Operation Epic Fury: Decoding Sentiment Inside Iranian Society

The U.S.-Israeli air campaign has entered its second week, and Washington is looking to declare victory. But the Islamic Republic is intact, a successor is in place, and Iran's strategic calculus is already oriented toward reconstitution. On March 10, Wikistrat invited expert Ahmad Hashemi to assess the regime's wartime resilience, the hereditary succession, the failure of the opposition, and why no amount of bombing will produce the political transformation that Washington and Jerusalem expect

Webinar Recording:

Ahmad Hashemi is Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Program at the Global Policy Institute (GPI), bringing a unique background as a former Foreign Ministry linguist, pro-democracy activist, and freelance journalist in Iran. His commentary and analysis have appeared in The Hill, National Interest, Washington Examiner, BBC Persian, Al Arabiya, and numerous other outlets.

Key Insights

1. A unilateral declaration of victory solves Washington's problem, not the region's

President Trump has already more than enough material to claim a tremendous win: Iran's ballistic missile infrastructure is severely degraded, what remained of the nuclear program after the June 2025 strikes has been further set back, and the supreme leader is dead. But none of that translates into a defined political outcome. Iran wants the war prolonged because every additional day worsens U.S. domestic political dynamics, rattles energy markets, and strengthens Tehran's hand. A quick declaration of victory without a durable settlement hands the regime exactly what it needs: survival framed as triumph.

2. The regime is turning the war into a religious narrative, and it is working

The killing of Khamenei during Ramadan handed the Islamic Republic a propaganda gift it could not have engineered on its own. In Shiite Islam, martyrdom during the holy month carries extraordinary spiritual weight. For the regime's base, and for a broader segment of Iranian society than Western analysts typically acknowledge, this is not merely a political event but a sacred one. The secular-leaning majority and the religiously committed minority are not the same audience, and the regime is speaking directly to the latter with a message that resonates at the deepest level of identity.

3. The hereditary succession breaks the republic's own rules, but wartime made it possible

Under normal conditions, installing the son of a supreme leader would have been ideologically untenable for a regime that was founded to end hereditary rule. The war changed the calculus. The clerical establishment, the IRGC, and the loyalist base coalesced around Mojtaba Khamenei, not because he was the most qualified candidate but because continuity was the safest option in a moment of existential pressure. He is reclusive, has never spoken publicly, and is reported to be more hardline than his father. The selection signals that the system prioritized regime continuity over any prospect of internal reform.

4. The bombing will not trigger a popular uprising

The expectation in Washington and Jerusalem that sustained bombardment would drive the Iranian public into the streets to overthrow their government reflects a fundamental misreading of how societies respond to external attack. The same pattern played out after the twelve-day war in June 2025: despite severe economic distress, no major protests materialized for six months. The rally-around-the-flag effect is real and predictable. Those who celebrated the strikes on social media will face consequences, as the regime is already discussing property confiscation and AI-assisted identification of domestic sympathizers. Far from mobilizing, the opposition is being identified, tracked, and marked for reprisal.

5. Iran will reconstitute its deterrent, this time underground and without transparency

The regime's immediate post-war priorities are clear: rebuild missile production capacity, accelerate the nuclear program, and restore the ability to threaten retaliation. The critical shift is that future development will be more covert, more dispersed, and smaller in scale, designed to avoid the vulnerabilities exposed by this campaign. The dominant internal narrative has now crystallized: had Iran possessed nuclear weapons, it would not have been bombed. That argument, once confined to hardliners, is now the mainstream position. Iran intends to become the North Korea of the Middle East, trading international standing for immunity from attack.

6. The reformist camp is finished for the foreseeable future

Whatever residual influence moderates and reformists retained within the system has been eliminated by the war. Voices that advocated for diplomatic flexibility, including former president Hassan Rouhani, who questioned the hereditary succession, are being sidelined. The regime's orientation for the coming years will be defined by reconstitution, repression, and deterrence. There is no political space for conciliation, and anyone who advocates for it risks being branded a collaborator.

7. The monarchist opposition has discredited itself

The exiled Pahlavi camp entered the conflict as the most visible face of the Iranian opposition and emerged from it diminished. The Crown Prince's close alignment with Israel and the U.S. right wing, combined with diaspora figures openly cheering the bombardment of Iranian infrastructure, has reinforced the regime's narrative that the opposition is a foreign project. Inside Iran, the monarchist brand is now associated not with liberation but with complicity in national destruction. The MEK, an exiled Iranian opposition group that originally fought the Shah and later turned against the Islamic Republic, remains universally despised. No credible, organized alternative exists.

8. The ethnic dimension is the most underexamined variable in Iran's future

Iran's non-Persian minorities, including Kurds, Azerbaijanis, Baluchis, and Arabs, constitute roughly half the population and have deeper grievances and stronger motivations for change than the Persian center. Any serious strategy for political transformation must engage the periphery, not just the capital. But a Kurdish-only approach, which some in Washington and Jerusalem have floated, would unite every other group against it. Azerbaijanis have territorial disputes with Kurds. Persians would rally behind the state. A viable opposition framework requires a multi-ethnic coalition with guarantees of territorial integrity and federal governance, a consensus that does not exist and would take years to build.

9. Israel and Iran share one strategic interest: the other side's chaos

There is a striking symmetry at work: both the Israeli and Iranian establishments thrive on regional instability. Israel's objective is not a reformed Iran but a distracted, fragmented one. Iran's proxy strategy served a similar function in reverse. The Kurdish forces in the region have internalized this lesson, as the YPG, the Syrian Kurdish militia that served as Washington's primary ground partner against ISIS, has publicly warned against trusting Western partners who treat local actors as disposable instruments. Any externally supported opposition effort that appears transactional will be rejected by the very populations it claims to empower.

10. The regime's survival floor is higher than most analysts assume

The Islamic Republic retains a committed base of at least twenty percent of the population, well armed, well resourced, and ideologically dedicated. That is more than sufficient to maintain control over an unarmed civilian population. Beyond that, Hashemi raises a point rarely discussed in open analysis: Iran possesses undisclosed chemical weapons stockpiles, maintained through dual-use production facilities that have consistently shown surplus output ahead of international inspections. The fact that these have not been deployed is itself an indicator that the regime does not consider itself near collapse. The instruments of last resort remain sheathed.

11. The real contest begins when the bombing stops

The air campaign was the simple part. What follows is a strategic environment defined by a more hardline Iranian leadership, an accelerated covert weapons program, a traumatized and surveilled domestic population, a discredited diaspora opposition, a destabilized Gulf, and no framework for political change. The United States needs a comprehensive, predominantly non-kinetic Iran strategy, and nothing in the current approach suggests one is being formulated. Iran's leaders think in decades. The window for shaping the post-war order is measured in months, and it is already closing.