What should they do ? Stop working, or protest and risk getting killed ?

It's easy to call for action from your comfortable life.

No, the populace does not bear the same responsibility for the country's actions in all countries. Swiss with direct democracy bear much higher responsibility than systematically oppressed populace in other countries.

This is a historically ignorant take, especially when you consider the country being talked about is Iran. As an American it's very easy to assume that a "government revolution" is something that can executed by the will of the people.

Iran had a democratic government. That democratic government voted to do something against Britian's economic interests. In response America dissolved it's government.

If I lived in a nation where any government instability would be used by wealth foreign powers who didn't care if I lived or died, I would also be hesitant in brewing any anti-government fervor.

You can't hold them wholly responsible when they don't even have the power of true self determination.

Actually, the US is responsible for Iran's actions. We're the ones who meddled in their government and pushed them to the point they're at today.

Regardless, it's laughable to think that regular Iranian citizens are just as responsible for their theocratic dictatorship as Americans are for the US's (crumbling) representative democracy. Those two things are not the same at all. Your average Iranian has zero influence over what the Iranian government does. The average American... put Trump in office, either by voting for him or by abstaining.

This is an extremely important, often overlooked, point. I also know of many "educated Iranians" living in the US who voice their opinion as GP suggests, and are self-proclaimed to be anti-regime. However, they travel to Iran to visit family and friends twice a year and take an iPhone or two on their way to gift them, directly benefiting the Mullah's system. I don't think a jew would have gone back to Nazi Germany to visit family, so I would take "hate the government" with a grain of salt when everything you do benefits the same establishment.

Some even line up to vote for sham Presidential elections of the Mullah regime, whose turnout legitimizes the regime, while inside the United States! Being Stanford educated does not prevent this seemingly cognitive dissonance or perhaps deception; it actually makes that more likely.