While the shadow of a renewed war lingers between Iran and the United States, there is a deeper problem in the region, one that receives less attention than the war.

For the fifth time in modern history, the Islamic Republic has disrupted a regional effort to redefine, reinvent, and reconstruct the Middle East. Arab countries have spent years trying to move beyond political Islam and build a new identity around prosperity and foreign investment. By targeting regional Arab states, the Islamic Republic has imposed a heavy cost on this transformation.

Every Iranian missile fired toward the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia shook the foundations of the new order the region was trying to build. The dreams of attracting foreign investment and building luxury tourism, AI and data centres evaporated in the eyes of Arab leaders, as the Islamic Republic shattered the perception of security and predictability in the Middle East.

This is not the first time the region has faced such a setback. The Islamic Republic has repeatedly undermined similar regional efforts in the past decades. Any time the region has tried to swim to the surface and take a breath, the Islamic Republic has dragged it down like a heavy stone chained to its ankle.

Subscribe now

1. Republicanism: 1950-1970s

In the 1950s-70s, many countries across the Middle East and North Africa revolted against monarchies and tried to experiment new political systems, most of them centred on republicanism.

Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser became the defining example after the 1952 revolution abolished the monarchy. Iraq overthrew its monarchy in 1958, Libya did the same under Muammar Gaddafi in 1969, and South Yemen emerged as a Marxist republic in 1967.

These movements, despite all their differences, shared one dream: replacing hereditary monarchies with some form of democracy. Many of them were built around nationalism and republicanism, mixed with some military populism.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution suddenly changed this trajectory when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini introduced an entirely different ruling model: an Islamic Republic. His state was built on religious rather than popular legitimacy. Its model extended far beyond Iran and diverted the Middle East away from republican experiments and toward Islamism.

In the following decades, many regional attempts to create new political orders were affected by this Islamist model, as seen in groups like Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Islamic State caliphate.

2. Reconstructions: 2000s

In the early 2000s, after the United States and its allies toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, a new sense of hope emerged across parts of the Middle East. Many believed the region was entering a new phase of reconstruction, institution-building and democratisation.

In Afghanistan, the United States and its allies invested heavily in the education system, media sector, and NGOs. Over two decades, an entirely new generation of Afghans emerged who gained skills in professional environments and in contact with international institutions and foreign mentors.

In Iraq, Americans tried to create a state integrated into the global economy. Large resources were devoted to security and infrastructure.

But these efforts were undermined by Iran, which saw American presence and influence as a threat.

Iran expanded its influence through Iraqi militias. It supplied sophisticated weapons to Shiites groups, who attacked coalition forces with deadly roadside bombs. In Afghanistan, Tehran gradually developed a relationship with the Taliban and provided them with weapons, hoping that no stable pro-Western order could fully take shape in its neighbouring country.

By doing this, the Islamic Republic increased the cost of maintaining political and economic stability in the region to an unsustainable level for the US. This not only led to the hasty withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, but also made the Middle East an extremely unpopular region to be involved with in the US psyche.

3. Arab uprising: 2010s

By the late 2000s and early 2010s, a new generation across the Middle East rose up to redefine their lives around civil rights and political participation.

The youth-led Arab Spring arguably started in Tehran in 2009, when Green Movement protesters took to the streets and questioned the disputed election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Islamic Republic crushed the Green Movement through violence and mass arrests. But it did not end there. Iran deployed forces to Syria to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s government against Syrian protesters.

The Islamic Republic was not the only regional power that blocked the democratic aspirations of young people, but it suppressed democratic movements both inside its own borders and beyond them.

Tehran even managed to turn an inspiring movement in Syria into a regional model of failure. To this day, many people warn against movements that could turn their country into “another Syria,” associated with civil war and bloodshed in vain.

4. Abraham Accord: 2020s

The Islamic Republic also tried to block one of the most significant political shifts in the modern Middle East: the Arab-Israel normalization, a project facilitated by Donald Trump.

The Abraham Accords were signed between Israel and several Arab countries. The United States hoped the accords would help with regional stability, freedom of navigation, and counterterrorism. For a while, Trump even mused that Iran could eventually be incorporated into the accords.

But the Islamic Republic showed its anger through proxy attacks on Saudi and UAE civilian infrastructure and commercial shipping lanes, and then the October 7 terror attack on Israel.

The Abraham Accords were a bold move that showed Arab states were ready to move beyond endless ideological confrontation and start collaborating with Israel on advanced technology, cybersecurity expertise, agricultural innovation, and intelligence gathering. The Islamic Republic and its “Axis of Resistance,” including Hamas and Hezbollah, showed they were ready to escalate regional violence to a new level only to block this shift.

5. Investment phase

The region tried to redefine itself once again, this time through forward-thinking leaders who wanted to move away from ideological politics and push the region toward development and prosperity. These models, first adopted by the UAE and inspired by Malaysia, were soon expanded to other countries, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Governments heavily invested in non-oil growth and transformed their economies into hubs for trade, investment, tourism and innovation.

Shining cities soon emerged from the deserts, and hundreds of thousands of expats flooded into the region to explore new opportunities. The once-dry region turned into a magnet for luxury tourism. Real estate boomed as Arab states offered something most other countries in the region could not: stability and safety.

For many regional investors, it made sense to move their money to Dubai, as it had become the only city in the region capable of bringing together people from different faiths and backgrounds under one shared universal value: making money.

The Islamic Republic also took advantage of this newly opened system, first by trying to launch front companies to bypass the sanctions. These companies presented themselves as players in the global economy, but in reality many were laundering money for the Revolutionary Guards.

However, In the recent rounds of war between Iran and the US, the Islamic Republic took revenge on this long-standing source of envy by firing missiles toward the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, shattering the perception of safety and stability on which these societies had built their new economic models.

Iran attacked the UAE even more aggressively than Israel, using ballistic and cruise missiles and drones in waves. Hotel occupancy in the UAE is projected to plummet to 10% in the second quarter, down from 80% before the conflict.

The Islamic Republic views infrastructures as acceptable collateral damage and it has built its defence strategy around strikes around Fujairah, attacks on UAE-linked tankers, disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and severe pressure on Dubai’s tourism and logistics economy.

This is a big blow to the region. Projects such as Saudi Vision 2030 now face a far more uncertain environment. Bringing in foreign money, global talent, and long-term investment will become significantly harder under the shadow of regional instability.

Arab mega-projects like NEOM, The Line, Qiddiya, New Murabba, and Lusail City are still under development. Through futuristic urban planning and AI-driven infrastructure, they are hopeful to attract skilled expatriates from around the world. Their success will not rely only on construction itself, but also on creating a safe and stable environment for capital and talent. The Islamic Republic showed it will not shy away from undermining that foundation.

Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi said he has never met Mojtaba Khamenei in his life.

Araghchi has been foreign minister for two years. Before that he served for more than a decade as deputy foreign minister and an adviser to Khamenei. In all the years he was one of Iran’s main nuclear negotiators.

The lack of any meeting between him and Mojtaba shows Mojtaba’s lack of interest in diplomatic issues.

We know Mojtaba attended some meetings between his father and military commanders, and we know he had close ties with the security forces. His limited engagement with the diplomatic elements of the Islamic Republic reveals his personality, interests, and inclinations.

Mojtaba has been active in the Iranian political scene at least since 2005, when his interference in the election of Ahmadinejad was made public by Karroubi, the losing candidate.

