Authoritarian regimes under foreign attack often benefit from a "rally around the flag" effect - citizens set aside grievances and unite against the external threat. Tehran may be counting on exactly this dynamic after Operation Epic Fury. According to a leading Iran analyst, that would be a grave mistake.
Ali Vaez, Director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, writes in Foreign Affairs that if the Islamic Republic "believes that foreign attacks will help it shore up popular sentiment domestically - the rally-around-the-flag effect - it might be sorely mistaken given that the regime itself has just spilled the blood of thousands on home soil," as reported by "Hvylya".
The timing is what makes the calculation so toxic for Tehran. The regime did not face these US-Israeli strikes from a position of domestic legitimacy. Just weeks earlier, it had unleashed an "intensely bloody campaign" to crush nationwide protests, killing at least several thousand civilians. The anger had started among merchants dismayed by the collapsing currency but quickly expanded into calls for the regime's demise.
Even by the standards of a ruthless government, the crackdown stood out. The regime moved with "alarming alacrity" to kill thousands of its own people and crush the movement's swelling momentum. This is not a government that can now credibly ask those same citizens to rally to its defense against foreign aggression.
The fundamental problem is one of sequencing: a regime that slaughters its own population cannot then invoke national solidarity when bombs fall from outside. The blood on the streets is too fresh, the graves too new. Whatever patriotic reflex might have existed was likely extinguished in December and January - long before the first American missile hit Iranian soil.
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