The elimination of Khamenei, the destruction of the fleet and missile arsenal, the systematic bombing of security forces — these are the stages of preparation for a popular uprising.
This text is a summary of Yuriy Romanenko's broadcast with Maziar Mian on the situation in Iran.
When American and Israeli aircraft began striking Iran on February 28, 2026, many observers treated it as a sudden turn of events. Maziar Mian — an Iranian who has lived in Ukraine for twenty years, a man who follows the Islamic Republic's internal politics through family, friends, and Farsi-language Telegram channels — saw it differently from the very beginning.
"All of this started after the 2022 protests, when Israel in particular saw that there was such internal potential to rely on," Mian says.
According to him, following the killing of Mahsa Amini and six months of unrest, Israel's military and political leadership reached a fundamental strategic conclusion: Iranian society is not an inert mass terrorised by the regime, but a living, potentially explosive force — one that could be factored into planning and built upon.
The symbolic turning point came with Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi's visit to Israel in 2023. The son of Iran's last shah met with Netanyahu, visited the Western Wall and Yad Vashem. For a politician in exile, long dismissed by Western capitals as an exotic relic of the past, it represented entry into an entirely different arena.
"The meeting with Netanyahu was the first such high-profile meeting with a head of state," Mian notes. After it, he believes, planning began for a multi-stage operation to dismantle the regime.
The operation was originally scheduled for the summer of 2026. But the January protests reshuffled the timeline — favourably for those who wanted regime change in Tehran. Israel's Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi publicly acknowledged that upon seeing Iranian society's readiness, the command decided to move earlier.
"They decided to carry out this operation sooner because they saw the readiness of the Iranian people," Mian explains.
January 2026: The Rehearsal for Revolution
To understand the logic of the current war, one must return to what happened on January 8–9, 2026. The episode was barely noticed in Western media, overshadowed by other news. But Mian calls it a turning point.
On January 6, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi posted a video address on Instagram calling people to take to the streets. The clip was viewed more than 90 million times. On the evening of January 8, at the precisely announced time — 8 p.m. — people came out across Iran.
"At eight o'clock people took to the streets. At nine o'clock the internet was shut down completely," Mian recounts.
Over the course of two days — January 8 and 9 — the regime killed more than 30,000 people across the country. Not only in Tehran. In small towns in Ilam province, in Lorestan, in Baluchistan. Two small cities in western Iran — Abdanan and another whose name escaped Mian in the heat of the conversation — were for several days entirely under the control of the protesters.
"The call for people to take to the streets was very well received, very positively. People listened and came out," Mian says. And he adds with barely concealed certainty: when the time comes again, they will come out again.
The January events proved that Crown Prince Pahlavi is not merely "a YouTuber in exile," as sceptics in the Iranian-American diaspora like to say. He is a politician with genuine mobilisation capacity inside the country.
The Anatomy of the Operation: From Tentacles to the Head
Mian describes the logic of the military campaign as sequential and surgically constructed. No chaos — only methodical stages.
The first stage: the destruction of proxy networks. The dismantlement of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the elimination of Hamas's fighting capacity in Gaza. The Islamic Republic's tentacles across the region have been severed.
The second stage: the destruction of Iran's own military capacity. The missile programme and the fleet. "The fleet was sunk entirely, including the ship that was in the Indian Ocean," Mian says. Ballistic missile launchers were struck so effectively that the number of launches dropped, by various estimates, by 60 to 70 percent. On the first day of the war, Iran fired approximately 275 missiles. A week later — around 15 per day.
The third stage — and this is where the conversation becomes genuinely unexpected — strikes against the internal security apparatus. Against the headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, against police stations, against sports complexes where IRGC fighters had taken shelter.
"Yesterday there were strikes on several state sports complexes. That's where the security forces were hiding. At the Azadi Olympic complex, a 12,000-seat indoor arena was bombed — that's where the security forces were hiding," Mian recounts.
