After eight days of utter defeat, the Iranians have finally apologized for expanding the war. Well, at least one Iranian did, and that speaks volumes about the collapse of the theocratic regime.
Donald Trump noted this apology in a Truth Social post earlier this morning, to which we'll return at the end. To grasp Trump's overall message, the context of this apology matters. Regime president Masoud Pezeshkian issued the apology to other Gulf states in a rushed video message, but it won't come with a change of policy. Apparently, no one's taking orders from the mullahs' side of the regime any longer:
Iran’s president apologized Saturday for attacks on regional countries even as its missiles and drones flew toward Gulf Arab states, indicating that Tehran’s political leadership could not exercise full command over Iran’s armed forces. He also rejected US President Donald Trump’s repeated demands for surrender.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, one member of a tripartite leadership council overseeing Iran since a Feb. 28 airstrike started the war and killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered the defiant message exactly one week into a conflict that has spread across the region, rattled global markets and air travel and left Iran’s own leadership greatly weakened by hundreds of Israeli and American airstrikes.
The message, seemingly filmed in a hurry without professional broadcast equipment, again underlined the limited powers being exercised by the theocracy’s leaders over its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which controls the ballistic missiles targeting Israel and others. It answered only to Khamenei and now appears to be picking its own targets as the conflict widens.
Pezeshkian promised to halt the attacks, which went about as well as you'd expect:
BREAKING: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized to neighboring countries for recent attacks and said Iran would halt further strikes unless those countries attack Iran first.
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 7, 2026
(Dubai International Airport was attacked shortly after the statement)
pic.twitter.com/LezRrxf50l
Pezeshkian claimed that the "Guardian Council," a triumvirate which includes the president and ostensibly holds power until a new Supreme Leader is chosen, had told the IRGC to stop firing at other countries unless they attacked first. The IRGC then completely ignored Pezeshkian's orders:
Huge explosions were heard across Iran as Israel carried out a "broad-scale wave of strikes" using 80 fighter jets targeting Tehran and Isfahan, where key nuclear facilities are located, as the war entered its eighth day. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE saw fresh drone and missile attacks on Saturday, even as Iran's president apologised to the Gulf nations for the strikes.
Translation: The Islamic Republic has ceased to be. Iran is now a flat-out military dictatorship. The IRGC no longer takes orders from the theocratic government that it supposedly serves. They have used this crisis to seize power, and they will not hand it back. Pezeshkian is now an irrelevant figure, as is Larijani and anyone else outside the armed services of Iran.
This brings us back to the bizarre narrative involving Mojtaba "Nepo Babytollah" Khamenei and the Assembly of Experts. The Iranian regime is built around the ruling ayatollah, elected by the mullah council and in whom all power supposedly resides. The sudden death of Ali Khamenei left an intolerable vacuum of power at the top of this theocratic tyranny, and the Assembly of Experts still has not filled it – not with Nepo Babytollah or anyone else. The council temporarily appointed senior mullah Alireza Arefi to fill the void while they met, who supposedly serves with Pezeshkian and Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei as the third leg of the triumvirate (the "Guardian Council").
Only ... no one has heard from Arefi. No one has seen him, and unlike Pezeshkian, he's not going on camera to reassure everyone of the continuity of government. Neither have the Assembly of Experts, whose headquarters in Qom got destroyed by the Israelis on Monday while they reportedly met to choose Khamenei's successor. No one has seen or heard from Mojtaba either. No one on the theocratic wing of the Islamic Republic has come forward since the Qom strike, even though the necessity of demonstrating continuity is so obvious that a child could understand it. IRGC-connected news services keep issuing updates on the status of the clerics' assembly and claim that Mojtaba is essentially home-officing until further notice, but that's the only claim for proof of life at the moment.
It's not even clear how much control the IRGC has at this moment either, but they have enough to defy Pezeshkian's orders. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has claimed that Ali Khamenei prepared for the war by ordering the all-out attack on Iran's neighbors and implementing a "mosaic" strategy, in which decentralized units would be empowered to carry out their last orders independently until ... something happened. In the last eight days, the US and Israel has done tremendous damage to command, control, and communication functions within Iran, so we are likely seeing the mosaic strategy playing out without any central control to reverse it and halt action – a risk in every war in which leadership gets destroyed.
That brings us to Trump's Truth Social message earlier. He took credit for Pezeshkian's "surrender" to his neighbors, but warned that it was not enough. Unless Iran's entire regime surrenders in full, Trump promised to widen the target selection in Operation Epic Fury, and that would start today:
Iran, which is being beat to HELL, has apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors, and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore. This promise was only made because of the relentless U.S. and Israeli attack. They were looking to take over and rule the Middle East. It is the first time that Iran has ever lost, in thousands of years, to surrounding Middle Eastern Countries. They have said, “Thank you President Trump.” I have said, “You’re welcome!” Iran is no longer the “Bully of the Middle East,” they are, instead, “THE LOSER OF THE MIDDLE EAST,” and will be for many decades until they surrender or, more likely, completely collapse! Today Iran will be hit very hard! Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
That threat is not just from the US or Israel, either. Pezeshkian's apology likely intended to avoid the insertion of ground troops into Iran, and not Americans or Israelis. The drone attacks and attempted terror attacks in Azerbaijan have enraged the government in Baku, which has now ordered its armed forces to prepare for mobilization:
The defense ministry of Azerbaijan has explained the order of operations in the event of the declaration of military mobilization No. 1 in the country, local media report.
It was noted that in the event of a military mobilization in Azerbaijan, its armed forces are brought to full combat readiness, and at the same time, the conscription of servicemen in reserve begins.
It was announced that within the framework of the mobilization measures, military units are sent to combat positions or to certain pre-designated areas.
It was emphasized that these measures are aimed at ensuring the operational readiness of the Azerbaijani army and the ability to quickly respond to possible threats.
Azerbaijan has a relatively small military, with 128,000 active-duty overall and reserves at around 300,000, where Iran has a combined active-duty force closer to 600,000. However, the Azerbaijanis have spent the last several years in a protracted war against Armenia, so they have some battle experience – certainly more than most of the IRGC and probably all of Iran's regular army. And the IRGC and the regular army in Iran is currently getting destroyed by the US and Israel; even the surviving units are pinned down at best.
Air supremacy over Iran would provide Azerbaijan forces all of the cover they would need to march on Tehran, where an oppressed populace is just waiting for people with heavy arms to remove the Basij and IRGC forces keeping a popular revolt from succeeding. One or two divisions of battle-tested Azerbaijani forces with massive US-Israeli might be enough to liberate Tehran and force the IRGC to run for the hills, long enough for the people in the capital to seize power and begin arming themselves.
Or so Pezeshkian may believe. A new wave with new targets – perhaps regular army positions, likely police functions in the major cities – might be seen as a prelude to a ground-force incursion in the region of Tehran by an experienced army that the IRGC has seriously pissed off. That may account for the apology, but if the IRGC has stopped taking orders and imposed a military junta, Pezeshkian's promises are just whistles past the graveyard of his regime.
Editor's Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
Help us report the truth about the Trump administration’s decisive actions to keep Americans safe and bring peace to the world. Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member