There are news reports of Iranian expats and opponents within Iranian who are disappointed with the ceasefire. They wanted trump to go further and destroy the regime.
That aligns with conversations I’ve had with Iranians friends in the US and family members within Iran who want the regime destroyed so there is a chance of removing the Islamic theocracy that governs the country currently.
The country is basically on the verge of civil war. The reason it’s not is because the anti-regime forces are disorganized with no clear leader, have no weapons, and rely on internet to organize.
My only goal has been to surface conversations I’ve had with actual Iranians. I think that’s been missing from these Internet conversations, and I think it’s really helpful that people know what actual Iranians think.
Otherwise, you fall into the funny situation like what happened with Maduro, where Internet commentators were upset, while ordinary Venezuelans (and expats) were celebrating.
Even those regime supporters are civilians. This is literally advocating for a war crime.
I think about it this way: would I have had any problem with the allies bombing Nazi rallies, even though they were mostly civilians? My answer is absolutely not. I feel the same way when I see pro-Islamic regime or pro-Hezbollah rallies. In fact, I think the limited repercussions for these extremist civilians - and their very tangible support for the regimes - is what keeps these movements alive and powerful. Cost to civilizations - military and civilian alike - is what ends wars.
My impression is that Iran is much closer to a civil war than Russia is. It’s very polarized.
You have to put yourself in the mindset of someone against the regime. They feel that their country was hijacked by an islamic theocracy.
This is a regime that forces little girls to cover their body. Dancing and singing in public is illegal. Protesters are hanged.
My wife was sent home from school as a kid because her headband didn’t properly cover her forehead. At the age of 30 my wife still has trouble wearing shorts because she is self-conscious about showing her legs.
This is the kind of mental trauma that women have to recover from after leaving Iran. And I’ve only skimmed the surface.
There is zero sympathy from the anti-regime side for those who support the theocracy.
But even so, I think the response you’ll get from most anti-regime Iranians is “go for it, if it may let us get our country back”.
Iranians who wants the regime overthrown are very conflicted right now. They see their country being destroyed, but they also hate the regime and want a revolution.
They literally feel that their country was hijacked by an Islamic theocracy. They want that destroyed, so they’re thankful that Trump is attacking it.
How far should Trump go? I just saw news reports that Iranian expats and anti-regime Iranians were disappointed with the cease-fire. That aligns with the initial reaction from my family and the Iranian expats that I know.
So it’s a complicated answer… Do Iranians want all their infrastructure destroyed? If it would guarantee the regime was defeated I think most would say yes.
The people who left tend were often in a privileged position under the previous regime and the bitterness at having their privilege revoked often echoes through the generations.
They might feign concern for human rights when the regime they hate is violating them (i saw a lot of that when the alleged killing of tens of thousands of protestors) but it's the bitterness of lost privilege which truly drives them.
Ive seen it with Cubans, Venezuelans, Angolans, even the odd Russian.
As someone from and in a thirdworld country, these expats can be even more arrogant and psychopathic than the imperialists they live under
My mother-in-law is the most anti-regime person I’ve met.
Every government in all of human history has had its detractors and supporters, more detractors probably exist in expatriated communities, their existence does not really prove anything.
didn't Donald Trump campaign on no more foreign wars? doesn't America First mean not starting some forever war?
and if there is a good case for intervention: then make it! what are the objectives? Regime change? we killed most of their leadership, and they are still running the show. We killed Osama... and then fled Afghanistan decades later. why is there such a short memory in this case? these dudes HATE US: their recruiting propaganda gets more effective with every bomb we drop on them.
and if regime change is so important, than surely we will invade North Korea next right? and Russia? what about them? how about Venezuela? ohhh, yeah we left the regime in place, with no change for the people living under it.
perhaps was controlling oil the key objective? well... we stopped sanctioning the Iranian regime, and they are still in a position to stop traffic in Hormuz: the current terms they are asking gives them more control over the strait, rather than less?
so what the hell is our objective? can we just admit that we have no idea what we're doing, because we have no strategy?
