Will the joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran “strengthen Tehran’s authoritarians or hasten their demise?” asked Karim Sadjadpour in The New York Times. Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump both raised the prospect of “regime change” in Tehran, and the crushing military defeat the two countries inflicted on Iran exposed “deep vulnerabilities” in the Islamic Republic, which is headed by 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei. But the regime does not seem “at risk of imminent collapse.” The ruling elites haven’t splintered into competing factions and still have a monopoly on violent repression. No charismatic opposition leader or organization has harnessed Iranians’ “mass discontent” to craft a unifying anti-government message. The regime appears “brittle,” but the struggle of younger, secular Iranians for a less oppressive government “is only beginning.”

The Israeli airstrikes have actually generated a lot of “mixed feelings” among Iranians, said Joshua Keating in Vox. On one hand, about 80% of the population of 90 million has no love for their fanatically religious ruling elite. Very few will mourn Israel’s targeted killings of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders responsible for violent crackdowns on peaceful demonstrators over the years. But Iranian opposition members loudly rejected Netanyahu’s call for them to rise up to topple their rulers, saying “the bombing doesn’t help their movement.” Iranians are also understandably “leery” of what a new regime would look like, said Jonah Shepp in New York magazine. If the Islamic Republic collapses, the power vacuum would likely be filled by the Revolutionary Guards, “the locus of the regime’s hard power.” An IRGC government would operate either as a typical military dictatorship or as a theocracy similar to the current one. Any effort by younger Iranians to create a democracy would “face tremendous odds.”

The early signs are not encouraging, said The Economist in an editorial. When the war broke out, Khamenei sought safety in a bunker and delegated his governing duties to a new council dominated by Revolutionary Guard members. One observer says the country is now effectively “under martial law.” After the Israeli assassinations of veteran IRGC commanders, their replacements are itching for vengeance, hell-bent on redeeming national pride. Israel and the U.S. may have won this military campaign, but the attack may not “break the cycle of paranoia and insecurity that has left Iran and its people in a ruinous state.”

Ralph Macchio has had a roller coaster of a career, said Andy Greene in Rolling Stone. At 22, the actor was cast as the teenage lead in 1984’s The Karate Kid, a blockbuster followed by two smash sequels also starring Macchio. But then came the lean years of scant employment, which lasted until 2018, when he reprised his Karate Kid role in the Netflix hit series Cobra Kai. 

Those decades out of the spotlight weren’t easy for Macchio, now 63. “I was a little rudderless” in the ’90s and 2000s, he says. There were “times where I might not have been the most pleasant guy to be around.” For young actors especially, “there’s a void when fame disappears, when you have it and lose it. When you wave to that guard on the movie lot and he just says, ‘Hi,’ and then you come back two years later and they ask to see your license and make you wait. That plays on certain people.” But looking back, Macchio is grateful for his career dip. “My daughter was born in ’92, my son was born in ’95. I was kind of around for all that, for the most part,” he says. “I got to be there. I got to be a dad and not be an absent person. When I look at it now, it’s like I designed it perfectly.”