The current wave of protests in Iran, which began in December last year, has once again revived a familiar question: Is this the moment the regime finally falls? The answer is likely no. Yet there is little doubt that Iran has entered a qualitatively new phase of political crisis. What distinguishes this moment from previous episodes of unrest is not the scale of protest alone, but its character. Something fundamental has shifted.
The defining feature of the present unrest is its generational and systemic nature. More than 60 per cent of Iran’s population of roughly 90 million is under the age of 35. This generation has no lived experience of the 1979 Islamic Revolution or the Iran–Iraq War that followed. As a result, the ideological and religious foundations of the state no longer carry moral authority. The demands articulated by protesters—centred on dignity, personal freedom, gender equality and global engagement—are not reformist appeals within the existing order. They represent a rejection of the political system itself and a direct challenge to its legitimacy.
What initially began as economically driven protest—sparked by shopkeepers in Tehran closing their businesses in response to the collapse of the rial and inflation exceeding 40 per cent—has since evolved into a broader movement. Women, in particular, have assumed a central and highly visible role, transforming economic grievance into a wider confrontation with state authority.
This time, the protests are socially expansive and openly system-critical, driven by a generation that does not share the regime’s historical reference points. This helps explain why many observers argue that “this time is different”.
However, recognising the depth of the legitimacy crisis should not be confused with predicting imminent regime collapse. Iran’s political system remains structurally resilient, built around a web of overlapping institutions specifically designed to absorb and withstand popular pressure. At the core of this architecture stands the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which functions not only as the regime’s principal security guarantor but also as a central pillar of Iran’s political economy. Its extensive control over key economic sectors provides a powerful incentive to preserve the status quo and to suppress any challenge that threatens its institutional and material interests.
While the protest movement’s horizontal structure may, over time, enhance its resilience in the face of repression, it has yet to crystallise into an organised political alternative capable of reassuring domestic elites, minority groups or external stakeholders. The latter—most notably Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States—have a vested interest in avoiding state collapse, particularly given concerns surrounding Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
The most plausible near-term trajectory is therefore not sudden regime change, but a protracted period of systemic instability: a state that endures through coercion while governing in the absence of popular consent.
Any decisive shift towards regime transformation is likely to hinge on the position of the Revolutionary Guard. As the actor with effective control over both coercive power and strategic assets, the IRGC holds the key to any orderly transition. Should it come to view regime change as economically or strategically advantageous—by displacing the clerical establishment, consolidating power and securing Iran’s nuclear facilities—such an outcome may, in the short term, represent the least destabilising resolution to Iran’s current crisis.
Top photo: Wikimedia Commons
Disclaimer: I have used AI to translate the original article from Danish into English