President Donald Trump this week claimed Israel is attacking Iranian energy facilities without US knowledge—though the Wall Street Journal and Reuters say he was informed in advance—and residents in Iran are reportedly decrying the air campaign for its devastation of infrastructure and residential areas. The free special issue of Middle East Policy, Washington’s War on Iran, analyzes the economic and social crises that these citizens were already facing, and considers whether the ground for regime change had been prepared before the current conflict began.
The 14 free-to-read articles in this special issue explain Tehran’s response to the June 2025 war, the development of a Sunni-Israeli alliance against Iran, how the Islamic Republic tried to take advantage of the US-China rivalry, and Tehran’s attempt to develop a regime-preservation network by looking East. It also takes a deep dive into the key pillars of Iran’s defense strategy, the clerical-military leadership, and the roots of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s hostility toward the United States. The issue concludes with a look at the parallels with the 2003 Iraq invasion, especially the groupthink that produced the American strategy. You can register to receive our weekly updates here. And please follow us on the social media platforms X and LinkedIn.
Even before the United States and Israel launched their war, purportedly for regime change, the Islamic Republic faced intensifying grassroots protests. In their in-depth interviews with Iranians who demonstrated in fall 2022, Rauf Rahimi and Sajjad Rezaei find that while the proximate cause was the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, at the hands of the religious police, the episode awakened latent demands for change. “Violation of rights is not a sufficient cause for rebellion, but it is a source of dormant rage,” one participant tells the analysts.
Indeed, the state’s actions compounded personal frustrations, the interviews show. “In my opinion, the death of Mahsa Amini made people realize that something like this could happen to them or their loved ones,” a demonstrator observes, “which causes individuals to worry about their future.”
Rahimi and Rezaei discover that most of those driven to confront the regime were less concerned about cruelty or women’s rights than the government’s refusal to take responsibility for Amini’s death. More important, they blamed the regime for poor management and lack of capacity to address Iran’s problems. The authors write:
Accusations of inefficiency and incompetence were recurring themes. “The government and its officials are ineffective and incapable of managing and organizing the country’s affairs in all fields,” P2 claimed. This was echoed by P20, who remarked that “the officials are inept and incompetent in handling the country’s affairs.” The dishonesty of officials was also criticized, with P4 stating, “By telling open lies to the people, the officials somehow insulted people’s intelligence and infused them with anger.”
This criticism of the state compounded what the interviewees describe as unbearable economic conditions, including unemployment, insufficient welfare provision, inflation, and a lack of hope for improvement due to sanctions.
P4 expressed alarm over the depreciation of the national currency: “All goods have become expensive.” The interviewee highlighted the insecurity in household budgets, noting, “There is no balance between people’s monthly income and expenses.” P12 further elaborated on the anxieties around individuals’ earnings: “Salaries and benefits have not significantly increased in comparison to inflation.”
This desperation over domestic economic conditions, and the unreliability of the Islamic Republic’s reporting, spurred Arvin Khoshnood to critically examine poverty in Iran. His investigation triangulates official statistics with those from global nongovernmental organizations and academics to provide a clearer picture not just of the economic pressures on Iranians but also the state’s lack of action to address them.
Khoshnood’s findings are rich and detailed, not easily summarized, so readers will benefit from digging into his article. He finds that the reported figures for the poverty line, inflation, malnourishment, housing costs and home ownership, and medical services likely underplay the severity of social and economic conditions.
But the evidence also shows that for the first two decades of the 21st century, the Islamic Republic’s national income nearly tripled. Despite this, the regime chose not to use its wealth to ease the dire conditions facing many citizens. “Just when the government had more resources to fight poverty,” he writes of the period leading up to street demonstrations in 2017, “the number of undernourished people had increased, which casts serious doubt on the poverty policies of both the so-called reformist and conservative administrations.”
