Proponents of foreign intervention in Iran are unlikely to get the sudden rupture and regime change they hope for. For years, interventionists in the West made the argument that the long-term costs of the political order in Iran, such as repression, economic decay, and social stagnation, outweighed the risks of a violent external regime change. Last month, the “moral barrier” to intervention was significantly lowered by the bloody crackdown on protests in January and the extensive positive coverage of the Iranian opposition in Western media. The US-Israeli intervention came soon after, with both United States President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging Iranians to “rise up”. The assassinations of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other high-level Iranian official...