The Israeli attack has shaken Iran's military power and the Islamic regime itself, but the Iranian opposition, which the government has been suppressing by all means for years, lacks unity, plans, operational coalitions, and functional structures, according to Iranian politicians in exile.
Although Washington and Tel Aviv are not clear about whether the goals of the Israeli military attack include overthrowing the regime in Tehran, Iranian expert Majid Golpour points out that "the question now is how a regime that is unable to protect even its own leaders and defense can claim to be the guarantor of the country's integrity?"
Golpur, reported by the German portal "Deutsche Welle", says that it is difficult to see a credible political alternative in Iran. "Now is the moment when national political forces should agree on a single common platform - both against the ruling regime and against external threats," notes Golpur.
EU media reported the assessments of other Iranian analysts in exile that "theocratic authorities have been systematically suppressing opposition voices in Iran for decades. Anyone who demonstrates the ability to bring people together is discredited, monitored, arrested and often sentenced to long prison terms."
The leader of the theocratic regime, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said he would never surrender, but US President Donald Trump, who had demanded it, said that "Israel is winning the war, so it is difficult to stop the attacks on Iran."
There are estimates in the Western media that Khamenei could be replaced by a general from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose leadership has been decimated by Israeli attacks.
The attempt by the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and Great Britain to achieve a breakthrough towards a diplomatic end to the war in talks in Geneva with Iranian Minister Abbas Araghchi was completely unsuccessful.
Trump, who, until the Israeli attack, was convincing Ayatollah Khamenei to reach a negotiated solution that would mean an end to Iran's attempts to produce nuclear weapons, stated that "the European Union is of no use at all in such attempts."
However, the foreign ministers of France, Great Britain and Germany, while demanding a halt to further escalation, demanded the same thing as Trump: "finding an urgent negotiated solution that will guarantee that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon."
French President Emmanuel Macron was even clearer, saying that Iran was being asked not only to halt efforts to produce nuclear weapons, but also to "limit Iranian activities, ballistic missile capabilities and to stop financing terrorist groups and groups that undermine the stability of the region."
The front page of the French newspaper "Le Monde" today carries the headline "Israel-Iran war continues, diplomacy in the mud".
Both Russia and China have asked Iran to agree to freeze its nuclear program, provided that Israel ceases attacks.
EU commentators believe that everything is now in Washington's hands, namely whether Trump will enter the war by using a 13-ton bomb, the most powerful in the world, and try to destroy Iran's currently intact main uranium enrichment center, Fordow, protected in a bunker 90 meters below ground level.
American analysts also believe that Trump's message that he will decide on this in two weeks is essentially a great pressure on Tehran to reconsider whether negotiations and a settlement to stop the nuclear program are better than what follows the American attack on the Fordow nuclear center in the mountains of central Iran, south of Tehran.
Analyses on both sides of the Atlantic warn that Iran would undoubtedly retaliate against the US bombing of the Ford by attacking US military bases in the region and closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world's oil traffic passes.
This then means a global crisis and, even worse, the inevitable entry of the US into war with Iran with unforeseeable consequences.
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