In early February, according to The New York Times and other outlets, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convinced U.S. President Donald Trump that airstrikes could help catalyze an anti-regime rebellion within Iran. But after the Israeli and U.S. militaries launched a war on the Islamic Republic at the end of the month, eliminating Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other key regime figures, the Islamic Republic did not collapse. Instead, internal pressure appears to have consolidated it around hard-line elements. It didn’t have to be this way. The protests that erupted in Iran in late December—one of the country’s most serious waves of unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution—were only the most public illustration of a process of internal change that had been gaining momentum. The regime was under severe economic strain and faced profound popular discontent. Even after a January brutal crackdown on demonstrators, the government remained very fragile.…