It’s very real . Very easy to see for yourself if you take a few mins to go to iranian websites or even on X
That may well be true that a significant Iranian population is ready for change, and hoping for it isn’t a crime on the part of the rest of the world, but it is a total crapshoot on whether that will result.
Nobody knows.
Honestly, I don’t think Trump is or isn’t banking on it. Like anyone who conceal carries and is forced to protect himself, Trump is doing this action to “remove the threat”.
He is giving them an opportunity. But once the leadership is eradicated, along with their stores of munitions, drones, and factories that produce them, he isn’t going to use our troops to go that last step and provide them “with a democracy”.
He is looking for wiggle room, another 10-30 years in which the nuclear threat and aggressive action is so low that it provides time for other longer term solutions to take hold.
They may not take hold. There may simply be a brutal, internecine civil war. But they will lose the ability to project.
And from what I know, we haven’t done anything to Kharg Island, which with the facilities there, is their major point of export. That is a bargaining chip. If they refuse to change their ways, their money can be cut off by mining Kharg Island with modern mines (such as programmable ordnance, captured torpedoes, etc.) or by simply destroying it.
We aren’t doing that yet, because I suspect we don’t want to remove their sole source of revenue besides pistachios which would be sure to plunge the country into chaos and instability.
Doesn’t mean they won’t build a major pipeline into Russia and sell their oil through them, but it makes things tougher for them to rebuild.
Overall, I expect the calculus is currently that a defanged and unsuppliable military (without hard currency) in Iran with leadership in chaos is preferable to an orderly, hostile leadership bent on acquiring nuclear weapons and exporting terrorism.