It may happen in a decade, it may happen next year, but if its policies do not radically change, the Islamic Republic of Iran is headed for collapse. Since the 2022 protests, the Shia theocracy has been unable to recover the legitimacy it lost through decades of repressive and misogynistic laws, economic turmoil, and a leadership seen as out of touch.
The brief but devastating war with Israel in June 2025 temporarily rallied the population against an external threat but ultimately worsened the regime’s internal issues and exposed critical weaknesses. Through these turbulent years, the regime has focused more on repression than legitimacy, a strategy that will eventually reach a breaking point.
The regime sought to revolution-proof itself following the 1979 revolution that brought it to power by creating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a loyalist militia meant to counterbalance the regular military, which it viewed as too professionalized to be fully loyal.
The IRGC evolved into an economic and political mafia, maintaining ideologues in control of key aspects of the government. Protest waves broke out periodically, in 1999, 2009, and 2019-20 but they did not directly challenge the system. Instead, they focused on reform or economic issues.
The 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement shocked the Islamic Republic because it directly challenged its ideology and called for a secular democracy. Women, in particular, demanded an end to discriminatory laws, most symbolically the mandatory hijab. Other issues such as the lack of economic opportunities and democratic freedom also played major roles.
Although the regime tacitly abandoned enforcing the mandatory hijab, it prevented widespread change through the IRGC’s control of mechanisms that uphold state power. The regime used the Basij, the IRGC’s plainclothes militia, to suppress street protests and kept the military away. Dictatorships with professionalized militaries often keep them from waging war on their own citizens because such forces are more likely to refuse unethical orders, seeing themselves as serving a nation rather than a regime.
While the protests were crushed, they emboldened the opposition and inspired new waves of defiance. By 2022, most of the younger generation saw no future under the regime. By 2025, that anger remained and began to find new outlets.
In late May 2025, truckers went on strike over government regulations and a lack of assistance, citing high insurance prices as a primary concern. The strike spread to more than 150 cities within days and gained support from other sectors, including bakers, teachers, cab drivers, and farmers. At the same time, more than 180 activist groups voiced solidarity with the strike.
The unprecedented strike, which lasted nearly a month, paralyzed the nation and left the regime with few options. The movement was technically legal, nonviolent, and did not directly call for the regime’s overthrow while still mobilizing opposition. Independent observers noted that the strike posed a serious challenge to state authority.
Ironically, the beginning of the Iran-Israel war on June 13, 2025, bailed the regime out. The war forced the strikers and government to reconcile; people did not want to protest while bombs were falling, and the outside attack briefly rallied citizens around defending the nation.
Although the Israeli strikes were not meant to completely destroy the IRGC’s capacity to suppress the population or topple the regime, they wiped out much of its senior leadership. These leaders were not just the top brass; they were architects of the regime’s repressive apparatus. Their tactical and institutional knowledge is now gone.
The war may have given the regime a temporary boost in legitimacy, but it did not solve the faltering economy or failing infrastructure that cannot meet the population’s power and water demands.
Following the war, which revealed the extent of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, penetration into Iran, the regime began an intense crackdown. In the weeks after the war, thousands were arrested for alleged links to Mossad. Experts believe many of these people had no such connections and were simply dissidents or random citizens.
In authoritarian regimes, people often believe that if they do not defy the government, they will not be harmed. Mass, seemingly indiscriminate crackdowns destroy that illusion. For many, it becomes proof that even doing nothing wrong is not enough, pushing them to see removing the regime as the only option.
Control by brute force may seem tempting, but it is ultimately a losing strategy. It relies on endlessly escalating repression as opposition grows, and even a regime with a vast internal security apparatus cannot survive when enough ordinary people — who vastly outnumber it — turn against it. This is the same lesson the Shah learned in 1979.
Experts have noted that the Iranian regime increasingly resembles the late stage of European communist states. Falling quality of life rendered those governments morally bankrupt, and their ideology felt hollow. They abandoned their pursuit of legitimacy and attempted to rule solely through fear. Such systems endured for decades, suppressing periodic protest waves without addressing the underlying causes, resulting in simmering opposition beneath the surface.
Eventually, an opening emerged with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, and opposition movements seized the moment, toppling their regimes and ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Iranian opposition finds itself in a similar position and simply awaits an opening.
If the regime does not dramatically alter its policies, the exploitation of such an opening becomes inevitable. It may not happen soon, but it will happen one day.
Edited by: Krithiga Narayanan