Anti-Regime Iranians Turn Against Trump Over War Strategy

In early January 2026, when Iranian security forces were beating protesters in the streets of Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz during the largest anti-government uprising since the 1979 revolution, many Iranians — both inside the country and across the diaspora — looked to Washington with cautious hope. President Trump had vowed to support the demonstrators. Exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi urged him to "intervene sooner, so this regime finally collapses" [1]. For a brief, heady moment, the interests of Iranian dissidents and the American president appeared to align.

Six weeks later, that hope has curdled into bitter disillusionment.

"You are all worse than each other," a University of Tehran student told The Guardian, addressing both the Islamic Republic and the United States [2]. The quote has become something of a rallying cry for a generation of Iranians who feel trapped between a theocratic regime they have risked their lives to oppose and a foreign military campaign that is leveling their country without delivering the liberation it promised.

From Protests to Bombs: The Path to Betrayal

The 2025-2026 Iranian protests began in December 2025, triggered by hyperinflation of the rial and decades of accumulated grievances against clerical rule. By the second week of January 2026, the Institute for the Study of War had recorded over 340 distinct protests in a single week across all 31 provinces [3]. The movement was remarkable for its breadth — students, workers, women's rights activists, and ethnic minorities all participated.

Then came Operation Epic Fury. On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a joint military campaign against Iran, striking over 5,000 targets in the first ten days [4]. The first wave of strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, a development that initially electrified anti-regime Iranians. In Los Angeles's "Tehrangeles" neighborhood — home to roughly 525,000 Americans of Iranian descent — hundreds poured into the streets with American, Israeli, and Iranian flags, dancing and celebrating [5].

But the celebrations were short-lived. As the bombing continued and civilian casualties mounted, a fundamentally different reality set in.

Source: FRED / U.S. Energy Information Administration

Data as of Mar 9, 2026CSV

'He Wanted to Pluck the Eyebrow and Blinded Us Instead'

Inside Iran, the mood among regime opponents has shifted from cautious optimism to anguish. TIME Magazine reported interviews with multiple Tehran residents who initially supported intervention but have since reversed their views [6].

"Trump either didn't have a clear strategy to begin with, or it was based on wrong data. None of what he has done has helped the people of Iran," said Mahmood, a CEO of an IT company in Tehran, invoking a Persian proverb: "He wanted to pluck the eyebrow but blinded us instead."

Kamran, another Tehran resident, described the devastation in stark terms: "All of our infrastructure is going up in flames — military, economic, even electricity now. We don't have the capital or technology to rebuild them. The economy had already tanked under the mismanagement of the regime, but what we'll be facing after the dust settles will probably be more akin to famine and starvation" [6].

The Minab school airstrike crystallized this shift. On the first day of the war, a U.S. Tomahawk missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab, Hormozgan province, killing between 165 and 180 people — most of them children [7]. Investigations by The New York Times, NPR, CBC, and BBC Verify concluded that U.S. Central Command had used outdated Defense Intelligence Agency data, targeting a school that had been physically separated from an adjacent IRGC naval base for at least a decade [8]. The Pentagon has opened an internal probe, but the damage to hearts and minds has been catastrophic.

"We wanted the regime gone, not our children," one Iranian mother wrote on social media, in a sentiment echoed by thousands [6].

A Diaspora at War with Itself

Nowhere is the fracture more visible than among the estimated 1.5 million Iranian Americans in the United States. The community, which Abbas Milani, Stanford University's director of Iranian studies, described as experiencing tensions "beyond normal levels," is split into increasingly hostile camps [9].

On one side are those who continue to support the military campaign despite the civilian toll. "Some people are so aggrieved at this regime that they say, 'At any cost, come and destroy this regime even if it means destroying parts of the country,'" Milani told NBC News [9]. Ara Torosian, a Los Angeles pastor who fled Iran in 2010 after imprisonment by the Revolutionary Guard, exemplifies this view: "War is the only hope for a new Iran" [9].

On the other side, a growing majority has turned against the war. A 2025 NIAC/YouGov poll found that 53% of Iranian Americans opposed U.S. military action against Iran — a number that has likely grown since the bombing began [10]. In Los Angeles, anti-war Iranian Americans protested outside City Hall with signs reading "Stop the war in Iran," while across town in Westwood, pro-military demonstrations sometimes turned violent; in January, a truck driver attempted to plow through pro-monarchy protesters at a Westwood rally [5][11].

The online discourse has become equally toxic. Those supporting military action face accusations of being "Zionists," while anti-war voices are branded as pro-regime. "I don't want to go back to rubble," Ariana Jasmine, a New York-based Iranian-American activist, told NBC News, explaining her opposition to the bombing campaign [9].

