Over two weeks of protests mark the most serious challenge in years to Iran’s theocratic leadership in their scale and nature but it is too early to predict the immediate demise of the Islamic Republic, analysts say.
The demonstrations moved from protesting economic grievances to demanding a wholesale change from the clerical system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution that ousted the shah.
The authorities have unleashed a crackdown that, according to rights groups, has left hundreds dead while the rule of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now 86, remains intact.
“These protests arguably represent the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic in years, both in scale and in their increasingly explicit political demands,” Nicole Grajewski, professor at the Sciences Po Centre for International Studies in Paris, told AFP.
She said it was unclear if the protests would unseat the leadership, pointing to “the sheer depth and resilience of Iran’s repressive apparatus”.
The Iranian authorities have called their own counter-rallies, with thousands attending on Monday (Jan 12).
Thomas Juneau, professor at the University of Ottawa, said: “At this point, I still don’t assess that the fall of the regime is imminent. That said, I am less confident in this assessment than in the past.”
These are the key factors seen by analysts as determining whether the Islamic Republic’s leadership will hold on to power.
SUSTAINED PROTESTS
A key factor is “simply the size of protests; they are growing, but have not reached the critical mass that would represent a point of no return”, said Juneau.
The protest movement began with strikes at the Tehran bazaar on Dec 28 but erupted into a full-scale challenge with mass rallies in the capital and other cities from Thursday.
The last major protests were the 2022-2023 demonstrations sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic dress code for women. In 2009, mass rallies took place after disputed elections.
But a multi-day internet shutdown imposed by Iranian authorities has hampered the ability to determine the magnitude of the current demonstrations, with fewer videos emerging.
Arash Azizi, a lecturer at Yale University, said “the protesters still suffer from not having durable organised networks that can withstand oppression”.
He said one option would be to “organise strikes in a strategic sector” but this required leadership that was still lacking.
COHESION IN THE ELITE
While the situation on the streets is of paramount importance, analysts say there is little chance of a change without cracks and defections in the security forces and leadership.
So far, there has been no sign of this, with all the pillars of the Islamic Republic, from parliament to the president to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), lining up behind Khamenei’s defiant line expressed in a speech on Friday.
“At present, there are no clear signs of military defections or high-level elite splits within the regime. Historically, those are critical indicators of whether a protest movement can translate into regime collapse,” said Sciences Po’s Grajewski.
Jason Brodsky, policy director at US-based group United Against Nuclear Iran, said the protests were “historic”.
But he added: “It’s going to take a few different ingredients for the regime to fall,” including “defections in the security services and cracks in the Islamic Republic’s political elite”.