Mojtaba has tried to exert influence over Iranian politics from behind the scenes by relying solely on the security forces and military elements.

It is very unlikely that he would choose a different path as supreme leader. He would seek to resolve the US-Iran conflict through military means rather than diplomacy.

Why the US-Iran war did not go fully as expected by many and did not lead to a total collapse of the Islamic Republic. Here are 9 reasons that come to my mind:

1) Succession chain

The attacks against the top leaders of the Islamic Republic did not include Mojtaba Khamenei, or if they did, it was not successful. Mojtaba was in the same compound as his father. His survival gave the system a sense of continuity and allowed the IRGC to rally around a single figure instead of descending into internal rivalry and fragmentation.

2) Trying to fight a low-cost war

The US wanted a war with the lowest possible military, political, and humanitarian cost, while the Islamic Republic had no problem with maximum disruption. While the US held back, the Islamic Republic targeted civilians, infrastructure, shipping routes and regional economic networks to raise the cost of the war across the Middle East and the globe. This imbalance tilted the war narrative gradually in favour of Tehran.

Subscribe now

3) Entering negotiations too early

The US began negotiations with Iran before the military pressure had fully matured. The Islamic Republic interpreted the move as a sign of weakness. Early negotiations created breathing space and allowed the system to regroup and even rearm. That strengthened Iran’s stance in the negotiations.

The sudden pause in military action killed the momentum that had been built and also prevented additional regional and international actors from joining the military campaign against the Islamic Republic.

4) Fragmenting the Iran problem

One of the strengths of Trump’s Iran policy was that he viewed the Islamic Republic as a single problem rather than a collection of isolated issues. His strategy aimed to force Tehran to change its behavior across the board or change the regime itself.

This was also Trump’s core criticism of the JCPOA. He argued that the agreement focused too narrowly on the nuclear file while leaving other issues untouched. Trump always pushed for a “jumbo deal” - as skeptically phrased by Borsi Johnson - that would address all these elements at once.

But during the war, the administration drifted into the same pattern as Trump’s predecessors. The nuclear issue became the central focus, particularly the question of 400 kilos of highly enriched uranium. Regional security became something for Gulf states to handle, the Strait of Hormuz something for Europe and China to worry about, and proxy conflicts something to be dealt with later.

5) Kurds

The US/Israeli administration believed Kurdish factions could be armed and used as an auxiliary force on the ground. But the plan fell apart. According to Trump’s side, the Kurds received weapons but did not do what they were expected to do. According to Kurdish accounts, they never received the level of military and logistical backing they believed Washington had promised.

The result was a critical gap. Despite airpower superiority, there was no reliable ground force inside Iran to exploit the pressure.

6) Checkpoints

US and Israeli forces stopped targeting the regime’s basic checkpoints and street forces. That allowed the Islamic Republic to retake control of public space and the daily lives of Iranians.

7) Narrative

While Trump tried to explain his reasons for going to war with Iran by portraying it as a major threat to global security, the Islamic Republic gained the upper hand in the media landscape by aligning its narrative with anti-war, anti-Israel, and anti-Trump groups. This gave it significant leverage.

8) F-35 fighter jet

Almost three weeks after the war, a US F-35 fighter jet was forced to make an emergency landing at an American base in the Middle East after it was reportedly hit during a mission over Iran. The aircraft, one of the most expensive and advanced jets in the world, is worth more than $100 million. The repetition of this incident could have hurt confidence in the aircraft and affect future arms sales.

9) People

For many Iranians, the beginning of the war was not February 28, but January 8–9, when Trump publicly encouraged protesters to remain on the streets and said help was on its way. But once the war began, the message changed. Iranians were instead told to remain at home, wait for a signal from the US, and then finish the job. Similar messaging was repeated by Israel, yet the call never came. The lack of synchronisation between political and military campaigns created confusion and disappointment among many Iranians.

Iran–US talks are on the verge of collapse, as both sides cannot even agree on what the subject of the negotiations should be: a ceasefire, the Strait of Hormuz, or Iran’s nuclear programme. The negotiations have turned into talks about what to talk about. The two sides could hardly be further apart.

Trump and Mojtaba Khamenei have shifted the war from military battlefields to the realm of public opinion. Their social media statements are becoming increasingly radical, each demanding absolute surrender from the other. The narrative war, however, is heavily tilted towards Iran, as Tehran’s most effective weapon is American public opinion, while the internet shutdown has prevented the US from giving much agency to Iranian people.

Subscribe now

In 2025, Ali Khamenei, the former leader, warned Iranian officials against succumbing to a “no-war, no-peace” condition, cautioning about its detrimental effects on economic stability. His successor seems less concerned and has instead resorted to “no-war, no-peace” as a solution.

The difference in priorities is natural. While Ali Khamenei was planning for long-term development (at least in his own mind), Mojtaba Khamenei is primarily focused on the survival - of both himself and the Islamic Republic.

He prefers the current situation to continue for as long as possible to avoid confronting the real problems he will face at home once the war ends: economic collapse and rising popular anger. The low-intensity war also provides him with an excuse to keep the internet and the stock market closed, limiting visibility into the true scale of economic and political decline.

This low-intensity, frictional war is also a preferred option for Trump, as it allows him to keep public opinion calm, minimize casualties, while maintain military pressure on Iran. Hezbollah and Israel were engaged in low-intensity conflict for years. Frictional wars tend to emerge when the military power of two sides does not match, yet neither has the appetite to escalate to decisive confrontation due to the costs involved.

In this context, Trump has imposed the blockade with two goals: first, to militarily enforce already imposed sanctions on oil; and second, to place pressure on Iranian oil storage and, consequently, oil wells productivity. Such pressure might have mattered to a leader with long-term priorities, but for Mojtaba Khamenei it carries less weight. His concerns are more immediate, centered on survival rather than a potential 20 to 50% decline in oil output in the future.

How might this evolve from here?

The US and Israel are likely to strike limited targets in Iran soon, aiming to push Tehran toward the negotiating table, but not forcefully enough to trigger a full-scale war. This approach also allows Trump to keep Congress at bay as the 60-day window for conducting military operations without congressional approval runs its course.

Iran will maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz and continue targeting regional actors, but not to the extent that it fully depletes its missile stockpile or provokes the US and its allies into a broader conflict.

This dynamic allows both sides to claim victory, regardless of when the war ends or what consequences follow.

In 2019, while working on the energy desk at Reuters, I began reporting on a question that has shadowed global oil markets for decades: what would happen if the Strait of Hormuz were closed?

For me, the question was not abstract. I came from a country where, for more than half a century, leaders had repeatedly threatened to weaponize the Strait. As an energy correspondent, I wanted to understand whether the region had built credible alternatives, or the world was still exposed to a risk it preferred to ignore.

Routing oil supplies away from the Strait of Hormuz has been a recurring topic in the Middle East, especially since the “tanker wars” of the 1980s. Regional governments had long been reviewing and funding contingency plans to deal with a possible closure of the Strait and to circumvent their oil and petroleum exports.

Yet most of these plans never moved beyond paper, even after cabinet approvals. Those that did remained underfunded, and the volumes they could carry were a drop in the bucket compared to the total flow through the Strait of Hormuz.

