Every US administration since Truman has tried to dictate Iran’s political trajectory. From the 1953 Anglo-American coup that removed a democratically elected leader and restored the Pahlavi dynasty to Trump’s bombing of three nuclear sites in June 2025, American leaders have intervened to shape the course of Iranian politics. Now Trump has ordered “a massive armada” of US ships and planes to stand at the ready to attack Iran.

Beginning in late December 2025, a vicious campaign of Iranian state violence against protestors has revived calls for efforts to overthrow a regime that has mercilessly murdered thousands (estimates range from seven thousand to thirty thousand victims) in just a few weeks. Trump has seized upon this unrest in Iran—and its horrifically violent suppression—to try to bend the Iranian leadership to his will.

The US president initially demanded an end to punishment for protesters; he later pivoted to demands that Iran give up its nuclear and missile programs.  In a third scenario, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned the US could attack “preemptively” to protect American personnel and allies in the region. Iran’s neighbors have tried to get the two sides talking, but with only limited success thus far.

Has the White House concluded that the military build-up in the Caribbean, followed by the audacious kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, can be replicated in Iran? Is Trump seeking “regime change”? As the US Navy sits offshore in the Gulf, and American planes circle overhead, the administration isn’t revealing any plans. As Rubio admitted, “No one knows what would take over” if US forces were to remove the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For their part, Iranian authorities have promised that they will respond to any attack by unleashing a “regional war.”

The one scenario that can be reasonably expected from any American military action in Iran is the creation of conditions for a far more repressive approach to opposition politics in both countries.

Iran on the Verge?

In Iran, it is possible that an assault on the Iranian leadership could kill its most important figures. The security forces could stand down. The prisons could open, and a democratic government could emerge. But it is far more likely that the 150,000-strong Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij, a militia whose numbers likely range from four to five million, will fight to defend the institutions that they view as safeguarding the revolutionary legacy of 1979, which produced the Islamic Republic.

Perhaps this could change. But the record of past major protest movements, including those in 1999, 2009, 2017-2018, 2019, 2022 and now 2025-2026, has been one of merciless subjugation. It is also unclear how the heroic mobilization of tens of millions of Iranians in recent weeks would translate into the establishment of a new kind of government. The diffuse and fragmented nature of the Iranian opposition is both a strength and a weakness.

In the December protests, some Iranian observers noticed a change in tone and demands from previous movements. In 2022, demonstrations spread across Iran after the authorities murdered 22-year old Mahsa Amini, and Iran women led protests under the banner, “Woman, Life, Freedom.” Recently, young males have played a more prominent role. Many used nationalist and monarchist symbols and slogans (including “Long live the shah!” and “This is the last battle, Pahlavi will return!) in support of the last shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi.

The shift has alienated some opposition figures. The Kurdish diaspora dissident Behrouz Boochani has noted that “this uprising appears to exhibit ultra-right nationalist tendencies, instrumentalizing popular demands for change rather than advancing a pluralistic democratic vision.”

Though celebrated in many diaspora circles and afforded ample attention in Western media, exiled opposition figures such as Pahlavi (who was last in Iran in 1978) and Masih Alinejad may be too closely aligned with the Trump White House to establish credibility after a regime change operation, not least because they have both called for US intervention, which would almost certainly claim Iranian civilian lives. The regime, meanwhile, will continue to frame any political challenge from the diaspora as the work of a disloyal fifth column backed by the US and Israel.

For decades, the regime has been telling Iranians that Americans and Israelis seek to destroy their country. Most recently, Iranian official media point to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s boast that his policies precipitated the current crisis by creating a “dollar shortage” in December: “The Iranian currency went into freefall. Inflation exploded, and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street.”

Previous American pledges to “free Iran” have helped set the stage for this moment. Presidents Biden and Trump promised to intervene against the Iranian government to protect Iranian citizens who took on the enormous risk of launching public protests against their own government. In 2022, during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, Biden told a campaign rally, “Don’t worry, we’re gonna free Iran.” He soon added, “They’re gonna free themselves pretty soon.” But the point was made.

Just days after the outbreak of the latest round of protests in Iran, Trump took to social media on January 2 to declare, “If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

On January 13, after weeks of massacres by Iranian security forces, Trump called on Iranians to continue their protests, suggesting that the US would intervene to end government repression: “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!… HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!!”

Such comments from US presidents have both misled Iranians and made their political activities far riskier. Boochani has argued that “[T]he narrative of a “final battle,” advanced by Pahlavi, alongside expectations of foreign intervention fueled by Donald Trump promising assistance via social media, played a significant role in mobilizing individuals to engage in high-risk street protests.” Many Iranians who subsequently risked death and injury by protesting have since complained that they feel betrayed by Trump’s incitement to rebellion.

American military action would, and not for the first time, give oxygen to the official narrative that any criticism of the Islamic Republic is a sign of treason and of collaboration with enemies abroad who seek to destroy Iran and Islam. Such claims will, of course, be dismissed by Iranians who counter that criticism of Khamenei and the current political structure of the country is entirely home-grown and authentic.

