The US-Israel War Against Iran and Iran’s Internal Conflicts

Coastal Carolina University hosted the 2026 South Carolina Political Science Association annual conference on March 20 and 21. Organized by Suheir Daoud, Ph.D., professor of political science. Approximately 70 professors and students from colleges across South Carolina attended to present research and engage in discussions on politics and international relations. The conference featured Mohsen Kadivar, Ph.D., research professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, as the keynote speaker.

Ladies and gentlemen, South Carolina Political Science Association, the Provost, the Dean, and the Chair of Coastal Carolina University,

Although I am not a political scientist, it is my pleasure and honor to speak at the 2026 South Carolina Political Science Association (SCPSA) Annual Conference. I should thank Professor Suheir Daoud for inviting me to this important event. Today is Nowruz — the first day of the new year in the Iranian calendar.

The matter of Iran is exceedingly complex — far more complex than the simplistic or at times distorted picture that is often drawn in much of the American media, or in the statements of the U.S. President and his senior cabinet members. My remarks will consist of three parts: a brief overview of Iran-U.S. relations before the 1979 Revolution, and in greater detail after it; the main headlines of the two recent wars waged by the United States and Israel against Iran; and the broad outlines of Iran’s internal conflicts. At the end, I will respond to your questions.

My account is a firsthand narrative from my homeland, Iran. I have been a critic of the Pahlavi regime, and since late 1987, a critic of the Islamic Republic as well. I have experienced imprisonment both before and after the Revolution. I am an exiled writer who has been banned from publishing in my own country since 2009. I am fundamentally opposed to the Islamic Republic and to Islamic governance — the concept of Velayat-e Faqih, or clerical rule — and I have authored numerous books and articles critiquing the political theory of Ayatollah Khomeini, calling for the impeachment of the second Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, and challenging his qualifications to hold religious authority.

On the other hand, as an American citizen, I am a serious critic of the United States foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and specifically of President Trump’s domestic and foreign policies, as well as Israel’s warmongering, expansionist, law-defying, and apartheid policies. Beyond being Iranian or American, I view these matters from the perspective of a global citizen. I am committed to ethical standards, international law, United Nations documents, and the United States Constitution. I wished to make clear from the outset that you are listening to a voice that is critical of all three parties — as you will hear in detail.

A Brief Overview of U.S.-Iran Relations

I wish to pay tribute to the memory of Howard Baskerville, the American teacher who was killed in the city of Tabriz in 1909, fighting alongside Iranians who were struggling to establish the rule of law in Iran during the Constitutional Revolution. He is the “American martyr of Iran’s Constitutional Movement.”

The most significant event regarded as the first turning point in the history of Iran-U.S. relations was the coup of August 1953, carried out jointly by the United States — under the name TP-AJAX Project — and Britain, against Iran’s legitimate Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh was a democratic and secular prime minister, elected by Iran’s Parliament, who nationalized Iran’s oil industry on March 20, 1951, and put an end to British exploitation in Iran. Mosaddegh adhered to a policy of negative equilibrium and never granted concessions to the Soviet Union; in turn, the Soviets refused to purchase Iranian oil during the Western oil embargo. Iranian Marxists also campaigned vigorously against Mosaddegh’s national government. Islamists, too, had no fondness for him — Ayatollah Khomeini did not even consider him a Muslim, though on a personal level, Mosaddegh was a devout believer.

Mosaddegh’s national and democratic government had become a model for Third World countries. Inspired by Mosaddegh, Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in Egypt in 1956. President Dwight Eisenhower overthrew Mosaddegh’s democratic and national government and imposed the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi on Iran for a quarter of a century. During this period, Iran was America’s most important ally in the Middle East and the largest exporter of oil to Israel. The country’s intelligence and security organization, SAVAK — the primary instrument of suppressing the freedom movement in Iran — was established in March 1957 by the American CIA and Israeli Mossad. The 1953 coup was the greatest blow the United States ever dealt to the process of secular democracy in Iran, and among its consequences were the rise of Islamism, the 1979 Revolution, and the coming to power of the clergy in Iran.

