After killing Iran’s supreme leader, Donald Trump told Iranians to “take over your government” because this was “probably your only chance for generations.” Five weeks later, as the human and economic costs of the war against Iran mounted while more hardline leadership tightened control, Trump insisted that the people of Iran were begging him to continue bombing until they were free.
Trump’s rallying cries assume a silent Iranian majority that trusts the United States and so hates the current regime that they reject diplomacy with it, favor airtight sanctions to starve it, and want national infrastructure destroyed until they can replace repressive authoritarians with a secular Western-style democracy. Buttressing this narrative are opt-in surveys that collect data from a subset of the population (like subscribers to a single vpn provider), and by Western news interviews with a small number of people inside Iran.
We have conducted 22 representative surveys in Iran since 2014 using gold-standard methods for polling in authoritarian countries. Our analysis reveals why it was a poor gamble to bet that air power could precipitate a popular overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Using pooled data from 15 polls conducted between 2014 and 2024, we compared respondents with favorable and unfavorable attitudes toward the United States, both before and after Washington’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018. The minority favorable toward the United States dropped sharply from 26.5% before withdrawal to 14.3% afterward.
This shrinking pro-U.S. minority does not resemble the constituency imagined by maximum-pressure advocates. Instead, it is more supportive of diplomacy than the rest of the public, more attentive to the human costs of sanctions, and surprisingly nationalistic on security questions.
The imagined constituency for military action
Trump administration officials have consistently maintained that coercive U.S. pressure could activate a politically useful anti-regime movement inside Iran.
Early in his first term, Trump argued that the JCPOA had given Tehran a “political and economic lifeline” just before what “would have been the total collapse of the Iranian regime.” In a 2018 Heritage Foundation speech unveiling the post-JCPOA strategy, his secretary of state declared that the United States would “apply unprecedented financial pressure on the Iranian regime” until it acquiesced to U.S. demands or was so weak that the Iranian people could finally “make a choice about their leadership.”
The Twelve-Day War last year was motivated by the same social theory of regime change, with airpower added. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a televised appeal to Iranians during the attack: “We are also clearing the path for you to achieve your objective, which is freedom…the regime has never been weaker…stand up and let your voices be heard…”
This strategic notion conflated four different public attitudes: dissatisfaction with the Islamic Republic, favorable views toward Americans, trust in Washington, and support for coercive U.S. policy. Our analysis finds that the Iranian constituency needed for maximum pressure to produce regime change was largely a mirage.
What the US-favorable minority actually looks like
Compared to the average Iranian, the U.S.-favorable minority is more metropolitan, educated, better off, and plugged into nonstate media. For example, Iranians who live in Tehran province account for 15.8% of the favorable group but only 9.8% of the unfavorable group. The favorable group has a slight male majority, but age and ethnicity resemble the general population’s distribution.
Those who followed BBC or Voice of America (VOA) were dramatically overrepresented: 46.2% of the U.S.-favorable group versus 20.5% of the U.S.-unfavorable group before withdrawal, and 40.1% versus 17.1% after. Respondents with a bachelor’s degree or higher were also far more common in the favorable group, but that gap narrowed from 44.7% versus 25.6% before withdrawal to 32.3% versus 23.3% afterward.
This is a narrow, outward-looking stratum, not a wide and angry underclass ready to be radicalized. It is less likely to want religious teachings to influence policy, and more likely to say that Iranian officials do not care what people like them think. But being more cosmopolitan and alienated from domestic elite rule does not necessarily imply support for external coercion or attack.
Much of this group makes a critical distinction between the American people and the American state. When asked separate questions in some pre-withdrawal waves about the people, the government, and the country in general, 87.7% of the U.S.-favorable minority were favorable toward the American people, but only 34.3% were favorable toward the U.S. government. After the withdrawal, a full 55.7% of the favorable minority was favorable to the U.S. people, but unfavorable to the U.S. government, while only 32.0% was favorable to both. Even before the JCPOA withdrawal, a majority of the favorable group lacked confidence that Washington would keep its commitments.
This is the analytical hinge of the whole story. Trump officials kept treating sympathy for Americans and frustration with the Islamic Republic as if it naturally implied support for Washington’s coercive strategy. But an Iranian can like American people, dislike the Islamic Republic, and still reject coercion by the U.S. government.
Pro-diplomacy is not pro-coercion
The U.S.-favorable minority approved of the JCPOA at higher rates than the U.S.-unfavorable majority and was more likely to want an Iranian president who would seek common ground with other countries. This was not a capitulation caucus, though. Before withdrawal, it split almost evenly between wanting a president who would negotiate and wanting one who would defend Iran’s rights and refuse compromise.
The minority most open to better relations with the United States was also most sensitive to the social costs of sanctions. It was more likely than the U.S.-unfavorable group to say sanctions had a great negative impact on ordinary people: 68.8% versus 52.4% before withdrawal, and 68.4% versus 61.5% afterward. That contradicts claims that this group supports economic coercion.
On hard-security questions, this favorable group remained far more nationalist than U.S. hawks assumed. Of the small minority that was still U.S.-favorable post-withdrawal, 78.6% said Iran’s development of its missile program was somewhat or very important. On nuclear preferences, 22.5% wanted a nuclear deterrent and a nuclear power program, compared with 34.2% of the unfavorable group. Roughly six in ten said Iran should respond to violations of Iranian sovereignty to deter future attacks.
The simplest fact may be the most devastating for the maximum-pressure worldview. The strategy intended to weaken the regime and widen America’s social base inside Iran did not expand this vanguard. In our data, the U.S.-favorable group slipped from 26.5% to 14.5% after Washington walked away from the JCPOA. Maximum pressure did not broaden pro-American sentiment; it helped alienate nearly half of U.S. friends.
Why the war is repeating the same error
Nobody should be surprised that the war launched on February 28 did not accelerate anti-government protests in Iran. The survey we fielded soon after the Twelve-Day War showed signs it had a rally-around-the-flag effect. Trump also had pre-war warnings from the intelligence community that his assumptions about the Iranian public’s response were flawed. After weeks of bombing, Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence saw no imminent regime collapse.
CISSM’s polling consistently finds real discontent in Iran. But Iranian discontent is not America’s to command. The favorable minority in our polling is more outward-looking, more skeptical of the domestic order, more favorable toward American people, and more interested in diplomacy than the rest of the public. But it is not a regime-change base waiting for Washington’s signal.
There is a constituency for reciprocity and an equitable nuclear deal. There was never any evidence of a significant constituency for maximum pressure, much less for liberation by bombing.