On the inconstant list of reasons given by United States officials for initiating a war in Iran, at least one seemed to indicate an interest in a better future: “All I want is freedom for the [Iranian] people,” President Trump said in late February. In the Review’s May 28 issue, Christopher de Bellaigue asks how that’s going:

Iranian democrats who were “against the war” desire regime change no less fervently than those who petitioned Trump to attack. The difference is that they want Iranians, not foreigners, to do the job.… The agony of ordinary Iranians, meanwhile, is forgotten.

Iran is entering a new winter of political failure that will be harder than that of the prerevolutionary period, when the experience of being insulted and infantilized by a crowned despot was alleviated somewhat by rising living standards. There is no such comfort now.

The destruction of civilian infrastructure by US and Israeli bombs has contributed to catastrophic inflation and the further immiseration of ordinary Iranians. The assassinations of Ayatollah Khamenei and other leaders, meanwhile, have entrenched a new generation of rulers and strengthened the Revolutionary Guard, which has tightened its control over civic life and continued the violent suppression of dissent. As Bellaigue reminds us, “War breeds tyrants.”

Below, alongside Bellaigue’s essay, are six articles and from our archives about the ongoing disaster in Iran.

Christopher de Bellaigue
Iran’s New Winter

The US–Israeli war against Iran, far from encouraging a popular uprising, has strengthened the regime’s grip and set back the cause of Iranian freedom indefinitely.

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Will Alden
Waiting for Day Zero

In Los Angeles, home to the largest population of Iranians outside Iran, supporters of the exiled crown prince insist that their moment has come.

—April 22, 2026

Fintan O’Toole
Signifying Absolutely Nothing

Trump’s war of choice in Iran is a performance of horrific military strength that betrays a stark political weakness.

—April 9, 2026

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Caitlin L. Chandler
Timid Europe

For the past month European leaders have lent tacit and sometimes open support to the US and Israel’s war in Iran—with one notable exception.

—March 31, 2026

Amir Ahmadi Arian
Of Fire and Rain

It was sometime in the afternoon, checking my phone for news from home, that I saw the flames.

—March 14, 2026

Orly Noy
Longing for My Tehran

On the Israeli news, I watch as the country whose citizenship I hold devastates the one where I was born.

—March 14, 2026

Arang Keshavarzian
Iran Transformed

To understand the regime the US now seeks to obliterate, we have to return to the political and economic convulsions that produced last January’s uprising.

—March 8, 2026

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