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“Why Did So Many People Think This War Was a Good Idea?”

The story of how millions of Iranians fell for the regime-change fantasy.

A graveyard in Minab, Iran, for students and staff from an elementary school who were killed in a US-Israeli strike on February 28.

“There is nothing to be worried about. Israel and the US are only hitting military targets and bases of government repression. Not a single home has been destroyed. Except for perhaps some minor incidental damage.”

I read Amir’s words once, and then once again.

It was March 5, five days after the United States and Israel had launched a war on Iran. A thousand people had already been killed. Tehran was scarred by bomb blasts.

The Iranian authorities had blocked the Internet, but many Iranians turned to VPNs to bypass the blackout. Some, like my friend Amir, a businessman in his 40s, used that access to celebrate the bombing of their country.

Not everyone shared his sentiment.

“It feels like we’re living the apocalypse,” my friend Maryam, an activist in her 50s, told me over the phone. (Maryam’s name, like those of the other people interviewed for this article inside Iran, has been changed to protect her safety.) “The first day, the bombing started around 9:30 in the morning. Kids had just started school. But when the missiles hit, they closed and sent everyone home. There were children everywhere, screaming with tears in their eyes, as they waited for their parents to pick them up and loud explosions boomed all around. And at that exact moment, the Americans bombed a school in Minab, and more than 100 kids died. I don’t wish upon anyone the horrors we’ve lived.”

I spent the war’s first days contacting everyone I knew in Iran, where my family is from and where I lived for several years. Most messages I sent showed a single check mark on WhatsApp, meaning they went unseen and undelivered.

Over time, however, many got back to me, including my friend Kamyar, an architect in his 30s who lives in northeastern Tehran with his parents: “Our apartment is right next to a military zone, and the missiles were hitting all around us. We had to leave.”

On the second day of the bombing, they drove to the mountains near the Caspian Sea, joining 3 million Iranians who were displaced. It was their second time fleeing US and Israeli bombs in less than a year.

Maryam texted me every night of the war’s first week. The messages were almost identical: “Last night was the scariest so far.”

So did Amir. “This is not a war,” he said, telling me not to worry. “It’s a struggle for freedom. This is the victory of light over darkness.”

Bombs tore through schools, hospitals, homes, and a gymnasium where teenage girls were playing volleyball. They hit bridges, universities, and mosques. Dead birds fell in Tehran’s streets, and plants shriveled up after Israeli missiles hit oil depots, unleashing massive explosions and a toxic cloud that turned the sky black and showered acid rain.

I managed to reach Maryam the day of the oil-depot strikes; she’d been stuck in bed with a migraine, overpowered by the gasoline smell that had invaded her home even with the windows tightly shut. Her voice was equal parts anger, resignation, and grief: “Why did so many people think this war was a good idea?”

After Israel and the United States launched a surprise attack on Iran on February 28, President Trump posted videos of Iranians dancing in celebration, which then circulated widely in the Western media. They were mostly filmed among the Iranian diaspora. But in Iran, too, some people rejoiced, including Amir.

Since early January, when Iranian security forces responded to major anti-government protests by killing thousands of people, Persian-language social media had been lighting up with pleas from the Iranian diaspora for the United States to strike Iran. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah, whom Iranians deposed during the 1979 revolution, led the charge. Styling himself as Iran’s future leader, he called on Trump to “intervene.” He was joined by celebrities like Googoosh, a singer with 6.8 million followers on Instagram, who pressed Trump to take “urgent and decisive” action, and activists like Roya Rastegar, cofounder of the California-based Iranian Diaspora Collective, who urged Trump to use “sophisticated” means to hurt Iran’s leadership and prepare for a “transitional government” that would allow Iranians to return to how things were before 1979. When Trump declared on Truth Social, “We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” they cheered his threat.

These voices were echoed on diaspora satellite-TV channels like Iran International and Manoto, which are both headquartered in London and watched by large numbers of households in Iran. They framed the war as a “rescue mission” that would enable Iranians to overthrow their government. There was little discussion of how exactly military strikes would lead to the collapse of Iran’s government. But the possibility raised unrealistic expectations inside Iran. To millions of people still reeling from January’s mass killings, it offered a fantasy that the US could swoop in, remove the government, and replace it with something else—without touching the Iranian people.

Almost overnight, Iranians who spoke out against war were accused of being “apologists” for the government.

“Where were you when they massacred 40,000 people in January?” was one frequent refrain. (While the number of people killed in the crackdowns has been extensively debated, the reality is believed to be closer to a still-appalling 7,000 people.)

“War will kill fewer people than the regime, so it will save lives in the long term. It’s simple math” was another.

“What’s your alternative?” was yet a third.

A quieter chorus warned against the lure of war. “We stand for peace,” Masoud Nikzadi, a historian in Tehran, wrote on Instagram. “We don’t need to explain a plan for why peace is necessary. Those who support war must explain how exactly it will bring freedom.”

A collective of women from the Baloch minority, formed during the 2022 Woman Life Freedom protests, warned: “War should not be sold as an opportunity to people under oppression. Militarization…leads to social collapse and disintegration, just as happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.”

But these voices in Iran, lacking large social-media platforms, were drowned out by influencers and celebrities abroad, whose message was embraced by those within the country.

“War will be worth it,” Amir told me a few days after the US and Israel began their attack, “because when it’s done, freedom will come.”

Freedom has not come. In the more than two months since the United States and Israel launched the war, their bombs have killed more than 3,500 Iranians, injured 25,000, and damaged 80,000 homes or businesses. Iran has struck back hard, giving the lie to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims that “the regime” was on its last legs. Despite the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other political and military leaders, the government remains as entrenched as ever—and now believes it’s negotiating from a position of strength. 

To understand how so many diaspora actors were empowered to get things so wrong, it is helpful to consider a recent critical shift within the 5-million-strong community (750,000 in the United States). While many prominent pro-war voices have positioned themselves as representatives of Iran’s people, the reality is more dynamic and........

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