Be an apologist for something that isn't truly riddled with internal inconsistency.
I’m not sure if we have good statistics on this. So everyone may have a different perspective.
All I can say is this: I’m married to an Iranian woman, and through her I’ve met many Iranian expats, and I’ve talked to her family members within Iran.
I think you’ll find that Iranian expats are pretty unanimously against the regime. That’s millions of Iranians. My in-laws who lives in Tehran are anti-regime, along with every single person on my wife’s side of the family: aunts, uncles, cousins. Everybody.
Thousands of protesters were killed opposing the regime. And that’s just the latest protest.
This is a regime that will kill women who don’t cover their hair correctly. Dancing and singing in the street is illegal.
Don’t be concerned on behalf of the regime. This is a just war supported by Iranians. You are on the right side of history to kill people who hang protestors and force little girls to cover every part of their body.
How do you square this with the absolutely massive pro-government rallies that we've seen all across Iran for the entire duration of the conflict? Millions of Iranians opposed to the regime, in a country of 90 million+, might still be a fringe minority.
If you asked some American expat their thoughts on MAGA, and they responded "China should bomb MAGA rallies so we can be free from the Republican party, my whole family in the US agrees".....that person would be considered a fringe lunatic, even if Trump's regime has record-low approval like it does now (and rightly deserves, I hope he is impeached and jailed).
Here was one survey that showed 81% disapproval of the Islamic Republic: https://gamaan.org/2023/02/04/protests_survey/
In a country of 90 million, if the regime has 20% supporters, that’s 18 million supporters.
Tehran population is 9 million, 20% of that is 1.8 million.
So it’s easy to understand why you might see videos of hundreds or thousands of regime supporters in the streets. That doesn’t mean they’re the majority.
How many of you have been to Iran, have family members there, etc? I'm guessing very few.
A majority of Americans want Donald Trump removed https://www.newsweek.com/majority-americans-want-trump-compl...
And a significant portion of the opposition wish he was dead.
It’s not about “minority vs majority” it’s the very biased phrasing of “we should bomb Iran because people want regime change” Imagine if Iran was bombing USA because the majority of Americans want regime change.
The Iranians I’ve spoken to feel that the ends will justify the means.
They believe that people will die either way, protesters are dying right now. So if they can destroy the regime, then it will be worth it.
Regimes rarely fall because civilians are reduced to searching for food and water. Destroying Iran's infrastructure would be more likely to produce desperation and disorder than revolt. It would hurt the weakest most, not those closest to the regime and best positioned to shield themselves from scarcity.
If outsiders want to help bring the regime down, supporting opposition forces would at least make more sense than bombing civilians into misery.
This is where not betraying the Kurds (several times) would have come in handy...
During the entire war, life goes on. The bakeries are open. They go about their life. My in-laws were driving back-and-forth across the city throughout the entire war. They recently bought a fridge.
They were seeing bombs and smoke from the city, sure. But it’s like living in uptown Manhattan, and seeing smoke come from the financial district. It doesn’t really affect your life, although it may be scary.
Only after a month of war did a bomb finally go off in their neighborhood. The shockwave broke the windows in their house. But the Red Crescent was in the neighborhood to support.
I agree with you that arming the opposition is probably the best move. All I can say is that whatever we’ve been doing the last 40+ years has accomplished nothing. Anti-regime Iranians want action.
Obviously no one is calling the victims evil. You have to suspect thats a misinterpretation if thats what you get from a comment
It would require a large scale ground operation which is off the table. A few more weeks of air strikes would not have destroyed the regime anyway but a few more weeks of asymmetric strikes (when Iran strikes its neighbors because it can do little about the US/Israel) would have destroyed gulf oil infrastructure inflicting lasting economic pain on the whole world.
Also, the Iranians you likely hear, are not representative. I don't think most people who depend on energy and water don't want that infrastructure destroyed.