Analysts I spoke to at the time believed such plans were not economically feasble in the absence of a real disruption. The reality was that regional countries were reluctant to commit billions of dollars to precautionary infrastructure that might never be needed.

And even if disruption did occur, many of them believed it would be short-lived — that the United States would intervene militarily and reopen the waterway quickly.

The alternative routes

As a result, projects remained limited in scope. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline carried oil to the Red Sea, but its capacity increases remained modest relative to the scale of Hormuz. The UAE’s Fujairah terminal bypassed the Strait, but remained geographically too close to be fully secure.

Other routes were even more constrained. The Iraq–Turkey pipeline faced political disputes between Baghdad and the Kurdish region over oil rights and territory. The Iraqi Pipeline through Saudi Arabia (IPSA), built by Saddam Hussein in 1989 to bypass Hormuz, has been largely inactive since 1990. Plans for a pipeline to Jordan’s Aqaba port depended on fragile Iraqi-Jordanian relations.

Deep-seated rivalries across the region prevented the implementation of most cross-border projects. The alternative plans were small, and governments were so reluctant to share information that I abandoned the article.

Two winners

Only two countries took the threat seriously.

China diversified its energy sources over the past decade and worked to reduce its dependence on the Strait of Hormuz.

The second was Iran, which built the Goreh–Jask pipeline to bypass the strait altogether, and also invested heavily in its ability to affect alternative routes.

Tehran repeatedly reminded regional countries that these alternative routes were vulnerable. The 2019 attacks on oil tankers near Fujairah, the 2019 drone strike on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, and the 2023 attacks by the Houthis on shipping lanes in the Red Sea were direct challenges to efforts to secure alternative export routes.

The U.S.-Israel war against Iran in March was a sobering reminder to the global economy that the world had long neglected one of its most critical chokepoints.
Iran managed to wipe out trillions of dollars from global markets by closing the Strait and added inflationary pressure to economies already under strain.

The price of securing the Strait was now much higher than the price of alternative projects would have been if they had been taken seriously.

Alternative routes were a partial answer at that time, but now they are no answer at all. During the US-Iran war, the region began to realize that a lasting solution lies not in infrastructure, but in a new regional security framework that limits the weaponization of the Strait of Hormuz.

Subscribe now

A newly circulated AI-generated video of Mojtaba Khamenei in a war room shows how urgently the Islamic Republic needs to project the image of a leader firmly in command.

More than a month after his selection as the new supreme leader, Khamenei has yet to be seen in public. His approach seems even more cautious than that of his father, Ali Khamenei, who released a few recorded messages from his secret bunker to show his face.

Mojtaba’s absence may be a calculated decision, aimed at survival against assassination risks, but in the long term it will certainly undermine his ability to rule.

In the final months of World War II, Adolf Hitler directed operations from a bunker, increasingly detached from battlefield realities. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein largely disappeared from public view, issuing sporadic messages that many doubted were even current. In 2011 in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi retreated from visibility as NATO-backed forces advanced, losing direct control over his fragmented forces. In each case, isolation formed uncertainty, internal divisions, and finally strategic failure.

By contrast, leaders who maintained a visible presence during crises often gained a decisive advantage. Winston Churchill remained in London during the Blitz, taking the same level of risks that ordinary people faced. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during the early days of Russia’s 2022 invasion, chose to stay in Kyiv and repeatedly show himself on camera despite assassination risks. Both strengthened courage, a sense of unity, and public morale.

Behind-the-scenes operator

Mojtaba Khamenei has failed to do that.

He faces constraints his father did not. Long viewed as a behind-the-scenes operator, he lacks an established public persona and the kind of hard-earned legitimacy that could be spent in these critical moments.

His position is further complicated by a swirl of unverified reports about his health, possible disfigurement, and his physical capacity to govern. His continued absence will only strengthen such rumors and further undermine his position as a strong leader.

In a profile aired on state television right after his selection as supreme leader, there was clear emphasis on the time he spent on the front line during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when he was a teenager. But those references are not enough to portray him as a credible commander among his soldiers. By staying out of sight while exposing foot soldiers to danger, Mojtaba Khamenei is widening internal rifts in an already demoralized military.

Khamenei’s absence from the scene — even from pre-recorded statements on state television — also suggests a lack of trust at the highest levels of governance. The Islamic Republic has tried, since the June war with Israel, to clean up its inner circle and root out Israeli infiltration. Khamenei’s continued hiding is, in effect, an admission of that failure.

Limits to “mosaic defense”

Iran has designed a mosaic defense system in which Revolutionary Guards centers in each province act independently, without needing direct orders from central command. But this strategy is unlikely to work in the long term; it is too rigid, limiting coordination and the ability to adapt strategies as the war evolves.

The lack of direct contact between Mojtaba and the government officials further complicates command and control system. He reportedly has not even met President Masoud Pezeshkian since assuming leadership.

History shows that leaders operating from underground or highly secure locations often receive delayed, filtered, or incomplete information. Hitler, in his final months, was issuing orders to units that no longer existed or had already collapsed, demanding counterattacks that commanders on the ground knew were impossible.

Even if the war ends now without the collapse of the Islamic Republic, it is unlikely that Mojtaba Khamenei will return to a normal public life. He will likely maintain limited contact with a small circle of trusted aides and restrict his public appearances to rare speeches where he can be sure he will not be targeted among civilians.

Mojtaba has already lost a month of his first 100 days of leadership without making a mark. By remaining out of sight, he may marginally prolong his tenure, but he has already made his leadership one of the weakest in Iran’s modern history.

.

One striking feature of Mojtaba Khamenei’s selection as the new supreme leader of the Islamic Republic is that most Iranians have never heard him speak. The only public recording of his voice is a one-minute video in which he tells seminary students that his classes have been cancelled.

For years, Mojtaba has operated largely behind the scenes within Iran’s political and security elite. But he appears to lack any significant public profile or popular following among the wider population — an element the Islamic Republic now seems increasingly unconcerned about.

The issue of choosing the supreme leader has always been a philosophical and practical challenge in the Islamic Republic. If the leader is the representative of God on earth and a successor to Prophet Mohammad, the question is how that selection happens. Does he become the representative of God when he is “elected” by the people, or is he already chosen by God and merely “discovered” by the nation?

These two camps have debated the nature of the Islamic Republic for decades. The former emphasizes the system’s republican and electoral elements, while the latter gives primacy to its theocratic foundations.

Popularity factor

The selection of Ruhollah Khomeini as the first supreme leader was relatively straightforward. He embodied both elements: he enjoyed broad popular support and was one of the most prominent religious figures of his time.

This was reflected in the first constitution adopted after the 1979 revolution, which said that the leader is “recognized and accepted by the overwhelming majority of the people as a source of emulation and leader, as was the case with… Grand Ayatollah Imam Khomeini.”

That provision was revised in 1989, when Ali Khamenei was selected as the second supreme leader, removing the reference to popular choice and assigning the decision solely to the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that chooses the leaders.

But even after the removal of the people’s formal role, popularity remained an important factor in choosing the leader. Ali Khamenei did not hold a high religious rank at the time and was not even an ayatollah. But he had served eight years as president and was a well-known figure across the country. The Islamic Republic ultimately chose him because these factors — public recognition and executive experience — were seen as more important than his religious standing.

New Islamic Republic

The selection of Mojtaba as the third leader of the Islamic Republic disregards the remaining importance of popularity in the system. He has been chosen not because of experience or public stature, but primarily because of his ties to military, intelligence, and security forces.

