I agree that these types of things galvanize a population.
Sometimes better to just let sleeping bears sleep.
The regime was organically declining in popularity. Israel’s war simply rejuvenated the regime’s supporter base without any meaningful gains on the ground. There was minimal impact to the enrichment campaign. And the fact that negotiation was used as a ruse by the Americans is definitely a motivation to pursue enrichment even further.
Not to mention that regional powers are now wary of Israel’s expansionist nature and see nuclear power as the only true deterrent. Think about it: does anyone ever mess around with Pakistan or NK?
This offensive directly led to the Saudi-Pakistan defense pact, with Turkey probably joining soon. I would also wager that both KSA and Turkey are starting or are considering starting their own nuclear weapons programs.
Israel’s war on Iran was an important piece in the way to the collapse of the regime. It exposed how incompetent the regime truly is in protecting Iran, and how the Iranian “ring of fire” project (masterminded by Qassem Suleimani) to encircle Israel with proxies, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, was taken apart by Israel in the course of a year. All of this investment, in direct funding as well as sanctions over the past 40 years came to naught when Israel struck back. Mullahs were exposed as weak, irrelevant, only able to oppress their own.
Furthermore, Israel essentially decapitated the Iranian state apparatus in those 12 days. Everyone who mattered in the government and IRGC was killed. It just completely pulled the rug from under this regime.
I’m almost confident this is over. And with it there’s going to be a huge shift in Middle East politics. Likely more countries will align with Israel, but the removal of the primary Shia power might push the Sunnis to negatively fixate on Israel.
I am less convinced this is the end though, but maybe another step in a slow death of the regime. Regarding your last point, this is already happening, now that Iran is weak the KSA has less of an interest to ally with Israel and it shifts to allying its previous rivals of Qatar and Turkey along with Pakistan
Let’s follow up in a few months and see who was right.
That is a statement that might make sense two weeks ago, but now? Evidently the effect Israel war had was not enough to prevents riots, or arguably might have emboldened them
2. The scale of the protests is very likely overblown.
3. Iran’s purging of Mossad assets since the 12 day war has not yet wrapped up. The CIA is rumored to also have assets participating in these riots.