That's the diaspora's luxury. They don't have to endure the pain of the conflict or sanctions, and they always end up being the biggest hardliners for that reason.
All my in-laws live in Tehran. They’re all anti-regime.
Most of them realized their mistake:
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/04/01/...
Iranians hoping that war and death will save them are chasing a gruesome mirage. The US has successfully liberated exactly one country by regime change since 1945: Panama in 1989. Every other intervention has either supported a rebellion (secession) instead of a revolution, or it has ended in failure (Afghanistan, Vietnam, Somalia) or a prolonged civil war (Iraq, Libya, Yemen). Anyone hoping for such a fate to befall their own country is morally compromised.
From my conversations with Iranians, they know regime change is a long shot. But what are they to do?
Anti-regime Iranians literally feel like that their country was hijacked by an Islamic theocracy. 40+ years of status quo has done nothing to change that.
So yes, they enjoy seeing the regime being bombed. Do they really expect a revolution? Maybe the tiniest sliver of hope in their heart believes in it. But that’s better than nothing.
And to your point, US interventions saved South Korea, Kuwait, Grenada, Bosnia, in addition to Panama. The legacy of Vietnam is complicated with the country rejecting communism, becoming capitalistic, and embracing the U.S. in recent years. This is in stark contrast to countries like North Korea. We don’t know how Iraq and Venezuela will turn out in the current timeline either.
Even more problematic though, is the fact that many of the US interventions happened in countries at the brink of free fall. These are failed states who are more likely to experience turmoils with or without the U.S.. Yes, civil wars can be worse than dictatorship. But that’s one of many possible outcomes. Avoiding all changes due to the fear of the worst potential outcome is weirdly privileged view. Kurds in Iraq can attest to this. Iraq has become much better for them nowadays because the Saddam era was pure hell. They were desperate and any alternative was thought to be better.
However, I don’t think intervention in Iran necessarily serves the US interest to begin with. So sure, I agree with you that the U.S. really shouldn’t waste more time in Iran.
What I said was that anyone who wants their country to meet the fate of other countries the US has attempted to regime change is morally compromised. Simply hoping that the Islamic regime will go away is completely rational. Knowing that it will definitely fail and wanting to try it anyway is insanity.
And the diaspora fools cheering for more bombs and destruction are also in armchairs. They have no sympathy from me.
>Hoping foreign power can help overthrow the domestic lord is nothing new. That’s literally how the U.S. gained its independence with French military assistance.
Not regime change, a rebellion.
>And to your point, US interventions saved South Korea, Kuwait, Grenada, Bosnia, in addition to Panama.
South Korea was a response to invasion, Kuwait was a response to invasion, Grenada was a coup (response to a coup — edge case because the end state was much easier to define and also the country is minuscule), Bosnia was a rebellion. None of these are regime change.
>Kurds in Iraq can attest to this.
Also a rebellion. You might want to recheck the criteria.
>We don’t know how Iraq and Venezuela will turn out in the current timeline either.
23 years of civil war is too many. You can't just say "well eventually it worked out", that could justify anything. Other dictatorships have ended faster without violence. Venezuela was not a real regime change war because a deal was made with the VP before the invasion and also the Bolivarians are still in power.
And how he would do that, exactly?
Anti-regime Iranians are basically holding onto any sliver of hope that they can regain their country.
Of course, it’s all very unlikely, but I can’t help sympathizing with them. I think their cause is just. I think a non-theocratic Iran that could rejoin the global economy is a dream worth fighting for.
I'd love to see a democratic Iran, but this was was utterly pointless and counterproductive.
I think one idea is that if you can kill enough regime leaders, perhaps a moderate leader may emerge?
Or perhaps there may be a military coup? Which may be a lesser of two evils?
The Iranians I’ve spoken to don’t feel like it was counterproductive. They actually feel like Trump has done more than any other president to damage the regime.
What’s the alternative? More economic sanctions? The status quo of the last 40+ years has accomplished nothing.
