Surging Iranian nationalism is an unintended consequence of Israel's attacks

Irish Times

12 hours ago

Reza Kianian, a veteran award-winning
Iranian
actor, has long been a vocal domestic critic of the Islamic republic, using his popular Instagram page to question tenets of the regime's ideology.
Yet when
Israel
launched its
deadly assault on Iran
this month, Kianian swiftly joined the ranks of regime critics rallying around the flag, part of the surge of patriotic fervour that has swept the country of 90 million since the 12-day war started. 'Iran has existed, exists still, and will endure,' Kianian said on Instagram after the war began.
This newfound sense of unity in the otherwise polarised country surprised observers and politicians both at home and abroad. While Israel's
Binyamin Netanyahu
sought to tap disillusionment by calling on people to rise up against the Islamic republic, even hardened regime opponents temporarily set aside their criticisms and recoiled against what they saw as a war against not just their rulers but Iran itself.
'One person sitting outside Iran cannot tell a nation to rise up,' Kianian (74) told the Financial Times. 'Iran is my country. I will decide what to do, and won't wait for you to tell me what to do in my own country.'
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This reawakening of Iranian nationalism – which politicians hope will persist even if anger towards the Islamic republic returns to the surface – comes after decades of deep polarisation.
Iran's theocratic rulers have long attempted to suppress an increasingly secular nation's yearning for economic, political and social change, responding to unrest with brutal crackdowns. Amnesty International said more than 300 people were killed during
protests
in 2022 triggered by the death in custody of a 22-year-old woman,
Mahsa Amini
, for not properly wearing a hijab, for example, leaving deep scars on the nation's psyche.
Though the Islamic republic has since relaxed its hijab rules, many Iranians are deeply unhappy with the state of the economy, struggling to cope with inflation and US sanctions, and angry at alleged corruption among those with regime links.
Yet when Israel launched its offensive on June 13th, Iranians quickly decided this was not the moment of change they had hoped for.
Many were shaken by the bombardment, which Israel said was aimed at regime targets but which Iranian officials said killed 627 people and destroyed 120 residential buildings in Tehran before ending in a fragile ceasefire on Tuesday. Israeli officials said Iran's missiles killed 28 people in Israel and hit residential areas.
'We felt stuck between forces who only sought their own ambitions, rather than our wellbeing,' said Maryam, a 39-year-old housewife and regime critic, who is still furious over the deaths in the 2022 protests. 'Netanyahu reminded us that we could even lose the little we have. In this sense, he inadvertently served the Islamic republic, making us less hopeful of being able to get rid of this regime.'
In order to avoid provoking a popular backlash during the war, the regime too played down its polarising ideology, in which the US and Israel are eternal enemies and Shia Islam is the solution to all problems.
Banners put up in Tehran sought to promote nationalism rather than regime talking points, and Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei
on Thursday praised what he called the country's 'extraordinary unity'.
'A nation of 90 million was united and resisted with one voice, standing shoulder to shoulder without raising their differences,' he said in a video message, which focused on Iran as a nation rather than the ruling theocracy, clearly aiming to keep Iranians united. 'It became clear that in critical times, one voice is heard from the nation.'
Officials have sought to prolong this patriotic fervour by hailing the conflict as a 'victory', despite the devastating blows to the regime, military and Iran's nuclear programme. 'Let's not forget there were no anti-war protests in the streets and the government made sure there was sufficient supply of food and fuel everywhere,' one regime insider said.
The war appears, for the time being at least, to have boosted some domestic support for Iran's ballistic missile programme, the government's crackdown on alleged Israeli collaborators and even enthusiasm for acquiring a nuclear bomb – something the Islamic republic says it is not pursuing.
Yet maintaining this unity will not be easy, with critics of the regime – whose long list of grievances towards their rulers have not gone away – calling for a reckoning over the Islamic republic's role in setting Iran on a path to war.
Iranian actor Reza Kianian in 2013. Photograph: Amin Mohammad Jamali/Kianian, the actor, said hardliners within the regime, including on state television, should be held accountable for the extent to which their policies contributed to the conflict.
Hardliners in Iran, which aggressively expanded its nuclear programme and enriched uranium close to weapons grade, have repeatedly said Israel should be wiped off the map and that support for militant proxies such as Hizbullah in Lebanon should continue as a core of the republic's foreign policy.
'They keep saying on television that we are all together, from left to right,' he said. 'It took them too long to realise that we are united, and only when there was no other choice during wartime did they say it.'
To many Iranians, the Islamic republic should not take this national solidarity for granted and double down on their most divisive policies, with all the issues that have enraged Iranians over the years continuing to fester.
'What has saved Iran is not a delusional ideology but its ancient history ... and the experience of surviving invasions by Alexander, the Mongols and the Arabs,' Fayyaz Zahed, a reformist political analyst, said.
'Perhaps only history teachers in the country could foresee this ... Once again, we realised that if there is ever going to be any change, it can only come from within.'- Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025