President Jimmy Carter is the last U.S. president to have visited Iran, on December 22, 1977. On the eve of Christmas in Tehran — fourteen months before the Revolution’s victory — he described Iran under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi as “an island of stability” and portrayed the Shah as beloved by the Iranian people. This is a telling example of how well the United States understood events in Iran! One week after this speech, the Shah ignited the revolution by publishing an insulting article against Ayatollah Khomeini.

After the Revolution, Iranian students known as the “Followers of the Imam’s Line,” in revenge for the August 1953 coup, seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held American diplomats hostage for 444 days — an act that received the decisive support of Ayatollah Khomeini and, justifiably, the opposition and subsequent resignation of Mehdi Bazargan, the head of the provisional government. The students demanded the extradition of the Shah for trial and the return of Iran’s frozen assets in the United States. This ill-considered action by the students led to the United States’ sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which persist to this day, and inflicted the greatest damage on the bilateral relationship while tarnishing the image of the Islamic Republic in international forums. The burning of the American flag and chants of “Death to America” are further sources of this tension and are certainly indefensible. This constitutes the second turning point in Iran-U.S. relations.

With Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in September 1980 — a war that lasted eight years — the United States, during President Ronald Reagan’s tenure, alongside the Soviet Union, China, and several European countries, became one of Saddam’s arms suppliers, particularly in the latter half of the war. On July 3, 1988, an Iran Air passenger aircraft route from Bandar Abbas to Dubai was shot down over the Strait of Hormuz by the USS Vincennes of the U.S. Navy, killing all 290 passengers and crew, including 66 children. The United States claimed that its naval forces had mistakenly identified the civilian aircraft as a military plane. In 1990, the captain of the vessel received the Legion of Merit from President George H.W. Bush for “exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service” during his command of the Vincennes. This is yet another bitter memory Iranians hold of America.

In the relations between the two countries over the past thirty years, we encounter three distinct models: that of President George W. Bush, that of President Obama, and that of President Trump.

In the tragedy of the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York on September 11, 2001, and the killing of several thousand innocent people, fifteen of the nineteen of the attacking terrorists were Saudi nationals — not a single Iranian was among them. Iran’s reformist president, Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, was among the first world leaders to explicitly and unequivocally condemn this savage attack, which ran contrary to both Islamic and human values. Iranians lit candles in Tehran in solidarity with the victims. Yet President George W. Bush, in his annual address to Congress in January 2002, labeled three countries — including Iran — the “Axis of Evil,” while the countries whose nationals had played a role in the catastrophe — all allies of the United States in the Middle East — were conspicuously absent from this axis. This occurred even as the United Nations had designated the year 2001 the “Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations,” at the proposal of Iran’s President Khatami — a theory he had advanced in opposition to Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis.

The second model is that of President Barack Obama, under whose leadership a lengthy process ultimately culminated in the Islamic Republic signing the nuclear agreement — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany, and the European Union in June 2015. Under this agreement, Iran’s nuclear activities were fully restricted for fifteen years, and the International Atomic Energy Agency was granted access to all Iranian facilities to monitor and verify compliance. In return, Iran was relieved of United Nations Security Council sanctions, European Union sanctions, and U.S. secondary sanctions. During President Obama’s tenure, both Iran and the United States remained faithful to this agreement.

The third model, however, belongs to President Donald Trump. In his first term, in April 2018, he tore up the nuclear agreement, formally withdrew from it, and announced the reimposition of previous sanctions. Iran, in turn, resumed its former enrichment program. The most resolute opponents of the nuclear agreement were Israel, the Republicans — and foremost among them, President Trump — and Iran’s hardliners. The then-Supreme Leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, was not happy with it. These factions consistently championed permanent hostility between Iran and the United States.

The Israel-America War Against Iran

In June 2025, while Iranian and American representatives were in negotiations and nearing a final agreement, Israel launched a military attack against Iran, assassinating a considerable number of senior commanders of the IRGC and the Iranian Army in the opening hours of the assault. Prime Minister Netanyahu chose this moment for the military strike for several reasons: first, to prevent a deal between Iran and the United States; second, following the mass killings in Gaza, the assassination of Hamas leaders in Palestine and Tehran, the killing of Hezbollah members through pager explosions in Lebanon, and the assassination of the Hezbollah leader, Israel assessed that the Islamic Republic was at its weakest point, and that by assassinating senior IRGC commanders the regime would collapse — that Iran’s discontented and protesting citizens would pour into the streets and welcome the fall of the Islamic Republic.

