Iran – This Time is Different

What began as a shopkeepers’ strike in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar has now transformed into a nationwide movement spanning all 31 provinces. The death toll, according to Western news sources, has surpassed 30,000 according to Time magazine, and still adding as the protesters are being executed judicially and extrajudicially in the prisons. This would make it potentially the deadliest revolution in modern history. The regime responded with a shoot-to-kill order while cutting communications to conduct massacres behind a digital curtain.

The unrest even though has seemingly successfully been suppressed through a blood bath, it has the potential to reignite soon with foreign military intervention. Why? Four factors have converged that were absent in 2009, 2017, and 2022. Their confluence explains why the Islamic Republic faces its biggest crisis yet.

First, this uprising is genuinely cross-class and nationwide. Unlike previous uprisings that were demographically siloed - 2019 was more working class and 2022 more middle class - the current protests transcend class, ethnic, and religious divides and are widespread across all the country. It is hard to estimate the exact numbers, but in Tehran alone reportedly 1.5 million went to the streets at its climax on January 8^th. This potentially engages with the critical 3.5% population threshold that research shows dramatically increases the likelihood of regime change. The regime itself is aware of its erosion of its legitimacy; a confidential government study found only 22.5% of Iranians support a religious government, and 60% did not cast their vote in Iran’s last presidential election in 2024.

Second, this time the opposition has coalesced around a leadership figure. Iran’s protest movements have repeatedly shown courage and scale, but they have struggled with a familiar bottleneck: coordination. The uprising started leaderless and spontaneously, but the chants on the street overwhelmingly called for crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who has been living in exile and has been an active voice against the Islamic Republic. This is particularly the case since 2017-2018 protests in Iran when chants in support of Pahlavi dynasty were heard in the streets of Iran. The protests escalated with Reza Pahlavi’s first official call ever for people to go to streets on January 8^th and 9^th, which have become the climax of the uprising so far.