While a ceasefire deal between Iran and Israel holds for the time being, uncertainty persists in the Middle East. Two Philly professors who are experts on the geopolitical region and foreign policy discussed Iran's capabilities to retaliate, what to make of mixed messaging from the Trump administration and why many Americans are opposing the United States' involvement in this conflict.

Here's what Sean Yom, associate professor of political science at Temple University, and Farah Jan, an international relations lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, told PhillyVoice this week. 

MORE: Grays Ferry residents create virtual archive to preserve neighborhood's history

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

PHILLYVOICE: How should Americans and people in the West differentiate between the Iranian government and the Iranian people?

YOM: This is how I frame it and teach it in my Middle East politics class every year at Temple: The Iranian government is not democratically elected. It's a type of authoritarian regime. It does hold elections for a Parliament and the office of the president. The candidates in those elections have to be vetted by unelected religious authorities and other tutelary voices that exert overall supreme control over the political system, so it's a type of non-democracy. The terms we use for this type of regime include autocracy, authoritarian regime, dictatorship ...

The Iranian people, Iranian society is distinct from that. There are many in Iranian society that support the Islamic Republic, but there are also many — and we find this ... is true in every non-democracy in the world — there are plenty of Iranians who identify themselves as opposition. They protest. They march. They mobilize. They go online. They try to emigrate. They dissent. They evoke ferocious resistance to a government that they feel has no legitimacy to dictate their lives. And in fact, we've seen increasingly frequent outbursts of popular mobilization demanding political reforms, if not a democratic transition, by some in Iranian society — certainly not all, but some — and they date back decades.

Iran's a country, in other words, where we could say the regime in charge is certainly not elected, and it's not a democracy. It's not the same as the Iranian people who themselves are diverse, and they form a very large society since there are over 90 million people. ... Some of those people support their Islamic Republic. Some of them dissent and oppose the Islamic Republic.

PV: Is the United States pushing for a regime change in Iran?

YOM: I think it's important to note that the president we have in office right now is one who has not only centralized and personalized his control over American foreign policy, but as we all know is renowned for making contradictory, ever-changing, malleable statements that his own officialdom have to constantly catch up to in order to defend, rationalize or resist, if necessary, because many of those statements are not in the interest of the American people.

President (Donald) Trump at times has suggested that regime change is on the table and at other times he has not. From my estimation, I do not think that our government under President Trump desires regime change in Iran, because the only way to carry that out would be to wage an all-out, conventional war and a repeat of the 2003 Iraq War.

JAN: The Trump administration, we get all sort of mixed signals, as we saw the first day. You know, (Secretary of State Marco) Rubio comes out and says, "We've got nothing to do with these strikes. This is Israel carrying out. The United States is not involved." Then Trump comes back and says, "No, the United States is going to carry out a range of strikes on three of Iran's nuclear facilities." ... So, you're kind of getting mixed signals from the Trump administration.

This is not your standard or regular U.S. administration. Here you get mixed messaging. You have the State Department saying something, the (Department of Defense) on a different page and then the White House coming up with very different statements, sometimes aggressive and other times calling ceasefires where the two parties are not sure if they'd even agreed on the ceasefire.

PV: Do you think Iran has the ability for retaliation against the United States?

JAN: This is now the second time the United States is getting involved in a conflict with Iran. The first time was under the first Trump administration when the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani was killed (in January 2020). We saw Iran respond back and attack the U.S. military base in Iraq. Again, it was more symbolic. It was more of a face-saving gesture than an actual attack on the U.S. base. What we saw (on Monday was), Iran doing something similar (attacking a U.S. base in Qatar). And the point simply was, "Fine, you've come, you've bombed us. We're not going to retaliate. We'll do this just to do some face-saving at home."

And, thus, you saw Trump, end of the day, call a ceasefire, because you have the nuclear issue that's taken care of, according to Trump. You have, on the Iranian side, they responded. The government of Iran is still intact and still in place. Now, the question is, what is the Israeli calculation here? Because Israel started the war. What is their endgame? Because, for the U.S., the endgame was, or their main objective was, for Iran to not have a nuclear weapon.

For Israel, the endgame is a regime change? The endgame is weakening Iran? We don't know. And that objective still remains. That's not been taken care of. The question is, are we going to see a ceasefire hold? We don't know. We have to wait and see how things unfold.

PV: What is the reason for many Americans opposing the U.S. attacks on Iran?

YOM: I think the groundswell of opposition to President Trump and his reckless efforts to dismantle American democracy one constitutional pillar at a time has only redoubled, because the evidence of American militarism unjustified and unwarranted and counterproductive shows that under his reign, our government can't be trusted. 

... This act of militarism ... reinforces in the minds of activists, demonstrators, civil society leaders and protesters and dissidents across our country that this president is not governing in the interest of the broader American public or American society. I think the other thing to note, though, is that what I saw, especially in Philadelphia with the latest anti-war protests over the last few days, is that there is now a new strand of consciousness among the activist community of our city —  that the United States is being dragged into yet another global role and another regional hegemonic position that it should not adopt.

JAN: I think on both sides of the aisle, there's very little appetite for another Middle Eastern involvement. We saw our involvement in Afghanistan, how it ended. We saw our involvement in Iraq, how it ended. Iran is very different than Afghanistan and Iraq together, or Syria for that matter. First of all, it would be incredibly difficult to put boots on the ground in Iran. And I think that would be an absolute disaster, based on the geography of the country and the structure of the state itself. And I don't think that's an option, and I don't think that's an option that the Trump administration is even considering.

PV: What should the average American, Philadelphian or student in one of your classes know about what's going on between Iran and Israel?

YOM: The average Philadelphian, even if they know nothing about the Middle East or America's history of military interventionism or about Iran specifically, should know all of this could have been avoided had President Trump not torn up the comprehensive treaty that the U.S. spearheaded and signed with Iran to disarm its nuclear facilities under President (Barack) Obama during his second term. 

That happened in 2018 — President Trump tearing up that treaty, known by the acronym the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Had not that happened, we would be opening up more, I think,  constructive diplomatic relations with Iran. We would be in dialogue with that government. We could apply other vectors and conduits of pressure, not just sanctions, but incentives and treaties and inclusion to the international community that I believe could have effectively, through diplomacy, prevented all of the conflict that we've seen over the past few weeks.

Follow Shamus on X: @shamus_clancy
Follow Shamus on Bluesky: @shamus