But that is not what happened. A few hours after Israel’s military assault, the Islamic Republic launched its own missile strike against Israel, swiftly appointed replacements for the killed commanders, and rather than citizens taking to the streets in anti-regime protests, national solidarity in defense of the homeland against foreign aggression actually increased. Contrary to some expectations, Iranian missiles were able to strike their predetermined targets and inflict significant damage on Israeli infrastructure.

On the twelfth day of the war, two important developments occurred. First, Prime Minister Netanyahu concluded that his defense systems had sustained serious damage and that he lacked sufficient ammunition and capability to continue the war; he therefore requested that President Trump announce a ceasefire to regroup and prepare a new offensive. Second, President Trump needed a propaganda achievement to end the war as a victory. He therefore ordered the heavy bombardment of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and then personally announced both the strike and its conclusion, declaring the destruction of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities. With Iran’s nuclear capabilities destroyed, he reasoned, there was no longer a justification for continuing the war — and so he declared a ceasefire in triumphant terms. Iran, having suffered extensive infrastructure damage and human casualties during this aggression, accepted the ceasefire.

Both sides declared victory. Yet when the casualties and infrastructural damage are considered, this aggression produced no winner. Israel and the United States did not achieve their stated objectives — the collapse, dismemberment, or civil war of the Islamic Republic. For the Islamic Republic, this amounted to a victory. However, among the outcomes of the twelve-day war were: greater dominance by hardliners — particularly the IRGC— over the country; the further marginalization of reformists and moderates from decision-making; and the increased suppression of the legitimate freedoms enshrined in the Constitution. Israel and the United States effectively slowed and complicated the Iranian people’s struggle for democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.

The second war began while Iran and the United States were engaged in negotiations in Vienna, with Oman serving as mediator. According to the official statement of the Omani Foreign Minister, Iran had accepted all of America’s conditions regarding nuclear energy, and the following round of talks was to finalize the agreement. Prime Minister Netanyahu encouraged President Trump to attack Iran. Unlike previous American presidents who had declined Netanyahu’s invitations, President Trump fell into Netanyahu’s trap, and the joint, large-scale military assault by the United States and Israel on Iranian territory began on Saturday, February 28. In the very first hours, the second Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, was assassinated along with several members of his family — including his daughter and two young grandchildren — as were several senior military commanders. A primary school in Minab was also bombed by the United States on that first day, and according to Amnesty International, 168 innocent people were killed, most of them schoolgirls. Over the course of these four weeks, a large number of residential homes, schools, hospitals, emergency centers, pharmaceutical factories, archaeological sites, museums, airports, and civilian infrastructure — including power plants, oil and gas refineries, and fuel storage facilities — have been bombed by the United States and Israel, causing severe environmental contamination. More than 1,700 civilians have been killed, including over two hundred children and two hundred and thirty women.

The Islamic Republic replaced its killed military officials even more swiftly than in the previous war. In accordance with the Constitution, a Leadership Council immediately convened, and within less than a week, the Assembly of Experts appointed Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei — son of the assassinated Supreme Leader — as the third Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. He had been wounded in the bombardments on the first day of the current war and had watched his father, wife, sister, son-in-law, and young nieces perish before his eyes. Iran’s military forces defended Iranian soil more resolutely than in the previous war, attacking Israel with Iranian-made missiles and drones; Israel’s costly Iron Dome has proven unable to intercept the Iranian projectiles, and they have inflicted heavy damage on Israeli military sites and infrastructure.

This war differs from the previous one in several significant respects. First, the war began with a joint assault by the United States and Israel, not merely an Israeli attack using American weapons and funding, with a symbolic American strike at the end. President Trump embroiled the United States in an all-out war with a country several thousand miles away, dispatching two massive aircraft carriers to the region. Second, American strikes on Iran have largely been launched from the country’s numerous bases in its Persian Gulf ally states — the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, and Jordan.

