Is now the moment for Iran?

One of the realities of history is that revolutions rarely succeed entirely on their own.

We tend to think of revolutions as purely internal, grass-roots uprisings — a people rising up and overthrowing their rulers through sheer will. But in practice, successful revolutions almost always have help from outside.

The American Revolution for example. The colonies fought bravely, but without French money, ships, and soldiers, defeating the British Empire would have been far less likely.

The same pattern shows up again and again in history. Outside support doesn’t create revolutions, but it often determines whether they succeed or fail. That raises a larger strategic question as tensions with Iran continue to rise: If the real long-term problem with Iran is not just its nuclear program but the nature of the regime itself, then what would meaningful change actually look like?

Airstrikes can slow a nuclear program. They can destroy facilities and buy time. But they don’t change governments.

Political change inside Iran would ultimately have to come from Iranians themselves.

Because while success revolutions often rely on outside help, no foreign power can manufacture a revolution.

But history suggests something else as well: revolutions that face powerful security states often struggle without outside support.

Iran’s government has built one of the most sophisticated internal security systems in the region — with plenty of help from the masters of modern digital surveillance, the Chinese Communist Party. The Revolutionary Guard, intelligence services, and religious authorities all work together to suppress dissent. Protest movements have emerged repeatedly over the past two decades, and each time they have eventually been “contained.”

Often, as we saw in the most recent uprisings, contained violently.

Given these realities inside a tightly restricted Iran, if a genuine revolutionary movement ever did take shape, how could it possibly succeed without outside support?

And if not, should the United States and its allies be thinking about how to support internal change — not just how to strike nuclear facilities?

That is a far more complicated question than simply launching airstrikes.

Foreign involvement can strengthen a movement, but it can also undermine it. Iran’s leadership has spent decades telling its population that domestic opposition is merely a tool of Western powers. If outside support becomes too visible, it can reinforce that narrative and weaken the legitimacy of the movement itself.

Still, history shows that revolutions often sit at this intersection between internal pressure and outside support.

The people must want change.

And if the goal of Western policy is not just delaying Iran’s nuclear program but ultimately seeing a different government emerge in Tehran, that question will become harder and harder to avoid.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)