Over the past two years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has sustained a series of major blows that may prove fatal to its survival over time. These have included the extended Israeli assault on its key non-state ally, Hizbullah, in Lebanon, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria – its closest supporter in the Arab world – and the very public manifestation of its own weakness, in intelligence and military terms, as Israeli and US attacks on Iran’s nuclear programme, and military and political leadership, went almost without a response from the regime’s much-vaunted military apparatus.
The clearest and most remarkable expression of its vulnerability came on Saturday morning when US intelligence penetration of the regime at the highest levels enabled the Israeli assault that killed the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and dozens of other senior figures, including the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Despite all of this, there is little to indicate the likelihood of regime change in Iran in the immediate term.
Recent history suggests that the sort of outcome proclaimed both by US president Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu as the key objective of the current onslaught on Iran – the removal of the Islamic regime in Tehran – is only likely to come about if there is direct intervention in the country by the US military. There is no indication of planning for this on the part of the US leadership, nor of any willingness to countenance the prolonged and damaging conflict that would ensue from such intervention. Instead, both Trump and Netanyahu have resorted to vague exhortations to the people of Iran to rise up against the regime in Tehran – although quite how this might happen and to what end has not been made clear.
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Undoubtedly, the Iranian regime is deeply unpopular, as January’s mass protests and footage of the celebrations that followed the killing of Khamenei make clear. Widespread opposition exists both inside and outside the country. However, as has been repeatedly observed, there is no clear leadership or organisational capacity to orchestrate mass protest, or indeed to take over the power structures of the state in the event of regime demise. Within Iran, there are diverse groups deeply opposed to the status quo – students, women’s rights activists, labour organisations. But these are fractured and divided into many factions.
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Labour organisations with deep roots in the country attempt to channel the widespread distress that Iran’s dire economic situation generates among workers. However, the regime restricts these activities, particularly in order to prevent co-ordination with students or human rights activists. Deep-seated opposition to the political order is also found within Iran’s diversity of ethnic minorities. Kurdish, Baluchi, Arab and Azerbaijani groups demand an end to Shia clerical dominance and respect for minority rights. But they are also reluctant to engage with other elements in the Iranian opposition, wary of further marginalisation in whatever Persian-dominated dispensation might follow from the fall of the Islamic Republic.
The broad opposition also includes some figures previously associated with regime institutions. Former presidents Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Khatami, among others, while opposing the hardliners who have dominated Iranian politics in recent years, seek reform of current structures rather than their dismantling. But their influence is increasingly limited, due to a combination of regime restrictions on their activities and mistrust on the part of other elements in the opposition who regard them as compromised by association with the status quo.
Finally, there is external opposition to the regime, most obviously exemplified in Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah of Iran who was deposed by the 1979 revolution. Even the Iranian diaspora is deeply divided. Those who support the attack on Iran are viewed as agents of foreign powers by some. Those who reject foreign intervention are seen as regime stooges.
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In any case, calls from Trump for Iranians to seize “the moment for action” wilfully ignore what happened when Iranians took to the streets in the past. There were mass protests following the disputed presidential election in 2009, again in 2019-2020 after a significant increase in fuel prices, and again in late 2022 following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, after her arrest for failing to wear her hijab “properly”.
In every case, the regime response was violent repression, leading to hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of deaths. Suppression of the most recent protests in January may have cost over 30,000 lives.
None of this is to say that there will not be a recurrence of anti-regime mobilisation. But in the absence of clear leadership, organisational capacity and a shared set of views on what a post-Islamic Republic Iran should look like, recent history in the region offers bleak lessons.
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In 2011, uprisings against corrupt, gerontocratic, authoritarian regimes took place across the Arab world. Youth-led cross-class and cross-ideological coalitions developed, united by their shared hatred of the status quo. However, in almost every case, this was all that they agreed on – leading to fracture, division and sometimes violence and instability in those instances where their objective of the fall of the regime was secured. Closer to home, Iranians can reflect on the events of 1979, when a similar coalition of divergent elements, from leftist parties, labour organisations, women’s movements and students of every ideological leaning, succeeded in bringing down the autocratic rule of the shah. Iranians are only too familiar with the political order that followed.
