Decades of American sanctions strengthened Iran’s Revolutionary Guards by hollowing out the middle class, former US diplomat Joey Hood told Iran International, and once the fighting ends, Tehran will face a reckoning with its own people. Analysts warned in the Obama years that sanctions were handing the economy to a black market run by the Guards, Hood said. That came true: the Guards grew stronger, the middle class weaker, and each time it took to the streets, the state kept shooting until the protests stopped. Relief from the 2015 nuclear deal went to regional militias rather than to Iranians, he said, and the answer now is pressure on the nuclear program and the militias at once, through a coalition of allies rather than bilateral deals. What has changed since the 12-day war in June 2025, Hood said, is that “anything that Iran or its militias do around the world will be answered for in Iran.” “Iranians themselves are having to pay for Iran’s foreign policy for the first time,” he said.