In the Tehran traf­fic, sit­ting in the front pas­sen­ger seat, win­dow down and right arm rest­ing on the win­dow ledge, I kept fear­ing for my el­bow. Our dri­ver, Parisa, was nav­i­gat­ing a mul­ti­ple-lane round­about/in­ter­sec­tion that made Ch­agua­nas’ Price Plaza round­about at rush hour look like a qui­et gar­den path. It looked as if every dri­ver in the coun­try, with a pop­u­la­tion at the time of 72 mil­lion, had de­cid­ed they need­ed to be there.

A dri­ver need­ed to be fear­less and nerve­less. No one gave you any­thing. You have to take ter­ri­to­ry, inch by inch, in a sea of ve­hi­cles seem­ing­ly head­ed for every point of the com­pass. Every few sec­onds, a car slow­ly cut­ting across us would surge alarm­ing­ly, threat­en­ing to smash in­to my side. I’d flinch and yank my arm in­side the car in an act of in­stinc­tive self-preser­va­tion. Parisa and the oth­er pas­sen­gers chuck­led.

“This is Tehran,” she said, “you’re fine. We have the best dri­vers in the world.”

To­day, there are ten mil­lion souls liv­ing in the cap­i­tal. Traf­fic is un­bear­able on the best of days. The roads have been clogged, as Tehra­nis flee an ex­pect­ed bom­bard­ment by the Is­raeli air force. Au­thor­i­ties sus­pend­ed flights out of Imam Khome­i­ni Air­port, Tehran’s ma­jor hub. The ex­o­dus is by road. It has been chaos min­gled with fear. My hosts from my last vis­it made it to Ar­me­nia, which bor­ders Iran to the north.

I’m writ­ing this on Fri­day morn­ing. The pic­ture could be to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent by the time you read it. Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu launched aer­i­al at­tacks against Iran’s nu­clear fa­cil­i­ties and as­sas­si­nat­ed a num­ber of mil­i­tary lead­ers and nu­clear sci­en­tists–on Fri­day 13th of all days. Iran has re­tal­i­at­ed with dam­ag­ing strikes on Is­rael’s main city, Tel Aviv, the main port Haifa, and oth­er places.

I’ve nev­er been to Is­rael and can’t pro­vide the first-hand look and feel that I can of Iran–from the sig­nif­i­cant­ly sized Iran­ian com­mu­ni­ty in Lon­don and Iran it­self. Stav Shaf­fir, for­mer Knes­set MP and Green Par­ty leader, friend and fel­low res­i­dent of heav­i­ly Jew­ish Stoke New­ing­ton/Stam­ford Hill in north Lon­don, is a rar­i­ty.

I say that to say this. While many in Iran sup­port a re­li­gious lead­er­ship that sits above the pres­i­den­cy, my clear sense over many years is that a sig­nif­i­cant seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion wants them gone. Many are qui­et­ly and even overt­ly cheer­ing Ne­tanyahu’s weak­en­ing of the pow­er of the theocrats and are hop­ing that this is Iran’s mo­ment to break their 46-year hold on the coun­try.

Oth­ers are torn be­tween loathing of the lead­er­ship, pa­tri­ot­ic in­dig­na­tion at the hypocrisy of nu­clear-armed Is­rael, and dis­like of Is­rael’s bru­tal­i­ty to­wards Pales­tini­ans. Iran is not the place to con­firm pri­ors or af­firm neat moral cleav­ages.

Ira­ni­ans on the whole want the same things we do. A good ed­u­ca­tion for their chil­dren, with the Unit­ed States be­ing one of the pre­ferred des­ti­na­tions. If you watch Fox News, you’d be­lieve that the av­er­age Iran­ian gets up every morn­ing and chants “Death to Amer­i­ca.” While I can’t cite any of this with polling num­bers ac­cu­ra­cy, a good num­ber of them love every­thing about the US; from Net­flix to fash­ion. Many learnt Eng­lish from watch­ing Amer­i­can movies.

They want to trav­el freely there. They jok­ing­ly re­fer to Los An­ge­les as “Tehrange­les”. Young women want to be able to watch foot­ball match­es in the com­pa­ny of their broth­ers or se­cret boyfriends, not strict­ly sep­a­rat­ed from them. They’d pre­fer to choose for them­selves whether to cov­er their hair, as man­dat­ed by the re­li­gious po­lice.

On June 20, 2009, mili­ti­a­men linked to the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard shot and killed Ne­da Agha-Soltan, a phi­los­o­phy stu­dent tak­ing part in protests against the pres­i­dent, Mah­moud Ah­madine­jad. Thou­sands of pro­tes­tors were beat­en, ar­rest­ed and tor­tured. Things felt shaky for the cler­ics for a while, but they soon re­stored or­der. Their lead­er­ship rests on the au­to­crat­ic ex­er­cise of pow­er. A crack in the wall could bring the whole struc­ture down.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who has talked out of both sides of his mouth about ne­go­ti­a­tion and force, has looked weak in let­ting the Ne­tanyahu tail wag the dog. How­ev­er, a seis­mic change in Iran could be about to land in his lap.