Iranian challenge
Iran is facing its most serious challenge to the ayatollahs' regime since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Protests are not new to the country. For years, there has been a growing and successive discontent that always finds a way to resurface in the streets. From the June 2009 election protests with the so-called "Green Movement," accusing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government of electoral fraud, to the repression of demonstrations against rising food prices in 2017 and fuel prices in 2019. In the latest wave of protests, which lasted six months, human rights organizations recorded up to 500 deaths and more than 20,000 arrests in connection with the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, sparked by the death of young Mahsa Amini. Increasingly, the regime's paranoia about threats to national security risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This time, the discontent of Tehran's bazaar merchants over runaway inflation has spread throughout the country, transforming into a genuine revolt against an increasingly weak and violent regime. A regime established in 1979, when 70% of today's Iranians were not yet born. The weariness with the deteriorating living conditions is becoming increasingly widespread. Iran has experienced inflation rates exceeding 30% for five consecutive years. In 2025, food prices rose by as much as 70%.
The Iranian regime is a complex power structure designed for its own survival. But it is also an incapable regime, with an economy ruined by mismanagement, corruption, and sanctions. The bloody repression of the protests, which began on December 28, has resulted in over 500 deaths and more than 10,000 arrests in just a matter of days.
The brutality of the response further accelerates the country's international isolation, which had already worsened significantly with the Twelve-Day War between Iran and Israel last June. Tehran's regional allies are going through a rough patch. In addition to the pressure to disarm Hamas and Hezbollah, its alliance with Russia is no longer what it once was, because Moscow has opted for diversification and maintains open lines of communication not only with Iran but also with Israel, Turkey, the Gulf monarchies, Egypt, and the various factions in Syria and Libya. Now, moreover, years of oil, financial, industrial, and security cooperation with Venezuela have been disrupted by Donald Trump's intervention in Caracas. The fate of Nicolás Maduro has also heightened fears that Tehran could suffer a similar fate. The iron-fisted approach the regime has employed thus far fuels the risk of military intervention by a Donald Trump-like figure. that studies a "forceful" response
The fear of potential external military reprisals—and their effect on both the regime and the protesters—is compounded by an economic disaster that could worsen in the coming months. World Bank forecasts predict inflation could reach 60% by 2026. The Iranian economy has been crippled by years of crippling international sanctions, mismanagement, and corruption. And the regime's ineptitude relies on a brutal crackdown on aspirations for freedom that challenge the surveillance ecosystem that spies on, persecutes, and suppresses any attempt at protest or even minimally critical expression. But images of the brutality, the killing of protesters, overflowing hospitals, and unrest across the country have escaped the regime's media blackout. The 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei holds on, surrounded by his most loyal defenders, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which now controls the economy, politics, and security of the Islamic Republic. The Iranian regime is a concentration of interests that has, to date, guaranteed the survival of a theocracy increasingly eroded by corruption, economic mismanagement, and the impoverishment of a population that now demands regime change. The system is rotten.
