Massive anti-government protests have swept Iran over the past two weeks, as Iranians demand change amid an economic crisis crippling the country and oppressive policies that have targeted the public for over four decades.
This new wave of protests, which comes as the Iranian government faces a series of challenges at home and abroad, has many analysts questioning whether this could spell the end of the Islamic Republic, which has ruled the country since 1979.
How did we get here?
Back in the 1950s, Iran wasn’t ruled by the Islamic Republic that runs it today. Instead, it was a parliamentary monarchy headed by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah ran Iran as a largely secular country and was friendly with Israel and the West.
Pahlavi pushed for reforms in many fields, aiming to modernize Iran and draw closer to the West and Israel. Those ties to the West contributed to his downfall. Pahlavi had been installed by Britain, which controlled a significant portion of Iran’s oil industry, to replace his father during World War II. As time passed, Iranians increasingly demanded control over their own resources, and parliament leaders began opposing the Shah’s concessions to the West. As tensions peaked in 1953, the U.S. and U.K. led a coup to keep Pahlavi in power, strengthening his image as a puppet of foreign powers.
His modernizing efforts and emphasis on nationalism over religion also angered conservative leaders. As dissent increased, he launched brutal crackdowns on several political factions, further fueling the opposition.
Eventually, the tensions culminated in revolution. In 1979, the Shah fled Iran, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an exiled Shia cleric opposed to Western influence, took power. He declared Iran an Islamic Republic, ruling through a mix of theocracy and managed democracy based on his interpretation of Islamic law. He aligned Iran against the U.S. and Israel, calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and building a network of proxies across the region to spread his ideals of theocratic rule.
After taking power, Khomeini quickly turned on the secular and communist groups that helped him overthrow the Shah. Thousands of political prisoners were executed, and political opposition was harshly suppressed. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s current Supreme Leader, followed his example, brutally cracking down on dissent over the past few decades. Khamenei also built up the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a military force parallel to Iran’s traditional military, tasked with “defending the revolution,” and the Basij, a paramilitary force primarily responsible for combating dissent within Iran.
Over the years, the IRGC has built up power over much of Iran’s economy, government, and defense establishment, establishing military-owned industries and building up a force meant to keep the regime alive and prevent any coup attempts.
Over the past ten years, Iran has faced several major waves of protests, mostly sparked by economic grievances but also by opposition to oppressive government measures. The last major wave came in 2022, after Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman, was killed by police who detained and beat her on allegations she was violating modest dress rules. The protests swept the country for several months before subsiding in early 2023.
Since then, Iran has faced new challenges. The economy has been severely destabilized by widespread corruption and crippling international sanctions. Many Iranians can’t afford basic necessities as prices have skyrocketed. Droughts, combined with the economic crisis, have led to frequent water rationing and electricity outages. Iran’s military and nuclear program were also heavily damaged in a 12-day war with Israel last June, and over the past two years, Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, and Yemen were hit hard in conflicts with Israel.
On December 28, protests erupted in several areas across Iran, including in markets in Tehran, as the Iranian rial plummeted in value. The steep decrease in value meant imports would become even more expensive, and Iran imports many basic necessities, like wheat, from abroad. That translates to a spike in the cost of living in a country where it’s already prohibitively expensive. Iranians were outraged.
For several days, protests continued throughout Iran, with relatively large gatherings across the country, though still smaller than those in 2019 and 2022. However, on the evening of Thursday, January 8, protests rapidly expanded, with massive gatherings reported in Tehran, Mashhad, and elsewhere. This came after Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah, called on protesters to gather on Thursday and Friday evening.
Throughout the protests, footage has emerged showing protesters chanting slogans in support of Pahlavi, a notable difference from most past protest waves, which have not coalesced around any single opposition leader. Pahlavi has lived in exile since his father was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
In recent statements, Pahlavi has said that he’s interested in serving as an interim leader of the country after the current regime falls. He has argued that much of the existing government and military could be maintained, at least in the interim phase, and that a constitutional conference could be convened to draft a new constitution. He’s also insisted that he isn’t opposed to a system in which the monarchy is not restored.
