Iran has once again appeared on the front pages, framed as a state on the brink. Protests in Iran have unfolded inside a dense fog of information warfare. Tehran’s self-imposed internet blackout has created a vacuum, and vacuums invite manipulation. Into that space rush foreign media, exile groups, intelligence-linked amplifiers, and governments with agendas of their own. The result is a distorted picture that treats every demonstration as existential, every chant as revolutionary, every rumor as fact.

There is no reason to doubt the courage of those on the streets. Thousands have been killed by most estimates. That alone demands moral seriousness. But empathy should not require credulity. Claims that Iran is days away from collapse are less analysis than aspiration. They echo the same wishful thinking that accompanied the 2009 Green Movement, the Arab Spring, and later the Syrian uprising—episodes where hope outran structure, and narrative outran reality. What is happening in Iran today is serious, tragic, and consequential. It is not, however, a simple morality play with a foregone conclusion.

Washington’s role in this distortion is not subtle. For years, US policy toward Iran has leaned on the logic of pressure leading to rupture. Protests become evidence that regime change is not only desirable but imminent. This framing flatters policymakers who prefer inevitability to complexity. Yet Iranian politics, like Iranian society, resists such simplifications.

Iran’s unrest is not the product of a single spark. It is the convergence of three long-simmering crises that have periodically erupted over the past decade.

The first is water. Iran is running dry. Lakes are vanishing, rivers........

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