Iran appears to be a country that hates US interference either direct or by its proxy, Israel, more than they hate the regime.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/18/middleeast/us-toppled-iranian-government-before-hnk-intl
Oil fields: In 1953, the US helped stage a coup to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh.
He had pledged to nationalize the country’s oil fields – a move the US and Great Britain saw as a serious blow, given their dependence on oil from the Middle East.
Height of the Cold War: The move to nationalize was seen as popular in Iran and a victory for the then-USSR.
Strengthen Shah rule: The coup’s goal was to support Iran’s monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to rule as Shah of Iran, and appoint a new prime minister, Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi.
The coup: Before the coup, the CIA, along with the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), helped foment anti-Mossadegh fervor using propaganda. In 1953, the CIA and SIS helped pull pro-Shah forces together and organized large protests against Mossadegh, which were soon joined by the army.
US cash: To provide Zahedi, the country’s new prime minister, with some stability, the CIA covertly made $5,000,000 available within two days of him taking power, documents showed.
US acknowledgement: In 2013, declassified CIA documents were released, confirming the agency’s involvement for the first time. But the US role was known: Former President Barack Obama acknowledged involvement in the coup in 2009.
It backfired: After toppling Mossadegh, the US strengthened its support for Pahlavi to rule as Shah. Iranians resented the foreign interference, fueling anti-American sentiment in the country for decades.
Islamic Revolution: The Shah became a close ally of the US. But in the late 1970s, millions of Iranians took to the streets against his regime, which they viewed as corrupt and illegitimate. Secular protesters opposed his authoritarianism, while Islamist protesters opposed his modernization agenda.
The Shah was toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution, which ended the country’s Western-backed monarchy and ushered in the start of the Islamic Republic and clerical rule.”
The Guardian reported today on the futility of the war as well as how the repression of anti regime protesters has increased due to the US/Israel attacks:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/28/iran-pro-regime-demonstrations-detained-people
”Iran’s regime has organised more than 850 public demonstrations of support of the government since the beginning of the war and launched a continuing crackdown on unrest that has led to at least 1,400 detentions, research reveals.
The high number of pro-regime gatherings and the increasing number of detentions underlines the resilience of the Islamic Republic despite a month-long campaign of intensive airstrikes by the US and Israel, experts said.”
*”The researchers noted that 99.2% of protests were pro-regime. “The near total absence of anti-regime protests suggests either genuine nationalist consolidation under external attack, heavy self-censorship, or effective pre-emptive suppression through the arrest campaign,” they wrote.
“The arrest campaign is the regime’s primary domestic tool – [with approximately] 1,465-plus detained in 27 days. Charges escalated from ‘filming damage’ to ‘espionage’ and ‘mercenary’ as the conflict progressed.”
Details of such repression are difficult to obtain, but recent incidents include the deaths of 10 people when Revolutionary Guards fired on anti-regime demonstrators and shot at apartment windows in Tehran on 25 March, and three killed on 18 March in Chabahar when detainees protested over food ration cuts inside a prison. On 17 March, security forces intervened against gatherings in Fardis and four Tehran districts when demonstrators chanted anti-government slogans, Acled said. “It was only really on the first night of the death of Ali Khamenei that you saw any small level of anti-regime activism. Since, there has been a coordinated effort to have pro-Iran or anti-war protests,” said Raleigh.
“Alia Brahimi, a regional expert with the Atlantic Council thinktank, said none of the pro-regime protests would have been spontaneous and showed how leadership structures in Iran had withstood the joint US-Israeli offensive.”
The US/Israeli attacks have killed civilians in significant numbers:
”Estimates of civilian casualties vary. More than 1,900 people have been killed and at least 20,000 injured in Iran since the start of US and Israeli attacks, said María Martinez of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) on Friday, citing figures provided by the Iranian Red Crescent. The US-based Human Rights Activists news agency (HRANA) said on Wednesday that 3,300 people had been killed since the war began. It said 1,464 of those were civilians, including at least 217 children.“