Geopolitical Future's take on the short term fate of the Islamic Republic:
Iran’s Islamic Republic Will Survive – For Now
Protests in Iran continue for the sixth consecutive week following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in custody of the morality police. Some observers see the demonstrations as a sign of the Iranian regime’s looming demise. Their persistence and expansion to all regions of the country have presented the government with the most significant challenge to its authority and legitimacy since the widespread demonstrations over the 2009 presidential election. Still, it would be wrong to assume the regime’s fall is immediate.
The leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolution built a formidable internal security apparatus that has proved time and again capable of crushing protests – irrespective of their size or duration. Though the regime has been weakened by sanctions and its international isolation, the protests do not pose a threat to its survival. It seems that Iranian officials, who consistently blame foreign enemies for conspiring against the Islamic Republic, are confident that the major powers, namely the U.S., still believe Tehran can be transitioned from foe to friend.
Cracks in the Regime
Since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic government in Iran has failed to establish a modern, industrialized state. Instead, it has created a vast military establishment and propaganda machine that have deluded its people and the outside world into believing it is capable of remaining independent, dominating the region and waging war.
The Iranian regime is run by an aging leadership, with mediocre administrative and economic competencies, and obsolete public service institutions. Its policies, applied using heavily coercive methods, stalled the country’s development. But despite this failure, the regime claims it is in the position to challenge the U.S., the world’s uncontested superpower, and continue its subversive regional activities. After suffering for years under severe sanctions and isolation, the nuclear deal, signed under the Obama administration, gave Tehran new hope that it could revive its economy and become the regional power it claims to be. Instead of correcting its past mistakes, however, the regime doubled down, expanding its regional adventurism and increasing its internal repression. In 2018, the Trump administration reinstated the sanctions, challenging the regime’s ability to continue its policy of expansionism.
It’s against this backdrop that the protests of the past six weeks have unfolded. They have produced a new force in Iranian society. For several decades, many have believed that the presidency has alternated between two political currents: conservative and reformist. But Amini’s death has led to a new, leaderless opposition that rejects the political establishment and distrusts the reformers’ ability to change a medieval-minded, dogmatic religious system. The protesters object to the dominance of the conservatives and reformists over the political arena and see no point in reforming a failed system.
The new generation doesn’t relate to the revolution of their parents’ era against the now-defunct shah regime. It aspires to remove the shackles of the ayatollahs’ regime that isolated them from the outside world. They deny Tehran’s accusations about foreign interference in the protest movement, while also criticizing Western countries for watching their suffering and only verbally condemning the regime’s heavy-handed tactics.
Government officials have been critical of the uprising, led by young women, saying they were influenced by social media. The deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps even said that the average age of those detained because of the unrest is 15. However, their demands for greater freedom are supported by much of the rest of Iranian society.
The demonstrators, who have chanted slogans like “We are in the last days of the dictator Khamenei,” have also enjoyed widespread support of Iranians abroad. On Oct. 22, thousands of Iranians residing in Europe converged in Berlin to hold their own demonstration against the supreme leader in solidarity with the protesters at home. In addition, an Iranian-American activist compared the veil, which triggered the massive protests, to the Berlin Wall, threatening to bring down the regime. In her opinion, if Iranian women could say no to those who tell them what to wear, they could also say no to a dictator.
The protesters’ resolve in the face of the excessive force used by security forces has compelled President Ebrahim Raisi to call for a review of certain laws that limit personal freedoms, especially those related to women’s dress. It’s unlikely that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would have given in in this way, fearing that it could undermine the regime’s Islamic foundations. But the protests have gained momentum, spreading throughout the country, especially to regions dominated by ethnic and religious minorities – mainly the Kurds in the west and the Baluchis in the east, where the Basij paramilitary forces killed more than 90 demonstrators in late September who were protesting the rape of a girl by a policeman. The demonstrations also spread to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, despite the public prosecutor’s assertion that the clashes at the facility, which killed eight prisoners and wounded dozens, had nothing to do with the violence that ensued after Amini’s death.
Regime Will Endure
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Originally Posted by Peter1469
