Iran on the Brink
A regime in crisis, a population in revolt—and no clear path to political transformation
Happy belated birthday Fariba and Mark! Happy birthday Amanda and David!
Honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and his dream. Let’s keep working to make it a reality.
The book giveaway is back! Oh, I’m also on TikTok. I know, I need to step it up. It’s a work in progress.
Please love this post by hitting 🖤 above —and, please, share with others. If you ❤️ the newsletter, please become a paid subscriber.
The Islamic Republic’s response to weeks of protests across Iran—even in its most conservative strongholds—has turned vicious. The death toll is believed to be between 2,500 and 3,000. These are numbers one normally would associate with war.
In many ways, that is not far off. A sclerotic, corrupt religious regime is up against a population fed up with inflation, international isolation, and suffocating social restrictions. Protesters have inverted the country’s long-standing global-facing chant of “death to America” and “death to Israel” into something that concerns them: “death to the dictator.”
Like so many worldwide, Iranians are focused on bread-and-butter issues—prices and affordability. My pocketbook before ideology.
How it began
The current protests began in late December, after Iran’s currency, the rial, collapsed. That shock pushed the bazaaris—the country’s traditionally conservative merchant class—into the streets. Iran has seen uprisings before. Most recently, in 2022, mass protests followed the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being detained for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly.
Yet, it was the merchants demanding action that signal a shift and, as this Al Jazeera piece notes, a warning. The regime has been losing support for a while. The more groups, such as the bazaaris, that grow disaffected further weaken them. That has prompted comparisons to 1979 and speculation about regime collapse.
Why this is not (yet) a revolution
As Narges Bajoghli argues in Time, revolutions require more than rage:
“Revolution requires the alignment of institutions capable of challenging state authority—and right now, the alignment doesn’t exist in Iran.”
The protests are potent but leaderless. There is no parallel power center, no organized movement capable of contesting the state, no figure people can turn to. Decades of repression—combined with infiltration, arbitrary detention, and deliberate fragmentation—have ensured that. Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi is currently serving a sentence for challenging the regime. Note to GOP and MAGA: You can’t bomb your way to democracy, you have to invest in people.
Bajoghli picks up on my aside, noting that this outcome is not solely the regime’s doing. Years of US policy—”comprehensive sanctions layered with covert operations, cyberattacks, and military strikes—have devastated Iran’s economy without producing an organized alternative.”
The vacuum
In the NYT, Holly Dagres points out how little preparation exists for a post-Islamic Republic Iran. There has been talk about the last Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, who is 65 and who has lived most of his life in exile, as a possible transitional figure, which seems more like grasping for straws than a plan. Do Iranians really want to go from a totalitarian regime back to a monarchy?
The US response
Meanwhile, last week Trump threatened to strike the Islamic regime if it fired on protesters. “Help is on the way!” he posted on Truth Social. “Keep protesting”—something he is denying Minnesotans, but I digress.
This week, he said he will levy 25 percent tariffs on countries that do business with Iran. As Vali Nasr notes, this may be more consequential than airstrikes. While that pressure might eventually isolate Iran to the point that the people topple the Islamic rulers, it does not produce a clear path forward, much less the freedom Iranians want.
What would actually bring the regime down?
Historically, regimes like Iran’s fall when security forces refuse to shoot. There is no evidence that this is happening. The military, aka Revolutionary Guards, appear to remain loyal. And even if the country’s top ayatollah, Ali Khamenei, were removed, as Bajoghli notes, Iran’s decentralized religious and economic power structures are too diffuse to dismantle quickly.
So what could happen? The Revolutionary Guards could move in: In an act to preserve themselves and the power they hold, the military could sideline clerical rule and essentially not change much.
Lessons from history
In this Foreign Affairs podcast, Karim Sadjadpour notes that Khamenei appears to have absorbed one lesson from 1979: don’t flinch. Then, the Shah came out to apologize to the Iranian public and promise to make improvements. The public took that as a sign of weakness and emboldened them. Khamenei’s instinct, by contrast, is brute force—much like the Chinese Communist Party in 1989, when tanks cleared Tiananmen Square.
The second lesson: provoke America. Once upon a time, Iran experimented with democracy. In the early 1950s, Iranians elected Mohammad Mossadegh. He nationalized the country’s oil, pushing out foreign companies like British Petroleum. The US backed a coup that led to his overthrow in 1953—and to the resurrection of the Shah, who ruled with an ironfist as he pillaged the country’s coffers. That is the narrative Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic movement repeated at mosques and bazaars. It not only led them to capture the state in 1979, it is how they have stayed in power since. Iranians do not trust America and do not want American interference.
What Comes Next
Things in Iran are likely to get worse before they get better. The regime has suffered setbacks over the past year—losing ground through weakened proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. Iran is more isolated than it has been in decades. Revolution is not inevitable—but neither is stability. —Elmira
📚 Interrupt Your Bookshelf! 📚
In 1991, Jung Chang published Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, which tells the story of three generations in her family, before communism, during, and soon after. Chang has spent most of her adult life living in the UK. She’s written a follow up to that book, Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself, and China. It picks up from where she left the original and looks at China under Xi Jinping. I read it and hoped to write a review, but didn’t have the time. It’s a fascinating account of China’s political trajectory, from a first hand account. Here is NPR’s review.
Enter the drawing to win a copy of Fly, Wild Swans. Submissions close on Tuesday, January 20, 9:00am ET. I am changing the rules for the drawing (because the last winner was not a subscriber and also has bad manners). You MUST be an active subscriber to the newsletter. Also, for this drawing, you must be based in the continental US.
