U.S. and Israeli officials have retreated from their initial goal of regime change in Iran, disappointing Iranians who hoped the war would overthrow their government.
At the start of the war on Iran, Israel and the U.S. said they were paving the way for Iranians to rise up and topple their government. Many Iranians cheered on the offensive as a last resort to overthrow rulers who killed thousands of protesters in January.
Now, they are grappling with the possibility that the war will end with them living under the same authoritarian rule and crushing international sanctions, but in devastated cities with an aggrieved government that has vowed to take an even harder line against dissent.
One Tehran-based civil-society activist and former political prisoner said Iranians were truly hopeful two weeks ago as the war began. Now, the person said, they feel betrayed. An English-language teacher living in Tehran who is opposed to the government but also the war was more blunt. "We were f -- ed over," the teacher said, saying they were turned into an excuse to launch a devastating war. "It's like we have gone back a hundred years in time."
The disappointment was triggered by a U-turn by Israeli and U.S. officials, who now are suggesting the time isn't ripe for regime change.
President Trump has hinted the war could end soon, saying American forces have already struck all the targets that could be hit. On Friday, he told Fox News Radio that he thinks it is unlikely that Iranians will rise up soon against a regime that remains dangerous.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken on a similar tone, saying in a speech Thursday that Iranians might not be able to bring down the regime, just days after he exhorted them to be ready for the coming moment to strike.
"The penny has dropped for a lot of people that this may be much more about state collapse than regime change," said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The war is shaping up to be the second time this year that Iranians have seen the U.S. retreat on promises of regime change.
In early January, Trump encouraged Iranian protesters to overthrow their government, posting on social media that the U.S. was "locked and loaded" and that "HELP IS ON ITS WAY." Days later, he decided against an attack after advisers convinced him the U.S. didn't have the necessary forces in place. Critics at the time feared for the future of protesters who had been emboldened by Trump's call to action.
When launching the war on Feb. 28, Trump and Netanyahu again called Iranians into the streets. But Iranian security forces had prepared for the war with plans to disperse decision-making and a widespread crackdown ahead of the fighting.
Once the airstrikes began, Iranian authorities warned civilians through text messages and television broadcasts that any protester would be punished harshly for siding with the enemy. A commander with the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, speaking on state television, said a shoot-to-kill order was in place.
Iranian authorities have detained at least 195 people during the war on accusations ranging from espionage to sending content to foreign media outlets, according to data compiled by Human Rights Activists in Iran, a U.S.-based group that monitors the country. Residents say people have been arrested for taking pictures or videos of strike sites.
Many Iranians expect the authorities to turn their force against them through mass arrests, lengthy prison sentences and violence once the fighting ends. In the 1980s, amid an eight-year war with Iraq, the Islamic Republic consolidated its power by executing thousands of political prisoners.
The realization that regime change isn't immediately in the cards has also changed the calculus of Kurdish armed groups based in the border area between Iraq and Iran. After weighing an uprising in the Kurdish-majority areas of western Iran, the Kurds put their plans on hold, deterred by the government's strength and the lack of foreign military commitment to push for change, according to representatives of several Iranian Kurdish groups which are mostly based in neighboring Iraq and border areas.
Iranian forces have repeatedly struck positions of Iranian Kurds in Iraq in recent days.
"In Kurdistan, until people are sure that real and serious changes are actually happening, I don't think any major change will take place," said Zagros Enderyarî, an official with the Kurdistan Freedom Life Party, also known as PJAK, an Iranian Kurdish armed group.
There were always limits to what an air war alone could accomplish. When foreign airstrikes have helped topple autocratic regimes in the region, they were supplemented with U.S. troops on the ground, as in Iraq or Afghanistan, or coordinated with local armed militias, as in Libya. Neither option applies in Iran.
Regime change also requires regime fragmentation, which doesn't appear to be happening in Iran. Despite punishing attacks on internal security organizations, including bases and command centers of the Revolutionary Guard and the plainclothes Basij militias, there has been no indication of serious defections or division. Residents say Iranian security forces are present and active to a degree that is keeping opponents of the regime in hiding.
Tehran residents say the destruction and death caused by the bombing is also turning more people strongly against the war, including many opponents of the Islamic Republic. More than 1,270 Iranian civilians have been confirmed killed so far, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran. U.S. military investigators think American forces likely were responsible for a strike that killed dozens of children at a girls' elementary school in Iran.
The fear is that a government emboldened by its survival and aggrieved by the punishing airstrikes will become a fiercer oppressor.
"This regime will become stronger, crueller, more monstrous even than before," said a Tehran resident who supported the war. "People don't have the weapons to fight back."