If there is one side that has lost the most from the six-week war between Iran and the U.S.-Israeli coalition, it is not the governments that fought it. It is ordinary Iranians - the very people whose desire for freedom Washington invoked as justification for the conflict.

"If one has to point to the side that has lost the most as a result of this conflict, I think it is the Iranian people, the cause of democracy in Iran," Suzanne Maloney, vice president of the Brookings Institution, told Foreign Affairs. "And it is why the decision to undertake this war was so deeply misguided by the Trump administration," "Hvylya" reports.

Iranians had been seeking change long before the war. Large protests swept the country in January 2026, but the regime responded with what Maloney called "obscene brutality" - at least 7,000 civilian protesters were killed, "and probably many more." The war gave the military government a new pretext for control.

Under bombardment, the prospects for opposition have only worsened. Maloney said she does not see a "rally around the flag effect," but the war has terrorized the population and handed the regime new tools of repression. "There's a military government very much in place now in Iran. It will be even more determined to ensure that it retains control of society," she said.

Executions have continued at a brisk pace even at the height of the conflict. With international internet connections severed, the regime has distributed messages via the national intranet threatening Iranians "not to dare protest," Maloney said. The five and a half weeks of bombardment have left the country in a state of collective trauma that makes organized opposition nearly impossible.

The economic picture compounds the damage. Iran "already had a struggling economy" and was "very much closed off from the international financial system," Maloney said. Rebuilding will take place "under potentially really negative circumstances." Whatever the regime extracts at the negotiating table, ordinary Iranians will face a "much battered economy" and a security apparatus more entrenched than ever. "Iranians are terrorized by their own regime," Maloney said. "They have been seeking change, and economic issues have been a huge vulnerability for this system - and that will continue even after this war."

Earlier, "Hvylya" reported on how Iran's public display of nuclear progress gave its adversaries the confidence to strike.