Iranians are shopping for essentials to celebrate the beginning of the Persian New Year, Nowruz, despite the threats of deadly US-Israeli attacks.
Published On 19 Mar 202619 Mar 2026
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Iranians in Tehran burned effigies of Israeli PM Netanyahu and US President Trump.
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The US-Israeli war on Iran is exposing deep divisions among Iranians in the diaspora and in Iran.
From inside Iran to the diaspora, Iranians are deeply divided about their country’s future. With Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gone and Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah, waiting in the wings, what do conversations about regime change reveal about the spectrum of what Iranians really think?
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This episode was produced by Noor Wazwaz, Marcos Bartolomé, and Catherine Nouhan, with Spencer Cline, Tuleen Barakat, Maya Hamadeh, and our host, Malika Bilal. It was edited by Alexandra Locke.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer.
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Published On 6 Mar 20266 Mar 2026
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March 6 (UPI) — Counter-terrorism police in London arrested four Iranian men early Friday on suspicion of conducting surveillance for Iranian intelligence of individuals and locations linked to the Jewish community in the capital.
The suspects, one Iranian and three dual British-Iranian nationals aged between 22 and 55, were detained shortly after 1 a.m. local time in raids on addresses in north London and Watford, just north of the city, under the National Security Act, Metropolitan Police said in a news release.
Searches of at least three addresses in the north London borough of Barnet were still underway, said the Met.
Six other suspects, all males aged between 20 and 49, were arrested at one of the locations raided in London on suspicion of assisting an offender and assaulting police.
“Today’s arrests are part of a long-running investigation and part of our ongoing work to disrupt malign activity where we suspect it,” said Commander Helen Flanagan, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing for London.
“We understand the public may be concerned, in particular the Jewish community, and as always, I would ask them to remain vigilant and if they see or hear anything that concerns them, then to contact us,” she added.
The arrests come as the latest development in a long history of covert activity by the Iranian regime on British soil, mostly targeting dissidents, exiled Iranian news organizations providing independent coverage to people inside Iran and the Iranian diaspora, and groups opposing the regime.
“Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism globally and sadly, that is in effect in our own society as well,” British Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy told ITV television on Friday morning.
“Our intelligence services and counter-terrorism police have thwarted lots of action over the last few years,” he added.
On Saturday, in his announcement that Britain was joining the U.S-Israeli offensive against Iran in a “defensive” role, Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned Iranian aggression against Britain’s Middle East allies, saying the United Kingdom had long been a target.
“Even in the United Kingdom, the Iranian regime poses a direct threat to dissidents and to the Jewish community. Over the last year alone, they have backed more than 20 potentially lethal attacks on U.K. soil.”
In May, three Iranian men were charged over allegedly conducting surveillance and reconnaissance of U.K.-based journalists working for the Iran International news outlet to enable “serious violence” to be committed against them.
Mostafa Sepahvand, 39, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 44, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 55, of London, are accused of “engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service” under the National Security Act.
A plea hearing is scheduled for Sept. 26 and a provisional trial date set for Oct. 5.
Iran International, a Persian-language satellite TV channel and multilingual digital news operation established in 2017, puts out highly critical coverage of the Iranian government which has banned it as a terrorist organization.
British media and U.S. academics have previously reported links between Iran International and backers at the most senior level in Saudi Arabia, which Iran International denies.
WASHINGTON — When President Trump announced that he was taking the United States to war against Iran, he offered a long list of ambitious goals.
He said the operation aimed not only to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but also to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles and defang its proxy forces in the Middle East.
Then he added the most audacious objective of all: regime change.
“To the great, proud people of Iran … the hour of your freedom is at hand,” he said. “Take over your government. It will be yours to take.”
That was a striking turnabout for Trump, who campaigned for president in 2016 promising: “We’re going to stop the reckless and costly policy of regime change.”
But it’s far from clear that the president has a coherent plan for replacing Iran’s radical Islamist autocracy with a friendlier regime. Nor is it clear that he’s fully committed to the goal.
On Monday, at a White House event, Trump reiterated the military goals of the operation, but did not mention regime change — suggesting he may be having second thoughts. However, he did describe the current Iranian regime as “sick and sinister.”
Military experts and Iran scholars are virtually unanimous that airstrikes alone, no matter how destructive, are unlikely to transform the Islamic republic into a peaceable, democratic country.
