Iran – This Time is Different

By Alireza Nouri | Feb 10, 2026

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.

The opposition is still far from hierarchically organized compared to 1979 Revolution, but at least, the movement is not operating in a leadership vacuum and can alleviate the coordination problem. Opposition figures from Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi to Kurdish leader Abdollah Mohtadi have united behind the uprising.

sociologist Jack Goldstone notes in his analysis of revolutionary dynamics, successful revolutions require more than just mass mobilization or state breakdown. They demand a cohesive leadership capable of uniting diverse coalitions and maintaining strategic discipline. Without this structure, previous uprisings suffered from a “tactical freeze,” (to put it in Tufekci’s words) unable to translate street anger into a sustainable transfer of power. This is particularly, crucial when facing an ideological well entrenched totalitarian state.

It also matters internationally. The U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff has recently met secretly with Pahlavi which underscores major outside actors are at least exploring opposition channels.

Third, and most critically, the regime’s regional empire has collapsed. triggered by the geopolitical shockwaves following October 7^th, that has dismantled Iran’s “forward defense” strategy, has served as the structural catalyst for this revolution. Hezbollah’s defeat and Hassan Nasrallah’s death in September 2024, followed by Assad’s fall and then Iran’s humiliating defeat in the 12-Day War, has shattered the myth of the regime’s image of strength among its loyalist base and emboldened opposition. During the war Israel purposefully bombed the domestic security apparatus including riot police HQs to weaken the state against a potential uprising. Renewed Israeli bombing is also possible as Israel has been concerned with Iran’s expansion of its ballistic missile program. This trajectory aligns precisely with the scholarship of Theda Skocpol, who argues that successful social revolutions are rarely sparked by domestic grievances alone; rather, they are triggered when military defeat and foreign pressure fracture the state’s “coercive apparatus,” rendering it unable to suppress internal dissent.

Furthermore, the loss of proxies validates Randall Collins’ theory of “geopolitical overextension,” where the contraction of an expansionist state’s external empire precipitates a rapid collapse of its domestic legitimacy.  This is exemplified through the chants of protesters that shout “neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I sacrifice my life for Iran”

Fourthly, Trump factor has changed the calculus this time. With the start of the protests he threatened Iran’s leadership not to kill the protesters and as the protesters were getting killed by thousands, he said on his Truth Social that the help was on the way. Since then, a series of mixed messages of have been transferred between both sides between leading to rhetorical escalation and deescalation. Trump made such threats while the US did not have sufficient fire power in the region to commit them. In the following weeks however, there has been an increasing build-up of military forces in the region and at the same time efforts for diplomatic negotiations underway on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile capabilities and regional proxies.

The US has a history of encouraging dissent only to back out later as was the case in Iraq 1991, due to a gap between the rhetorics and realities on the ground as Seva Gunitsky highlights. However, Trump could be different as often there is no clear gap between his rhetoric and strategy. Importantly, he has a violent history with the Iranian regime from 2020 assassination of senior IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, and his later involvement in the 12-Day War, including strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

It is true that this is different, however, the regime can still put up a fight.

Firstly, the regime’s elite despite superficial differences and disagreements, remain loyal and united which so far have not cracked, despite the brutal suppression. For example, the reformist President Pezeshkian recently called the protesters as “foreign linked-terrorists” and announced his support for the upmost suppression, echoing the hardline views of the supreme leader. Importantly, as Levitsky & Way (2022) highlight, the revolutionary background of the regime and its survival of early violent crises (including the hostage crisis and Iran-Iraq war) generated enduring perceptions of existential threat that fostered a permanent “siege mentality,” thus strengthening elite cohesion through “linked fate.” In this context, it was viewed as catastrophic for the elite to view any dissent or defection an existential threat as the cost of losing power.

Secondly, not only the regime has access to an array of proxy foreign militias that it has deployed to suppress the revolution its own security forces remain loyal as well: a heavily funded police apparatus, the ideological Basij militia, and dual military structures (the IRGC and conventional army) that lack military professionalism that typical drives defection. As Katherine Chorley’s “Iron Rule” states: no revolution succeeds against a modern army that remains loyal.

The situation is calmer in the streets due to violent suppression. But this could be the calm before the storm. As Mark Beissinger (2022) suggests, urban revolutions create “thickened history” where contingency becomes paramount, and a single tactical error can dramatically alter the outcomes. The Islamic Republic may even survive this moment, but it can no longer pretend it governs with anything other than sheer force – over a resentful population that has strong signalled it wants it out.

Alireza Nouri is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Toronto.