Indeed, the track record is abysmal. And that is worrying.

The Iranians around me say this is their last hope. They have tried reforming the system from inside, they have tried protesting. And the regime has just become more ruthless and violent. Many have actually been calling for foreign interventions - they don’t actually care who.

Iranians in general will not align with the IRGC, they are universally hated. Their recent actions have just made them even more hated.

It is true that US and Israel don’t have the best of the Iranian people in mind. However, many Iranians hope that this may create a chance for the Islamic regime to be replaced.

Here you go: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025–2026_Iranian_protests

The reason Iran wants people to talk about the war and not the protests, is that they themselves are much better at killing their own citizens, with 10-30k dead and 300k injured during the January protests.

Thank you! There is a tendency, as you have noted, of some white-passing Iranians who immigrate to the US to claim “we are actually white”. I think it’s problematic and can be seen as racist - does this mean they consider non-white-passing to not be Iranian? Does it mean they think of themselves as better than immigrants that don’t pass as white? Here’s a photo to illustrate different ethnicities in the country:

Wait, he wasn’t when they stripped his titles?

Actually, in Iran there is a full blown spectrum, from what in America is considered white, even blonde people, to what you consider black, and everything in between. There’s quite a bit of Asian, specifically Turkic and Mongolic, genes woven into it too.

All these people are considered Iranian.

They mean what they say and it is propaganda. In addition, the amount of civilian targets hit are few. The Islamic regime itself is responsible for a lot more deaths. The opinions of regime-critical Iranians inside the country can be summarized like this: yes, bombs are scary, but the regime is more scary.