On Sunday, at approximately 2 in the morning, Tehran's time, seven stealthy aircraft B-2 attacked Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, the strikes allowed both the belief that Iran had this as the particular technology of American bombers. A drug addict Trump put it in rigid terms shortly after the operation ended. “For 40 years, Iran has been saying death to the United States, death to Israel. They have been killing our people, exploiting their arms, blowing their legs, with road bombs. That was his specialty.”
Convention promotes Iran's coverage in the United States, from anti -American stock images Murals to the lasting threat of “militias backed by Iranian.” Now there is an emerging consensus That overthrow the government in Tehran will achieve what Israeli and American aerial assaults do not have: the end of Iran's nuclear program and the destabilizing aspirations of that country for regional hegemony, not to mention the end of the oppressive Islamic Republic itself. TO series of headlines, Analysts and politicians In recent days he has presented the regime change as a natural certainty, nothing less than a magical bullet. This is also seen as Iran's earring.
Very few of these expert voices have taken the next step asking: “So what?” Where does the magical bullet land? Sovereign imperatives wait for the next group to enter power. Democratic or other, the government that replaces the current regime will focus on Iran's survival. And there are very few reasons for Israel or the United States to think that a reconstituted I will become more conciliatory towards any country once the war ends.
The reality is that nationalismNot theocracy, it is still what historian Ali Ansari calls Iran's “determining ideology.” There is a robust consensus among academics that politics in Iran begins with the idea of Iran as people with a continuous and uninterrupted history, a nation that “comes out of an immemorial past.” Nationalism provides the wide political arena in which different groups and ideologies in Iran compete for power and authority, whether monarchist, Islamist or leftist.
And that means that Iran's patriotic defense is not an approved phase, produced under the coercion of the bombs, but the predetermined position, the great idea that keeps Iran together, hardened in the last two centuries of Iranian history and the trauma of the loss of territory and dignity to external powers, including the Russianshe British and the Americans.
Getting rid of the Islamic rule will not change this dynamic; It is almost certain to guarantee that something worse It will come, sending Iranian politics in unexpected and more corrosive directions. Americans, after all, just need to look at their current administration (or past interventions in the Middle East) to see examples of how populist responses to foreign, real invasions or imaginedcan lead to inconceivable results.
“Trump only guaranteed that Iran will be a state of nuclear weapons in the next 5 to 10 years, particularly if the regime changes,” Trita Parsi wrote from the Quincy Institute based in the United States on Saturday night. This is especially true if a new regime is democratic. The promised “liberation” of the Iranian people through devastating bombing campaigns presents the worst case for Israel and the United States, since no government chosen future would survive unless it would hold, and perhaps exceed, the current belief of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
There is tragedy here. Common Iranians, like most people, want peace and security, preferably through diplomacy and dialogue. The unprovoked attacks of the last week and its subsequent justification not only by the United States, but also in almost the entire European Union, a disastrous sequence that began with the unbridled Trump rape of the Iran agreement of President Obama in 2018, has convinced an increasing number of Iranians that the moderation of weapons, nuclear or other, is national suicide.
To the extent that the Islamic Republic can affirm that it is the only The Iranian government in more than 200 years had lost “not an inch of soil,” continues to cling to power. Of course, such legitimacy comes with a double advantage. This regime can survive in the short term, but if it falls and when it falls, since its leaders failed to keep Israeli and American weapons, ammunition that have already killed more than 800 of their fellow citizens in less than a week, according The group based in Washington Human Rights activists.
One of the most common conventions when it comes to Iran, typically presented as a gesture of grace, is to draw a distinction Between his government and people, to blame “the Mulás” and not to the suffering citizens of the country for the status of their country as a dishonest actor. As a way of attracting the Iranians of the justice of their cause, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their substitutes have deployed tropes of great civilization that would even make the most ardent Persian chauvinist blushing. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister announced That the time had come for the Jews to pay an ancient debt: “I want to tell him that 2,500 years ago, Cyrus the Great, the King of Persia, freed the Jews. And today, a Jewish state is creating the means to free the Persian people.” The regime change, according to this logic, is a recovery and revival project, a safe way to make Iran again.
Iranians are proven to be less nuanced and unvolved. The distance between the Iranian state and society in the last week has been reduced to almost nothing. Through the range of experience and suffering, of imprisoned Nobel Peace Award and previously imprisoned palm d'Or Winners To the working class workers Leaded by the revolution, the primary feeling today in Iran is clear: these clergy can be scoundrels, but they are our scoundrels, our problem to solve.
Almost 50 years after an unwanted dictatorship, the Iranians have developed a refined ability to identify bad faith. They know who has the interests of Iran in the heart and who is trying to save his fur.
American Iranian SHERVIN MALEKZADEH It is a visit assistant Professor of Political Science at Pitzer College and author of the next book, “Fire Under the Ash: The Green Movement and the Stuggy for Democracy in Iran, 2009-2019”.
