Dozens have been killed in violent protests across the country with the Islamic regime at its most vulnerable point yet
The Islamic regime in Iran is facing what many observers believe to be its most vulnerable moment since it came to power in 1979.
Crowds of people, many young, are out on the streets across the country, calling for the downfall of the regime – and even for the intervention of Donald Trump, who has already threatened to get involved.
“It’s a hugely significant moment for them because it’s a combination of internal mounting pressure and external pressure,” said Anoush Ehteshami, a professor of international relations at Durham University. “All these dynamics are creating a really volatile situation in Iran.”
Reports have suggested that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei may even be drawing up a ‘Plan B’ to flee the country if necessary, likely to Moscow.
On Friday, however, Khamenei appeared on national television for the first time in several days to pledge that the government “will not back down” and accused protesters of being vandals who were trying to “please” Trump.
What’s happening right now in Iran?
Following growing protests that have roiled the country for nearly two weeks, Iran was plunged into a communications blackout on Thursday, with reports of a phone and internet shutdown.
It came after Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s former monarch who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution, issued a call on social media for people to take to the streets.
British-Iranian campaign group United4Mahsa said that Thursday night “marked a clear inflection point in Iran’s uprising… with witnesses saying entire neighbourhoods across Tehran erupted in synchronised chanting” and with massive crowds reported in major cities across the country.
Pahlavi called for demonstrations again at 8pm local time on Friday, which could mean another surge of protesters.
Demonstrations initially began with shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, in response to economic difficulties, but they are now believed to have spiralled into the largest protests the country has seen in over 15 years.
The demands of some protesters have also grown broader, shifting from economic reform to full regime change.
Footage has emerged of protesters shouting “Death to Khamenei”, referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and “Long live the Shah”, referring to the late monarch.
After Trump threatened the regime with military action last week if it came down heavily against the protesters, some have been calling on the US to intervene.
One protester told The Times: “When Mr Trump threatened this regime, we were all happy… We know that if he says something, he will act on it, and the government knows that.”
For his part, Khamenei said of Thursday night’s protests: “A bunch of vandals came out in Tehran and other places and destroyed buildings belonging to their own country just to please the president of the US.”
How did events spiral in Iran?
Iran is under pressure from multiple angles. The country’s economy is collapsing, strangled by years of international sanctions for its reported attempts to build up nuclear weapons capabilities, and compounded by fiscal mismanagement.
The past 12 months have also been disastrous for its international alliances.
The regime pumped funds and resources into supporting Bashar al-Assad’s Syria and the broader “Axis of Resistance”, a loose coalition of armed groups that helps Iran in the Middle East. But Assad was overthrown just over a year ago, while Hamas and Hezbollah have been severely weakened by their conflicts with Israel.
Iran itself was hit by Israeli and US air strikes last June, targeting its nuclear programme and killing several key Iranian military leaders. And then came the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro – a further blow as the countries had been working together to circumvent sanctions.
Dissent against the regime has also been growing, with numerous rounds of protests in recent years, all of which have been forcefully put down.
“The Israeli attacks on its allies and on Iran itself – but also Trump’s open hostility – really exposes them internationally, at a time when they are not getting any meaningful support from China or Russia,” said Ehteshami.
“The external environment is not favourable and that’s really important for the vulnerability that they are feeling internally,” he added.
How Trump is getting involved
Early on in the protests, Trump warned the Iranian regime that if it shot at protesters, “the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go”.
Trump repeated the threat on Thursday.
It’s unclear if he would actually follow through – rights groups say dozens of protesters have already been killed – but after events in Venezuela, even a threat of action is enough to make Iran’s leaders sit up and listen.
Ehteshami noted that protesters had been heard shouting “Obama is with us” during previous protests, so the situation is not without its precedents. “What is different is that Trump has already intervened in Iran militarily, he has enabled Israel to intervene in Iran militarily, and he has openly said that they will do it again,” Ehteshami said.
What happens next may depend on how things play out over the coming days, Ehteshami added. Trump “is an opportunist. And if there is an opportunity for him to weaken the regime, he will do whatever it takes for that to happen”.
What could happen next?
Ehteshami said that the protesters will likely be met by an increasingly violent crackdown from Iran’s authorities, as they try to get a grip on the situation. The big question is whether the situation will spiral into revolution.
While the regime has successfully repressed mass demonstrations and quashed dissent in the past, the external conditions have caught it at a particularly vulnerable moment.
But revolutions are difficult to predict. “Protests can certainly put pressure on a government… but revolutions only take place if there’s a major schism in a political elite”, typically requiring defections from both the political leadership and the security apparatus, Kevan Harris, an Iran expert and sociologist at UCLA, told The i Paper.
The challenges facing Iran’s government are all “enabling conditions”, he said, but there are still many possible outcomes.
Nate Swanson, director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council, wrote this week that “despite working on Iran policy for nearly 20 years, it is not possible to predict how the ongoing protests will end… I don’t know whether this is the protest that brings down the regime”.
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One potential outcome is a deal with the US.
Ehteshami said the Iranian government is “desperate for a deal”, with some elements of the elite now believing they need a “grand bargain that will mean Iran will abandon its regional proxies, will abandon its nuclear programme, will cut back its missile programme and will veer away from America’s adversaries, China and Russia”. All of this in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
Meanwhile, Trump “wants these guys to capitulate, like he’s tried to do with Venezuela”, Ehteshami said, and for US companies to get access to Iranian oil.
For Iran, he said, “the more exposed they are internally, the more vulnerable they are to external attack. It’s that dynamic that is now in play for the first time”.
