Jared Malsin

Well, so to begin with, you have to put this in context to set the stage of where Iran was before the war, which is the country was in a very severe economic crisis.

You had this collapsing currency, a surge in price inflation, a rising cost of food and inability to sort of make economic decisions, which caused these protests over the winter and really a huge uprising against the government.

The regime responded with a deadly crackdown in which they sent security forces to open fire on those crowds of people.

Killing thousands of people in one of the worst, deadliest political crackdowns in recent world history anywhere.

People that we spoke to on the ground in Iran talked about how

The bombings were shaking their buildings at night, waking up their children, blowing out the windows of their houses, and just causing a lot of fear and anxiety about the future of the country.

My colleagues and I spoke to a lot of people who talked about how

Even for the great many people that are opposed to the regime, and including some who wanted the U.S.

and Israel to attack, who were really desperate for change, these attacks were so intense that it was pushing the country to the brink of state failure.

People are worried about, yeah, just about institutions, vital services, critical infrastructure unraveling, and that there was a risk of chaos within the country.

And it was also becoming clear that the regime is not going anywhere.

That is a view that many people have told me.

For example, in my reporting where I

visited the Turkish border with Iran a few weeks ago, where I spoke to about two dozen people.

Almost all those people said a version of the same thing, where they said, you know, we don't like this government, we want to get rid of them, but we also don't want another country to come in and bomb us.

We also talked to people about how they were

Just bracing for the worst, you know, stocking up on canned goods, water, batteries, fueling their cars, and just bracing for impact.

And then you have to imagine if you've been living under four or five weeks of bombing and just trying to breathe through that.

And then the president of the United States is posting about how he's going to end civilization in your country.

How would you feel?