Mojtaba played a significant role in the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 and was also known as the mastermind behind the expansion of the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence and economic empire, as well as the policies adopted to suppress dissent in Iran.

If the Islamic Republic had followed its previous trajectory, it might have been expected to choose one of the former cleric presidents — most likely Hassan Rouhani, who in recent months had appeared to position himself for such a role.

By choosing Mojtaba, the Islamic Republic has effectively fallen into a trap of its own making. It has accepted a form of hereditary rule — something the system once prided itself on rejecting after overthrowing the monarchy in 1979. But this contradiction does not appear to be the main concern for Khamenei’s allies and inner circle, who see Mojtaba’s rise as the safest way to sustain the Islamic Republic.

While the leadership council is trying to present Mojtaba’s appointment as a prompt emergency decision taken during wartime, the reality suggests otherwise. Mojtaba Khamenei’s activities behind the scenes over the past decades indicate that this was not a sudden decision.

The succession of Mojtaba also blocks any realistic prospect of fundamental change in the Islamic Republic, with the structure of power pointing to continuity rather than transformation. The Iranian leadership showed it has little regard for resolving tensions with the nation or with the United States.

A week after the start of the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic Republic, Tehran appears to have no clear path to recovery. Iranian authorities may still try to slow the momentum of events, but the system lacks any meaningful sources of strength to prevent its collapse.

The death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the first hour of the attack on Saturday was arguably the biggest blow to the Islamic Republic since its inception. Despite the failures of many of its policies, Khamenei personally carried much of the burden of the system’s legitimacy.

The Islamic Republic often claims that every fallen leader can easily be replaced. But the deaths of some of its most prominent figures, including Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, have shown that the system relies heavily on powerful personalities rather than institutional strength.

History has also shown that the death of a dominant leader can trigger profound transformations in totalitarian systems. This was the case in the Soviet Union and, to some extent, in China after Mao Zedong. In the case of the Islamic Republic, however, the situation appears more severe. The leadership crisis comes at a time when almost all other pillars of the system have been severely weakened or have collapsed.

Subscribe now

Popular support

Domestically, the Islamic Republic has largely lost the support of its own people. The rift between the state and society has deepened significantly in recent years, and especially after the January massacre, that killed tens of thousands of peaceful protesters. Many Iranians called on Trump to come to their rescue.

A widely shared sentiment on social media was that Iranians might be the only nation in the world calling for a foreign attack on their own country.

A viral video of a motorcyclist driving through the streets of Tehran summed up the feelings of many Iranians:“If you had the people behind you, no power could even dream of attacking us,” he said with a sober tone. “You have done such terrible things to the Iranian people that they now wish for war, even though they know it could bring major losses — they might lose a loved one or their homes and belongings. But they prefer all these hardships to your continued rule.”

Unlike in the 1980s, when the Islamic Republic could mobilize waves of volunteers against Iraqi forces, the relationship between the government and the public is now fundamentally broken, meaning the system cannot count on society to stabilize or defend it.

Military and international support

Iran’s military capabilities are also on the verge of collapse. Israel says it killed around 50 top military commanders in the first hours of the attack. U.S. forces have also destroyed 30 Iranian naval vessels.

The Islamic Republic has lost a substantial portion of its missile capabilities, which form the central pillar of its defense doctrine. Out of roughly 450 missile launchers, Israeli strikes have destroyed around 300. In other words, nearly two-thirds of Iran’s missile launch capacity has been eliminated. Iranian ballistic missile and drone strikes have declined significantly as the war has progressed.

From an international perspective, the Islamic Republic has also failed to secure the level of backing it had expected from its allies.

This is not surprising. Many of the regional proxies are now weakened and increasingly focused on their own survival.

China and Russia prefer to keep Iran within their geopolitical orbit, but they are not willing to do so at the expense of damaging far more valuable relationships in the region, including with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. China’s trade with these countries is significantly larger than its trade with Iran.

Iran’s retaliatory strikes against neighboring countries have also angered states that had initially tried to remain outside the conflict. As a result, a broader regional coalition now appears to be forming around the United States and Israel to confront Tehran.

Economic and cultural Support

Iran’s economy is also on the verge of collapse. The government increasingly lacks the financial capacity to buy political support or maintain loyalty at home or abroad.

For decades, Tehran relied heavily on narrative-building to portray its military strength, internal unity, and regional influence as far greater than they actually were. Today, however, the Islamic Republic appears to be failing even in this domain.

The regime has attempted to portray the death of Khamenei — arguably one of the most significant intelligence failures in the history of the Islamic Republic — as an act of bravery. According to the official narrative, Khamenei knowingly chose to appear in his office despite the danger and was killed as a result of that decision.

Yet reports from media outlets, including the Financial Times, suggest the assassination was the result of a prolonged and sophisticated intelligence operation. These reports point to years of monitoring the movements of Khamenei’s bodyguards, hacking into CCTV cameras in the surrounding neighborhood, and tracking mobile phone signals in the area.

Authorities have even struggled to organize a public burial ceremony for their leader — something that would normally serve as a central moment of political symbolism and mobilization.

After a week, the system has failed to choose or announce a new leader, likely out of fear of further eliminations.

At the same time, Iranian officials have issued exaggerated claims that are difficult to sell to domestic audiences. Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani said on Wednesday that Iranian forces had killed 500 American soldiers, while official reports say the number of fatalities was four.

Similarly, Iranian media initially suggested that Iran had downed U.S. fighter jets, while the aircraft were reportedly shot down accidentally by Kuwaiti military forces.

With its leadership weakened, its military degraded, its economy collapsing and its social base fractured, the Islamic Republic appears to have lost all pillars that once sustained it. In practical terms, the system now has little left to stand on.

The burning of the Islamic Republic’s national flag at three Iranian universities on Monday marks a new high in the widening rift between the state and the people.

The protest movement in Iran is no longer selectively targeting certain symbols of the Islamic Republic, as it did a decade ago. It is now challenging everything the Islamic Republic represents, including the national flag itself.

One of the earliest visible signs of this state–society rupture emerged in 2009, when students set fire to a picture of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the 1979 revolution. At the time, the act carried such a strong taboo that opposition leaders suggested it may have been carried out by elements linked to the security apparatus, to justify a harsher crackdown.

Subscribe now

Around the same period, protesters began chanting, “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon — my life for Iran,” signaling a shift from the Islamic Republic’s transnational ideology to a national identity.

The Islamic Republic used such displays of anger in state television propaganda to discredit protesters. Yet each time, segments of the public repeated those same acts, turning them into a new front of defiance against the state.

The display of anger soon expanded to other figures — including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior military figures such as Qassem Soleimani, who had embodied Iran’s extraterritorial revolutionary doctrine. Their posters were torn down and burned.

Public anger even targeted the Iranian national football team during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which many Iranians viewed not as a sporting body but as a representative of the Islamic Republic.

For many Iranians, the team’s international presence risked strengthening the state’s domestic legitimacy and global image at a time when large segments of society felt alienated from it.

The depth of the rupture became particularly visible in June 2025, when many Iranians celebrated the killing of senior Iranian military commanders by Israel. Military figures who had been presented as national heroes four decades earlier during the war with Iraq were no longer seen as representing the nation.

