For more than a week now, protests over the cost of living and skyrocketing inflation have rocked the streets of Iran. While the protests are the largest such movement against the government since protests over the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022, they’ve been smaller so far, despite reports of demonstrations in at least 78 cities already. While protests over the dire state of the economy are not unusual, these protests have begun amid a new push by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for another war with Iran over its ballistic missile program. The explosion of attention has been emanating almost entirely from Washington and Tel Aviv, where powerful interests were hoping from nearly the first day of the protests that the overthrow of the Islamic Republic was finally at hand.

Israeli opposition leader Naftali Bennett, who has oftentimes encouraged Netanyahu to be even more confrontational on the regional stage, sent out a video, spoken in English but subtitled in Farsi, encouraging “each and every” Iranian to go out and create a “better Middle East,” and saying “all the nations of the free world” stand with them. Both the Israeli science minister and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham donned black “Make Iran Great Again” hats for the cameras in their respective countries. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also lent his support, posting to X what appears to be an AI image of a statue of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei crumbling before a hangman’s noose.

Despite the assessment of Israel’s own intelligence services that the current protests do not currently threaten the Iranian government’s existence, some American media outlets are eager to embrace Israel’s narrative that the end is nigh. The........

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