The massive anti-regime protests that swept Iran in January have given way to a starkly different political reality: even Iranians who despise the theocracy are showing up at rallies to defend their country, political scientist Vali Nasr has told Bloomberg. The war Washington hoped would trigger an uprising has instead united the population against an external enemy.

The fundamental question inside Iran has shifted, "Hvylya" reports, citing Nasr's conversation with Bloomberg's Mishal Husain. "Are you for war or are you against war? As opposed to: are you for the regime or are you against the regime?" Nasr said. This new dividing line has scrambled the old opposition calculus entirely.

The mechanics are straightforward. When Tehran suffers acid rain from bombed oil depots and civilians die, the argument that America and Israel are liberators collapses. "If the city of Tehran is under acid rain because of the bombing of oil depots, people might die - people are dying, their lives are being destroyed," Nasr said. Destruction of cultural heritage sites has further convinced Iranians that the campaign targets Iran itself, not just its government.

Before the war, the picture was simpler: a repressive regime facing an exhausted population that wanted economic openness and personal freedom. That anger has not disappeared. But it has been temporarily overridden by a survival instinct that neither Washington nor Jerusalem factored into their planning.

Nasr was blunt about the implication for US strategy: "If the president was looking for a quick political uprising in Iran, it's not happening. And it won't happen until the dust of this war settles." The Iranian public, which both Israel and the United States had counted on as a force multiplier, has become irrelevant to the war's outcome for now. Meanwhile, Netanyahu continues to predict the collapse of the Iranian regime - a prediction that, according to Nasr, has no basis in current reality.

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