BURNING THE FLAG

Students at several universities across Iran held protest gatherings for the third consecutive day on Monday, chanting slogans against Khamenei and in support of opposition figure exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi.

During their gatherings, they trampled on the flag of the Islamic Republic and threw it toward members of the security forces. At Amir Kabir University, the University of Tehran, and Alzahra University, students set fire to the flag of the Islamic Republic.

The Islamic Republic tried in 1979 to combine national and Islamic elements in the national flag. It took the colors from the pre-revolutionary flag and added the phrase “Allahu Akbar” in the middle. This is the part that many Iranians no longer sympathize with.

Iranian law does not explicitly criminalize insulting the national flag, but it can be prosecuted since the flag bears the word “Allah,” and insulting Islamic sanctities can carry severe penalties.

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC VS. IRAN

The Islamic Republic, from the very beginning, showed little regard for many Iranian traditions and symbols. Khomeini and his allies attempted to replace Nowruz new year celebration with Islamic religious holidays, although they failed.

While the White House displays a Nowruz table with traditional symbols, Khamenei delivers his New Year speeches without a Nowruz table, with only a photo of Khomeini in the background.

For many years after the revolution, the national flag did not occupy a central place in the Islamic Republic’s public symbolism.

That changed during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when the display of flags expanded dramatically. Streets were lined with newly produced, brightly colored flags, and government buildings were draped in national symbols.

This was not merely aesthetic. It coincided with the intensification of the nuclear dispute and a deliberate effort to frame Iran’s nuclear program as a matter of national sovereignty rather than regime ideology.

After the 12-day war with Israel in June, the Islamic Republic made an attempt to revive some of the national symbols and motifs. At one point, after emerging from his war bunker, Khamenei asked a religious singer to perform a song about Iran. But many Iranians saw that as too little, too late.

The resentment between segments of society and the state — and anything associated with it — has intensified to such a degree that long-standing religious funeral traditions have begun to fade. The customary recitation of the Quran at funeral ceremonies has been largely replaced by music, and mourners have even danced at the funerals of victims killed during the January protests.

In certain instances, people have worn white instead of black, returning not to pre-revolutionary but pre-Islamic traditions.

About a month ago, US President Donald Trump urged Iranians to keep protesting and take over institutions, saying that “help is on the way.”

Since then, the US military presence around Iran has expanded steadily, and many Iranians openly call for American military action against the Islamic Republic.

Yet some of Trump’s advisers draw cautionary parallels between a potential strike on Iran and the US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, warning against another protracted and costly war.

There is, however, another Middle Eastern precedent—one that both Iran and the United States would be wise to examine closely: the 1991 Shia and Kurdish uprising in Iraq. It was a revolt sparked in part by American encouragement but crushed after the United States did not intervene on behalf of the protesters.

US call for uprising

On Feb. 15, 1991, President George H.W. Bush called on “the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.”

His message was broadcast into Iraq via television and radio. Coalition aircraft dropped leaflets urging Iraqi soldiers and civilians to “fill the streets and alleys and bring down Saddam Hussein and his aides.”

The call came weeks after the US-led coalition had launched its campaign to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Shia communities in southern Iraq and Kurdish groups in the north rose up against Saddam.

The uprisings were fueled by deep public anger over Saddam’s military adventurism — from the long war with Iran to the invasion of Kuwait — which had imposed immense human and economic costs on Iraqi society.

Protests began in Basra and quickly spread to Najaf, Karbala and Nasiriyah. Shia rebels and defecting soldiers attacked security forces and government buildings. Baath Party offices were seized, officials were killed, prisoners were freed.

Within roughly two weeks, 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces were effectively outside the central government’s control.

It was a dramatic advance — but it did not last.

Subscribe now

The collapse of the uprising

The rebellion ended in one of the bloodiest crackdowns in modern Iraqi history. Its failure stemmed from a combination of factors: American hesitation to intervene, Saddam’s extensive use of force and deep divisions among the opposition — a combination that could, in a different form, reappear in Iran.

Despite overwhelming military superiority in the Persian Gulf, the Bush administration chose not to enter a new confrontation with Saddam. There were fears of “another Vietnam,” with American troops drawn into a prolonged deadly conflict.

Bush publicly called for Saddam’s removal but remained wary of what might follow. One concern was the “Lebanonization” of Iraq — the prospect of the rise of Iranian-backed Shia forces in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, opposition groups inside Iraq — Shia factions, Kurds, nationalists and others — failed to unify under a coherent command structure. The opportunity to conquer Baghdad slipped away.

The Gulf War ceasefire allowed Saddam breathing room. A regime many believed was on the brink of collapse recovered quickly. Relying on the Republican Guard — which had remained in the war largely intact — Saddam launched a counteroffensive.

Although parts of Iraq were placed under no-fly zones, Saddam exploited a loophole: helicopters were not barred. He used them to attack rebels, and coalition forces did not intervene to stop those assaults.

The Republican Guard shelled residential neighborhoods indiscriminately, conducted house-to-house arrests and carried out mass executions. Chemical weapons were used against some rebel-held areas. Even those who sought refuge in religious shrines in Najaf and Karbala were not spared.

Estimates suggest that between 30,000 and 60,000 Shia in the south and around 20,000 Kurds in the north were killed. Roughly 2 million people were displaced.

Lessons for the US and Iran

The Iraqi uprising offers several lessons for policymakers in Washington, and for Iranians.

First, the international community often underestimates a regime’s capacity for internal violence. Military weakness abroad does not necessarily translate into fragility at home.

A government that perceives its survival to be at stake may show restraint toward foreign adversaries while unleashing far harsher tactics domestically. Even an army battered in external war can regroup internally, close ranks and act with renewed intensity.

Saddam’s regime had been defeated by an international coalition, yet it retained loyal security structures, a functioning chain of command and the willingness to use extreme force against its own citizens.

At such moments, any external concession or diplomatic maneuver can be repurposed as an instrument of internal consolidation.

A deal with Iran could give the ruling elite a chance to regroup and unleash a new wave of repression against its own people.

For opposition movements, strategic cohesion matters. Agreement on minimum political goals, unity of command and preparation for a potential power vacuum can be decisive.

Victory does not arrive simply because a regime appears weakened. In Iraq, rebels went so far as to appoint local governors in areas they controlled — but the new order collapsed swiftly. Divisions within the opposition ultimately strengthened the existing power structure at a decisive moment.

At the same time, global leaders should recognize that threats alone are insufficient. If a foreign power seeks to alter the balance of power, it must understand that displays of force without the intention to use it can carry profound and unintended consequences.

Bozorgmehr Sharafedin’s daughter was born earlier this month as he grappled with historic protests gripping his home country of Iran and the government’s harsh response to them. The juxtaposition was strange for the D.C.-based journalist, who is the head of digital at the exiled Persian-language news outlet Iran International, which is headquartered in London. “I was living in two different universes. I would open my phone and see all these things from Iran,” Sharafedin said. “And then I would look at her. She’s so innocent and pure.”

The latest round of protests in Iran began on Dec. 28 in the capital and has since spread across the country. At first, protesters expressed frustration with the halting economy, but they soon also challenged the government and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Iranian government shut down the internet on Jan. 8 and cracked down on protesters. Thousands have been killed. The near-total communications blackout has made it hard for Iranians to know what’s going on or even to communicate with each other.

