The great illusion of the bombing

We still don't know how much damage was caused by last month's US airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. "I think it was total destruction," boasted US President Donald Trump at the recent NATO summit. However, a preliminary US intelligence report suggests that Iran could resume enriching uranium within a few months. Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has reached the same conclusion.

However, one thing we can say with relative certainty is that the massive Israeli and US bombing campaign did not spark an uprising against the Islamic Republic, the outcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had hoped for. Trump even mused that regime change was the obvious solution for a government that "is incapable of making Iran great again."

The idea that bombing civilians will break their morale and turn them against their own leaders is old and largely discredited. It didn't work during the Spanish Civil War, when the Germans and Italians bombed Guernica in 1937, or during World War II, when Hitler unleashed the Blitz on Britain or the Allies annihilated entire cities in Nazi Germany. Operation Rolling Thunder, which lasted from 1965 to 1968 in North Vietnam, failed to achieve this goal, and the same will happen with the current Israeli bombing of Gaza.

Strategic bombing, also known as saturation bombing or terror bombing, was a tactic devised between the two World Wars largely by the Italian General Giulio Douhet. But during World War II, these brutal air raids were associated with Arthur 'Bomber' Harris, Commander-in-Chief of the British RAF Bomber Command, and Curtis Emerson LeMay, a United States Air Force general. The latter, after razing Japanese cities in 1944-45 and killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens, once admitted that had the United States lost, he would have been tried as a war criminal.

But despite its widespread use in World War II, this tactic never provoked a popular revolt. And, regardless of the consequences of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was no uprising against the Japanese government.

In fact, bombing can have the opposite effect: it enrages people, which can mobilize support even for deeply unpopular governments. German efforts to demoralize Londoners in 1941 only made them more stubborn, reinforcing their belief that the city could withstand such attacks. Winston Churchill was, of course, popular. But the same response was evident among Berliners, even those who hated Hitler. People take pride in their resilience, especially when facing a common enemy.

The truth is that most people don't like being bombed by foreign powers, no matter how much they despise their own leaders. This is especially true in a proud country like Iran, with a bitter history of foreign intervention. In 1953, a US- and UK-backed coup ended a fledgling democracy . Hatred of these Western countries may have diminished, but Iranians remain suspicious of their motives. And if it's hard to imagine Iranians uniting around Trump's "Miga" banner, the idea that they would consider Netanyahu a political savior is even more fanciful.

Undoubtedly, weakening Iran's nuclear capability is a positive development . Israel's war against Iran's allies in Lebanon and Syria may also have been a positive development. But, as other Western military interventions in Asia and the Middle East have shown, bombing does not lead to democratic change.

The defeat of Japan and Germany in World War II and their subsequent democratic transformations are sometimes cited as counterexamples. But democracies were built, or rather rebuilt, after the war by the elites of those countries under Allied occupation. And today, no one dares to suggest that the United States or Israel should occupy Iran, much less that doing so would have the same results as in Germany and Japan.

The only ones who can overthrow Iran's sclerotic, oppressive, and often brutal theocracy are the Iranians themselves. The regime is deeply unpopular: a 2023 poll found that more than 80 percent of Iranians would prefer a democratic government. Bombing Iran may have exposed the country's military weakness, but it could also have weakened the growing opposition.

The reaction of the distinguished Iranian actor Reza Kianian is instructive. A fierce critic of the government and a supporter of anti-regime protests in 2022, he would undoubtedly welcome a more democratic society. But once Israel and the United States began the bombing, his patriotism took over. He told the Financial Times: “A person outside Iran cannot tell a nation to rise up. Iran is my country. I will decide what to do, and I will not wait for you to tell me what to do in my own country.”

This justified aversion to outside intervention could soon give way to renewed determination. You never know what can happen when a regime comes under pressure. But so far, the regime has cracked down harder on perceived traitors and dissidents. And Iran's military weakness increases the likelihood that its leaders will redouble their efforts to build a nuclear bomb. This is certainly not what Netanyahu and Trump intended, nor what most Iranians would want.

(*) Analysis by Ian Buruma, author of numerous books, including Year Zero: A History of 1945. © Project Syndicate. New York