As Israel’s devastating attack on Iran’s nuclear sites — and the killing of scientists and top military personnel — began to unfold early this morning, UnHerd was able to speak to our contacts across the Islamic Republic. The dominant reaction was not anger but jubilation, and hope that the regime’s failure to respond in kind would hasten its demise.

Mohammad, 20, told us from Tehran: “This is our chance to rise up against them because they have shown themselves to be so weak. Our liberation is very close, and they do not have big enough security forces to suppress us.” He went on: “The generals and military officers are now so scared of being targeted by Israel that they won’t dare to come after us.”

Alireza, 19, also from Tehran, added: “Now that the world is watching us we need to use this opportunity. I believe that if we do that, the Islamic republic won’t have a chance.”

Time will tell whether such claims are overly optimistic and somewhat naive. But it chimes with assessments by senior UK government analysts, who say popular support for Iran’s Islamist regime is at an all-time low. “The Iranian people pretty much hate the regime and want to see it weakened or removed,” one source told us today. “Its leaders know this, and that has led them to make crap decisions — such as to push ahead with their nuclear weapons programme in the mistaken belief they could do so with impunity.”

Some Iranians we interviewed recalled that before the 1979 revolution, Israel and Iran used to be close allies, with thousands of Israelis living there under the late Shah. Diako, who lives in the western province of Kermanshah, said he hoped for further “help” from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Bibi support us please! If you continue this, we will get rid of this useless regime.” He used his phone camera to show us a building that had just been destroyed: “Hey, look at what happened,” he said. “We even didn’t know there has been a military or potentially a nuclear base here.”

Nasim, 29, a woman in Tabriz near the Turkish border, said she was staring at a massive plume of smoke rising from the Iran Tractor Manufacturing Company. She hoped the factory had not been destroyed. It had been operating since the time of the Shah, she said, and the Islamists had failed to build productive facilities like it: “I hope Israel doesn’t attack our infrastructure, and only targets the military bases and nuclear sites.” Either way, she said she believed the regime was finished: “I think this is the end of them. Do they even want to survive?”

Several Iranians pointed out that earlier this week, Iran’s intelligence minister Esmail Khatib claimed it had scored an intelligence coup by acquiring Israeli nuclear secrets. Yet now, the regime had shown itself to be incompetent, failing to resist the airstrikes and seeing Jordan shoot down many of the 100 drones Iran launched against Israel. One social media poster commented: “Is this what you spent billions of our money on? A donkey could run faster than your drones.”

Others told us that the strikes had revealed the “lies and corruption” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. For years, they had branded themselves as “soldiers of the poor”, yet the buildings in which top officers have been killed were, in the words of one Iranian, “luxury penthouses in Tehran’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. Even in ruins, their homes speak of privilege. While ordinary Iranians struggle under crushing sanctions, they were living VIP lives behind closed doors.”

But according to Mahshad, a 32-year-old woman who spoke to us from Shiraz, avarice had undermined the regime’s ability to defend itself: “They wasted our money to make the nuclear facilities, and the same people who profited from that also got money from Israel to be their agents and give them sensitive information. This regime is the victim of its own corruption.”

The fury directed at the regime is not confined to the young. Ahmad, 60, a veteran of the Eighties Iran-Iraq war, told us he loves his country, and that he was proud to fight for it. “Saddam Hussein started that war, but now Ayatollah Khamenei, our supreme leader, is the only person to blame,” he said. “He is a paranoid ideologue who holds our lives in his hands and has ruined our country. This war is because of him.”

Iranians opposed to the regime have voiced what turned out to be unwarranted optimism before: during the “green movement” protests of 2009, which led to thousands being jailed or executed, and the protests in 2022 sparked by the killing of Mahsa Amini by security forces after she refused to wear a hijab.

Could this time be different? The UK government analyst voiced caution: “Much as Iranians want to be rid of the regime, there’s a fine line between that and enduring national humiliation.” As he spoke, regime supporters were burning Israeli flags at Friday prayers and chanting against Israel and America. It should also be remembered that the attack took place against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, and the regime was trying to persuade both domestic and international opinion that this was “another atrocity committed by the Zionist beast”.

On the other hand, Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah, Iran’s strongest proxy, last year has left it enfeebled, unable to support its Iranian sponsor, and once-friendly Syria is now effectively Iran’s foe. According to the analyst, the regime’s only true supporters now are those who depend on it for their livelihoods, and the question is not if it will fall, but when. It may not be wise to bet against the prospect that this time, Mohammad, Alireza and the millions who share their views might be right.