“Air power rarely produces friendly regime change,” said Robert A. Pape of the University of Chicago, a prominent scholar of air power. “Bombing can destroy targets. It does not reliably reshape politics.”
A more likely outcome is that Iran’s militant Islamic security force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, will seize power, experts said. The Washington Post has reported that the CIA also made that assessment before the war began.
A takeover by the Revolutionary Guard would change the names of the people in charge, but it would fall far short of a genuine regime change.
Trump has said he doesn’t believe ground troops will be necessary, although he hasn’t ruled them out. He hasn’t offered a plan for pushing Iran’s theocratic rulers out of power beyond continuing the airstrikes. The outcome on the ground, he said Sunday, is up to ordinary Iranians.
“Be brave, be bold, be heroic and take back your country,” he said in a video message on Sunday. “America is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you, but we’ll be there to help.”
In an interview with the New York Times, he said he hopes the Revolutionary Guard will simply “surrender” to the opposition forces it was brutalizing only a month ago.
In effect, he is abandoning the so-called Pottery Barn rule — “You break it, you own it” — that was popularized by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell before the Iraq war in 2003. Trump’s message to Iranians looks like: “I’ll break it, you own it.”
The central problem with Trump’s apparent theory of regime change, scholars say, is that the Revolutionary Guard and other security services are well-organized and well-equipped, but the country’s democratic opposition is fragmented.
“Even if the clerical regime were to fall, the security forces are best positioned to take its place,” warned Richard N. Haass, a former top State Department official in the George W. Bush administration.
Meanwhile, he added, “the political opposition is not united or functioning as a government-in-waiting. It is not in a position to accept defections [from the regime], much less provide security.”
Some experts argue that there is more the administration could be doing to improve the prospects for regime change, without putting troops on the ground.
Haass faulted the Trump administration for failing to work more closely with the Iranian opposition to prepare it for a role in a potential future government.
Others said the United States should now make it clear that it would provide substantial economic aid to a new Iranian regime, but only if its behavior is benign. Iran’s economic crisis, its worst in recent history, helped spark the popular uprising in January that the regime suppressed at the cost of thousands in lives.
“There are more steps the administration could be taking now to help the democratic opposition,” said Kelly Shannon, a visiting scholar at George Washington University. “Close coordination with dissidents on the ground. Protection from the security forces if they open fire. Money, including support for a general strike fund. Assistance with ensuring internet access for all Iranians. And ensure that airstrikes don’t hit Evin Prison or other prisons where dissidents are being held; a lot of potential opposition leaders are in there.”
If the Revolutionary Guard remains intact, Iran experts have described several different scenarios for the regime that may emerge.
One might be called the Venezuela scenario: an Iran ruled by officers from the current regime who have agreed to cooperate to some extent with the United States. This would resemble the situation in Venezuela, where the United States captured President Nicolás Maduro but left the rest of his regime in power.
Trump has already endorsed that quick-fix scenario and said he’s willing to open talks with the newly named successors to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike. “What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” he told the New York Times.
Another option might be called the Hamas scenario: a battered and weakened Islamic Republic could stay in power but remain hostile to the United States, even after losing much of its military infrastructure.
A third possibility would be the Libya scenario: an Iran in which the regime has been toppled, and several factions battle for power. That’s what happened in Libya after the United States and other countries used air power to help overthrow longtime dictator Moammar Kadafi.
But none of those scenarios would be the transition to democracy that many Iranians hope for — the more positive version of regime change.
Trump, meanwhile, sounds as if he is already looking for an opportunity to declare victory and withdraw.
In an interview with Axios on Saturday, he said he believes he has several “offramps” from the war.
“I can go long and take over the whole thing — or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians, ‘See you again in a few years.’”
“He seems to be looking for an offramp,” Haass said. “He may say ‘It’s up to the Iranian people’ and leave the opposition to its fate…. He might claim a victory in terms of obliterating — or, I guess, ‘re-obliterating’ — Iran’s nuclear program and downgrading its ballistic missiles.”
“But he would still face a danger in that scenario. If it comes down to a physical confrontation [between the regime and the opposition], the opposition could be killed in even larger numbers before. … After offering regime change as one of the reasons for the war, we may not only fail to produce regime change; we could see a second massacre.”