Romanenko articulates the logic of these strikes directly: "This is preparation for an uprising, because this is the command centre for suppressing an uprising." Mian agrees.
Why spend expensive missiles on a district police station in a provincial town? Because that station is precisely the point from which armed men will emerge when crowds take to the streets. Remove that point — and there will be no one to fire on the crowds.
"Why do this? Why bomb a small police station in a small town? There is a plan behind this. And that plan is regime change," Mian says.
Loss of Command: When Generals Act on Their Own
The first day of the war brought not only military results but a political rupture. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was eliminated.
"On the first day, Khamenei was killed — the leader of the Islamic Republic, the man everything depended on, really. That is a very significant result," Mian assesses.
Khamenei's death exposed the structural weakness of a system built over decades around a single decision-making centre. It turned out the regime had a contingency plan for the elimination of its leadership: authority to issue orders would be delegated to lower-ranking generals. In theory — sensible. In practice — catastrophic.
"Now different generals in different places are doing whatever they feel like," Mian observes.
The result has been a series of decisions that can only be described as irrational. Iran began striking countries that had until the last moment tried to prevent the war and had served as intermediaries. Missiles and drones were launched toward Oman, Azerbaijan, Turkey. One missile landed in Cyprus — on the territory of a British military base.
"They started bombing even Oman. What is the point of that?" Mian asks, genuinely bewildered.
The scene he describes next is worthy of political satire. The Iranian foreign ministry urgently calls Baku, says it does not understand what happened, and promises an investigation. Simultaneously, the IRGC publishes a statement claiming that the drones that landed in Azerbaijan were not Iranian at all — they were Azerbaijani.
"This speaks to a loss of control," Mian concludes. The regime has not yet collapsed — it is "somehow holding on" — but the signs of a disintegrating command structure are unmistakable.
Who Rules Iran Today
The question of who actually holds power in Tehran after Khamenei's death is not rhetorical. Mian analyses the power structure in detail.
Nominal president Masoud Pezeshkian is a decorative figure. "He decides nothing in Iran right now," Mian says, adding that this has been true since the moment of his election.
Real power is concentrated in the hands of two men. The first is Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader's son, himself a product of the IRGC, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War. He is, in Mian's assessment, the most likely candidate to become the regime's new leader. The second is Ali Larijani, secretary of the National Security Council. It was he, Mian says, who ordered the opening of fire on protesters on January 8–9: "The National Security Council gives permission to open fire. That is his area of responsibility."
There is a third figure: Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament, also an IRGC veteran. All three are products of the same system, the same corps, the same war.
On the periphery sit the reformists — Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif. Mian does not rule out that they may be brought in as transitional figures with a more moderate public image. But they are not an independent force.
Tellingly, on the day of the broadcast, Israeli forces struck again at the underground bunker beneath Khamenei's residence — this time with bunker-busting munitions. "They say someone was there. Perhaps one of those I named today is no longer with us," Mian says carefully.
Kurds, Separatism, and Red Lines
One of the most hotly discussed topics surrounding the Iranian conflict is the role of Kurdish armed formations. Western media have actively covered the possibility of a Kurdish advance from Iraqi territory. Mian reacts to this subject with undisguised irritation.
"This is all ridiculous. Nothing will come of it," he says.
His argument operates on two levels. The first is purely military: the Iranian army numbers 150,000 to 190,000 troops, plus several hundred thousand reservists. Against that force, a few thousand armed Kurdish fighters in Iraq amount to "just a joke," in Mian's words.
The second level is political and psychological, and it is the more important one. Iranian Kurds who came out to protest on January 8–9 with the same slogans as residents of Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz consider themselves Iranians. Separatism is a marginal phenomenon with no mass support even in Kurdistan.
But this argument carries a crucial caveat. Mian draws an unexpected parallel with Ukraine: "If Israel and the United States support marginal separatists to seize some piece of territory — in that case, people like me in Iran, they will all go to fight and defend their land."
