No clear path for Iran

Saeed Ahmadi felt the inquisitive eyes of onlookers as he let out a series of joyful screams during his 20-minute walk to the chemical engineering research lab at Ohio State University. But he didn’t care. The news his friend had called to share seemed too incredible to be true: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, was dead.

“For a moment, I couldn’t breathe,” Ahmadi said. (WORLD agreed to change Ahmadi’s name to protect him and his family from government retaliation.) Sobs shook the Iranian international student as his ecstatic shock melted into grief. “I just started crying for all the years that they ruled us.”

In broad daylight on the morning of Feb. 28, the United States and Israel killed Khamenei and dozens of other top Iranian leaders in a series of coordinated strikes dubbed Operation Epic Fury. The two nations also targeted the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ control centers and air defense systems, as well as Iran’s military communications network and naval forces.

Thousands of Iranians flooded the streets of major cities across the globe to celebrate the U.S. strikes. But not all Iranians share Ahmadi’s view of the Trump administration’s intervention. They worry foreign interference could sabotage ongoing Iranian efforts to advance democracy and lead to greater authoritarian crackdowns or civil war. Other critics of the president’s military campaign argue it violates campaign promises to keep American service members—and American tax dollars—from more military entanglements in the Middle East.

Ahmadi arrived in Columbus, Ohio, in 2023. He told me most Iranian students coming to the United States to study are really just desperate for a life out from under the prying eyes of their government. The 31-year-old doctoral student grew emotional as he described his relief at Khamenei’s death. “We begged for that,” he said. “This man killed his own people.”

A study at Stanford University’s Iranian studies program showed that on average a protest occurred in the capital city of Tehran once every three days between 2009 and 2024. The nation’s largest wave of protests occurred this January. The U.S.-based organization Human Right Activists News Agency said it verified the government killed more than 6,000 protesters and is investigating over 17,000 more deaths, though internal sources estimate the total could be closer to 30,000. Ahmadi said his brother barely escaped arrest during one university protest.

While the Trump administration has maintained Operation Epic Fury is not a “regime change” war, the president urged the Iranian people to “take over your government” in an 8-minute video posted to Truth Social. But meaningful governmental change appears unlikely. Iran’s Assembly of Experts, a body of Shia clerics, named Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the recently slain ayatollah, to be the country’s next supreme leader. Khamenei espouses the same hard-line positions as his father and has the support of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The choice does not bode well for a swift end to the conflict. Trump previously told Axios he would not support the appointment of Khamenei’s son. The president said his administration intended the operation to last four to five weeks. But he warned it would continue until the United States achieved its objectives: prevent the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear weapon or funding terrorist armies and decimate its ballistic missile capabilities and naval power. The military offensive followed several failed rounds of negotiations and a series of bombings last year that Trump claimed obliterated key nuclear sites, though some independent reporting indicated the facilities weren’t completely destroyed.

The Islamic Republic has launched a series of retaliatory attacks, including a drone strike on a makeshift operations center in Kuwait that killed six U.S. servicemembers, according to U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM. Israeli air defenses have intercepted hundreds of Iranian missiles as well as missiles fired by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. A ballistic missile killed at least nine people, including children, in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh when it struck a bomb shelter.

“We’ve been planning for this. The whole country’s been gearing up for it,” said Aryeh Myers, the national relations liaison for Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance, and blood bank service. He said they expect to see hundreds if not thousands more people injured.

I asked Myers what he wanted Americans to know about the conflict. “We are not just fighting a battle for Israel,” he said. “We are fighting a battle for the Western world.”

But a recent NBC News poll showed a majority of Americans—54%—disapprove of the military action in Iran, including a small slice of Republicans who don’t consider it a part of the president’s America First platform. Top congressional Democrats condemned the action, arguing the president overstepped his executive authority. On March 4, the Senate voted largely along party lines against invoking the war powers resolution, a law passed during the Vietnam War that would have required Trump to end U.S. operations in the region within 60 days unless he obtained congressional approval to continue. Congress has not declared war since 1942.

Trump has long criticized America’s international military entanglements. But Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., argued that the Trump administration’s military action in Iran follows in the same vein as his Republican ­predecessors. “It was the dream of the neoconservative to get rid of the Iranian regime after getting rid of the Afghan and Iraqi regimes,” she said. “He’s just living it out.”

Slavin contended that years of American opposition to Iran in the form of economic sanctions bolstered the regime’s position by weakening Iranian society, unintentionally stalling reform efforts and pushing the Islamic Republic into the arms of China. The Asian nation buys more than 80% of Iran’s crude oil exports, data from the firm Kpler revealed. Now, Slavin worries the recent strikes could bolster Chinese propaganda painting the United States as “reckless” and the People’s Republic as the “true upholder of international law and stability.” She also expressed concern that the Trump administration’s intervention could jeopardize internal Iranian resistance efforts.

Daniel Byman, the director of the warfare, irregular threats, and terrorism program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that upheaval in the region could end up solidifying Chinese influence. But he noted Operation Epic Fury may also strengthen the United States in the eyes of its Asian rival, which can now see Trump is willing to back up his foreign policy objectives with force.

Amid their nation’s political uncertainty, Christian ministries say growing numbers of Iranians are becoming dis­illusioned with Islam and are looking elsewhere for answers. Edwin Keshish-Abnous fled the Islamic State and is now the CEO for Heart4Iran, a ministry that broadcasts Christian programming into the nation through its satellite TV station. It also operates a 24/7 call center. It has seen engagement rise as opposition to the regime has intensified. “The Iranian people’s perspective regarding Islam has changed a lot, long before this attack,” Keshish-Abnous said.

Ahmadi told me he doesn’t practice the Muslim faith anymore because of all that has happened in his country. He identifies as agnostic. But he has also started going to Bible studies.

The doctoral student said he is considering moving back home—but only if the regime fully changes. “I want the whole world to know the true nature of this government,” he said. “How their ideology destroyed my beautiful country.”