In response, and with prior notice, Iran has carried out missile and drone strikes against every location from which attacks on its soil have been launched. Where these bases have been used to strike Iranian infrastructure, Iran has reciprocally targeted the infrastructure of the American-allied countries. In other words, the United States and Israel’s war against Iran has spread to the broader region. Iran has repeatedly stated that its strikes constitute legitimate self-defense and proportional retaliation against American bases in the region, and that it harbors no hostility toward any of its Arab neighbors.

Third, Hezbollah — which Israel had claimed to have destroyed — launched an attack on Israel following the assassination of the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, having issued prior warning. Israel then launched heavy strikes against southern Lebanon, occupying part of that country’s territory. In these three weeks, it has killed more than one thousand Lebanese civilians, displaced over one million people, and inflicted widespread destruction in southern Lebanon comparable to what it carried out in Gaza.

Fourth, Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers belonging to the United States and its allies, permitting passage only to vessels from countries that have not participated in the aggression against Iran. Iran has announced that it will maintain this policy after the war as well. President Trump appealed to allies around the world to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. To date, no country has responded positively to his request — meaning America stands alone. Iranian drone and missile strikes have compelled both American aircraft carriers to withdraw from the region.

Fifth, Iran has concluded that in both wars, negotiations were nothing more than a deception — that the United States, at Israel’s instigation, used diplomacy to keep Iran preoccupied while preparing a military strike. Accordingly, despite multiple requests from Trump’s envoy Witkoff over these four weeks for talks, Iran has not responded. Iran’s position is that a country that has twice attacked it during ongoing negotiations and twice betrayed diplomacy cannot be trusted. Furthermore, Iran has so far declined multiple mediation offers from Arab and non-Arab Muslim countries for a ceasefire, viewing any ceasefire as a prelude to allowing the United States and Israel to regroup for a new attack. Iran’s explicit response to date is as follows: We did not start this war. We are exercising legitimate self-defense and proportional retaliation in defense of our territorial integrity and independence. The defense will continue until we are assured that the aggression has ended and until adequate guarantees against renewed aggression are provided. We are prepared to conclude a non-aggression agreement or armistice with the guarantees, but without such guarantees, we will neither accept a ceasefire nor negotiate with an aggressor that does not abide by international treaties.

The pressing question — both in the United States and internationally — is: what was President Trump’s objective in launching a military assault on Iran? Did he have a deliberate, methodical, and timed plan? This question need not be posed about Israel, as the answer is clear to all: the partition of Iran, the dismantlement of the existing order, regime change, and civil war. From among Trump’s contradictory and inconsistent statements — where it is unclear which objective is primary — the following goals can be identified: 1) halting Iran’s alleged development of an atomic bomb, or permanently stopping uranium enrichment in Iran, or the complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear industry; 2) regime change in the Islamic Republic, or installing a leadership subservient to the United States and compatible with Israel; 3) Iran’s unconditional surrender and the transformation of Iran into a country resembling other American-allied Middle Eastern states; 4) the partition of Iran; 5) a war of attrition, rendering the existing regime ineffective, fomenting civil war, calling for internal insurrection, encouraging armed Kurdish forces in Iraq to enter Iran and wage war, and threatening a ground invasion of Iran; 6) permanently neutralizing the threat Iran poses to the United States; 7) Iran is a source of instability in the Middle East and a sponsor of terrorism that must be eliminated once and for all.

He appears to have forgotten that on June 22, 2025, following the heavy bombardment of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, he officially declared the complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear industry. The assassinated Supreme Leader of Iran had issued a religious decree (fatwa) forbidding the construction of nuclear weapons on religious grounds. To date, despite repeated claims by Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump, there is no evidence or proof of Iran attempting to build a nuclear bomb. I do not have specialized intelligence on this matter. Iran is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and under the JCPOA and comparable agreements, there is no cause for concern. The United States is the world’s largest holder of nuclear weapons, and Israel, too, is armed with this destructive weapon. Double standards are indefensible. Nuclear weapons are harmful for any country. Do President Trump — with his deeply problematic policies — and Prime Minister Netanyahu — despite his conviction by the International Court of Justice in The Hague as a war criminal — have the authority to decide on the use of nuclear weapons, while Iran is not even permitted to possess nuclear energy for civilian purposes?!

