On the morning of the opening attack against Iran in late February, President Donald Trump addressed the Iranian people directly. "When we are finished, take over your government," he told them. "It will be yours to take." Two weeks later, the only crowds visible in Tehran's major squares have been pro-government rallies, fueled by anger over the war and what Iranians view as American military missteps.
The expectation of a popular uprising was central to the war's planning. In the days leading up to the attack, senior Israeli officials told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if the initial strike succeeded in killing a large portion of the Iranian security establishment - including the supreme leader - there was a good chance protests would erupt again quickly, "Hvylya" reports, citing The New York Times. Netanyahu appeared to sell that idea to Trump, who built it into his public messaging.
The assessment seemed far-fetched to many at the time, and two weeks of war have validated the skeptics. Rather than fracturing the regime, the strikes - particularly the deadly hit on an elementary school near a military base in southern Iran - have consolidated public support behind the government. Trump himself now appears to have doubts about the viability of an uprising.
In a radio interview with Brian Kilmeade of Fox News, Trump acknowledged the bleak reality facing would-be protesters. "They say, 'Anybody protests, we're going to kill you in the streets,'" he said of the Basij militias tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. "So I really think that's a big hurdle to climb for people that don't have weapons. I think it's a very big hurdle."
The IRGC's paramilitary forces and the militias that killed thousands of protesting Iranians on the streets in January remain fully operational. While Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead, the theocratic power structure he built over nearly four decades has not collapsed. His injured son has assumed command and pledged to fight on. The powerful IRGC apparatus that sustains the regime was never the primary target of the air campaign - and it remains the main obstacle to any internal challenge to the government.
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