"War has instead done what it usually does: empowered the powerful, rallied the faithful, and allowed an apparatus of repression to present its imperatives in terms of national security," writes Secot. "Trump, of course, is as indifferent to the fate of Iran's civilians as he is ignorant of their circumstances. But there is still one gesture he could make, in service not of the Iranian political opposition per se but of the forgotten cause of human decency, toward a population protected neither by its own regime nor by anyone else. The next time he shoots for the deal of the century, he could add to his list of pie-in-the-sky demands a few that would cost him and the Islamic Republic next to nothing: the release of those arbitrarily detained, an end to political executions, and a respectful burial for the dead."