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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/world/middleeast/iran-united-states-escalation.html
The Cost of War Is Starting to Be More Palpable in Iran
(New York Times) Erika Solomon - After more than a week of strikes by the U.S., discontent over the human and economic cost of war is starting to be more palpable in Iran. On Saturday, 268 prominent Iranians, including academics, politicians, athletes, clerics and trade unionists, signed a "No to war" petition - a risky move at a time the government, backed by a fiercely pro-war hard-line base, has continued to crack down fiercely on dissent. "The government will have a very difficult time convincing people that they should continue fighting this war at the cost of Iran's destruction," said Omid Memarian, an Iran analyst at DAWN, a Washington-based Middle East research institute. "So time is ticking for them too." That sense of time slipping away is likely what encouraged Iran to launch the attacks on ships that began the latest spiral, said Farzan Sabet, an Iran analyst at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland, to take advantage of strategic gains while they have them. "They saw their leverage in terms of being able to control the strait quickly decline," he said.