He recalls his father — a military officer who served under the Shah. When Saddam Hussein attacked Iran in 1980, his father went to the front — to defend the country, not the regime. "For him there was no such thing as 'this is an attack on the Iranian regime.' A man has come to take your land — you go to defend your land."
That is precisely why, Mian insists, the current war is perceived by Iranians differently from any previous aggression: "No one wants to take the land of Iranians. On the contrary — they are bombing the people who were killing them two months ago."
The Information War: From Videocassettes to Starlink
A separate thread in the conversation concerns how the opposition maintains contact with the population under conditions of total information blockade. Mian paints a picture in which forty years of the regime's war on outside signals forms an almost farcical sequence.
First, videocassettes were confiscated — the first wave of emigrants from the United States had been recording messages to those left behind. Then satellite dishes were seized — officials would arrive, climb onto rooftops, and simply take them away. "We had to buy a dish again just to pick up the satellite signal," Mian recalls from his years living in Iran.
Now they cut the internet. On January 8, 2026 — one hour after people took to the streets — the network was severed entirely. Simultaneously, they began jamming Starlink.
Today opposition channels with tens of millions of subscribers broadcast via satellite and shortwave radio — "like Voice of America fifty years ago," Mian observes without irony. Several times hackers broke into Iran's state television: for a few minutes, all channels broadcast Prince Pahlavi's address.
Starlink, meanwhile, continues to work partially. "We receive photos, we receive videos" — meaning that inside Iran there exists an organised network of people who film events, know who to pass material to, and manage to upload it through the few points where signal gets through.
The Cost for Ukraine: Short-Term Pain, Long-Term Gain
Romanenko does not shy away from the uncomfortable question: what does this war mean for Ukraine right now? The answer is not simple.
The short-term costs are obvious. Oil prices are rising. Patriot interceptor stockpiles in the Gulf states have been seriously depleted: according to calculations Romanenko cites from an analysis by Fabian Hoffman, the UAE alone spent between 20 and 40 percent of its arsenal in the first days of the war. The United States is simultaneously lifting some sanctions on Russian logistics companies — to incentivise Moscow toward greater flexibility. Washington's attention and military resources are focused on a different theatre.
"The Russians now have a window of time — they will have an advantage in overcoming our air defences," Romanenko acknowledges.
Mian does not dispute the tactical dimension. But he insists on the strategic one: "In the long-term perspective, Ukraine will gain an ally instead of an enemy." Shaheds will stop flying. Ballistic missiles will stop being supplied to Russia. And Zelensky's meeting with Crown Prince Pahlavi at the Munich Security Conference in early 2026 is evidence that Kyiv is already thinking in precisely these terms.
"This is where it all started, when we had our first broadcast together. The first one — autumn 2022, when I was on your show for the first time. We talked about the need to start communicating with him," Romanenko reminds Mian. "Yes, we were the first," Mian confirms.
Why This War Cannot Last Long
Mian's concluding argument is perhaps the most important for understanding the overall situation. The war against Iran cannot drag on. Not because no one wants it to, but because too many competing interests are arrayed against a prolonged conflict.
China receives 80 percent of its Iranian oil through the Strait of Hormuz. India is the largest buyer of Middle Eastern energy. Arab states live off transit through the same strait. Trump cannot afford a long war ahead of an electoral cycle.
"It is not in anyone's interest. China, India — they buy oil from the Arabs, and that oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. No one will allow this to be a long war," Mian says.
The military logic also works against prolongation. In the first week alone, according to Mian's assessment, 80 to 90 percent of the Islamic Republic's missile capacity has been destroyed. The fleet is on the seabed. The command structure has collapsed. "If this happened in one week, then in another week there will be no launches at all."
The central question remains: will the strikes against the security apparatus weaken it enough that a popular uprising, when the call comes, does not drown in blood — as happened in January?
"When they have been bombed out — then we will see whether there is a result or not," Mian says. And he adds the words that make this broadcast an important document of the moment: "Right now, everything is heading in that direction."