Plus, without the US onside, NATO does not have the stocks at the moment to keep supplying Ukraine in the way they would need to take back all of their lost territory, and you can’t become a member of NATO if you have an ongoing border dispute. Unless Ukraine is willing to cede its claims to the regions occupied/annexed since 2022 (as well as Crimea), they can’t join NATO now, and they can’t re-take that territory (for now) without the US helping.
If defense production can adequately ramp in the rest of NATO, then that might change, but for the moment this seems like a decent option if it keeps US friendly and options open depending on how things pan out. They aren’t really sacrificing anything that was a realistic prospect in the short term anyways, as far as their strategic goals are concerned.
Probably depends on who you ask, but my understanding is that there is at least relatively significant support for the reinstatement of Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son and exiled crown prince of the last shah. To my knowledge, his calls for protest and overthrow aren’t the inciting incident for the currently-occurring protests (the economic catastrophe(s) Iran is going through have that plenty covered), but those calls to action have at least been been a contributing factor and rallying point for the ongoing protests.