Elsewhere in the World.....
On our radar...
Because it’s my newsletter…. I can lead with this….
Bosnia may no longer be in the headlines, but 30 years after the Dayton Peace Accords brought the country peace, the country remains a paradox: a state whose peace has held, but whose political system is deeply dysfunctional and vulnerable to nationalist pressures. In a new piece, I explore how Dayton’s institutional architecture has shaped Bosnia’s stagnation—and why meaningful reform is now essential both for the country’s future and for European security more broadly, including Ukraine. (Foreign Affairs)
Iran
As Iranians take to the street to protest the Islamic regime, there have been a lot of comparisons to the 1979 revolution. Yet, the circumstances that led to the overthrow of the monarch and today are quite different, writes Narges Bajoghli. (Time)
Regime change is easy to invoke—and when it comes to Iran, even exciting. Yet, few are thinking about what comes after the mullahs are gone, writes Holly Dagres. She says the West is not prepared for the day after. (NYT)
Iranians are fed up with the regime, writes Tara Kangarlou, but they’re also weary about foreign intervention and exploitation. The best way for the US to support the Iranian people is not through airstrikes but through people-to-people commerce that enables small business and lifts travel bans on artists, scientists, and civil society. (Atlantic Council)
Iran’s rulers shut off the Internet. But that comes at huge economic cost that can’t last forever, writes Dara Conduit. (The Conversation)
Honestly, if Isaac Chotiner called me to do a Q&A I would change my name and address. I might even consider a facelift. But Fatemeh Shams masters the master of the conversation in this discussion on Iran’s nationwide protests. She notes that it is an “explosion” and pushes back on Chotiner when he points to the Iranian public’s push back on Israeli and US strikes. “...they’re not defending the regime by condemning Israel,” she says. (New Yorker)
Venezuela
While many abroad celebrated the US military raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, those in the country worry that things will not change—and, in fact, may even get worse, writes Shaylim Castro Valderrama. (New Lines)
Immediately after the US captured Maduro, Trump said that the US would run Venezuela—and pay for it through Venezuelan oil. Heather Williams points out the fallacy of that thinking, including the need to dominate airspace and logistical systems as well as bring back talent. (The Hill)
And, on Thursday, Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Laureate María Corina Machado called on Trump at the White House, despite the fact that Trump threw her under the bus after apprehending Maduro and saying she didn’t have the support to lead. It’s likely that her visit is meant to push him to hold elections in Venezuela sooner rather than later. She also presented him with her prize. 🤢
Note to Nobel committee: Do better.
Greenland
Yes, we’re talking about Greenland and NOT Ukraine, which is still under Russian occupation and siege.
Trump says that the US needs Greenland because of threats that Russia and China present. Cécile Pelaudeix points out that the greatest threat to Greenland comes from Donald Trump. She advises Europe to build up the courage to stand up to the US. (Le Monde)
If Trump seized Greenland, would it be the end of NATO? Julianne Smith says the question has created an existential crisis in the alliance, but points out that it’s not the first tension NATO has seen. Greece and Turkey have butted heads. (Chicago Council on Global Affairs)
On that note, Frida Ghitis notes that the US is competing with Russia for attention in European headlines, as Europe focuses on preparing for war. (Insight)
The US
The US has withdrawn from 66 UN programs. While there are arguments for the world to carry on without the US, Suzanne Nossel says that multilateralism will struggle without US participation. (Foreign Policy)
Africa
Sudan’s civil war continues. The World Food Program said this week that it is struggling to keep emergency operations going. WFP food stocks will be depleted by the end of March. More than 21 million people are not getting enough to eat, while 12 million have been displaced. (United Nations)
Iran wasn’t the only place that experienced an internet blackout. Before elections on Thursday, the country’s incumbent leader, Yoweri Museveni, shut down the internet to stop “misinformation” spreading. Museveni is up against the pop star Bobi Wine. Mahima Kapoor and Mark Hallam on the voting, which included long lines and lots of disruptions. (DW)
At the end of December, Trump ordered strikes on Islamists in Nigeria’s north. As Dionne Searcy and Eric Schmitt report, the bombs struck mainly farmland. Now, Nigerians in that region believe that the US is targeting all Muslims. (NYT)
Asia
While the US was capturing Venezuela’s president and threatening Iran’s mullahs, China announced a $1.2 trillion trade surplus—this, despite Trump’s tariffs. Can it last? Simone McCarthy’s sources seem to think so. (CNN)
The International Court of Justice in the Hague began hearings on whether Myanmar’s ruling junta violated the Genocide Convention this week. Antonia Mulvey notes that it gives Myanmar’s Muslim Rohinga’s a chance to confront military leaders and let their voices be heard. (The Diplomat)
Middle East
While Iranians were protesting, the UAE and Saudi Arabia locked horns. Their spat is being played out in Yemen, but as Annelle Sheline points out, the rivalry is more about regional dominance. (Responsible Statecraft)
Under the Radar
The US is suspending immigration visas for 75 countries. Jennifer Hansler has the details. (CNN)
Trump sees women as the enemy. It’s no wonder they’ve come under attack, writes Karen Greenberg. (Tom’s Dispatch)
Opportunities
In DC, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is hiring for a Communications Coordinator.
CFR is looking for a Research Fellow/Deputy Director for its Future of American Security.
International Rescue Committee is hiring for a Senior Director, Global Public Affairs and Communications.
Equality Now has a slew of open positions.
Editorial Team
Elmira Bayrasli - Editor-in-Chief