Many Iranians hoping for regime change even as beleaguered government clings to power

Many Iranians hoping for regime change even as beleaguered government clings to power

- Roger Cohen

DUBAI - Roxana Saberi felt like she was back behind bars in Tehran. As she watched Israel's bombing of Evin prison, the notorious detention facility at the core of Iran's political repression, she shuddered at memories of solitary confinement, relentless interrogation, fabricated espionage charges and a sham trial during her 100-day incarceration in 2009.

Like many Iranians in the diaspora and at home, Ms Saberi wavered, torn between her dreams of a government collapse that would free the country's immense potential, and her concern for family and friends as the civilian death toll mounted. Longings for liberation and for a ceasefire vied with each other.

"For a moment, I imagined seeing Iran again in my lifetime," said Ms Saberi, 48, a dual Iranian and American citizen and author who has taken a break from her journalistic career. "I also thought how ridiculous it was that the Islamic Republic wasted decades accusing thousands of women's rights advocates, dissidents and others of being spies, when they couldn't catch the real spies."

Those spies, mainly from Israel's Mossad foreign intelligence service, penetrated Iran's highest political and military echelons. The question now is what a shaken Islamic Republic in dire economic straits will do with what Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate, has called "a golden opportunity for change". That moment is also one of extreme, even existential, risk brought on by the 12-day Israeli-Iranian war that the US briefly joined.

The military campaign flirted with dislodging the clerical autocracy that has made uranium enrichment the symbol of Iran's national pride, but stopped short of killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's 86-year-old supreme leader, even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had said that the ayatollah's death would "end the conflict". The 46-year-old Islamic Republic limps on.