Iran International is banned in Iran, and its journalists have been targeted by the country’s government. Still, it remains among the most-watched outlets in Iran. Amid the internet shutdown, its broadcasts, accessible through satellite TV, have become even more important. We recently spoke with Sharafedin. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Subscribe now

(Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, head of digital at Iran International. credit: Maansi Srivastava)

How have the past few weeks been at Iran International?

Very difficult and emotional. Iranian journalists are used to working under a lot of pressure. That’s the drill. We know that we are, dare I say, the only source of information for many Iranians. We know that we have a big responsibility. During the previous rounds of protests, we decided to be the voice of the people. When internet shutdowns happen, people tune in more to satellite TV, and that’s why they’re more reliant on us. But it is very difficult to work under this stress. We are living in the darkest era of Iran’s modern history. We have never seen such brutality before. It’s been very difficult, but what keeps us going is the mission we have, the trust we have from our audience and the responsibility we feel to keep them informed.

What measures is Iran International taking to support journalists who may be experiencing trauma while reporting?

We’ve seen a lot of signs of PTSD among people who are doing this work. Psychologically, we try to give staff the maximum support. We don’t put just anyone on that front line. People who are there are trained and resilient. We won’t bring someone with no experience and put them in front of gory images. We have 24/7 psychotherapists they can access. We also are trying to automate part of the job, so we have created a bot that will receive messages from sources, analyze them and filter some of the initial images.

How has the internet shutdown impacted Iran International’s ability to reach its audience in Iran?

I run our digital news services, so my department was hit the hardest because people can’t get access from inside the country to our website and social media. We created a lighter version of the website that people can access with very low-speed internet. We also launched newsletters that contain the 50 latest news items from the website, with no images, so it’s very light and people can receive it and forward it to one another. We launched these initiatives after the protests because we could see that the internet shutdown was coming. While people are watching our broadcasts, they can now get text updates on the latest news in boxes on the side and bottom of their screens because we shrank the broadcast to the top corner. We have been working on that initiative for the last year, and we launched it because of the internet shutdown.

We have received some reports of broadcasts getting jammed, but they continue. The government is surely frustrated that Iran International is a main source of information for Iranians. There were reports that authorities raided peoples’ houses and confiscated their satellite dishes. I don’t know how successful the government will be with that, but they understand that shutting down the internet won’t be enough, because people will still receive information through satellite channels.

How has the shutdown affected your ability to gather news, talk to sources and learn what’s happening on the ground?

We were receiving 12,000 videos or audio messages per day from Iran before the shutdown, and it dropped to 400, so it has significantly reduced the connection. As soon as the internet opens, we are expecting a flood of information. I’m sure we will be overwhelmed by the amount of data and information that sources will send. And the Islamic Republic knows that. They know the internet shutdown can’t last forever, so they have started erasing video. They stop people on the street, check their phones, and if there’s any video of protests, they delete them and confiscate their phones and arrest them. They even find private CCTV footage from shops and houses and erase the videos. There is a race to erase as many videos as possible before the internet shutdown is over.

When the internet opens, we’ll start categorizing the information and saving it. I think Iranian journalism, for many years, will be the fight between people’s narrative of what happened in Iran versus the government’s narrative. We will try to support the people’s narrative as much as we can. We want to keep this part of Iran’s history.

What is happening in Iran could be the largest massacre carried out by the Islamic Republic in its history. By my estimation, the scale of the killings has now surpassed the mass executions of 1988, with the death toll potentially exceeding 10,000.

My estimation is based on conversations with reporters, human rights activists, and ordinary citizens on the ground. I have also seen horrific videos and pictures recorded by Iranians at the scene.

The images and videos come largely through Starlink connections, which are concentrated in wealthier urban areas. Vast parts of the country—especially smaller cities, rural regions, and villages—remain completely in the dark. The true scale of the violence may be far more shocking.

The Islamic Republic now has its back against the wall and will do everything in its power to survive. Its leaders have nowhere to retreat—no Syria, no Venezuela. Faced with this reality, they are prepared to fight to the very end. The paramilitary and mercenary forces they have cultivated also understand that, should a revolution succeed, they are unlikely to escape accountability.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has already demonstrated how far it is willing to go. It was a central force behind the mass killings in Syria during the country’s civil war (2011 to 2024), organizing, planning, and executing operations for the Assad regime. Senior IRGC commanders have repeatedly blamed Assad in public interviews for weakness against rebel forces, implicitly acknowledging that decisive war strategies often came from Tehran.

A state that was complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands beyond its borders should not be expected to show restraint when its own survival is at stake.

This behavior can only be understood by grasping the worldview of Iran’s ruling elite. They do not see themselves as leaders of a nation-state bound by a social contract with their citizens. Instead, they view their system as a theological project—one that happens to be located in Iran. In this framework, legitimacy does not flow from popular consent but from a perceived divine mandate.

The government is now moving to seal the country off entirely. The internet shutdown has been in place for more than five days. Satellite dishes that allow people to watch foreign news channels, especially Iran International, are being confiscated. Landline connections are down for much of the day. Authorities are also collecting Starlink terminals, cutting off one of the last remaining channels through which Iranians can communicate with the outside world.

At this pace, Iran risks descending into a level of isolation reminiscent of Taliban-era Afghanistan or North Korea.

Under these conditions, the balance of power inside Iran cannot shift without external involvement. President Trump has threatened to hit Iran if the authorities continue killing their own people. He should act soon.

Symbolic attacks or secret sabotages will not be sufficient to alter the equation on the ground. Meaningful change would require operations capable of reshaping realities on the ground. Hence, US military intervention cannot be as surgical as its strikes on nuclear facilities in June.

At present, only Israel appears to possess the operational reach and intelligence penetration necessary to act meaningfully inside Iran.

The U.S. administration should also be aware that the Venezuela model would not work in Iran. A change of leadership—the removal of Khamenei, similar to Venezuela’s Maduro—may initially satisfy protesters, but it would not meet their real demands. They seek fundamental change to the entire system.

But while Washington weighs its complicated options, the window for meaningful change inside Iran may be rapidly closing. For protesters on the ground, time is not an abstract consideration—it is the difference between momentum and collapse.

Subscribe now

Within a week of the outbreak of protests in Iran against the Islamic Republic and its rulers, US President Donald Trump weighed in twice with direct comments.

On the second day of protests, he condemned the Iranian government for firing on demonstrators. On day six, he went further, warning that if the killing of protesters continued, US forces “will come to their rescue.”

This amounts to the fastest and most explicit reaction by an American president to a wave of unrest in Iran in the past 45 years. The question is whether this posture translates into concrete diplomatic steps or credible military pressure—or remains a largely symbolic deterrent message.

In 2009, former US president Barack Obama responded cautiously to Iran’s Green Movement protests. At the time, he had sent a second letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and had yet to receive a reply. Obama feared that open support for protesters could undermine the secret backchannel he was attempting to establish with Khamenei to resolve the nuclear standoff.

At the same time, his advisers warned that overt US backing could backfire: protesters might be branded as “foreign agents,” giving the government a pretext to crack down even harder.

Those concerns are far less salient for Trump, at least for now. On one hand, there is currently no meaningful or active diplomatic channel between Tehran and Washington that a sharp US stance could weaken or shut down.

On the other hand, Iranian officials have for years accused protesters of being agents of hostile powers—a charge repeated by Khamenei himself in a recent speech on the unrest—rendering the label largely meaningless. There is little indication that demonstrators now fear either foreign support or accusations of outside ties.

