For the most part, these incidents do not inspire people to take to the streets in support of the occupiers. If anything, they show how those waging a war from afar can begin to see their prey as a pile of faceless, nameless, and historyless human bodies.
By Hossein HAMDIEH
US President Donald Trump recently asked in one of his Truth Social outbursts: “When will the Iranian people rise up and fight?” Trump’s statements are so frenetic and erratic that it’s hard to tell which are genuine policies and which are just noise. But if relying on the “Iranian people” to rise up and fight is really US policy, then, as far as I can tell from inside Iran, it’s a failed policy. And a miserable one. At least for now. There are no reliable nationwide polls that can tell us in real time what Iranians think about the war. So this is an observation, not a poll. It comes from conversations I’ve had with a lot of people.
Although I am a social scientist, I work closely with Iranian startups and the digital ecosystem. Before the war began, my understanding was that this environment was hardly a hotbed of support for the Iranian state. On the contrary: being a supporter of the state was generally frowned upon, not least because of the internet outages that had repeatedly disrupted the very infrastructure on which the digital economy depends. And yet, even in this environment, one can sense a growing revulsion towards the US and its war on Iran. I am talking about some of the most vocal voices. Businessmen with money to spend, large social media profiles, and enough influence to shape the conversation. These are the people many young Iranians look to as role models, and they are increasingly speaking out against the war.
Majid Hosseini Nejad, an entrepreneur and founder of Alibaba – an Iranian online travel agency – wrote on X on September 2: “God willing, the day is not far when attacking Iran will become a terrible nightmare for them and they will not even have the courage for such wishful thinking.” His social media page is full of similar sentiments against the US and Israel. Many within these circles share this sentiment. This, of course, does not necessarily translate into support for the state. But one can witness the emergence of a strong dislike for the US, alongside a growing desire to rebuild Iran for the better. There is a broader sense that this war is clarifying something. This feeling is being fueled by the images and stories coming from the war: the crushing tragedy of the school in Minab, the sports complex in Lamerd, the destroyed homes in Tehran and, most recently, a wedding in a small southern village where people were killed and maimed.
For the most part, these incidents do not inspire people to take to the streets in support of the occupiers. If anything, they show how those waging a war from afar can come to see their prey as a mass of faceless, nameless, and historyless human bodies. Their deaths are counted as the necessary and negligible cost of one man’s war against Iran. The stories and images of ordinary citizens being slaughtered tend to unite a divided country against foreign occupation. Such incidents rightly bring back memories of Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. If their goal is to encourage people to “rise up and fight,” they seem to be having exactly the opposite effect. In meetings, conversations, and public events, a perception that was once widely held—that Iran is a nation kidnapped by our political system—is beginning to fade. In its place, another idea is emerging: we are a nation at war with a hostile Regional enemy and its imperial backer.
More and more people seem to be drawn to this conclusion. Even if they don’t support the state, they cheer it when it opposes the mujshari. This is the important distinction that Washington seems to be so naively missing. A person can dislike the Islamic Republic and still dislike the American war on Iran. One can oppose the state and still not want to see their own country bombed into submission. One can seek political change and still believe that such change must come from within. Nationalist and anti-imperialist sentiments are on the rise. If you had asked me in February, I would have said that the gulf between the state and the nation was probably unbridgeable. Now I would say that there is a possibility.
The domestic uprising is what the US is counting on. But if the goal is to provoke Iranians to turn against their own state, the war may be doing the opposite. The more Iranian civilians are killed, the harder it becomes to maintain the distinction between the Iranian people and the Iranian state. And the more that distinction disappears, the less likely it is that the people will rise up on behalf of the foreign power that is attacking them. From my perspective, the people do not seem likely to rise up. Instead, they may be joining the front.