The upshot of this lengthy article in
Foreign Affairs is that
Trump/Netanyahu's war with Iran has spectacularly backfired. The "decapitation strikes" not only created martyrs, but they created a more nimble and focused leadership, less focused on ideology and more focused on nationalism, one with stronger backing from the Iranian people.
Part of that is because of the stupidity of Hegseth and Netanyahu:
According to a Bloomberg analysis, two-thirds of the targets struck in Tehran before the cease-fire were residential, commercial, and other civilian buildings. In interview after interview, Iranians described explosions that reverberated through their bodies night and day, leaving deep psychological wounds. To them, the Iranian armed forces were no longer the oppressors but the defenders. A chant heard at rallies across Iran to cheer on Iran’s missile and drone strikes captured the shift in mood: “Strike, for you strike so well.” As the Iranian philosopher and dissident Mohammad Mehdi Ardebili said in Tehran during the fifth week of the war: “In this moment in time, the Islamic Republic and Iran are one and the same. If the Islamic Republic falls, Iran falls.”
Hitting civilian infrastructure to weaken a regime has a nearly-100% failure rate going back over a century, back to when German dirigibles were dropping bombs on London and German long-range guns were shelling Paris. But ghouls like Whiskey Pete and the Zoomie goons keep trying.