Trump Went to War With Iran. One Woman’s Death Shook the Regime More. - Newsweek

When an unprecedented joint onslaught of U.S. and Israeli strikes first pummeled Iran earlier this year, President Donald Trump issued an appeal that some predicted would spell the downfall of the Islamic Republic.

"When we are finished, take over your government," Trump ordered in a broadcast message to the Iranian public as the war commenced in the early hours of February 28, weeks after protests and unrest consumed the nation. "It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations."

But today, nearly seven months later, the Iranian government stands strong. The slaying of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other key officials would not precipitate the kind of state collapse and mass uprising for which the White House hoped.

That's not to say Iran's leadership is immune to forces compelling change, however. In fact, it was one woman's death while in morality police custody four years ago that sparked the largest sustained social movement challenging the system since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

In many ways, the impact of the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement ignited by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022, held on charges of failing to adhere to Iran's mandatory hijab laws, serves as a far more successful blueprint for achieving reform in Iran than the U.S.-Israeli military intervention.

"The Women, Life, Freedom movement was a turning point because it changed Iranian society and government tolerance without yet changing the law," Sanam Vakil, director of Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa Program, told Newsweek.

"Compulsory hijab remains legally in place," Vakil said. "But its widespread rejection has transformed public urban life and forced the state to tolerate forms of personal freedom and everyday defiance that were previously unthinkable, even as it continues to repress organized political dissent."

The precise circumstances surrounding Amini's death remain a matter of dispute.

The official investigation, carried out by the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization, which falls under the country's judiciary, blamed an underlying disease related to a brain surgery she underwent at the age of 8. The final report found that she suddenly lost consciousness, developed an irregular heartbeat and loss of blood pressure before being pronounced deceased due to organ failure and hypoxia.

Amini's family has denied she suffered from any preexisting conditions. They have cited firsthand witness accounts from fellow detainees attesting that Amini was subject to extensive beating by police officers, a narrative that gained traction both in Iran and abroad.

What followed were global displays of solidarity and a monthslong series of protests that outlasted and surpassed other major demonstration campaigns in 2009, 2017 and 2019. Demonstrations were particularly intense at universities and among Iran's Kurdish community—of which Amini was a member—but acts of dissent ultimately swept all 31 provinces and hundreds of cities.

At least 200 people were killed, according to Iranian media, while foreign monitors put the toll at more than 500. Thousands were arrested as Iran's Guardian Patrol scrambled to contain the rapidly spreading rejection of mandatory head coverings for women.

By spring of 2023, the protests began to subside. No laws were formally repealed, and Iranian officials remained staunch in their defense against what they viewed as attempts by external powers to corrupt the Islamic Republic's velayat-e faqih system by exporting Western-style feminism.

"We have recently been attacked by a virus of assaulting cultures and we've been assaulted by culture coming from the West, westernized cultures," Jamileh Alamolhoda, wife of then-Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, told Newsweek around the first anniversary of Amini's death in September 2023.

But even a cursory look at the country today would indicate that the sacrifices were not in vain. While a significant number of Iranian women continue to wear head coverings, more openly eschew the hijab without consequence than ever before.

"I believe the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement succeeded to a remarkable extent," Negar Mortazavi, host of the Iran Podcast and senior fellow at the International Center for Policy, told Newsweek. "The government never acknowledged defeat, but what we see across Iran’s public spaces amounts to a defeat in practice."

"Women have pushed back the boundaries of compulsory hijab and the dress code so dramatically that daily life looks fundamentally different from before the movement," she added. "I would describe it as a social and cultural revolution from which there is no going back."

"As we say in Persian, 'Water that has passed through the stream cannot be returned.'"

The "Women, Life, Freedom" movement may emerge as the Islamic Republic's most influential protest movement yet, but the demonstrations that rocked the country from late December 2025 through early January 2026 proved far bloodier.

What began as a campaign led primarily by Tehran shopkeepers and merchants airing grievances over the country's ailing economy soon morphed into a broader movement, with thousands of people across various strata of Iranian society taking to the streets. In this case, Iran, having suffered a direct assault in the 12-Day War months earlier in June 2025, attributed the turmoil to direct involvement from foreign agents.

Here, too, the facts are contested. The Washington Post and The New York Times have reported on U.S. knowledge of Israeli efforts to promote an uprising in Iran, while public statements from both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrate the two leaders at least lent their rhetorical support for the protesters.

"Help is on the way," Trump declared on Truth Social as he ordered the largest military build-up in the Middle East since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

By the time the war began, that dissent had been largely suppressed, resulting in thousands of deaths. Iranian media reports an official toll of 3,117 killed, most of them civilians, while some estimates were upward of 10 times that figure and Trump recently placed the toll as high as 60,000, without evidence.

Rather than reviving the protest movement, the U.S.-Israeli intervention appears to have had the opposite effect. Attacks causing civilian deaths and Trump's threats against civilian infrastructure, even Iranian "civilization," have done little to endear the population to the White House's messaging.

"The U.S.-Israeli campaign has not been experienced simply as a war against Iran’s government," Mortazavi said. "On its opening day, a U.S. strike hit an elementary school in Minab, killing roughly 120 children. Since then, homes, hospitals and cultural sites have been damaged, and a recent strike on a house hosting a wedding killed women and children. For many Iranians, it became clear that this was also a war on their country and its people."

On February 28, a school in Minab, in southern Iran, was struck. The Minab prosecutor’s office identified 156 people killed, including 120 children. Two U.S. officials told Reuters that military investigators preliminarily believed American forces were likely responsible, but had not reached a final conclusion. The Pentagon said in July that its investigation remained ongoing,

In early September, Iranian state media reported that a strike hit a wedding ceremony in southern Iran, killing five people and wounding at least 68 others. The U.S. Central Command said at the time: "We're aware of the reports, which originated from Iranian state media. The U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC."

"The attacks produced a rally-around-the-flag effect among government supporters and strengthened nationalism among the broader public," Mortazavi said. "Many Iranians who oppose the Islamic Republic also oppose a war that kills civilians and destroys their country. Opposition to the government does not automatically translate into support for U.S. and Israeli military action."

In some ways, she pointed out that Iran's wartime footing has "entrenched" the Iranian authorities' de facto acceptance of the kind of attitude adjustment brought on by the Women, Life, Freedom movement. The government, now led by Khamenei's son, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since his father's killing, lacks the capacity to enforce the strictest social measures while simultaneously waging war and maintaining broad domestic support.

But while the economic strains of the conflict also weigh on the country, the new iteration of the Islamic Republic now expected to not only survive the conflict but emerge with new advantages is also predicted to be even more hard-line in nature.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist who won Iran's 2024 snap election after principlist Raisi's death in a helicopter crash and went on to bring more women into government, is facing an intensifying series of challenges from influential rivals emerging in Khamenei's shadow. Among them is Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander-in-chief Major General Ahmad Vahidi.

Vahidi served as a founding commander of the elite IRGC Quds Force that was later handed to Major General Qassem Soleimani—the famed Iranian military leader who was killed in a January 2020 airstrike ordered by Trump—and he was interior minister under Raisi during the investigation into Amini's death.

"The war has also narrowed the space for political dissent," Mortazavi said. "The government has tolerated greater social and cultural freedom while treating organized political opposition as a security threat. Wartime criticism can now be labeled collaboration or treason, strengthening hardliners and consolidating the political system rather than fracturing it."

"Iran’s grievances have not disappeared, but protest cannot be summoned from Washington while bombs are falling," she added. "Military force can destroy infrastructure and eliminate leaders; it cannot manufacture an indigenous uprising."