Iran at a Crossroads: Will Domestic Unrest Reshape the Region?

Protests in Iran continue to intensify amid deepening economic pressures and growing frustration with the Government. Domestic unrest is unfolding against a volatile regional and international backdrop. Regionally, Iran has suffered significant losses since October 2023, with its network of allied actors either decimated or severely weakened in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen.

At the international level, Washington’s intervention in Venezuela highlighted the Trump administration’s willingness to use force to pursue its objectives. Iran was attacked by both the United States and Israel last year, and Tehran’s efforts to re-establish deterrence have since faced serious challenges. Rising regional tensions and the prospect of a renewed confrontation between Tehran, Washington, and Tel Aviv leave an uncertain future for the region. Together, these dynamics raise critical questions around Iran’s domestic stability and wider regional security.

To explore these developments, the Middle East Council on Global Affairs (ME Council) convened a panel of experts to offer regional and international perspectives on this evolving landscape and its implications for Iran and the Middle East at large. The discussion explored key questions, including: How will the current protests shape Iran’s domestic political landscape and regime stability? To what extent could internal unrest influence Iran’s external posture, including its reliance on allied regional groups, and its capacity for deterrence and escalation? What risks would an escalation pose to neighboring states? What precedents do recent global developments set for coercive diplomacy, and how could it impact the Iranian context?

Ali Vaez

• The current protests differ from other recent protests in the sheer desperation of the protestors that come from all walks of life and the extreme use of brute force by the regime as a suppressing method.
• These protests have had limited success mainly because they are leaderless and are often seen as directionless, when contrasted with the 1979 revolution which tapped into Khomeini’s leadership and network. The imprisonment of prominent political and civil rights activities with potential to lead is lending to the state’s success in suppressing the protests.
• The Iranian regime will be reluctant to abandon its proxies; as it’s going through a ‘death spiral’ and will hold on to whatever is possible.
• Iran’s failure in protecting the nuclear weapons program was due in part to the drawing of ideological red lines that prevented them from reaching agreement with the Trump administration and their lack of flexibility.
• Iran’s nuclear program has not been halted, with the government still possessing the ability to produce warheads in approximately six months.
• The internal chaos threatening the regime could have large scale international security consequences, should some form of civil strife endanger the ownership of nuclear warheads.
• The element of security and stability that marked the main feature of the social contract between the regime and civilians has been broken.
• The country is undergoing a political deadlock, with the possibility of protecting the status quo becoming less likely by the day. Should the system refuse to change, it will go down.
• The regime’s collapse, if seen as a possibility, will not happen through bottom-up action but rather through foreign intervention.
• Iran cannot afford to become another failed state in the region, with risks of increased radicalization and waves of refugees leaving the country.

Hamidreza Azizi

• The protests are marking a unique moment of convergence of internal and external threats, which has resulted in violent response on the part of the regime, with claims being made that the government was expecting such protests since the 12 Day war with Israel and economic situation after the war.
• The government feels the need to use force as a means of sending messages to both external and internal actors; a message of lack of hesitation in using brute force should instability arise even from civilians and taking measures in economic terms such as the closing of the Hormuz Strait.
• Reza Pahlavi was unable to take momentum due to lack of proper organization and planning for what is to come next.
• The protestors are not necessarily supporters of the Monarchy, but their hatred and frustration with the Republic have prompted them to take to the streets.
• The Republic has historically used the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy to disassemble protest movements and limit the number of opponents they had to deal with at a time.
• There have been hints that the Republic is trying to establish their own internet network through the implementation of some form of Chinese model.
• The government’s investment in naval technologies and their utilization of Houthis has given Iran strategic control over two important straits and is in line with the Republic’s forward defense and proxy cultivation strategy in pushing the battlefield as far away from the Iranian soil as possible.
• Change appears to be inevitable, and while the Republic is expected to remain, shifts will happen from its two core pillars of ideology and stability to that of security.