Iranians support Israel assassinating their oppressors – at least for now

Sydney Morning Herald

5 hours ago

Iranians are scared right now. A friend described to me how all the windows blew out in her north Tehran apartment a few nights ago, the walls shaking as a missile met its target just one block away. Another told me of her terror, not knowing whether top regime officials might also live in her suburb. Not knowing which parts of the city were host to secret military or intelligence installations. Not knowing where the next hit would be – and who might end up collateral damage.
Iranians reacted to the first wave of Israeli strikes with a mixture of fear, apprehension and in some quarters, cautious celebration. Social media clips initially circulated showing young Tehranis partying as Israel bombed regime targets, with some residents chanting 'death to Khamenei' (Iran's Supreme Leader) from the rooftops. One survey of public opinion, necessarily conducted from abroad, shows that more than 80 per cent of the Iranian population no longer support the Islamic Republic and would prefer some form of secular democracy. Among my friends and contacts in Iran, it was widely lamented that the country's octogenarian ruler, Ali Khamenei, wasn't among those first assassinated.
The IDF's decimation of Iran's air defences and missile-launching facilities appears to have been more successful than originally hoped. Still, the Islamic Republic has been able to cause significant damage to several Israeli towns and cities as the regime has embarked on its inevitable retaliation. This includes direct hits on apartment complexes and civilian homes, with at least 24 civilians killed and hundreds wounded.
Israel has responded with further strikes and assassinations of regime figures, including the head of the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a group responsible for imprisoning and torturing thousands of innocent Iranians and foreign visitors – myself among them. Few are shedding tears over the demise of evil men like these.
However, there have been worrying signs that Israel's early efforts to distinguish between the regime and the Iranian people are starting to wear thin. Washington-based Iranian advocacy group Human Rights Activists reports that 406 people have been killed, including 197 civilians. As Israel deals with an unprecedented attack on its home soil, its escalation in rhetoric has become alarming. Defence Minister Israel Katz was reported over the weekend to threaten that 'Tehran will burn' should Iran fire missiles at civilian areas.
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So far, the mood within the large segment of the Iranian population that broadly opposes the regime has been to blame Khamenei and his fanatical henchmen for bringing this calamity upon Iran through their nuclear program, sponsorship of terrorist proxies, and increasingly bellicose rhetoric about wiping Israel off the map. Rhetoric which, following the two Iranian missile and drone attacks of last year, seemed less like ideological posturing and more like an operationalisable plan.
The feeling initially was that in brutally suppressing the Iranian people's overwhelming call for greater civil freedoms, including the hijab issue, the regime had sowed the seeds of its own demise. Iranians are a patriotic people who are rightly proud of their deep civilisational roots, yet there was no rallying around the flag of the Islamic Republic following these attacks. Many Iranians are no fans of Israel, but there does exist considerable alignment between the two peoples in that both would like the hardline clerical kleptocracy ruling Iran to be gone.
This is why Katz's comments are idiotic in the extreme. He has since doubled down on this rhetoric, warning on Monday in a post on X that 'the residents of Tehran will pay the price' for Iran's continued bombardment.