The Iran war was cast as a catalyst for the Islamic Republic’s downfall, but months of fighting failed to dislodge the clerical leadership and left its opponents out in the cold.
US President Donald Trump said at the start of the war with Israel on February 28 that it would pave the way for the Iranians to rise, after pledging support for anti-government protests that peaked in January and were the most serious challenge to the Islamic republic in years.
Fragile opposition movements outside Iran scrambled to position themselves as successors to the ruling system when the war began with the assassination of the supreme leader in US-Israeli strikes.
But the Islamic republic emerged from the war unscathed, with opposition groups abroad more divided than ever and dissidents in Iran facing a new wave of repression, experts and rights groups say.
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah, has failed to emerge as a unifying figure, while prominent dissidents inside Iran, including Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi, are still under pressure from the authorities.
“There could have been an additional motivation for the various factions in the opposition to really try to seize the moment … but that just hasn’t been the result,” said University of Ottawa professor Thomas Juneau.
“If anything, the infighting among the opposition in exile has intensified,” he added, while the domestic opposition has been “severely weakened” after decades of repression.
Some inside Iran expressed hope for foreign intervention after nationwide protests that were fueled by severe economic pain and culminated in a violent crackdown that rights groups said killed thousands of people.
But hope faded as the Islamic republic not only endured but imposed new security crackdowns and an internet blackout that, along with the death and destruction of the war, only deepened economic suffering.
– “Peace with my executioner” –
“This war was never about the human rights of the Iranian people,” said Mahmood Amiry Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights, as authorities instead “used the war as a pretext to intensify internal repression.”
“Democratic change must come through the Iranian people, not through foreign military intervention,” he said.
US Vice President JD Vance this week insisted the war was about ending Iran’s nuclear program and that Trump’s position has always been that “the Iranian people want to rise, fine. That’s their job.”
However, Iranians inside the country and opposition leaders have expressed a sense of betrayal by the US-Iran deal to end the war.
“No matter how much they try to decorate the deal with pretty bows, it will only empower them (the Islamic republic) to oppress us more,” said Tehran resident Sima, 34, who did not give her full name for fear of retaliation.
“Any form of peace with the Islamic Republic would be like making peace with my executioner.”
The reception of the agreement by prominent opposition figures was cold.
“Confrontation with this regime will fail and we will all face the consequences,” Pahlavi wrote in X, warning that negotiations with the Islamic Republic after the suppression of the protest “is morally wrong and strategically wrong.”
Pahlavi saw the biggest surge in media attention since the January demonstrations as protesters chanted the name of the family dynasty.
But he failed to win the support of Trump, who has not thrown his weight behind any Iranian opposition figure.
– Political prisoners –
The protests and their aftermath also did not spur new efforts to build an opposition coalition, Juneau said, with various factions holding their own solidarity rallies abroad.
Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the People’s Mujahideen opposition group, attacked both the Islamic republic and the monarchists in a reaction to the US-Iran deal, saying only that they had “wanted war”.
She welcomed “any agreement aimed at ending the war and the suffering of the Iranian people” and called for it to include an end to the executions of political prisoners.
This was not mentioned in the memorandum of understanding signed on Wednesday, according to texts released by both sides.
Rights groups and the United Nations have sounded the alarm over a surge in executions in Iran – more than 40 since the start of the war – and arrests in recent months, including many related to protests that authorities have called “terrorist riots”.
Among the opposition figures jailed in the country, Mohammadi nearly died during the war from a heart ailment, according to her supporters.
Amnesty International’s Agnes Callamard warned against a deal that ignores the dangers to Iranians who oppose the Islamic republic.
“Protesters, dissidents and others advocating fundamental political change remain at grave risk of further atrocity crimes by Iranian authorities,” she said.
