Only way to topple Iran’s regime is through popular movement, Shirin Ebadi says

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Israeli warplanes may succeed in destroying Iranian nuclear sites and slaying its leaders, but military intervention is unlikely to topple the Islamic regime that has ruled the country for nearly a half-century, says one of that country’s most celebrated human-rights advocates.

In fact, the brutalities of armed conflict may achieve the opposite, driving Iranians into the hands of a government that has already tightened its grip on personal liberties in the past week, arresting Iranians for social-media posts and cutting off the country’s internet access.

Those measures demonstrate that authorities there “can still crack down on any protesters, which means that the regime has not been weakened sufficiently for a popular movement to succeed,” said Iranian human-rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly advocated for regime change in Iran, calling on people to rise up as he directs a barrage of strikes against the country’s infrastructure, military leadership and nuclear scientists.

Yet little sign of determined protest has, to date, emerged from Iran.

Instead, the continuation of attacks – with hundreds of Iranians already dead and Israel’s military warning Friday that its people “must be ready for a prolonged campaign” – has brought an oppressive new reality upon Iran, Ms. Ebadi told The Globe and Mail in an interview Friday.

The lack of internet has prevented mass organizing by protesters, she said. The deprivations of war, meanwhile, risk driving Iranians toward the very regime that Israel has placed under attack.

If conflict is prolonged, as Israel has warned, it is likely to force people into hunger, dissolving the rhythms of daily life. “There is a fear that people will rally around the government, because they don’t want the war any more,” Ms. Ebadi said.

Yet she continues to hold out hope that Iranians will once again take to the streets to demand change.

“The possibility is there,” she said. Some have already begun preparing for such a movement, with activists laying plans for protest in the midst of Israeli attacks.

“They have proposed that protesters go out holding white pieces of fabric or white flags so that Israeli forces know they are protesters,” said Ms. Ebadi, who is among the most prominent critics of the Iranian regime.

For Iranian-Americans, a potential U.S. attack on the regime brings complex feelings

She was a pioneering figure in her country’s judicial system, becoming the first woman to be made chief magistrate of the Tehran court, where she worked until she was stripped of that post by the new leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

She took up private practice, defending thousands of people in political cases. In 1999, she was locked in solitary confinement for 25 days on charges of “disturbing public opinion.” Iranian authorities confiscated her property, arrested her husband and, she says, tricked her husband into cheating on her – arresting him and then allowing him to win back his freedom by denouncing Ms. Ebadi.

She now lives in London, but has found ways to continue peering into Iran, even with regular internet connections severed, thanks to a small number of people who have used Starlink satellite connections to remain in contact.

“The Iranian government is acting more aggressively than ever before,” she said.

It’s designed, she said, “to create an atmosphere of fear and to intimidate people, lest they take to the streets to stage yet another protest.”

She has little hope that foreign military attacks can dislodge Iranian leadership that has kept its grasp on the country since 1979.

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Israel’s strikes have “no doubt weakened the regime,” she said. But “the only way the regime can be toppled is through a popular movement.”

However, Israel’s attacks have, she said, provided Iranians new reason to oppose their country’s rulers.

Missile strikes have killed top Iranian leaders with deadly efficiency. The regime, meanwhile, has shown little ability to help its own people. Basic food supplies have run short. Fuel has been rationed.

“One of the major banks has been hacked and the others don’t have any cash. The majority of ATMs don’t function any more,” Ms. Ebadi said. “People are frustrated. They don’t know where to turn to and what to do.”

Basic security, too, has been woefully inadequate.

For 46 years, the Iranian regime has chanted “death to Israel.” Yet it seemingly did little to prepare for an attack, failing to provide adequate shelter in Tehran, a city of 10 million people, Ms. Ebadi said.

Telling people to seek shelter in mosques or the underground metro system “is totally ridiculous,” she said. A mosque has little more protection than a residential building. ”As for metros, they shut all the gates at midnight. So what are people supposed to do?”

It is, she said, ”just one example of how powerless and useless this regime has been.”