After weeks of massive military build-up, America and Israel’s joint attack on Iran has taken out the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man who not only led the Islamic Republic but defined it.
Tehran has retaliated by firing drones and ballistic missiles, apparently in all directions, as the Middle East is plunged into an unprecedented period of turmoil.
And in the eye of that storm are the people of Iran. Tens of thousands of them have bravely taken to the streets, calling for their rights and regime change since December. They faced a bloody slaughter, mass arrests and weeks of promises from the Trump administration that “help is on its way”.
Their future is now even more dangerously uncertain.
“The hour of your freedom is at hand,” Donald Trump declared to the Iranian people on Saturday. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance in generations.”
But one of the biggest concerns from across the spectrum of Iranian opposition is that, while the Americans have taken out Khamenei, airstrikes do not make a regime change.
Donald Trump said the Supreme Leader’s death is “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country” – but the process for selecting his successor is already underway. There are concerns that, particularly since the last wave of US strikes on Iran in June, the real power has been held in the hands of the Supreme National Security Council and the brutal network of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
And so, instead, this joint operation, when it’s over, will leave a degraded, wounded yet still standing furious regime looking to enact revenge close to home, to pound a population into submission lest they dare heed Trump’s call.
It does not help that the protest movement fizzled out in the bloody crackdown, and never had a clear leader or replacement. That is despite some protesters calling for the return of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah, the monarchy that was toppled in the 1979 revolution, which ushered in the current Islamic Republic.
Even those who support the strikes are concerned, like the Iranian Kurdish separatists, who have some of the few organised armed opposition forces in the country (and, it should be noted, are not in support of a Shah).
“If the strikes don’t end this regime, the next time people rise up it is going to be worse than ever before, especially in the targeted killing of minorities. Massacres will happen,” said Hana Yazdanpana, a member of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, the PAK, an armed Kurdish nationalist movement.
“The silence from the international community after the series of uprisings and calls for help meant hundreds, thousands of youth were captured,” she continued.
“Of course, the strikes are welcomed, but we lost a lot of energy from the people due to past failures to rescue them. We need to bring the hope back.”
And that is the issue, external military pressure may weaken a regime, but it rarely, if ever, ushers in a viable stable alternative, and in the interim, that space during transition is the most dangerous.
