By any reasonable measure, the past two weeks have not gone according to plan in Washington or Tel Aviv. When Donald Trump remarked in a recent interview that regime change in Iran “is not going to happen easily,” the statement carried the weary tone of a man acknowledging political gravity. It was less a revelation than a quiet admission of failure.

For weeks, the strategy had seemed straightforward: military pressure, psychological warfare, and the familiar expectation that domestic unrest would fracture the Iranian state from within. Israel joined in military operations. Commentators in Western capitals predicted a predictable script—bombs from outside, protests from inside, and eventually the collapse of the ruling order.

Instead, something almost antique in its political simplicity occurred. The Iranian public, divided and often angry at its own government, suddenly remembered that it had a country.

That realization changes everything.

History has always shown that nations tolerate astonishing levels of internal dissent—until an external threat appears. At that moment, grievances are often postponed, rivalries muted, and patriotism, dormant but powerful, rises with surprising speed. The phenomenon is neither mysterious nor uniquely Iranian. One can find it in the pages of history from World War II to the early days after the September 11 attacks in the United States.

In Iran’s case, the calculation by outside powers misunderstood a fundamental political instinct. The Iranian public may criticize its leaders; it may even protest them. But when those protests appear to be manipulated or encouraged by foreign adversaries, the dynamic changes.

National pride enters the room.

At first, the protests within Iran seemed to follow the pattern familiar to observers of modern politics: anger over governance, frustration over economic hardship, and calls for reform. These were authentic grievances. Yet the moment many Iranians sensed that Western governments—and especially Israel—were attempting to weaponize that discontent, the protests began to lose........

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