Photo: A woman walks around a commercial district without wearing her mandatory Islamic headscarf in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 23, 2022. Iran has been gripped by nationwide protests since September, after the death of a young woman in the custody of morality police for allegedly not observing the mandatory hijab. Source: AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
Published on January 9, 2023 in The Hill.
Iran’s five-month protest is more serious than any since 1979, and one that’s against not only economic suffering and government corruption but also the very nature of the country’s Islamic regime. Could Iran’s Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an arm of the Iranian Armed Forces, believe that a strike by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities would galvanize the population to unify against an external foe? After all, sometimes it takes a war to get people to rally behind their leaders.
So, would the mullahs’ regime be more or less likely to survive if Israel struck Iranian facilities? Or, although it appears to be off the table for now, could an eventual rejoining of the nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) defuse the protests?
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