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Iran’s unrest I do not have a good enough grasp of Iran’s internal political and social dynamics to know if this wave of resistance has an real prospect of unseating the ghastly Islamic regime… but that would indeed be a truly wonderous start to 2026 if it was to happen.
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I suspect the Mullahs will not go quietly. If half the population has to die for them to remain in power, they will be fine with that.
And if the people are in fact exercised enough to push things to that level…what is the rest of the World prepared to do?
Will we intervene before half the population–and none of the ones who deserve death–dies?
I’m tired of sending American sons and daughters overseas to face death. Period. I don’t care what the “cause” is. But IIRC, the Iranian people are a decent and Western civilization friendly lot and given the Mullah’s penchant for not staying at home with their murderous rampages, maybe we have multiple reasons to help, materially help.
If the DLI-Farsi alum are missing their holiday parties, I’d say someone is interested here.
The mullahs will fall when their guards decide they’ve had enough of them. But then the IRG will take over and nothing much will change. The uprest will just give them an excuse.
That will happen when the mullahs lead the IRG into failure or cut their money. The loss of face recently with respect to Israel will be pushing that closer.
Note that the Israelis do not strike the mullahs. They strike the IRG. That’s where power now lies.
Of course if the IRG take over and things get worse, the public may yet rise up sufficiently to put them out of power in turn. A lot of revolutions occur in two distinct stages. Often after several aborted attempts at revolution get very nasty first, of course. The Russians had a dry run in 1905, for example.
Do you think that Trump and Netanyahu will act just as Biden acted in ’22? Sternly worded letters and such?
I’ll be disappointed if they do.
Only one question.
Who will replace the current regime and will they be better for the population at large?
It’s about the water. Really. Iran has utterly fucked up its water management and many places, including Tehran, are basically out of water now. Hot dry weather isn’t helping. But this is at heart a protest about the fact that there’s nothing in the taps. Plenty of good YouTube videos about this. They spent money on nukes not infrastructure. You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.
Where the hell are our media? Good luck to the Iranian people.
The current regime are an unpleasant lot, hanging grimly onto power. I hope that whatever replaces them will be better, but if the new regime struggles their replacement will be a lot swifter.
Whatever happens, I hope it doesn’t lead to lots of refugees heading for Europe.
The Iranian people have risen against the Islamic regime before – and they were betrayed by President Barack Obama who backed, massively backed, the “Social Justice” Islamic Republic of Iran Dictatorship.
It remains to be seen what President Trump will do – I hope he does NOT listen to the siren voices who support the Islamic Republic of Iran Dictatorship (which has been at war with the West for 46 years) – siren voices such as Mr Tucker Carlson.
Do not laugh when I mention Mr Carlson – he has a vast number of followers. Followers he misleads, lies to, about many important matters.
If the regime falls, it’s likely to do quite the opposite.
Molly Millions – correct, people will want to return to Iran if the Islamic regime falls.
It is ironic that whilst people are fighting the “free stuff” (“Social Justice” “free” this, that, and the other, were the promises of the Mullahs in 1979, and right to this day) regime in Iran – such a regime has come to power in New York City.
The promises of Mr Mamdani (now Mayor Mamdani) were the same “free” this, that, and the other, promises made by the Mullahs in 1979 – it is the same “Social Justice” message – beloved by Barack Obama and that corrupt nonentity Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Loretta Lynch (a very logical choice for Mayor Mamdani’s swearing in) is a reminder that this evil is NOT confined to Islam.
Never before has such a group of utterly evil people taken control of a large American city – and most of them are NOT Muslims.
Practical steps should be taken.
For example, the Stock Market should relocate to Dallas – where a Stock Market is already in operation.
“But that would mean the end of Wall Street” – the street would continue to exist, it just would not have so many business enterprises there.
Everyone who can leave New York, should leave New York.
But there is no need for them to be “refugees” – they are American citizens, and will find that their lives will be better in other parts of the United States.
Sell up, for whatever you can get, and leave.
I’ll believe that when I see it.
Overthrowing Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi was followed by more refugees to Europe, not less.
Assad is gone in Syria, yet the refugees are still in Europe.
Martin – the position in Iran really is different, indeed it is the opposite.
The forces against Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi thought that Islam had not gone far enough – they wanted a regime that was more Islamic, not less. This was in spite of the fact that Gaddafi pushed the “Green Revolution” of Islam against King Idris in 1969 – burning down the vineyards as his first act. And in spite of the fact that Saddam Hussain donated his own blood to be used in the ink of a copy of the Koran.