Years later, Obama acknowledged that his cautious approach to the Green Movement had been a mistake, arguing that the United States should support popular, pro-freedom movements wherever they arise. Trump’s swift and blunt reaction suggests he has avoided a similar error.

Subscribe now

The Obama administration’s experience also underscores another lesson: firm rhetoric is not enough. In 2012, Obama declared that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad constituted a US “red line.”

Yet a year later, a sarin gas attack on Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held suburb to the east of Damascus, killed hundreds of civilians, but the United States did not launch a military strike. Instead, Obama pursued a diplomatic route to remove Syria’s declared chemical weapons stockpiles.

That effort reduced—but did not end—the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and it significantly weakened Obama’s standing, and that of the United States, among Syrian opposition groups.

Trump, by contrast, appears keenly aware that unfulfilled threats erode both his personal authority and the projection of American power. He has acted on threats toward Iran twice: first, with the killing of Qassem Soleimani exactly six years ago, on January 3, 2020, and second, with a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities around 200 days ago.

On Saturday, Trump also followed through on recent threats against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, announcing that the United States had carried out a major operation against Venezuela and detained Maduro and his wife, removing them from the country.

Tehran moved quickly to respond to Trump’s threat against the Islamic Republic’s repressive forces targeting protesters, suggesting that Khamenei is attentive to the speed and clarity of the message and the prospect of its implementation.

Share Bozorgmehr's Substack

Iran’s protests have entered a fifth day, spreading rapidly from Tehran to cities across the country and drawing in other civic groups, unions, and guilds. University students have joined in, holding multiple demonstrations in support of the unrest.

What is unfolding on Iran’s streets is no longer a narrow, sectoral reaction to currency fluctuations. It is a direct and far-reaching challenge to the structure of governance under the Islamic Republic. The ongoing movement is reinforced by the following ten factors:

1) Perhaps the most consequential shift is the reassertion of economic demands at the heart of Iranian politics. Livelihood grievances have long been disparaged in the Islamic Republic’s political discourse. From the earliest days of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said that the Islamic uprising was not about the economy or the “price of melons,” and in other speeches dismissed material demands as animalistic urges.

Rooted in a quasi-mystical ideology, this outlook remained for decades among the political elite—and even segments of the opposition. Many activists, for example, dismissed the November 2019 protests, sparked by fuel-price hikes, as mere “bread riots” lacking democratic potential.

The current protests by merchants and shopkeepers point to a different reality: the distinction between economic and political protest has largely collapsed. Basic economic demands can run deeper than many political slogans and, for that reason, carry broader appeal.

2) Iran’s economy is experiencing stagflation, a rare economic condition in which high inflation, weak or stagnant economic growth, and high unemployment occur at the same time.

The protests began among a group of shopkeepers in Tehran and quickly spread to other merchants across the country. Merchants typically have greater capacity to absorb and pass on costs by raising prices. But extreme currency volatility has stripped even this group of the ability to plan, rendering normal business activity in Iran almost impossible.

What is now unfolding resembles an economic collapse.

3) Traditional merchants were a central pillar of the 1979 revolution—an organized network tied to the clergy by ideology and a shared determination to resist the Shah’s modernization drive. For decades after the revolution, they remained among the Islamic Republic’s core supporters. Their protest signals the erosion of both the ideological and financial backing of a powerful and influential constituency.

4) The protests have spread with remarkable speed from the capital to large and small cities. Recent movements are no longer centered on Tehran, or even major urban areas. While the 2009 Green Movement and the 1999 student protests were largely confined to Tehran and a handful of major cities, today’s unrest has rapidly spread to smaller and peripheral towns, pointing to a shared anger nationwide.

5) The merchants’ protests swiftly attracted support from other unions and movements with very different backgrounds and demands: drivers’ and truckers’ unions issued statements of solidarity, while students held sympathetic gatherings at universities. This suggests that groups with very different backgrounds and demands have reached the same conclusion: their problems share the same root causes.

It is not unlikely that other movements—including women’s groups and labor organizations—will be drawn into the same wave of protest. If that happens, it would be a turning point for the movement and can turn it into a serious challenge to the Islamic Republic.

6) For years, many analysts believed that mass mobilization in Iran would occur only after a major shock—most often imagined as the death of the supreme leader, disputed election results, or a foreign military attack. Recent events have challenged that view. Fuel-price hikes in 2019 and the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in custody triggered massive movements across the country. The merchants’ protests showed that mobilization can also begin with seemingly ordinary grievances. The decisive factor is whether such grievances can spread, link different groups, and build into a sustained movement.

7) This is the first protest wave since Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran. Officials now face a level of psychological insecurity they have not previously experienced. Israeli officials and media—officially and semi-officially—have encouraged Iranians to take to the streets, at times even hinting at support. Iranian state media, in turn, claim the protests are meant to pave the way for renewed Israeli attacks. The regime now views domestic unrest as a continuation of a recently experienced external threat—deepening its sense of vulnerability.

8) Only a day after the protests began, senior U.S. officials spoke out. President Donald Trump referred to the demonstrations during a meeting with Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu, warning about the Islamic Republic’s record of rapid violence against protesters. The U.S. Department of State and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations also issued statements of support.

In previous rounds of protest, Western governments tended to act with caution—first gauging the scale and durability of unrest, consulting security and diplomatic advisers, and then issuing carefully calibrated statements that expressed rhetorical support for Iranians while avoiding direct provocation of the theocratic state.

The speed and clarity of Washington’s response this time mark a notable opening for the protest movement.

9) Chants supporting exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi feature prominently in many videos, suggesting that, at least for many protesters, the perceived leadership has shifted from inside Iran to outside. Such a shift could complicate the regime’s efforts to suppress dissent.

10) The silence of Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei has long been part of his tactic—both to assess unrest and to minimize its importance. This time it carries a different meaning. Khamenei, now living under heightened security amid perceived threats, may find it harder than ever to control the streets. His familiar narrative tools—labels such as “seditionists” or “infiltrators”—are worn thin. Each new label risks alienating yet another segment of the regime’s social base. In this context, silence signals not confidence but strategic constraint.

The coincidence of these protests with December 30—the date on which Khamenei once mobilized supporters to crush the 2009 Green Movement—underscores how protesters have emptied the Islamic Republic’s political calendar of its old narratives.

The case of Arash Darbandi, reported on Tuesday by the Ukrainian outlet United24, sheds light on a disturbing but increasingly familiar wartime practice: the exploitation of migrants and refugees as expendable manpower. Darbandi, a 34-year-old Iranian from Ahvaz, traveled to Russia on a tourist visa hoping to find work as a photographer. Instead, he found himself trapped in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

According to his testimony, Darbandi was detained in Saint Petersburg after a confrontation with police. Russian authorities gave him a stark choice: three to five years in prison or one year at the front. Deportation—normally the legal outcome for a foreigner without status—was never offered. “This is Russia,” he was told. “You will go to war.”

After months in detention and rudimentary training near the Ukrainian border, he was sent into combat despite serious injuries, including a deliberately broken arm he hoped would spare him deployment.

His account of the battlefield is bleak. Foreign recruits were misled about their assignments, sent forward with minimal weapons and little food, and exposed to relentless Ukrainian drone attacks.

