The horrific death toll notwithstanding, Iran seems to be just as far from regime change as it was in the aftermath of the former, heroic but futile uprisings against an oppressive regime most Iranians do not anymore identify with.
The year 2026 is likely to go down in Iranian history as did 2009, 2019, and 2022, noble attempts at change drowned in blood.
There are no metrics to reliably measure how many Iranians still trust the regime of theocracy created by the 1979 revolution. The evidence of widespread unrest engulfing the entire country, however, proves that people had enough of a system that can no longer fulfill the unwritten social contract that kept the regime afloat for nearly five decades across unending crises and bouts of recurrent internal revolts and repression to quell them.
Still, the quantitative edge to just overturning a system that does not anymore suit the people seems still to be missing. The demonstrators, in their millions, do not outnumber the passive and the active supporters of the regime. Why?
There is no doubt whatsoever that the petty government official, the small artisan or trader of the bazaar, the worker in the service industry, the teacher, the doctor, but even the policeman and the security agent or army officer, including lower level IRGC men, are unhappy about their quality of life, their prospects and more so about the prospects of their children. A regime breaking down under the weight of sanctions provoked by its mischief committed in the name of its idiosyncratic and anachronistic policy choices, pitting it against nigh the entire world, is not a polity its citizens, suffering the consequences, are willing to sustain for long.
Then, why would not ALL Iranians choose to join the protests? Why would 1979 not repeat itself? Were the Iranians brainwashed into submission to last forever?
You need to have spent time in Iran to understand.
With all its failings, shortcomings, and even obnoxiousness, the Iranian system as it is today, was built by the Iranian people. As Vali Nasr so eloquently proves in his latest book, Iran’s Grand Strategy, the 1979 revolution against the brutal and repressive system of the Shah, sustained by American complicity and supplanted over the nationalist government of Mosaddeq by an Anglo-American coup, was an achievement almost all Iranians identified with.
This feeling of ownership for 1979 and the layers of uniqueness that characterize Iran, a Shia Island in a sea of hostile Sunnism, and a proud nation state cherishing its Persian past, play their role in forging the amalgam which makes Iran unique and a case apart.
If we assume half the Iranians want the clerical regime gone and half, either for existential fears or for ideological affinity – a belief in the system’s Shia credentials – would rather put up with it, then we are in front of an equation hard to solve by protests alone.
Reforming a regime ruling through repression and losing legitimacy in the eyes of most of its subjects is a long shot. Particularly so after the latest bloodbath and the reprisals the regime may have in mind as a deterrent. Something altogether new will have to be invented to satisfy both sides and forgo further violence.
Iran would need a Gandhi. Someone with strong national credentials, not a pawn of outside powers, a charismatic leader with a message of peaceful change, to convince all to forgive, if not forget. Maybe even mothers who just lost their children to repression during the protests would accept. Maybe regime stalwarts, seeing the futility of oppression, would accept. Maybe all could acknowledge that Iran reached a dead end, the clerical system must give way to a secular polity where the ballot box decides, based on a constitution acceptable to all, and not a religious document drawn up by mullahs wedded to medieval notions. Islamic Republic to Iranian Republic.
I have no doubt in my mind that even after the horrors we have witnessed lately, there is enough common ground among Iranians to accept that the future is not repression, nor revenge, but coming together around principles of humanity and inclusivity, with none forcing their opinion on the other. And yes, there are Iranians of integrity, some chafing under repression in prisons, and some in exile, who could be Gandhis to their people. One of them, the charismatic lawyer and Nobel Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, the first female judge to emerge in Iran, would neatly fit the role… let the people of Iran decide.
What is important now is for all to understand that neither violence nor foreign intervention will bring a solution to the festering crisis of Iran, which, unaddressed, could turn into a regional disaster. Clear-minded representatives of the system – they must exist – and select representatives of the opposition should come together ASAP to find and rally around an Iranian Gandhi who can peacefully lead their struggling nation out of the current bloody impasse. The world should help realize such an outcome, as one thing is for granted: violence is not the way out for Iran.
