But this time, when the bombs dropped, the war didn’t stay far away. It came home. And it changed the conversation. The generation that once scoffed at the regime’s rhetoric is now learning—sometimes for the first time—why the government built a narrative of resistance in the first place.

In the weeks following the Israeli strikes on Iran in June, something unusual happened. For decades, Iranians had been among the most pro-American populations in the Middle East. They were skeptical—if not outright dismissive—of their government’s ideological framing of the United States and Israel as existential threats. Such official slogans were heard by much of the population, especially younger Iranians, as merely background noise or even as a source of eye-rolling embarrassment. The regime’s obsession with “resistance” often felt more like a relic than a real policy.

In the weeks following the Israeli strikes on Iran in June, something unusual happened. For decades, Iranians had been among the most pro-American populations in the Middle East. They were skeptical—if not outright dismissive—of their government’s ideological framing of the United States and Israel as existential threats. Such official slogans were heard by much of the population, especially younger Iranians, as merely background noise or even as a source of eye-rolling embarrassment. The regime’s obsession with “resistance” often felt more like a relic than a real policy.

But this time, when the bombs dropped, the war didn’t stay far away. It came home. And it changed the conversation. The generation that once scoffed at the regime’s rhetoric is now learning—sometimes for the first time—why the government built a narrative of resistance in the first place.

Almost overnight, I heard a profound shift among my many contacts across Iranian society.