Source: GDELT Project

Data as of Mar 14, 2026CSV

Trump's Regime Change That Isn't

Central to the disillusionment is what many Iranians view as Trump's fundamental strategic incoherence. The president launched a war that killed the supreme leader, decimated military infrastructure, and sent oil prices from $67 to nearly $95 per barrel in less than two weeks — but has explicitly declined to pursue actual regime change [12].

In early March, Trump suggested that "somebody from within" the Iranian regime should take over leadership, telling reporters alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that an insider would be "more appropriate" than an exile [13]. He simultaneously declared he "must be involved" in choosing Iran's next leader while dismissing Reza Pahlavi — the exile most diaspora monarchists rallied behind — as merely "very nice" [14].

For Iranians who risked their lives in the January protests hoping American power would deliver a democratic transition, this was the final betrayal. Trump appeared willing to destroy their country's infrastructure while leaving the same authoritarian system intact under different management.

"He pulled us into this quagmire," Zoreh, a working mother in Tehran, told TIME. "He made matters such as the Arab-Israeli conflict the main issues of the country, while it had nothing to do with Iran" [6].

The Opposition's Impossible Fragmentation

The war has also deepened existing fractures within the Iranian opposition itself. Three main factions have long competed for post-regime influence: monarchists who support Reza Pahlavi's return, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) led by Maryam Rajavi, and secular republicans who oppose both theocracy and monarchy [3].

The January protests briefly papered over these divisions. But the war has ripped them open. Monarchists, who tend to be wealthier and more established in the diaspora, have been the loudest supporters of military intervention — a stance that has alienated younger, more progressive Iranians. New Lines Magazine reported that right-wing diaspora members are "far louder" than their actual numbers suggest, creating a distorted perception of community consensus [11].

At diaspora rallies, the presence of Israeli flags alongside calls for regime change has become a flashpoint. Some activists refuse to attend events where Israeli flags are displayed, viewing the optics as confirming the regime's propaganda that the opposition is merely a tool of foreign powers [11].

Meanwhile, the MEK — long controversial for its cult-like organizational structure and history of armed struggle — has attracted renewed scrutiny even as figures like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have promoted it as an alternative government [3]. Most Iranians, both inside the country and in the diaspora, reject the MEK, viewing its extremism as no better than the regime's.

A survey published in The Conversation found that while Iranians broadly agree on the desirability of regime change, they remain deeply divided on what should come next — a constitutional monarchy, a secular republic, or something else entirely [15].

The Rally-Around-the-Flag Mirage

Perhaps the cruelest irony for anti-regime Iranians is that the war may be strengthening the very government they sought to overthrow. Analysis from multiple think tanks suggests that while the June 2025 Israeli strikes initially appeared to trigger a "rally around the flag" effect, the reality was more nuanced — the public did not genuinely unite behind the regime, but the government successfully portrayed dissent as treason and imposed extraordinary security measures [16].

With Operation Epic Fury, the regime has doubled down on this strategy. Esfandiar, an architect in Tehran, described the atmosphere to TIME: "They plan to fight the Americans and Israelis to the very last man. They are saying, either join us, or get out of the way, otherwise we will destroy you" [6].

The appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader following his father's assassination has further cemented regime continuity. Rather than the democratic transition that protesters demanded, Iran got a dynastic succession — precisely the outcome that both the protests and the war were supposed to prevent [4].

An American Public Equally Skeptical

The growing Iranian disillusionment mirrors broader American skepticism. A CNN poll found that 59% of Americans disapprove of the strikes, while a Quinnipiac University survey recorded that over half of voters oppose the military action and 74% oppose sending ground troops [17][18]. Only 12% of Americans favor a ground invasion, and a steady majority say the Trump administration has failed to clearly explain the war's goals [18].

The partisan divide is stark — 79% of Republicans support the strikes while 86% of Democrats oppose them — but even among Trump's base, cracks are emerging. Some MAGA supporters have protested under the banner of "We voted for walls, not wars," echoing the isolationist strain that propelled Trump to power [19].

Between the Hammer and the Anvil

Two weeks into a war that has killed over 1,300 Iranians, effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, and sent global oil prices surging past $110, anti-regime Iranians find themselves in what Hesam, a journalist in Tehran, described as an impossible position: "No matter who is in power, how can thieves and criminals be controlled when there are no police stations left?" [6].

The protests of January 2026 represented a genuine grassroots movement for democratic change — hundreds of thousands of Iranians risking their lives against a brutal security apparatus. Operation Epic Fury has not replaced that movement with something better. It has replaced it with rubble, grief, and a regime that now has both a martyrdom narrative and a dynastic successor.

For the student at the University of Tehran who told The Guardian that all sides are "worse than each other," the sentiment captures a generation caught between forces they cannot control: a regime that has brutalized them for decades, and a foreign power that claims to liberate them while bombing their schools. The path to a free Iran, if one exists, now runs through the wreckage of both.