A group of demonstrators burn photos of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Milan, Italy, in January 2026. Israel and the United States are attempting to degrade the Iranian regime’s ability to suppress protests. (Shutterstock/pcruciatti)

How US Strikes on Iran Can Aid the Protest Movement

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US and Israeli strikes on Iran should actively degrade the regime’s ability to kill protesters—including by directly targeting the Basij troops working to suppress them.

As the United States’ efforts at diplomacy with Iran stall, the US military is moving additional assets into the Middle East in preparation for war. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei refuses to dismantle the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment capacity and shields the ballistic missile program from negotiations. If talks collapse, the question is not simply whether the United States can use force, but how to align military action with Iran’s ongoing protest movement so that pressure accelerates regime fracture rather than suppresses it.

Israel’s June 2025 strikes inside Iran, codenamed “Operation Rising Lion,” were an early attempt to link internal unrest with external pressure on the clerical regime; the name itself invoked Iran’s pre-1979 imagery in a plea for the Islamic Republic’s overthrow. Despite Israeli efforts to spur protests, however, Iranians stayed home as contradictory messaging from Washington and Jerusalem paired calls to rise up with evacuation warnings. Iranians also tended to view Israel as initiating the conflict rather than responding to regime aggression, thereby muddying the political framing—even though the strikes also failed to trigger a rally-round-the-flag effect for Tehran. Force alone did not mobilize the streets because it was not synchronized with a coherent political narrative inside Iran.

Nearly nine months later,........

© The National Interest