#WTH Iran on the brink?

Talking through the options

Protests are escalating quickly in Iran. Per AEI’s Iran-watching team at the Critical Threats Project (together with the Institute for the Study of War), Iran’s 2026 protest movement caught fire on Thursday, January 8:

Protest activity in Iran has expanded dramatically in both rate and magnitude since January 7, including in major cities like Tehran and in northwestern Iran. Protesters demonstrated in at least 156 instances across 27 provinces on January 8, which almost doubles the number of protests recorded on January 7. The individual protests are also much larger than those prior to January 8 and include 60 medium-sized protests (over 100 participants) throughout the country.

But here’s the money description, that gives you a sense of the panic that is taking hold at the highest levels in Tehran:

The regime has likely determined that these protests represent an extremely dire security threat and has intensified its crackdown accordingly, including by taking the rare step of using the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Ground Forces to suppress protests in at least one province. The regime used the IRGC Ground Forces to suppress protests in at least Kermanshah Province and possibly other provinces on January 8. This is a rare step; the regime only deployed the IRGC Ground Forces once during the Mahsa Amini protests, but it did so in Kurdish-populated areas. Kermanshah Province, where there are reports of IRGC Ground Forces activity, has a large Kurdish population. The regime tends to rely most heavily on the LEC and paramilitary Basij to manage social unrest and suppress protests. The regime maintains elite Basij units that specialize in crowd control and repression and activates them when protests escalate meaningfully. The regime relies on the IRGC Ground Forces in the most extreme circumstances, during which the regime tends to approach protests as an insurgency rather than gatherings of aggrieved citizens. The IRGC Ground Forces is the final regime defense against civil upheaval and thus uses extreme levels of force to quell demonstrations.

There have been numerous civilian deaths, and several deaths in the security forces as well. The regime has shut down internet access in much of the country, likely seeking to mask the breadth of anti-government anger.

But how should we think about the challenge facing the regime, the West, and the opportunities ahead for the Iranian people?

To review the bidding, these protests broke out late last month, initially over spiraling inflation, economic hardship, and a plummeting rial (currently hovering at almost a million rials to the US dollar). But they quickly spread, and morphed into anti-government protests.

Though it doesn’t always make the front pages, Iran is often riven by substantial, if smaller protests. The last major uprising was in 2022, with the death of Mahsa Amini. But since the failed Green Revolution of 2009, the Islamic Republic regime has put in place — with substantial Chinese and some European help — a police state surveillance system that has enabled them to maintain control. It has also moved to suppress independent thought inside universities, newspapers, and online.

So, will these protests fizzle out like previous such uprisings against the regime?

For opponents of the Islamic Republic inside and outside the country, the protests are almost always deemed “the big one” that is certain to topple the ayatollahs and reinstate… Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah of Iran, or some savior to be named later. Generally, these assessments have been wildly optimistic. There are security services at every level of Iranian society, from the regular army, the Artesh, to the paramilitary Basij, to the more elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which manages terrorist proxies abroad and regime protection at home. In short, to drive home the point, Iran looks like a dictatorship because it is a dictatorship.

But is this time different?

Generally speaking, the regime has the upper hand. While the Islamic Republic has nuclear ambitions, regional ambitions, missile ambitions, and more, job one has been and will always be regime protection. Everything can go — the hijab, Hamas, the Palestinians, you name it — but the system of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (the Supreme Leader), and all those who have gotten rich in the last 46 years — are sacrosanct.

The above is the baseline for an assessment. But there should be no doubt that circumstances have changed for the Islamic Republic in the last year. Hamas is on its knees, Hezbollah is too, Assad is gone from Syria, and everyone in Iraq is more worried about their Swiss bank accounts than they are about velayat e faqih — the guardianship of the jurist.

Add in Iran’s obvious military ineffectiveness, Israel’s devastation of Iran’s nuclear program, the United States’ cost free strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, and the usual nightmare of a mismanaged economy and a restive population, and the boys in turbans have never looked weaker.

Now factor in the hyper-aggressive response to these demonstrations, including fielding the IRGC — a desperation move — and it’s starting to look like the regime may actually be on its last legs.

What will Donald Trump do?

Well, there is what DJT tells us he’s going to do, what he actually might do, and the key question: What difference will it make? On Thursday night, Trump reiterated his threat to the regime in an interview with Sean Hannity. Here’s what he said:

In the past, they’ve started shooting the hell out of people. And all of a sudden, people without any weapons whatsoever are standing there, and you have machine guns gunning them down, or they take them to prisons and then hang them and kill them. They played rough. If they do that, we’re going to hit them very hard. We can hit them hard. We’re ready to do it.

Well, ok. So what’s he going to hit? Where? And will that cause the regime to collapse? These are legitimate questions, and the answers are unclear. Certainly, a strategic bomb to IRGC HQ would cause many inside Iran to sit up. And, pace all of the armchair analysts who claim to know Iran, such a move would be unlikely to coalesce the people of Iran behind the regime. But cui bono? Is it the putative Shah? Some other internal leadership? The IRGC and a military coup?

Clearly, Reza Pahlavi is an appealing plug and play. He comes, he takes over, bad regime is dead, long live the Pahlavis. Maybe. But Reza Shah has lived in and around DC for much of his life, and the vast mass of Iranians know little other than that things were better under his dad than they are under the Islamists.

Could Reza Pahlavi be a caretaker and usher in democratic rule in Iran?

Sure, why not? Then again, the Islamic Republic has had a stranglehold on Iran’s 92 million people for almost 47 years. People born after the revolution have children and grandchildren. And the Islamic Republic has controlled the education system, information systems, and much more. A turn to democratic rule is neither obvious nor necessarily imminent. Democracy requires institutions and leaders and systems, none of which exist in today’s Iran.

So, is Iran doomed with or without these tyrants?

Absolutely not. The Iranian people are cultured, educated, and patriotic. They also hate their current leaders. Things could turn out well, especially if the United States is willing to throw its support behind a transition to non-Islamist rule inside Iran. It’s not clear to me that Donald Trump is interested in doing that (in Iran or Venezuela), but he might be.

Finally…

In an ideal world, the Islamic Republic would collapse as any former Soviet captive nations did… peacefully, with a reasonably smooth transition to democratic rule. Even if that exact outcome is not in the offing, an end to this particular government is highly desirable. Don’t forget, the Middle East looks the way it does today in large part thanks to the malign efforts of Iran’s mullahs.

The perfect cannot be the enemy of a good, or even better outcome. No matter what, let’s wish the Iranian people Godspeed, and do what we can to share their stories and help them secure a better future.

PS It tickles me to think that if the regime does collapse, it all began on October 7, 2023. Cosmic justice….