Anti-regime Iranians want action. They want us to make a move. We killed a lot of regime leaders and destroyed their military capability. That’s something. Now we have to see how that chess move played out.
Did they also want Trump to destroy the whole civilization and have the country back to stone age like he claimed he would do?
It seems Trump and Israel expected an internal revolution once the bombing started, but it doesn't seem that manifested.
The Iranian diaspora is more divided on the matter than you think [1], and given your background, you're probably in the bubble of the diaspora that wouldn't mind sending threatening messages to anyone not being completely aligned with anti regime stance.
It's like someone marrying a deep south confederate flag waving MAGA American, moving there, and judging from talking to their friends and their hate for everything not MAGA, conclude that every American is like this. Or same scenario but California and liberals.
[1] https://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/on-unity-fragmentation-i...
I’ve responded to this idea of bias in other threads.
I’m open to the idea that I’m perhaps biased by my wife, her friends, and my in-laws.
I’ll admit that it may be a little hard for me to accept that given that I’ve been to so many Iranian celebrations, and met so many different people, and heard the same perspectives again and again. I feel that what I’ve conveyed on hacker news in my comments does reflect truly the conversations I’ve had.
Most importantly, my goal in making these comments is to surface what actual Iranians are thinking.
Many Iranians in the US are afraid to speak out because they have family in Iran, or they’re here in the US on a visa. They fear that if they speak up, they’ll never be able to go home and see their family again.
As a US citizen, who is connected with the Iranian community, I feel it’s my duty to surface these conversations I’ve had.
It was (supposed to be) a reference to the content of the linked material:
>Individuals and opposition groups took it upon themselves to allege relationships between diaspora Iranians and the Islamic Republic and guided their followers to conduct purity tests that sought to target, silence, and excommunicate anyone with whom they disagreed, labeling them as apologists or agents of the Islamic Republic for having called for reform in years past (now deemed too soft on the Islamic Republic), or for being unwilling to name the then-nascent protest movement a “revolution” or, in more extreme cases, for being unwilling to support regime change by any means necessary.
And a comment about the fact that you and your close Iranian relatives and friends probably hold the anti regime views strongly, and so does many (especially the ones that had to flee the revolution, or the childrens of) of their friends. I'm not questioning that fact, but pointing out that it's quite obvious that your friends and relatives probably wouldn't hang around the Iranians with different views.
It's not the only group and in a political climate like the Iranian diaspora, individuals (or groups) with opposing views or nuanced views are often silenced relentlessly.
It's simply unavoidable dynamics: iranian diaspora strongly wanting regime change are also not the ones that have to carry the blunt of that cost (they're outside Iran already), but reap most of the benefits. They're also spreading that message on platforms in countries that have an incentive to push for that message (USA, Israel) so the discourse will be highly amplified around anti-regime rethoric. The fact that it's not their house that is being bombed, also means that there aren't really any counteracting weight put on any potential opposing discourse, the discourse will maintain or go more extreme in is anti-regime rethoric going even more "any means necessary" route.
The Iranians against the regime inside Iran, I would assume, have a more nuanced view now. They might be against the regime, but not to the point they're willing to sacrifice their children, neighbors, and society collapsing Libya or Syria style. So they're probably less "any means necessary" about regime change.
I will say that my in-laws live in Tehran, and last week a bomb blew up near their house, and the shockwave broke all the windows in the house.
They had been seeing lots of bombs dropped onto Tehran, but this was the first one near their house.
My mother-in-law is very anti-regime and was actually in the streets during the protests. I don’t think that’s changed at all since the war.
It’s hard to speak for all Iranians. I wish we had better surveys and statistics to understand public opinion.
It seems from new media the support for khameni family has increased after the leader was killed.
The best recommendation I can give you is to connect with your local Iranian community
I’m not sure where you live, but every major city has one. You will experience great food and great parties and great dancing.
Iranian expats love to dance because dancing and singing in public is illegal in Iran. So they do it as a big middle finger to the Islamic republic.
