The Generation Iranian Hard-Liners Have Been Waiting for

In the weeks that followed the Israeli strikes on Iran in June, something unusual happened. For decades, the Iranians were among the most supportive population of Americans in the Middle East. They were skeptical – if they did not refuse explicitly – that their ideological government framing the United States and Israel as existential threats. I heard such official slogans by many residents, especially the younger Iranians, are just noise in the background or even as a source of embarrassment. The regime’s obsession with “resistance” was often similar to the remains of a real policy.

But this time, when the bombs fell, the war remained far away. He returned home. The conversation changed. The generation that mocked the regime’s discourse is now learning – sometimes for the first time – why the government built an account of resistance in the first place.

Almost overnight, I heard a deep shift between many contacts across Iranian society. Even the Iranians who rejected the official slogans of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khounai, began to repeat it. The strikes were not just a national enthusiasm. They ignited something more volatile: a widespread feeling that foreign powers have crossed a line. Even among some of the most bustling critics in the system, anger did not turn inside, but rather abroad.

In just two weeks, the Iranians absorbed a new geopolitical reality. Smochs began more logical. The military elites were barely unified about the best ways to protect Iran; Now, those who urge diplomacy are immersed by those who demand a hard -line defensive position. Even civilians – who once opposed the security position of the regime – now calls for stronger defenses. Some publicly discuss the need for a nuclear weapon. “We need something that makes them think twice.” “Otherwise, they will be able to target us every few years.”

For years, many Iranians have seen the wars between Israel and the United States and their country as far, abstract or imposed. These wars played in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq – and not at home in Asfahhan or Tehran. Either outside and inside the country, the regional strategy of the Islamic Republic has been criticized as a farce, provocative and isolation.

But June strikes changed this perception. This was not a war on the front of a distant agent. It was direct. It was quickly. The ordinary Iranians have made it clear that they were no longer spectators. Israel and the United States can now arrive deeply within their borders without impunity.

“I used to be one of those who will chant during the protests not to send Iranian funds to Lebanon or Palestine. But now I understand that the bombs we are facing all are one, and if we do not have strong defenses throughout the region, the war comes to us,” an artist told me in Tehran.

This new awareness has spread quickly – but not only within Iran. Many of the viral content that explains the history of Western intervention in Iran, from the 1953 coup to the assassination of Iranian scholars, was not made in Tehran. He came from the West, to the western masses. On Tiktok, Instagram and X, youth – from left and right from the political spectrum – they ask why Iran has decades as the permanent number of American foreign policy. These were not the loyalists; They were mostly Americans – who were trying to Millennium and General Z – to understand the wars forever that formed their lives.

Suddenly, Khamanni’s warnings about the United States were not trusted and Israel was warm and expanding that did not seem very far-not because he won the moral power, but because the world was attached to the strategic reality that Iran was referring to for years. This transformation, no matter how part or unexpected, is reshaping how Iran – at the regional and global levels.

The West photographed the Iranian Islamic Islamic Guard Corps (IRGC) as a homogeneous institution dedicated to the lack of aggression. However, in fact, IRGC is divided internally with competing factions. Over the past decade, its ancient leadership-which has been filled with the shock of the Iran war and the return to 1980 to 1980 to 1980-often urges restraint. Despite the commitment to regional deterrence and military expansion, many of these leaders have seen an open conflict with Israel or the United States as an existential danger, not a necessary confrontation.

But under it, a young generation in IRGC rose: one who did not visit the defense but rather in the projection. Some of these younger fighters are now in the 1940s and are preparing to take over. This new generation has been trained with drones, missiles, and the cliff. They were personally fought in Syria and helped organize militias in Iraq. Today, these emerging members against IRGC were not inevitable but fruitful. For them, deterrence is not only related to survival: it relates to the regional position, national pride, and reaffirmation of sovereignty.

I encouraged this generation, on which Iran has doubled, but the directions, this generation. They argue that the state’s seizure over the past two decades – not to mention its misleading commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal – has called only more attacks. The fact that Israel can hit deeply, efficiently, only strengthens its cause: Iran needs a reliable deterrent, and it now needs.

In all population, a generation born after the 1979 revolution – a plan with the ideology of the state – is now subject to a deep shift. They do not embrace the regime, but they rethink everything that they believe in about Western power and security.

