After the war, the Islamic Republic of Iran still standing and an opposition out of the game

The Islamic Republic has not collapsed: at the end of the American-Israeli offensive against Iran, not only are the ultraconservative clerics still in power in Tehran, but the opposition is more marginalized than ever.

American President Donald Trump, who supported anti-government demonstrations at the start of the year, argued at the start of the conflict that the bombings should pave the way for a popular uprising capable of bringing down Iranian power.

But Iranian dissidents are the first losers of the agreement reached this week between Washington and Tehran to end the chaos, according to experts and human rights defenders interviewed by AFP.

The opposition movements in exile, who were quick to position themselves for a hypothetical transition, did not succeed in "seizing the opportunity", explains Thomas Juneau, professor at the University of Ottawa.

"On the contrary, internal struggles within the opposition in exile have intensified," he believes, while the domestic opposition "has been considerably weakened" after decades of repression.

In Iran, some had expressed the hope of foreign intervention after the protest movement in January, which was bloodily repressed.

And on February 28, on the first day of the Israeli-American strikes, cries of joy greeted the announcement in neighborhoods of Tehran that the supreme guide Ali Khamenei had been killed.

But as the war progressed, expectations soared in the face of the response of the Islamic Republic which, far from retreating, attacked Israel and its Gulf neighbors allied with the United States.

The deaths of civilians and destruction from the conflict, the wave of arrests and executions, and massive internet outages have ultimately only aggravated the suffering of residents, against a backdrop of economic stagnation.

- “Peace with my executioner” -

“This war was never fought for the human rights” of Iranians, asserts Mahmood Amiry Moghaddam, director of the NGO Iran Human Rights. And on the contrary turned against them by allowing the authorities to use it as a “pretext to intensify the repression”.

For him, "democratic change must come from the Iranian people, and not from foreign military intervention."

US Vice President JD Vance insisted this week that the war was primarily about ending Iran's nuclear program and that Trump's position had always been: "If the Iranian people want to rise up, great. That's their business."

Nevertheless, Iranians have confided their feeling of betrayal in recent hours.

“They may try to embellish the agreement, but that will only give them (the Iranian authorities, editor's note) the power to oppress us further,” said Sima, a 34-year-old resident of Tehran, under the cover of anon