetic to Iran – which is what they are counting on.

While it might feel “cleaner” to simply let the Iranian economy collapse, the reality is that the people of Iran will continue to pay the price either way. It would be quicker and easier to simply knock the remaining pillars out from under their economy right now (Kharg Island, anyone?) and get it over with well before the midterms. Iran believes that they are in the drivers’ seat right now, and if they can just hang on until November, they will have allies within the United States who will work on hamstringing the president, and turning a blind eye to whatever Iran decides to do next.

Featured image via jorono on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license