It appears that President Trump’s primary concern about Iran is not uranium enrichment — because he knows well enough that Iran neither intends to build a nuclear bomb nor has come close to doing so. These are media fabrications, much like the false propaganda before the invasion of Iraq under President Bush — claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction — which was exposed as a lie after enormous casualties and destruction. Or what was propagated before the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president and his wife about drug trafficking from Venezuela to the United States, after which it became evident that the true objective was seizing Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and colonizing that country.

It appears that President Trump’s principal objective in attacking Iran is to ensure Israel’s security. Based on available documentation, Iran has never posed a genuine operational threat to the United States. Specialists in the field — such as John Mearsheimer and others — have stated this clearly. Accordingly, the current war does not align with President Trump’s “America First” strategy; that strategy has shifted, in effect, to “Israel First.” Many of the president’s own allies within MAGA (Make America Great Again) have pointed this out to him and criticized it sharply. I will cite one example:

Joe Kent (Joseph Clay Kent), an American politician and former U.S. Army/CIA special operations officer, resigned from his senior position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in the Trump administration on March 17th. These are his exact words: “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

This war is costing America one billion dollars per day. Is this enormous expenditure — for something that does not serve America’s national interest, and particularly given that most of the American people do not support a war against Iran — in any way defensible?

The American Ambassador to Israel declared just days ago that the entire Middle East belongs to Israel. This is the true intent of Israel’s rulers. If President Trump is pursuing the realization of such a vision, he would do well to share it openly with his own citizens. This war is, of course, intended to pave the way for such an ambition.

Under the United States Constitution, the President is required to obtain Congressional authorization for war. No such authorization was obtained. This war is unconstitutional. Under the norms of international law, the aggression of the United States and Israel against Iran is unlawful, and no legal justification supports it. Under United Nations documents, member states are not permitted to attack other member states. This war is illegal. Of course, for a president who considers himself above international law, such objections carry little weight. And yet, have not the existing laws of the United States prohibited assassination attempts against the leaders of other countries?

The president who entered his second term on the laudable pledge that he would not drag America into another war — and would bring all existing wars to an end — has now launched one of the costliest wars in American history. He has explicitly stated that he is proud to be killing Iranians, or that attacking Kharg Island is, for him, a form of entertainment. Do the Republicans — who, in addition to the presidency, hold the majority in Congress, the Senate, and the Supreme Court — not consider what devastating blows these reckless policies are dealing to America’s reputation in the world, to American values, and to America’s national interests? Should we not learn from the bitter experience of America’s previous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam?

Had President Trump known the Iranian nation, he would never have raised the foolish demand of “unconditional surrender.” Such a concept does not exist in Iran’s lexicon. Iran has the experience of an eight-year war. The United States and Israel are not prepared for a prolonged war. I am confident that the dream of Israel and President Trump — Iran’s unconditional surrender — will never be realized. The opposite is, in fact, more likely to materialize: oil prices rising so dramatically, and the prices of countless goods increasing worldwide in consequence, and American and Israeli casualties mounting to such a degree, that Republicans lose their majority in the Senate and Congress in the November elections. Then it will be President Trump who must reconsider his mistaken policies — not the reverse. And the possibility of his impeachment and trial cannot be dismissed.

It seems that every American citizen who thinks about their country’s national interests, and who is concerned about restoring America’s damaged international standing and its seriously harmed values, must act urgently to end this war. Before we witness the black body bags of American soldiers returning home — as happened during previous American wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, bringing grief to countless families — we must immediately bring this illegal, unconstitutional, unjust, and strategically self-defeating war to an end.

Iran’s Internal Conflicts

Iran is a country with several thousand years of civilization — a civilization-building nation that has been a superpower three times in its history. Even when it has been occupied by aggressors, it has imposed its language and culture upon the invader, absorbing them into its own rich cultural heritage. Cyrus the Achaemenid ended the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, and he is mentioned by name several times in the Hebrew Bible with gratitude. Although Iranians constitute less than five percent of the world’s Muslims, nearly fifty percent of Muslim scholars have been Iranian, ten times their proportion of the population. The Persian language is the second language of Islam. Iranians rightly take pride in their culture, civilization, and homeland.

