For Iranians, War With Israel Still Looms Large – Maryam Manzoori

Though more than 10 weeks have passed since the 12-day war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran, for Iranians, the conflict lingers like an unfinished chapter. 

The fighting shattered the longtime notion that Israel and the U.S. would avoid a direct military confrontation with Tehran at all costs. And it did so in the most dramatic fashion: with the targeting killings of senior regime officials and strikes deep within Iranian territory, including against three key nuclear facilities. The Middle East now sits on a knife’s edge as it awaits the next phase of the war.

But the faceoff also shook the status quo within Iran, giving many people languishing under Islamic Republic rule a glimpse into a different future. And the regime knows it. In the weeks since the attacks, the government has sought to quell dissent by ramping up its crackdown on Iranians at home and abroad.

During the war, Israel and the U.S. didn’t just strike military assets; they also hit symbols of the regime’s control, including facilities tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), propaganda outlets like state television, and secret surveillance infrastructure. Many of the Iranian officials killed had long been involved in repression at home, crushing dissent, restricting the internet, or siphoning national wealth into the regime’s nuclear ambitions. Israel’s strikes revealed that the very commanders who drove Iranians into poverty were living in palatial homes.

“Probably we are the sole nation in today’s world that live in such a contradiction,” a 41-year-old Tehran resident, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by the government, told me. “Every day, we wait for a foreign country to attack our homeland to help us live. Today, Iranians know that the only person who might rescue them from this life of poverty and humiliation is Netanyahu.”

Ordinary Iranians now live in a suspended moment—aware that the war has merely paused, not ended, as the regime’s nuclear program continues to threaten regional stability. U.S. battle damage assessments found that the June strikes—including those on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan—set back, but didn’t destroy, Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Significant amounts of enriched uranium and centrifuge equipment appear to have been safeguarded or relocated in advance. 

Last month, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany triggered the United Nations snapback mechanism, demanding that Tehran resume nuclear talks, grant inspectors wider access to its nuclear sites, and account for its uranium stockpile. Under U.N. Resolution 2231, sanctions will automatically be reinstated after 30 days unless the Security Council votes otherwise.

Renewed sanctions threaten to compound the economic difficulties Iranians already face at the hands of the regime. Iran’s year-on-year inflation rate reached 41.2 percent in July, according to the country’s Statistical Center, marking its highest level in two years. And critical energy infrastructure in Iran did not escape unscathed from the conflict with Israel, which saw strikes on gas and petrochemical refineries.  

Many Iranians blame their dismal economic situation on the state’s control of key economic sectors. “Wherever you work, you are either working for the IRGC or working with them. They own everything,” said the Tehran resident, who works at a private insurance firm that he insists is actually controlled by the Iranian military arm. “They structured everything in a way that [the] economic pressure [from] Israel’s strikes against regime targets falls on the people. Inflation is high, and the government says taxes will increase. Still, we are ready, because there is no other way.”

During the short-lived war, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and government officials sought to redirect popular discontent within the country to its foreign attackers. 

The regime vowed to enact “harsh revenge” against Israel and the U.S. while restricting internet access to control the flow of information. In a sudden shift, top officials began speaking the language of nationalism rather than Islamism—broadcasting patriotic songs, erecting banners and statues of Persian heroes, and even easing restrictions on women’s dress codes to ease social pressures. Breaking from their usual emphasis on the “Islamic Ummah,” they began referring to the people as the “Iranian nation.”

But analysts warned that the regime’s appeal to nationalist pride was a temporary ploy, and they were right: As soon as the ceasefire was in place, security forces resumed urban crackdowns, searching citizens’ cars and phones in Tehran and other cities, and arresting citizens on charges of spying for Israel to instill fear among the Iranian people. Human rights groups report that in August 2025 alone, at least 140 prisoners—many on political charges—were executed.

Several men were charged with smuggling “assassination equipment,” including the drones used for Israeli operations, and aiding sabotage operations targeting Iranian infrastructure. Human rights groups have condemned a wave of hundreds of arrests and warned that the government is using the June conflict as a pretext to escalate repression. Rights groups have also cited concerns over forced confessions. Iranian state-aligned media Fars News reported in June that more than 700 people, described as “Israeli mercenaries,” were arrested during the conflict. 

The Islamic Republic knows it is financially broken, militarily weakened, and isolated at home and abroad. “Every time we protested fuel prices or the cost of bread, the regime answered with bullets,” a 35-year-old man, who identified himself as Farshad, told me. “Today, Trump and Netanyahu are the allies of the Iranian people against Khamenei, and this is a historic opportunity. The IRGC knows better than anyone that in this war, we are not standing behind the regime. They are the same force who killed us.”

But even in its weakened state, the regime’s long arm of repression extends well beyond Iran’s borders. During the 12-day war and in the weeks since, the families of journalists, political activists, and media commentators have faced harassment, threats, and in some cases, arrest.

In June, the Persian service of Voice of America reported harassment of the families of several of its journalists and staff in Iran, saying the IRGC had threatened them with reprisals if their relatives did not stop working with the U.S.-funded broadcaster.

In August, Iran International, a Persian media outlet with headquarters in London and Washington, said the families of 45 staff members had been targeted. In one instance, the relatives of a female presenter were detained in Tehran to force her resignation. Another journalist told The Dispatch that their sibling disappeared for three weeks and cut contact with them afterwards. 

Iranian journalists across the diaspora tell similar stories. Parents have been threatened with the loss of their pensions, and siblings have been threatened with dismissal from their workplace, to force reporters’ hands. In some instances, The Dispatch learned, journalists in foreign countries have been asked to attend a video call with Iranian security officers to express regret for their professions. 

“As far as I know, at least four of my colleagues have been targeted. These pressures didn’t all start at once; some families were harassed weeks before the war began, and after the war, the pressure on others increased,” said one VOA journalist, requesting anonymity. “Most of it was directed at close relatives. Their demand was for journalists to quit their jobs and to record video interviews with Ministry of Intelligence and IRGC officials.”

He added: “The probable goal was to extract recorded confessions, produce propaganda films—what they call ‘documentaries’—and air them on their national TV to discredit foreign outlets as sources of information. Another goal was to influence the editorial policies of Persian-language media abroad by pressuring journalists into self-censorship. They want to censor our reporting and bend it to their will.”

The Islamic Republic’s renewed campaign of repression underscores its perilous position both at home and in the region. For years, a military strike on Iranian soil was considered an untouchable red line. That taboo is now gone. 

With Khamenei weakened, his commanders decimated, and Iran’s network of regional proxy groups largely dismantled, the regime has fewer tools of deterrence left. For many Iranians, the real question is not whether the next phase of war will come, but when—and what that chapter might bring for a dictatorship on the brink of collapse.