WASHINGTON—In the past week, headlines in the West about the Iran war have focused on the exchange of increasingly hostile threats between US and Iranian leaders. Now, following the news on April 7 that Washington and Tehran have struck a two-week cease-fire deal, attention is turning to the ongoing negotiations between the two sides. Little, however, is being reported about the fates of ordinary Iranians, creating a concerning blind spot for US policymakers as they consider whether to resume strikes on Iran after two weeks have expired.
In part, not much is being reported out of Iran because little is known. Since the war began, the Iranian regime has imposed a near-total internet blackout. As during the previous internet blackout in January—when the regime unleashed an unprecedented wave of state violence to suppress nationwide protests, killing as many as 30,000 people by some estimates and arresting over 50,000—it is difficult to get news from inside Iran or for overseas relatives to know whether their loved ones there are safe. The proliferation of artificial intelligence–created images and misinformation online, too, make reliable information difficult to obtain.
This information gap works both ways. With few exceptions, the Iranian people are cut off from communications and from receiving accurate news about what is happening inside their own country. Ordinary Iranians are on their own, isolated from the world and facing an increasingly desperate regime that is determined to cling to power at all costs. In the immediate term, this blind spot of how ordinary Iranians are faring carries both humanitarian and policy implications. And in the longer term, how Iranians view the war will directly shape the country that emerges from the conflict, including how that country engages with the United States, Gulf states, and Israel.
There is no simple way to address this blind spot. But to begin, US policymakers should pay close attention to the signals that are emerging from inside the country and take the Iranian people’s views and human rights into account as negotiations—and perhaps more conflicts—play out.
How Iranians are responding to the war
For years, large numbers of Iranians have opposed the Islamic Republic. When US and Israeli strikes began on February 28, many Iranians likely hoped that the war would either topple the Iranian regime or weaken it enough that the Iranian people could overthrow it themselves. The news that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the initial round of US-Israeli strikes reportedly led to jubilation within Iran. To many Iranians, Khamenei was the face of the hated regime that has oppressed them for forty-seven years.
As the war has dragged on, however, there are also reports that Iranians’ elation over Khamenei’s death is transforming into fear, despair, and anger—not only at the regime, but also at US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israeli and US bombs have targeted both regime strongholds and civilian buildings and infrastructure. Over 1,600 Iranian civilians have died in the war so far, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, including more than a hundred children who were killed in a US strike on a school in the southern city of Minab on February 28. Multiple world heritage sites in Iran have also been damaged by the bombing, which upsets the many Iranians who are proud of their nation’s long history and culture. Even more concerning has been the strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure. An Israeli strike on fuel depots in Tehran in March released toxic black smoke and coated the city in oily rain. Trump’s threats earlier this week that US forces will strike bridges and power plants could, if ultimately carried out after the cease-fire ends, anger and dishearten Iranians even more. Certainly, the US president’s subsequent threat to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization” if the Islamic Republic did not meet his April 7 deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz caused terror among ordinary Iranians.
Amid a tentative cease-fire, the Iranian people are likely wondering what their country’s future holds. Despite Trump’s and Netanyahu’s calls for Iranians to rise up and overthrow the regime, the United States and Israel are creating conditions that make it difficult for anti-regime Iranians to organize, prevail, and ultimately build a new government system. The danger is growing that this situation will stoke Iranians’ anger at Trump and Netanyahu, as it becomes increasingly clear that neither is the savior from the regime that many Iranians hoped they would be. Instead, many in Iran may conclude, US and Israeli bombs offer Iranians not liberation but only more death and suffering.
How Iranians view the Islamic Republic
Yet even as ordinary Iranians’ views of the United States and Israel sour, most are unlikely to view the Islamic Republic more favorably. Anger among Iranians toward the Islamic Republic runs deep. It is a corrupt regime that subjugates women and executes its own citizens at one of the highest rates of any country in the world. It strips young people of their dreams and everyone of freedom and economic opportunity. It mismanages Iran’s natural resources, and it violently suppresses dissent. It has been clear for several years, but especially since the Woman, Life, Freedom movement of 2022-2023, that the majority of Iranians want the Islamic Republic to end, and many want to replace it with a secular democracy grounded in human rights and the rule of law.
With each nationwide uprising, that call has become louder and more insistent. The thousands of unarmed Iranians who were massacred in the streets by Iranian security forces in January died seeking freedom. While the state’s violent response to those protests had the intended effect of driving demonstrators back into their homes, Iranians’ determination to overthrow their regime is unlikely to have been diminished.
But Iranians’ determination now competes with real fears. One such concern is that Iran could lose its territorial integrity and become fragmented, riven by civil war and possible separatist movements among ethnic minorities. Recent reports that Israel and the United States are arming Kurdish groups against the Islamic Republic reinforce such fears. Beyond fragmentation, Iranians also certainly have feared for their lives and the lives of their loved ones and neighbors amid the war.
Perhaps the greatest fear for most Iranians, however, is that the war will end with the Islamic Republic still in power. Bruised by the deaths of its top leaders, from Khamenei to national security head Ali Larijani, the remnants of the regime will likely become further entrenched and even more oppressive. In addition to its massacre of protesters in January, the regime has taken actions during the war that prove just how well-founded Iranians’ fears are. State television repeatedly warns Iranians against protesting with vows that any dissidents will be killed. Basij militiamen and other security forces have set up checkpoints throughout Iran, not for the people’s security but rather as a show of force against the public. Recent executions of people arrested during the January protests, the Iranian judiciary chief’s April 7 order to speed up executions of political prisoners, and new arrests of more than 1,500 people for allegedly aiding the enemy demonstrate the regime’s deadly resolve.
The Islamic Republic has long seen the Iranian people as its enemy, and it is willing to use any and all measures to keep them in line. This is its priority, even as the regime fights for its survival against the United States and Israel.
What happens after the war ends
If the United States abandons Iranians to face a recalcitrant and enraged regime, then the Iranian people will likely face unimaginable retribution by the remnants of the Islamic Republic. A wounded but surviving Islamic Republic may also be motivated to race toward acquiring a nuclear weapon to deter future foreign attacks, thus locking the Iranian people even more firmly behind a theocratic wall. For Trump, who in early January highlighted Iranians’ suffering at the hands of the regime as a rationale for US military action, this would mark a failure.
To avoid such a failure, the Trump administration should quickly land on a coherent plan for the war and its aftermath that takes the Iranian people into account. In addition, the US Congress, the American people, and the international community should insist that the White House commit both to protecting the Iranian people’s human rights and to providing them meaningful assistance in building a democracy.