For nearly one hundred and fifty years, Iranians have been fighting in their country for the rule of law, freedom, and justice. During this period, they have had two revolutions: the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and the one of 1979, known as the Islamic Revolution. The Revolution of 1979 was one of the most authentic revolutions of the twentieth century, prompting a revision of certain sociological theories — namely, desecularization and the return of religion to the public sphere. The Islamic Republic is an “electoral authoritarian” system. Iran’s political regime, both before and after the Revolution, is authoritarian — like many of the regimes found across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, the Islamic Republic holds one advantage over most authoritarian regimes in the Middle East: it is electoral. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the president, parliament, city councils, and the Assembly of Experts are all directly elected by popular vote.

Although the assassinated Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, through the jurists of the Guardian Council — who are appointed by the Supreme Leader under the law — restricted elections through an unlawful interpretation of supervisory approval, limiting candidacy to figures approved by that Council, Iranians were nonetheless able on several occasions to elect their preferred candidates for the presidency and parliament against the Supreme Leader’s wishes. Seyyed Mohammad Khatami served as reformist president (1997–2005), and Hassan Rouhani (2013–2021) as moderate president, during whose tenure the JCPOA was concluded. The current president, Masoud Pezeshkian (since July 2024), also managed to defeat the hardliner candidate Saeed Jalili. In the Sixth Parliament (2000–2004), reformists held the majority and created serious difficulties for the Supreme Leadership. By contrast, in many of the Arab Persian Gulf states — such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar — not a single government official is elected by popular vote, and elected parliaments simply do not exist. In the UAE and Bahrain, the few elected representatives play no decisive role in the political structure.

The Islamic Republic is a revolutionary regime that came to power through a popular revolution with the decisive support of more than 98 percent of the people. Ayatollah Khomeini was a charismatic figure who, until his death in 1989, enjoyed the support of a strong majority, at a minimum of more than three-quarters of Iranians. Although he did not believe in freedom and democracy, he was not aligned with conservative fundamentalist clerics. Despite being a religious authority and spiritual leader for a significant portion of Shia Muslims inside and outside Iran, and enjoying the support of many Sunni Muslims worldwide, he paid attention to popular consent and maintained a balance between the political left and right factions. In governance, he was pragmatic, deeply committed to the principle of expediency of the state, and in practice — albeit unknowingly — by introducing the element of expediency, he laid the groundwork for the secularization of Shia jurisprudence and Iran’s political system.

The second Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, lacked the high-ranking religious scholarship and charismatic personality of Ayatollah Khomeini. Being suspicious of the political left faction — operating under the banner of reformism — he gradually eliminated them entirely from the system’s orbit. Under his leadership, the political right faction, operating under the banner of principalism, came to occupy all positions of power. The principalists gradually divided into two branches: moderate principalists and hardline principalists. As the purification process continued, the moderate principalists were themselves gradually removed from the body of the system, and most key positions fell to the hardline principalists — known as the Steadfastness Front. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–2013) and Ebrahim Raisi (2021–2024) were two hardliner presidents elevated by the Supreme Leadership.

Over the thirty-seven years of Khamenei’s rule, the country was governed by leadership decrees rather than law; the republican character of the system was severely weakened; freedom and democracy declined; corruption and discrimination increased sharply; and most importantly, public discontent grew. As the Supreme Leader constrained reformist and moderate presidents and blocked all legal reforms, a growing number of Iranians concluded that the Islamic Republic is unreformable. Electoral participation in recent years fell below 50 percent for the first time since the Revolution — meaning nearly 60 percent of eligible voters did not participate — and the non-participation rate in Tehran approached 70 percent. Based on calculations across several recent elections, it can be said with confidence that the level of Iranian discontent with the Islamic Republic has reached approximately 85 percent. In other words, under the second Supreme Leader — particularly over the past two decades — the Islamic Republic has become the rule of a monopolistic minority over a discontented majority.

