Despite the Iranian attack on Israel, Tehran has no interest in escalating the conflict, believes the deputy head of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Ariane Sadyed, quoted by the Austrian news agency APA. Iran cannot afford to finance a war, and the population does not support the actions of the mullahs' regime, Sadyed said today in an interview with APA.
Iran presents itself to Iranians as a "mighty power in the region that sets an example," but "people are not behind it [Iran] ideologically,", Sadyed said. There is now a majority that no longer supports the regime and finds the attack on Israel a "expression of force" that is "totally unnecessary" and hides a certain danger. The expert emphasizes that even if many Iranians find Israel's political actions "problematic," they do not want Tehran to interfere because Iran has too many problems to deal with first. And a new wave of protests against the government is unlikely, Sadyed believes, since there are no funds for protests. International sanctions have significantly weakened the Iranian economy, with inflation in the country reaching around 50%.
The last major protest in 2022 was brutally suppressed - then thousands of people took to the streets after the death of a young Iranian woman of Kurdish origin, Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for improperly wearing a headscarf, APA recalls. More than 270 people are said to have died in the wave of protests, and at least seven demonstrators have been executed.