Darbandi was wounded multiple times and left bleeding for days while Russian troops failed to retrieve him. He survived when Ukrainian soldiers rescued him and transferred him to a hospital.

Whether every detail of his account can be independently verified is difficult to establish; prisoners of war often speak under pressure. Yet one fact is beyond dispute: Iranians and other foreigners are fighting for Russia in Ukraine.

“Foreigners come from Africa, Arab countries, Iran, Kenya, and Colombia,” Darbandi said. “They separate us from the Russians. The place where we slept was different from where they slept.”

Russia’s growing dependence on non-citizen fighters reflects an economic calculation. Recruiting migrants, prisoners, and foreigners allows the Kremlin to sustain a costly war while minimizing domestic backlash. Casualties among non-Russians do not produce the same political consequences as the deaths of conscripts from Russia. The government also does not need to pay the families of foreign mercenaries any meaningful compensation or long-term benefits after their death or injury.

Wagner Group and Fatemiyoun Brigade

The model is reminiscent of the now-defunct Wagner Group, which relied heavily on prisoners and marginalized men promised freedom, salaries, or redemption. In practice, Wagner used brutal “human wave” tactics, and imposed summary punishments.

Iran has long employed comparable methods. During the Syrian civil war, Tehran recruited thousands of Afghan refugees into the Fatemiyoun Brigade, a force organized under the supervision of the Quds Force.

These fighters—mostly undocumented Afghan Shiites—were promised monthly salaries, residency permits for them and their families, protection from deportation, and in some cases Iranian citizenship. Many of these promises were vague, conditional, or never fulfilled.

Fatemiyoun units were deployed as front-line infantry in some of the bloodiest battles in Syria, including Aleppo. Reports documented inadequate training, heavy casualties, and families left without proper compensation after deaths or injuries. While Iranian state media portrayed these fighters as ideologically motivated “defenders of holy shrines,” the primary motivation for many of the Afghan soldiers was economic survival.

What connects Russia’s war in Ukraine and Iran’s war in Syria is not ideology but method. Both states have learned to weaponize refugees and migrants—people already stripped of security and rights. Citizenship, money, or protection becomes leverage; deportation and prison become threats.

The article by Mohammad Javad Zarif published on Monday in Foreign Affairs is yet another example of the former Iranian foreign minister’s attempt to justify and theorize militarization and domestic repression in the Islamic Republic.

In this joint piece with Amir Parsa Garmsiri, a student at the University of Tehran, Zarif argues that relations between Iran and the United States have for decades been trapped in a vicious cycle of “securitization,” in which both sides feel compelled to adopt increasingly hostile policies in response to the other’s behavior.

Zarif writes: “Tehran, after all, has been forced to spend more on its military and less on development and welfare because Iraq, Israel, and the United States have attacked it.”

The first flaw in Zarif’s narrative is his refusal to grapple with Iran’s own role in its militarization. Contrary to Zarif’s assertion, the Islamic Republic’s shift toward securitization was not simply a reaction to foreign pressure. The process began in the aftermath of the Iran–Iraq war, under President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, when the military was deliberately integrated into both politics and the economy.

In Zarif’s account, responsibility for Iran’s unbalanced development is shifted outward: the West, not Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is blamed for a system in which missile expansion took precedence while basic welfare sectors such as employment, healthcare, and housing were left behind.

Zarif further argues that if the United States were to ease pressure, the Islamic Republic would refrain from escalating tensions. But this claim contradicts the very experience Zarif himself has described from his years in the office.

After the nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers in 2015, one of the achievements Zarif repeatedly highlighted was that the United States, as a gesture of goodwill, lifted not only nuclear-related sanctions but also restrictions on Iranian arms, military activities, and missiles.

One such example was the removal of sanctions on Iran Air (Homa), allowing Iran’s national airline to modernize its aging fleet and purchase aircraft from Boeing and Airbus. Yet by Zarif’s own admission in an interview with Saeed Leylaz (released in 2021), following the lifting of sanctions the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) used Iran Air flights to transfer weapons to Syria—flights that, according to the same account, increased sixfold after the nuclear deal.

Zarif says that when he questioned Qassem Soleimani, the former head of the IRGC’s Quds force - about this decision, Soleimani responded that “Iran Air is safer.”

Zarif later described this situation as the “dominance of the battlefield over diplomacy”—a clear acknowledgment that the drive toward militarization stemmed from conscious decisions made within the power structure of the Islamic Republic, not from external pressure.

The reality is that after the nuclear deal, the Islamic Republic not only failed to reduce its militarization but actually intensified it. The IRGC expanded investment in missile industries and used newly freed financial resources to strengthen networks of proxy groups across the region.

In one section of the article, Zarif writes: “Iran, in response, has been forced to devote more resources and attention to defense. It also increased uranium enrichment in defiance, to show that it would not be pressured into submission. The external securitization of Iran has fed into a parallel dynamic at home, as the state adopted a stricter approach in dealing with domestic social challenges, responding to these challenges with tighter restrictions.”

Zarif presents two core actions of the Islamic Republic as reactions to Western pressure: first, increased uranium enrichment; second, the repression of social movements.

This goes well beyond the Islamic Republic’s usual deflection of blame and effectively turns Zarif into a theorist of repression. Through this logic, he seeks to absolve the ruling system of responsibility for violating citizens’ rights and violently suppressing social movements, shifting that responsibility instead onto Washington.

This pattern of deflection has a long history in Zarif’s discourse. In the same interview with Leylaz, he says that after the nuclear deal, Soleimani traveled to Moscow and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Zarif, it was after that trip that Iranian ground forces entered the war in Syria. He portrays the visit as part of a Russian plan to undermine the Foreign Ministry’s achievements and render the nuclear deal ineffective—without any reference to the role of Iran’s leadership in making that strategic decision.

In Zarif’s narrative, Iran’s direct entry into the Syrian war and the deployment of Iranian troops were not deliberate decisions by the Islamic Republic but the product of Moscow’s design; the IRGC, Soleimani, and even Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are assigned no role. Responsibility for a decision taken at the highest levels of the Iranian system is lifted from Tehran and placed squarely on Putin.

The Islamic Republic’s inability—or unwillingness—to break this “vicious cycle” was also evident in the case of dual nationals. With the conclusion of the nuclear deal, the release of several Iranian-American detainees, and the unfreezing of part of Iran’s assets, one might have expected the cycle to end. Instead, a new wave of arrests of dual nationals quickly followed. This behavior was not a reaction to external pressure but a deliberate tool for continuing political extortion of the West.

This form of narrative construction is a classic example of evading responsibility: deliberately erasing the role of domestic decision-making institutions and reducing the Islamic Republic’s strategic choices to foreign conspiracies. Through this account, Zarif effectively seeks to shift the burden of the consequences of a costly, failed, and repressive policy away from Iran’s rulers and onto external actors.

In the same article, Zarif and Garmsiri describe Israeli attacks as “unprovoked,” without any reference to four decades of the Islamic Republic’s official policy calling for Israel’s destruction or to the expansion of proxy networks aimed at pressuring Israel. He portrays Israel’s actions against Iran as unjustified, even though the starting point of the current confrontation was Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023—an attack praised and supported by the Islamic Republic.

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly had opportunities to halt the very cycle Zarif laments—from the early days of the revolution to the post-nuclear-deal period. Each time, however, it has consciously chosen a different path.