It’s difficult to determine from the footage and available information exactly how popular Pahlavi is in Iran. His family has an unpopular history in Iran, which is why many Iranians supported the revolution in 1979. It’s likely that at least many older Iranians would fear the return of his family to power, even if he says it’s only temporary. The existence of influence campaigns, potential AI content, and fake audio placed on some videos makes gauging support even more challenging. However, from the videos that have been verified as authentic, the presence of pro-Pahlavi chants is still notable in comparison to past protests. Whether that’s a sign that he’d be accepted as a new leader or simply a cry for help from any option besides the current regime or a call meant merely to evoke nostalgia from some rosy image of Iran of the past, isn’t clear.
The question of who will lead if the regime falls isn’t the most pressing concern for many at the moment, though. As the protests expanded Thursday evening, the regime severely intensified its crackdown. Internet access and phone service throughout the country were shut down, and security forces rained bullets on protesters. As of Wednesday, thousands of protesters were reported killed, with some estimates reaching as high as 20,000 killed, with many more wounded and thousands arrested. Verifiable information is difficult to obtain because of the communications blackout, but the limited footage and testimony that have emerged are extremely concerning.
Families of slain protesters have reported going to morgues filled with hundreds of bodies to identify their loved ones. Many have been refused the right to bury their relatives or hold funerals. According to some reports, Iranian security forces have stormed hospitals and arrested wounded protesters before they could receive medical treatment.
Is the Iranian government on the verge of collapse?
Foreign analysts and Iranian expatriates have debated what this wave of protests could lead to.
Fatemeh Shams, an Iranian professor living in exile in America since 2009, told The New Yorker that these protests differ from previous ones because Iranians from all sectors and classes are involved. “This is a riot of a starving population. This is a riot for survival… It’s a matter of how to survive and protect their families and put bread and food on the table when basic goods are impossible to buy or find.”
Shams noted that the war with Israel and the loss of Iran’s proxies made Iranians see the regime as weak. “I think the war led to this complete lack of trust in the ability of the government to protect the nation, in the case of an invasion, under a regime that has been basically attacking Israel, attacking America, and isolating the whole nation in the name of national integrity.”
The popular chant “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I sacrifice my life for Iran” reflects widespread exhaustion with regional interventions. “People are just done with these expansionist ideological plots that both Khomeini and Khamenei have had in mind for forty-seven years. Their main concern is, How are we going to survive?”
In contrast, Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz’s Middle Eastern affairs analyst, argued that in many ways these protests are no different from past ones. He noted that when the regime took similar measures previously, “observers spoke of a ‘turning point’ or being ‘on the verge of toppling the regime’ or ‘fear gripping the leadership’ to the point that they had no choice but to cave into protester demands. It never happened.”
Bar’el posited that even with the economic crisis uniting protesters, this “doesn’t guarantee that all protesters want regime change and won’t be satisfied with a significant improvement in their lives.” Some protesters may also fear the chaos and destruction that neighboring nations have faced after revolutions.
Researchers Karim Sadjadpour and Jack Goldstone argued that while these protests meet many conditions for revolutionary success, they are still missing one critical ingredient: elite support. While merchants are backing the protests, most of the political elite and all security force leadership remain opposed.
“The opposition movement has shown that it can mobilize widespread fury, but to succeed, it will need to move beyond mobilization and forge links with disgruntled elites. Some of these technocrats and marginalized insiders feel alienated but are too afraid to act because of what may await them the day after,” Sadjadpour and Goldstone said. ”The opposition needs to offer a credible safe exit for these regime insiders, convincing them that the Islamic Republic is no longer their shield, but their shroud.”
The two researchers described the Islamic Republic as “a zombie regime” whose legitimacy, ideology, economy, and leaders are dead or dying. “What keeps it alive is lethal force. The most important element still missing from a full revolutionary collapse is the repressive forces deciding that they, too, are no longer benefiting from, and hence no longer willing to kill for, the regime. Brutality can delay the regime’s funeral, but it’s unlikely to restore its pulse.”
Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore offered a similar assessment: “The real coup de grâce is almost always delivered within the palace, not the streets. The streets exert the pressure, but the courtiers wield the dagger.”
He noted that while many Iranians oppose the regime, “for its devotees, it is still a powerful inspiration, and the regime is still viewed as a revolutionary institution under a sacred monarch that, combined with its ideology of anti-imperialism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Israelism, justifies fanatical belief backed by extreme force.”
Montefiore cautioned that any collapse could take time, pointing to the Assad regime in Syria and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which fell only after extended internal conflicts. He warned that revolutions often “eat their children,” with moderate leaders displaced by more radical ones, and that civil war or an IRGC military-religious dictatorship could follow any collapse.