This moment of relative popular support for the security situation is not guaranteed to last. However, at the present time, it turns the balance of power in Iran’s policy circles. The youngest of the young in IRGC acquires a ground. They put their allies in the governmental, parliamentary media and even the Ministry of Intelligence themselves as the only actors capable of defending Iran from the existential threat.

These voices are now flooding those in Iran – and there are many – who do not want war. Historically, those who preferred negotiations with the West appeared from the most pragmatic technocratic camp for officials, but now, these sympathetic leaders with peace face a deeper shift in public perception. For years, even with my crude warning that it cannot be trusted, large segments of the population continued to vote for the candidates who promised to participate. Diplomacy was seen, if not perfect, then realism: the only practical path of isolation. But the unjustified Israeli strikes in June fell while negotiations with the United States were still ongoing. Now, among the same electoral districts that once supported the dialogue, there is a growing view that the talks with the West are a shell game; Regardless of how to involve Iran, it will be punished.

In the few weeks that have passed since the beginning of the strikes, the conversation in Iran has moved from whether diplomacy could succeed to whether it is honesty to start. Now, the idea that negotiations with the West will solve Iran’s problems less like realism and more like surrender.

Khamna, the tactical at all, used this moment to unify a narration that supports Iran’s regional integrity through defense. Specifically, the narration of the resistance, which at least 1980, endured, when Iraq – assisted the United States, the Soviet Union, and Western European countries – raised Iran (if not earlier, when Washington and London organized a coup in Iran in 1953). Because if Iran is surrounded by all parties by enemies who want to control the country, the resistance – including all missiles and drones that have been produced locally – raises the last hope to survive. The only entities capable of escalating this defense resistance are the armed forces of the Islamic Republic.

Certainly, the strikes have been affected by the Iranian infrastructure, but only reinforced Khamanni’s narration. The system survived. Driving was held. The streets did not explode in protest. Iran did not shine. Internationally, Iran is no longer considered only the aggressor, but as a country under siege, once again resists external interference.

This legacy is important – not only for history but for the caliphate. Each of the 86 -year -old clouds as Iran’s supreme leader in the context of these June attacks: where the resistance doctrine was validated through events, not only ideology. This gives IRGC-especially its younger generation-a delegate in forming the next chapter of the Islamic Republic.

The challenge facing Iran’s leaders – especially the younger IRGC generation – is how to take advantage of this moment without exaggeration in their hands. Calls for greater military expansion, or even nuclear collapse, may resonate at the present time. But they risk raising more dense foreign responses and deepening economic isolation.

The ability of the Islamic Republic to survive the strikes does not mean that they are immune from collapse – there is no fortified country. Iran’s economy is still tense. The audience’s confidence is low. And the lines between supporting deterrence and support for the referee is thin. If the leadership is mistaken in strategic verification for unconditional legitimacy, this may lead to temporary disorders.

However, the internal political scene has changed in very basic ways. The militants who once fought to justify the “resistance” against Israel and the United States are now arguing that history has proven right. The “resistance” is no longer the monopoly of the Islamic Republic and the loyalists – it is now a massive cry to defend the country that crosses social and political borders. This is a strong narration – especially when the previous skeptics repeat it and the events are presented on the ground.

Whether they can add the institutional character to this narration – through the caliphate, legislation or broader social consensus – it will determine the future form of the Islamic Republic. But at the present time, they are up.

International conversation about Iran is often swinging between extremism: either the system is moments of collapse, or it is a regional threat that cannot be stopped. What is lost is the elasticity and response of the system: how to learn, adapt, and integrate shocks in his narration to survive and resist. Israeli strikes did not destroy this system. I strengthened it. Nobody really knows what lessons will now provide the Iranian narration – both of them hope for peace and those who seek war.

The strikes also reshaped how the Iranians see themselves. Once, even in light of the sanctions, the Iranians considered themselves as negative monitors of remote wars; Now, they are direct goals for regional aggression.

Perhaps the most subordinate transformation is generations. This is not the generation of 1979 reaffirming old positions. Their children and grandchildren-who can be accessed on the Internet, and the Western media, are often the pro-Western positions-they are questioned by the legitimacy of the global system in which they grew up. This transformation, if it is, will form Iran’s local and regional policy for decades.

This transformation – more than any tactical success or failure – may be for the permanent influence. For years, the Iranians asked why their country needs a missile program, regional agents, or the principle of military resistance. Now, they ask how to make these defenses stronger, in order to keep Iran sovereignty and independent.