Iran’s Choices

The 12-day war that pitted Iran against two nuclear powers, Israel and the United States, is one of those conflicts that permits all sides to declare victory.

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For the Islamic Republic, that declaration came quickly, and centered on the fact that the regime is still standing. Despite heavy losses and widespread damage, there was no collapse, no revolt, and no regime change.

To many Iranians, especially among the opposition abroad (some of whom — from the exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, to the former armed group Mojahedin-e-Khalq — openly cheered the strikes), the scale of the onslaught suggested an intent to topple the government. But a revolt was always unlikely, given who was calling for it. The urban middle class — the backbone of Iran’s civic and professional life - was not going to rise up on behalf of the two foreign powers most associated with decades of coercion and violence in the region.

Thus, whether ordinary Iranians “won” or not will depend on what comes next: how the government responds, how quickly it can rebuild civilian infrastructure, and whether it offers concessions to a middle class that rallied around the flag in the face of a brutal bombing campaign.

Some change was already coming well before Israel attacked. Since mid-2023, the Islamic Republic has been showing signs of a strategic shift inward. It did not directly enter the fray after Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel, nor in response to its allies in Lebanon and Syria coming under pressure.

Owing to mass protests in 2022, following the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody, the regime curtailed street-level enforcement of the unwritten dress code. When I visited Tehran and a few smaller cities last April, I was struck by how much the urban scene had changed. Many women (though not most) went out with their hair uncovered, and mingled freely with young men in the coffee shops that have mushroomed across urban Iran.