Something was shifting in Iran, but now missiles and the return of foreign interference may tear up the green shoots of progress
Missiles follow trajectories. So do countries. And over the past few days, Israel’s attacks have dramatically changed Iran’s trajectory.
Some believe that Iran was already on a downward spiral and that Israel’s actions will simply accelerate the descent. In an op-ed published on Monday, several of Iran’s most prominent civil society figures, including Nobel peace prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, declared that the “only credible path to safeguard [Iran] and its people is the resignation of the current leadership”. In this view, the war could be construed as a deliverance – Israeli officials are openly suggesting that their operations could lead to regime change in Iran. But if Iran’s decline was already precipitous, why are ordinary Iranians terrified by the outbreak of war? Why have they not welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu as the saviour he imagines himself to be?
The answer is that Israel is harming, not improving Iran’s trajectory, the arc of which had recently been bent upwards through the persistent efforts of the Iranian people. Iran has long undershot its potential, held back by a sclerotic and oppressive government that has failed to undertake necessary reforms. Yet despite many headwinds, the country has been experiencing slow but steady improvements in its political, economic and social conditions over the past few years. Iran’s people have been successfully pushing back against the authoritarian tendencies of the leaders in Tehran. Now they have been thrust into a war devised by an authoritarian leader in Jerusalem.
