Will Iran's hated regime implode?

Trump calls for Tehran to immediately evacuate.

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Iran's regime is often described as decaying, corrupt, bankrupt and despised by its citizens. Is it about to collapse? Israel's shock-and-awe campaign continues relentlessly: On June 16 it said it had "full air supremacy over Tehran". On June 17 US President Donald Trump called for Tehran to "immediately evacuate" and cars have already been streaming out of the city in recent days. Its shops are shuttered. On social media, some Iranians have celebrated the assassination of their generals with emojis of barbecued meat.

The humiliation illuminates the failure of the regime's military strategy and, some hope, may trigger an uprising or a coup d'état, in turn creating chaos or national renewal. Yet Iran's default is to defy its aggressors, not to capitulate. And an extended war with large civilian casualties could act to rally public opinion in an intensely nationalistic country, allowing the regime to survive and redouble its efforts to race for a bomb.

Iran's internal weakness has encouraged attacks before. Some 45 years ago, amid its post-revolutionary disarray, Saddam Hussein, Iraq's president, started the Iran-Iraq war. It lasted eight years and killed hundreds of thousands. Far from weakening the Iranian regime, it strengthened its leadership and the grip of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime's political militia. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants Iranians to rise up. "The time has come for the Iranian people to unite around its flag," he has proclaimed. His operation, "Rising Lion", has evoked the pre-revolutionary flag of the Shah and the Persian symbol of kingship in its centre. Iran International, a satellite channel in London, beamed his appeal into people's homes.