Stockholm in Iran: Ceasefire aside, when the leader of a nation such as the United States threatens to eradicate an ancient civilization, those sentiments, once they make the public rounds, cut deeply into the way citizens are inclined to view would-be liberators. So deeply, in fact, that opponents of an oppressive regime can suddenly place national pride ahead of domestic discontent, a kind of in-house Stockholm syndrome brought into being by a loose-lipped and at times lunatic president. Those Iranians who at first welcomed a possible change in government may come to see those who bombed them for more than a month not as saviors but as raiders alone. The U.S. and Israel may claim to have won this war, or won a ceasefire, but they have no notion of the disillusionment they have inflicted on the people they sought to redeem. If the Iranian masses now behave more gingerly toward those who would “rescue” them, this will be the cause. A pummeled regime that was not supposed to have survived has apparently done just that, and in so doing perhaps retrieved a Stockholm syndrome–like reprieve from a restive population.