Credit: Reuters
A towering inferno blazed where the most important oil reservoir of Tehran once stood and the air turned into the city black.
Randy area kicked through the streets of a mysterious break in the sewerage corridors. Cars quickly exploded in succession while spectators shell a shock. Many residents fled; Others were drawn up outside of gas stations and tried to find desperating fuel supplies desperate while they prepared to join the Exodus.
While Israel's war against Iran raged in a third day on Sunday, the rumor and chaos suppressed the capital. Whatever the military objectives of Israel, its effect had clearly adopted a broader dimension, aimed at not only the economic foundations of the state, but also on the psyche of his people.
For years, Israel has had the feeling that the remaining population of Iran turned on his Islamist masters. Now it sows the seeds of chaos hoping to push them over the edge.
Changing the regime, due to the own recognition of Benjamin Netanyahu, is one of the desired results of Israel. He told Fox News: “[It] Could certainly be the result because Iran is very weak. '
Quite where the Israelis were behind and what they were not for sure no one.
Perhaps the sewer pipes were cracked on their own initiative; Perhaps an unknown group was exploiting the fraying feeling of order to blow up cars.
Credit: X/@Nexta_TV
But given that this is a country whose spies remotely thousands of pagers and Walkietalkies from Hezbollah exploded in Lebanon, anything was possible.
Only one thing can be definitively fixed on Israel: a series of attacks on Iran's oil and gas facilities. The likely motif was not difficult to distinguish.
After they shuddered in the dark by one of the toughest winters in recent memory, irritated Iranians have increasingly hit their anger about the regime in recent months.
It seemed like a scandal that a country with a sixth of the world's gas and 10 percent of its oil in such a catacly -micical current crisis could be entangled that even large roads were housed in the dark due to lack of electricity.
While the government offices closed and school performance pushed their thumbs at home at home, angry Iranians took to the streets in more than 150 villages and towns to denounce corruption and mismanagement behind the crisis – protests that will continue this month.
No wonder that Israel not only hit Iran's nuclear facilities and rocket bases in the last 24 hours, but also his electricity and gas plants.
On Sundays, burned in the southern Pars gas field and a nearby oil paint in the southern province of Bushr. A dozen storage tanks in the most important fuel depot in Tehran exploded one after the other and set fire to the surrounding hills.
There are plenty of reasons why Iran's energy infrastructure is attacked. Israel hopes Iran to deny the fuel it needs to support military operations. It may also hope to claim Iran against Saudi or Emirati-energy activa-worth the United States, with its bunker-bending bombs, possibly be drawn in the war.
But perhaps the most crucial, Israel seems to have concluded that if it fights alone, his best chance of dismantling the nuclear program of Iran, not in bombing deep buried enrichment facilities, but in destabilizing the regime she has built. The regime of over -May, some officials believe, are simply the best bet of Israel to survive.
If so, the rotting domestic energy sector of Iran is perhaps the most vulnerable point. The country is sending. Power Rantsing has closed factories, unpaid employees, prevented bakers from making bread, not students and farmers to irrigate their crops.
Many blame the Mullahs and the elite revolutionary guards, who not only protect them, but also control much of the power generation and distribution of Iran.
Fury about it reports that electricity has been diverted to power-granting bitcoin-mining activities that are linked to the guards, has fueled a popular singing in the cities of Iran: “Crypto for the guards; Black-outs for the people!”
Mr Netanyahu clearly believes that the people of Iran can be persuaded to overthrow the regime itself. Israeli strikes on their country, he told them on Friday, “would free the path for you to reach your freedom”.
Such a step, he told Fox News, would clearly be a justified outcome of the offensive of Israel. He said, “We can't have the most dangerous regime in the world the most dangerous weapons in the world.”
Rally around the flag
Yet not everyone is convinced that the strategy will work. In fact, it could be wrong, possibly helping to reinforce support for an unpopular regime, warns Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East at Chatham House, a think tank of international affairs in London.
She said: “Iranians are usually quite nationalistic and as civilian casualties become the establishment and life more difficult, they are more likely to gather around the flag.
“The unintended consequence could be the re-legitimization of the Islamic Republic-a devastating outcome for Iranians and the wider region, let alone Netanyahu.”
Whatever they think of the regime, but few Iranians will enjoy seeing destruction on their home country, says Farzan Sabet, a researcher of the Middle East at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, from the Iranian city of Shiraz.
He said: “In my own city, the electronics industry that contributed to the radar systems of the army is destroyed.
“It was a military target, but also a center of technology and an important source of employment. Many people who were not special pro-government are quite upset to see it destroyed.
“If Israel continues to expand such operations, you will see many people who do not love the government, offer descriptive support. They may not love the government, but they also do not like what is happening with the country.”
Before the operation started, there was little doubt how unpopular Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, and his fellow Mullahs belonged to a large part of the population. They have always hated liberals from the middle class.
Before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran had one of the most westernized population in the middle: unveiled women wore pants, danced in night clubs, drank cocktails and canoodled with unmarried men.
Such advanced were paramount in the first important anti-government protests in 2009, led by the so-called green movement. Later waves of unrest in a more diverse range of Iranians – especially women – pulled frustrated by the strict Islamic codes, corruption and the economic toll of sanctions and insulation of the regime.
Iranian women protest against the Israeli attacks on Tehran – Majid Saeedi/Getty
Although these protests alerted the regime, they ultimately did not change much. The Ayatollahs successfully crushed the most serious uprising, activated at the end of 2022 after Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died in police detention because she is said to have shown her hair.
Part of the regime has survived by trusting a fanatic loyal core of supporters.
“The popularity of the regime has decreased steadily over time,” says Sabet. “But the support of it, at least under its core base, remains relatively solid for the time being – and this is the core group that the system has trusted to survive.”
But this is not the only reason why Israel can have trouble initiating the regime change.
While the Israeli bombs began to fall, Reza Pahlavi, the banished son and heir of the Shah who was overthrown in 1979, urged Iranians to overthrow the regime and to blame Iran dragging in war “.
Although many Iranians feel nostalgic for their 2500-year-old monarchy, Mr. Pahlavi leads what many analysts consider the weakest of five, often bitterly distributed opposition movements-a fragmentation that the Mullahs have successfully used.
Until there is a more united opposition, it is unlikely that a popular uprising, especially from abroad, will have a significant impact, claims Meir Javed Danfar, a teacher at Israel's Reichman University. History, especially in the middle, suggests that they rarely do that.
He said: “Everyone in Israel wants regime change and I think 80 percent of people in Iran want better leaders.
“But I am not sure whether the regime change from abroad can be encouraged. It has to come from the inside. It needs local leadership – and I just don't see the opposition in Iran organizing around a single leader or party.”
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