Netanhayu is not any Iranian's friend as nuch as he would like to asert he is.
‘This War Is Not Helping Us’
Members of Iran’s opposition want change, and fear for their lives.
By Arash Azizi
https://archive.ph/c1CiV#selection-581.0-597.11
“I know that war won’t bring democracy,” she told me. She was active in the Women, Life, Freedom movement against compulsory veiling in 2022–23, and she told me that Netanyahu is no champion of the movement’s values. “The life that we wanted is the mirror opposite of the terrible events that are now happening,” she said. But the war hadn’t endeared Iran’s leadership to her, either—she blames its aggressive policies for the country’s predicament.
That Iran has a substantial population opposed to its system of government is well known and has been oft-proved through cycles of protest and repression. The Women, Life, Freedom movement was one dramatic iteration. It followed economically motivated protests in 2017–19, the sweeping pro-democracy Green Movement in 2009–10, a student uprising in 1999, and an electorally based movement for reform covering nearly all the years since 1997. Iranians have been outspoken inside the country and across an ever-growing diaspora against the Islamic Republic’s human-rights abuses, constriction of personal freedoms, economic mismanagement, and belligerent foreign policy.
For years, the debate outside Iran was theoretical: Would a military strike on the country help its people topple a hated regime, or would it cause even oppositionists to rally ’round the flag in their nation’s defense? Now the answer to this question is being determined by the hour, and it is neither binary nor simple. Even ardent anti-regime activists I spoke with were hard-pressed to support Israeli attacks that have already killed almost 200 civilians, according to Iran’s health ministry. Some had cheered the killings of certain repressive military figures in the early hours of the strikes, but the mood has since turned to terror, the priority simple survival.
Kar told me she blames Khamenei for having made an enemy out of Israel for decades. But she made clear that Netanyahu is no friend to Iran’s freedom fighters. “Nobody I spoke to in Iran supports these attacks,” she said. “People are angry, and they hate the Islamic Republic. But they now probably hate Mr. Netanyahu and his military policies even more.”
Israel’s campaign could yet rattle the Iranian regime into some kind of change in behavior or composition. But the notion that air strikes will lead to a popular uprising, or that Iranian activists for freedom will support a devastating war on their homeland, appears to be little more than a fantasy.