Thus, Khoshnood concludes, much of the economic stress facing Iranians was driven by state policy, not by incompetence or by US and Western sanctions. Indeed, as the protesters tell Rahimi and Rezaei,
The divide was being driven by the government’s not being responsive to the citizenry. Indeed, the state’s reliance on revenues from oil and gas means that it is not financially dependent on the people and therefore less likely to accommodate them.
While conditions for ordinary Iranians deteriorated after 2017 due to Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, the Islamic Republic found sources of revenue. “China never actually terminated its oil imports from Iran, even at the height of Western sanctions,” Shirzad Azad demonstrates. “When it was not possible for Beijing to engage with Tehran directly, the two sides continued their oil deals through subterranean methods.”
Azad’s study shows that the sanctions took an immediate toll on Tehran’s trade with Beijing but did not destroy it: “In April 2019, China imported about $1.6 billion in Iranian crude….Throughout 2020, data reported by Chinese authorities indicated the total value of China’s oil imports from Iran to be $200 million or less.” Beijing became more aggressive during the presidency of Joe Biden, upping its imports from between 100,000 and 200,000 barrels per day in October 2020 to more than 800,000 in the first quarter of 2022.
Due to the sanctions and the role of third parties in these oil deals, precise figures are elusive. But Azad shows that Iran’s exports in the second quarter of 2022 may have topped $20 billion, and around that time, China promised to invest 10 times that amount in Iranian oil and gas projects.
Still, the regime’s survival through its oil wealth sparked a backlash among the people even before Israel and the United States waged their war. Citizens had long since recognized that regime change would be necessary for increases in economic fortunes and political rights. “The system cannot shift toward changes in society, and laws do not align with modern-day behavior,” Rahimi and Rezaei observe. “And while the state holds a lot of power, there are few nodes where individual feedback can affect government behavior and policy.”
The question is whether an externally imposed war can be one of those nodes.
You can find more incisive examinations in The Israel-Iran War, our previous special issue on the 2025 campaign against Iran’s nuclear capacity. And check out the Middle East Policy Council’s website for insights from its analysts.
Middle East Policy, Washington’s War on Iran—special issue
TEHRAN’S PERILOUS POSITION
The June 2025 Israeli War: Iran’s Assessment and Regional Consequences
Ali Bagheri Dolatabadi, 2025
Jordan’s Role in Establishing a Sunni-Israeli Alliance
Ronen Yitzhak, 2026
Iran’s Strategies in Response to Changes in US-China Relations
Sara Bazoobandi, 2024
CAN REGIME CHANGE SUCCEED?
Clerics and Generals: Assessing the Stability of the Iranian Regime
Hadi Sohrabi, 2018
Iran’s Supreme Leader: An Analysis of His Hostility Toward the US and Israel
Thomas Buonomo, 2018
Iran’s Defense Strategy: The Navy, Missiles, and Cyberweaponry
Gawdat Bahgat | Anoushiravan Ehteshami, 2017
Iran and the SCO: The Quest for Legitimacy and Regime Preservation
Nicole Bayat Grajewski, 2023
ISLAMIC REPUBLIC’S SOCIAL & ECONOMIC CRISES
The 2022 Iran Protests: The View from the Streets
Rauf Rahimi | Sajjad Rezaei, 2025
Bargain and Barter: China’s Oil Trade with Iran
Shirzad Azad, 2023
Poverty in Iran: A Critical Analysis
Arvin Khoshnood, 2019
ECHOES OF THE IRAQ INVASION
Invading Iraq: The Road to Perpetual War
Ronald Bleier, 2002
Reinventing Iraq: The Regional Impact of US Military Action
Judith Yaphe, 2002
Drinking the Kool-Aid
W. Patrick Lang, 2004
Coping with Kaleidoscopic Change in the Middle East
Chas W. Freeman Jr., 2013
BOOK REVIEWS
Javad Heiran-Nia, Iran and the Security Order in the Persian Gulf
Reviewed by Mahmood Monshipouri
Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez, How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare
Reviewed by Bahram P. Kalviri
Robert J. Lieber, Indispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in a Turbulent World
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce