Will Iranians Rise Up? Here Are the Odds.

 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/03/01/iran-uprising-trump-khamenei-regime-change-00806179

According to Donald Trump, Iranians have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “The hour of your freedom is at hand,” he declared, as U.S. and Israeli warplanes pounded Iranian cities and the compound of the country’s supreme leader. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will probably be your only chance for generations.”

The country’s population, after all, is clearly fed up with the Islamic Republic. Over the last decade, Iranians have repeatedly staged mass demonstrations against the regime. Those protests typically only go away after the government responds with horrific force. In December and January, for example, hundreds of thousands of Iranians spent weeks demonstrating — until Iranian security officials shot and killed thousands of them. But now, American and Israeli warplanes are attacking Iran’s military and security apparatus and destroying other government institutions. They have killed the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and many other top officials. The Trump administration seems to be betting that the Iranian people will soon take over the regime change process, resume protesting and successfully remove a greatly weakened government.

Iranians, of course, do desperately want a better future, and they have been willing to protest under very difficult conditions. For an autocracy, the country has high levels of civic engagement. It is therefore possible that Iranians will succeed where other populations haven’t. But history suggests most of the country’s people will not heed Trump’s call, and that even if they do, they will have a hard time winning.

“Never,” Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who studies air power and regime change, replied when I asked whether what Washington was doing in Iran had succeeded elsewhere. “Bombings have never led people to take to the streets and topple their leader.”“In order to save the pro-democracy protesters, you’ve got to be right there,” Pape told me. “You have to have troops on the ground.”