Iran on fire: The uprising, Trump’s threats and the bloody crackdown

Demonstrators set fire to government buildings, shouted anti-mullah slogans and clashed with security forces. For the umpteenth time in 25 years, his theocratic, Islamic regime is rocked by protests, while some Western analysts again discount its end.

But it is the first time that the US is not limited to encouraging the protesters and to covert operations to overthrow the regime, but through Trump’s mouth direct threats of bombing if the Iranian security forces proceed with violent, massive repression.

Historical experience shows that the faster a rebellion spreads in Iran, the faster it can be drowned in blood if it does not have a structured leadership and is not supported by a wider social and political alliance (businessmen, students, popular strata).

Estimates of the regime’s imminent fall have been around since the student protests of 1999 and the 2003 mass protests against President Ahmadinejad’s contested re-election in 2009. More recently, in 2022, the regime was rocked by the Life-Women-Freedom movement, following the death of Makhsa Amini at the hands of police. morals because she did not wear the headscarf properly. Another uprising, exactly eight years ago, had many similarities to the current one that remains to be seen whether it will have the same outcome.

December 2017: When Iran Began to Boil

The calendar showed December 28, 2017, when a wave of protests began in the northeastern city of Mashhad, the country’s second most populous, and within days spread to almost all provinces and the capital, Tehran. Rising consumer prices and fuel subsidy cuts have dashed expectations that the re-election of “moderate” President Rouhani would lift international economic sanctions and open up to the West.

It was preceded by the unilateral withdrawal of the US from the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, one of the first actions of Donald Trump after his election. One interpretation of the uprising was that regime hardliners instigated the first protests in Mashhad to undermine Rouhani, but lost control and resorted to brutal repression.

In those demonstrations, the questioning of the regime’s ability to manage the economic problems, was accompanied by the demand to stop the allocation of large funds to Tehran’s proteges abroad (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad in Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza). Along with the slogans against the supreme religious leader Khamenei (death to the dictator) there were slogans in favor of the return of the successor of the shah Pahlavi (the first big mobilization of the nostalgic for the monarchy took place at the tomb of Cyrus the Great in Pasargades in 2016).

The game of superpowers

The dire state of the economy is also the starting point of the present crisis, which broke out in the shadow of the major blows received by the “Axis of Resistance”, including Iran, last year from the aerial bombardments of the USA and Israel. It was preceded by the assassination, in Tehran, of the visiting leader of Hamas, Haniyeh, in 2024 by the Israeli secret services.

The outcome of the current uprising will largely determine the succession of the 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei, who has been Iran’s supreme ruler for 37 years (after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989). President Pezheskian runs the country but Khamenei is the head of the army, the Revolutionary Guards which are a separate, elite force with tentacles in the country’s economic life, and the Basij militia which spearheads the suppression of anti-government protests. Among Khamenei’s potential successors is his son Mokhtada, who has links to the clergy and repression forces.

If a part of the Shiite clergy directly or indirectly sided with the protesters, perhaps the great internal upheaval would take place, although this scenario is unlikely. In another scenario, the Americans or Israelis bomb Khamenei and other members of the leadership to “facilitate” regime change, but play with the fire of Iranian nationalism and Shia retaliation around the world. The shah’s exiled son, projected as a unifying factor, resonates more with Iranians in the diaspora than at home, although his name is heard more often in protests.

The risk of chain reactions and upheavals in the regional balances is widespread, as in the event of an attack against it, Iran will probably respond with missile attacks against Israel and American bases in the Gulf region. At the moment, the statements of the Americans and the Israelis make it easier for the regime to christen its enemies as “agents of the Great and the Little Satan” respectively (in the words of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979), betting on the patriotic and religious sentiments of the Iranian people.