Dr. Raz Zimmt, director of the Iran and Shiite Axis research program at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, argued it was less important for protests to have centralized leadership at this stage, though “the absence of leadership and coordination could hinder the formation of a viable alternative government in later phases.”
Zimmt noted that political elites and security forces still appear united against protesters, and critical sectors such as oil field workers may not have joined the protests yet. “Against this backdrop, Iran appears to be slipping into a protracted revolutionary state—one that could last for an extended period and develop along several main trajectories.”
Will the U.S. or Israel intervene?
As protests expanded and the crackdown intensified, U.S. President Donald Trump warned that America would intervene if many protesters were killed.
On Sunday evening, Trump announced that Iran had reached out to the U.S., expressing a desire to return to negotiations on a new nuclear deal. Talks on a new deal had stalled over the past year, as Iran refused to compromise on uranium enrichment. The president said a meeting was being organized but warned, “We may have to act because of what’s happening, before the meeting.” On Tuesday, Trump announced that he had cancelled all meetings with Iranian officials, calling on Iranian protesters to take over institutions and save the names of security forces and warning “they will pay a big price.”
In the days since his initial threat, Trump has reportedly held consultations to determine the best way to aid protesters, including a larger discussion with his national security team on Tuesday. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with his security cabinet on the same day.
Additionally, the U.S. and other countries have issued urgent alerts warning their citizens to leave Iran immediately. Reportedly, the U.S. has pulled some of its troops from bases in Qatar and other locations around the Middle East in recent days as well. Israeli media reported that Israeli officials believe Trump will approve strikes on Iran to help the protesters.
Iran has warned that if the U.S. conducts strikes, it will respond with attacks on U.S. assets in the region and on Israel.
Any U.S. intervention could take different forms, ranging from military strikes to diplomatic support. Most analysts counseled caution about direct military action.
Anna Leis, an analyst on Iran affairs and doctoral student at Bar-Ilan University, warned that military intervention, especially an operation to remove the Supreme Leader, could end up strengthening the regime and rehabilitating Khamenei’s diminishing image as an aging and weak leader. Such intervention would “de-legitimize the protests and allow the regime to portray the protesters as traitors who have conspired with Israel and the U.S.,” she cautioned.
Leis argued that Khamenei isn’t “irreplaceable” and his role is already largely covered by associates; removing him would only create a martyr and enable his replacement with a younger, more capable successor. “From Lebanon to Pakistan, Khamenei will be remembered as the brave and wise leader he never was, and the destructive ideology of ‘exporting the Islamic revolution’ will continue to exist alongside his name.”
Zimmt similarly advised that Israel should not intervene “directly and openly,” as this could strengthen the regime’s foreign interference narrative and undermine protester legitimacy.
Abram Paley and Nate Swanson, fellows at the Atlantic Council, argued the U.S. should focus on the protests while avoiding nuclear negotiations or military strikes. “The Iranian people deserve the time and space to see these protests through,” they wrote, noting that “in June, the Iranian government benefited from an ill-conceived Israeli strike on Evin prison that attempted to liberate, but ended up killing, a number of prisoners. It is vital to not give the government a similar propaganda victory.”
However, some have spoken out in favor of a U.S. military intervention in recent days. Marzia Nasiri, an Iranian expatriate in Germany, argued to the Israeli N12 channel that U.S. or Israeli action was the only chance for protesters to succeed. “The Islamic Republic does not hesitate to kill millions of people, and therefore, we need external power, power that will not come from the people themselves, because our people lack weapons.”
Bilal Y. Saab, an associate fellow at Chatham House, argued that the results of a U.S. strike could go either way. While strikes could cause Iranians to “rally around the flag,” they could also embolden protesters and distract the regime from suppressing demonstrations, especially if instruments of repression like the Basij were targeted. Even then, he noted, any confrontation with Iran would require a long-term strategy, including planning for what happens if the regime falls.
Analysts suggested several non-military measures the U.S. and Israel could choose from to help the protesters.
Leis advised providing protesters with communication tools and intensifying diplomatic and economic pressure on the regime. Paley and Swanson urged funding for services helping Iranians circumvent communications blackouts, as well as channels to support protesters directly, such as providing living wages for striking workers. They noted the U.S. has an unused legal mechanism, the MAHSA Act, to sanction Iran for human rights abuses, and advised Trump to designate a special envoy for Iran who can provide full-time attention to the file.
Originally Published Jan 14, 2026 12:39PM EST
