When growing up in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Shay Khatiri recalls that it was fairly common to hear criticism of the regime expressed behind closed doors; criticism of Islam, however, was exceedingly rare. But after over four decades of theocratic rule, that too has changed. Khatiri cites ample anecdotal evidence that this is so—such as a friend’s elderly and once-pious father who declined to participate in an annual ritual with the words, “Son, I have come to realize that all these things are bullshit!” And these are not the only reasons to believe that the religious ideology that fueled the 1979 Islamic Revolution has taken a toll on Islam:

GAMAAN, a Netherlands-based center run by two Iranian political scientists that tracks public attitudes in Iran, reports that 67 percent of Iranians reject the idea of theocracy, and 72 percent reject having a religious figure as the head of the state. A 2020 report by the same organization found that only 32.2 percent identify as Shiite Muslims, with another 5 percent identifying as Sunni. (Contrast that with the CIA World Factbook, which reports that 90–95 percent of the country is Shiite.) Nearly half identified as some form of irreligious—none, agnostic, spiritual, or atheist. A whopping 7.7 percent called themselves Zoroastrian, far higher than the 0.03 percent of the Zoroastrian population inside Iran. It’s not that Shiite Iranians are converting en masse to the religion of their pre-Islamic forbears—Zoroastrianism doesn’t accept converts. The better interpretation is that a significant number of Iranians claim the ancient Persian religion as a method of identifying as Persian and shedding the Muslim identity they’ve come to hate.

Iran’s plummeting fertility rate gives more evidence of its declining religiosity. Iranians have been poor in the past, but they still had high fertility rates despite being high on the misery index. The return of poverty doesn’t alone explain why the fertility rate has fallen to 1.7 children per woman of child-bearing years, but it makes sense when one considers the rise of “nones.” Religiously unaffiliated people, on average, have fewer children than religious people. In 1989, when I was born, Iran’s average fertility rate was 5.1.

But none of these data are as astounding as the clergy under attack. Iranians used to respect the clerical class, either sincerely or begrudgingly. It wasn’t just fear of its power but also a tradition and a custom. Nowadays, the stories that populate the news are about how pedestrians, often without cause, physically assault random mullahs on the street.

Before the Islamic Revolution, Iran had an Iranian state and a religious population. Now, it has a theocracy and a population increasingly embracing the non-religious components of its national heritage.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.