To the degree that the system lost its popular base, reliance on an unfree judiciary, security forces, and particularly the IRGC increased. To silence critics, the government employed house arrest for prominent dissidents, lengthy imprisonment of political critics, dissolution of opposition political parties, closure of independent newspapers, and exile of influential figures. For example, the most prominent religious authority who was originally supposed to become the second Supreme Leader — Ayatollah Montazeri — was placed under house arrest for more than five years after criticizing the state takeover of the seminaries and challenging the Supreme Leader’s qualifications to hold religious authority. The last prime minister of the Islamic Republic received a majority of votes in the 2009 presidential election, yet Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in his place. The largest street protests since the Revolution — known as the Green Movement — arose under the slogan “Where is my vote?” These protests were violently suppressed, and Mir Hossein Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard have been held under house arrest for fifteen years.

The IRGC has become the most powerful institution in the country — not merely militarily, but in terms of security, economics, politics, culture, and even media. Due to the multi-layered sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic by the United States — unprecedented in their scope worldwide — Iran’s economy has been severely damaged, and the burden of these sanctions has fallen more heavily on the people, particularly on low-income groups and the middle class, than on the government itself. The sanctions have fed corruption. More than one-third of the population now lives below the poverty line. The mounting economic pressure, combined with political, cultural, and social restrictions, and the system’s rigidity in accepting any form of political or social reform, has fueled street protests. For instance, over the past thirty years, Iranians have staged street protests on average every 2.6 years — including in 1999, 2009, 2017, 2023, and 2026. The age of protesters has gradually decreased, and the number of demonstrators killed by security forces — specifically the IRGC — has increased. According to official figures, approximately 3,000 protesters were killed during the demonstrations of January 8 and 9 of this year; according to documented figures from the opposition, the number is approximately 7,000.

The Iranian opposition falls into two broad groups. The first is the national opposition — those who seek structural reform in the country, a referendum on changing the system, and a non-violent transition from the Islamic Republic toward a democratic government, while simultaneously opposing any foreign interference in or military aggression against Iran, and firmly opposing the partition of Iran. This group holds that confronting foreign aggression takes precedence over confronting religious despotism.

The second group — the non-national opposition — constitutes a spectrum of dissidents who believe the Islamic Republic must be removed at any cost, even through violence or through American and Israeli military attack. Some of these opponents — though not all — have been organized and armed by Mossad. The monarchists who support the son of the former Shah — who is openly backed by Prime Minister Netanyahu — and the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) are two well-known dependent opposition currents that receive disproportionate coverage in Western media. To date, President Trump has not shown particular favor toward Reza Pahlavi. The non-national opposition — whether uninformed independent individuals who advocate foreign military intervention, or the fully dependent opposition — is in the minority and is unlikely to play a decisive role in Iran’s future.

It can be stated with confidence that the national opposition commands an overwhelming majority — meaning much more than three-quarters of Iranians are seriously opposed to the American and Israeli assault on their homeland. Iranians thus distinguish between Iran and the Islamic Republic: while they oppose religious despotism and the governing system’s manner of rule, they simultaneously and wholeheartedly support the Army and the IRGC in defending their country’s soil against foreign aggression. This is precisely where the complexity of the Iranian question lies. Notably, the visible presence of ordinary citizens on the streets in support of the armed forces, the funeral processions for those killed in the war and in Israeli assassinations of military and civilian officials, and the expression of support for legitimate self-defense against American and Israeli military aggression have genuinely increased strikingly over the past few weeks. This support in no way signifies support for the Islamic Republic. Contrary to President Trump’s claims, this is not the product of artificial intelligence. One need only consult the reports of Western media correspondents inside Iran.

It is highly unlikely that the American and Israeli military aggression will lead to the collapse of the Islamic Republic, even though the human casualties and infrastructural damage are, regrettably, severe. Yet thus far, President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have left two significant marks on Iran: first, popular solidarity in defense of the homeland — including the deferral of opposition to the Islamic Republic — has increased markedly. Second, this military aggression has weakened and delayed the freedom-seeking and democracy-demanding movement in Iran. After the war ends, hardliners within Iran will suppress freedom-seeking critics far more forcefully than before. This military aggression is negative and condemnable in every respect — for the Iranian people and for the American people alike.