But there are also Iranians who will recall the terror of Israel’s twelve-day assault in June 2025. Moreover, awareness of the joint Israeli-American genocide in Gaza may temper enthusiasm for any changes that may amount to surrendering sovereignty to Tel Aviv or Washington, even for those who would prefer to wake up tomorrow in a country not ruled by clerics and their backers in the security organs. The fall of the revolutionary order, some Iranians may legitimately fear, could subordinate Iranian interests to Israeli and American hegemony.

For its part, the regime would accelerate its move toward a nuclear weapon. As Farah N. Jan has recently argued, the authorities in Tehran understand the history of countries, namely Libya and Ukraine, that gave up their nuclear programs: “abandoning a program invites regime change, surrendering weapons invites invasion, and stopping short of the bomb invites strikes, [so] the calculus becomes unavoidable: only nuclear weapons guarantee security.”

Even excluding, for the sake of argument, the historical precedents of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria—all cases with which Iranian society is familiar in myriad ways, it remains unclear why Iranians would embrace Trump-led regime change or trust Americans to determine the future of their country.

As if Trump’s record on democracy were not enough, the example of Venezuela may offer a preview of the very undemocratic post-intervention future Iranians might expect: an American effort to decapitate the government (and perhaps a certain number of senior clerics and IRGC officials) followed by the establishment of a chaotic protectorate status—and, crucially, the “opening up” of the oil sector to Trump allies. There is nothing in Trump’s past to suggest tangible support for additional political change.

War-time Emergency Powers?

If a negotiated outcome is not reached, and the US launches an attack on Iran over its nuclear or missile program or some other pretext, the consequences could be disastrous for Americans as well. As a “war-time president,” Trump could operate with even fewer constraints.

American media have historically rallied around all US military operations and muted any critical discussion of US policymakers—at least in the early phases. The American public is also reliably pro-war—again, at the beginning.

Even MAGA, whose leaders expressed aversion to foreign entanglements in the lead up to the 2016 and 2024 elections are mostly enthusiastic about war when it comes to Iran: a Politico poll conducted in mid-January found that 65% of Trump voters back military action against one or more of the countries that Trump has demonized; and 61% of “MAGA Republicans” think Iran should be in the crosshairs. An Economist/YouGov poll from early February found that 59% of Republicans support the overthrow of Khamenei.

However, the picture looks different if one considers American public opinion across the political spectrum. Nearly half of respondents to the same poll (48%) expressed opposition to military action against Iran. Should a war go beyond a measured exchange of missiles (for instance, with Iranian advance notice, as in the June counterattack on the US Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar), American popular support for the war may increase. Or it may not, especially if the promised Iranian counteroffensive manages to turn the conflict into a war involving multiple countries and substantial casualties on American ships and bases across the region.

In the current environment, the Trump administration is primed to seek confrontation with dissenters at home. Since Trump’s return to power, he has been testing the limits of using violence to silence his opponents. ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) have been at the vanguard of a lawless campaign to enforce the president’s mass deportation scheme—as well as to intimidate and punish critics of the president’s policies.

Besides rejecting due process and existing immigration laws, the White House has directed the Department of Homeland Security (which oversees ICE and CBP) to frame its actions as a struggle against “terrorism.” Much like every administration since 2001, the Trump White House \ uses the label “terrorist” in a very expansive fashion.

What differs about this moment is that tens of thousands of masked and militarized paramilitary forces have been unleashed in American cities with license to brand nearly anyone a terrorist. Two of the most visible victims of Trump’s mass deportation operation—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—were among the first to be labeled “terrorists.”

Federal agents have at their disposal access to surveillance technology—the fruit of decades of federal cooperation with the likes of Palantir. Agents are already threatening protestors with inclusion in a “terrorist database” for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Little is publicly known about how the US regime is using this surveillance technology. A September 2025 White House memo dramatically expanded how federal authorities are to define “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” “Domestic terrorists,” it asserts, are motivated by “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

Reports that the Pentagon is buying and outfitting numerous warehouses for the detention of as many as 8,000 people at a time suggests that the Trump administration is working to scale up its capacity to hold anyone caught up in the ICE/CPB web indefinitely and without due process.

There are no guarantees that critics of any war will not be branded “terrorists” and sent to one of these concentration camps until the war is over—or the administration sees fit. The history of the prison at Guantánamo Bay is a reminder that once such infrastructure is built, it rarely goes away. Still open in February 2026, the Guantánamo prison is being repurposed to hold migrants seized in the US.

The danger of a “war-time president” and the “emergency” powers the war may enable have not received enough attention. Martial law and the suspension of the November 2026 elections are a step closer if Trump begins a war (even if it is formally undeclared, as it surely would be).

Crucially, despite many differences, the opposition in both countries faces enormous challenges. In Iran, this is a product of systemic repression; in the US, the Democratic Party has failed to blunt any of Trump’s signature policy priorities.

The case of Iran—and Trump’s past and threatened military action—is not an issue that Democrats have contested with any seriousness. Democratic Senator Tim Kaine has joined Republican Senator Ron Paul in proposing that Congress be consulted on any use of force in Iran, but they have not broken with a position that has remained the bipartisan Washington consensus since 1979: “the mullahs” must go.

They forget that war creates the ideal setting for the consolidation of dictatorships. Besides the potentially disastrous effects on the civilian populations of the region, a clash between Iran and the US could enable each regime’s hunt for the “enemy from within” and justify the expansion of state repression in two deeply divided societies.

Robert D. Crews is professor of history at Stanford University.