The same is true in Syria – the people who overthrew Assad wanted more Islam not less Islam.
In Iran, among the Iranian (Persian) people, there really is opposition to 46 years (almost 47 years now) of Islamic rule.
There are many Iranians who look back proudly on the pre Islamic past – even though the old Persia fell more than a thousand years ago, that just is NOT the case in Iraq, Libya and Syria – even though these lands had a proud pre Islamic past.
It is partly an Iranian verses Arab thing – many Iranians regard Islam as “Arab”, even after all these centuries they see it as the religion (and political and legal philosophy) of the enemy.
It is possible (possible – not certain) that a successful Revolution in Iran would mean the rejection of Islam.
That would be an event of world-historical importance – remember Islam conquered Persia (with a reign of terror) more than a thousand years ago – for Islam to be defeated in Iran would shake Islam to its very foundations, all over the world.
Muslims are NOT genetically evil – their DNA is NOT evil, it is the ideas, the doctrines, that are evil.
This, the defeat of the IDEAS of Islam, was never on the agenda in other cases.
Indeed only a couple of days after 9/11, President Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington D.C. and made a terrible (just awful) speech about how wonderful Islam was – this, right at that point, doomed the future operations in Afghanistan, and elsewhere. It meant the “War on Terror” was LOST before it started.
But then what better could be expected of “No Child Left Behind” and “Medicare Part D” President Bush – a man who claimed it was “impossible” to secure the borders of the United States, but thought he could secure the borders of nations thousands of miles away.
The Bush family has never been conservative – it has always been establishmentarian, and that is NOT the same thing.
One will not get a successful domestic or foreign policy from establishmentarians.
@ Paul Marks – not Loretta Lynch, but Letitia James. But it’s a distinction, without a difference, which is probably why you mixed them up.
llater,
llamas
I hear that the army is the key to this. If the regime starts to crumble, the army will have to decide whether to shore it up or abandon it to its fate. I very much hope for the latter option. The fall of the regime in Iran could pave the way to a wider peace in the middle east. 2026 could see the end of the communist regimes in Venezuela and Cuba too. Maybe Trump really is a genius?
JohnK at 3:35pm, “Maybe Trump really is a genius?”
Yep…or maybe the problems he’s solving aren’t as challenging for a billionaire New York real estate guy (what says “savvy” more than that?) as for the “experts” who’ve been effing them up for 100+ years? Probably a bit of both.
The Iranian regime relies, like all governments, ultimately upon the assumption that its command structure will hold, so the guy at the top giving orders will be followed, because if he isn’t, those disobeying believe that those around them will follow orders to enforce the Ruler’s will. Ludwig von Mises pointed out that all power is ultimately ideological, the belief that the ruler will be obeyed being the ultimate foundational belief of all States. In Iran the RGC performs a function like the Waffen-SS in early 1940s Germany, a counter-weight to the Army which although smaller, has enough firepower to make an Army coup unlikely to succeed. This is the divide-and-rule tactic of all despots, just as the Soviets had the KGB with the Frontier Troops controlling 9 military districts (with 16 for the Soviet Army) making it sufficiently powerful (along with the MVD Army (Interior Ministry) who controlled ammo on larger Soviet Army bases) and the system of political officers and Stukachi (KGB informers) in the Armed Forces and other aspects making it difficult to overthrow the system from within.
The USSR collapsed when those at the top, having implicitly admitted the failure of the system, fell out and the August coup undoubtedly hastened the end, providing Yeltsin, with his democratic mandate, the opportunity to fill the void left by the suddenly powerless Gorbachev.
In Iran, AFAICT, and I know little, there is no obvious internal faction or alternative ready to take power. It might take some Bonapartism from the Iranian Armed Forces, basically saying to the RGC ‘Stand down or we, the Jews and the Great Satan will blow you to bits‘. (My favourite typo from 1980s newspapers was a report saying that an Iranian cleric condemned the ‘Great Stan’.).
Let us hope for the quickest, cleanest, safest resolution of this in favour of the Iranian people.
@Mr Ed
Let us hope for the quickest, cleanest, safest resolution of this in favour of the Iranian people.
I do too, but I do think it is important to remember that revolutions do not always turn out well. Louis XVI was a horrendous dictator as was Tsar Nicholas II, but the conditions that their overthrow led to were very bad, arguably worse than before. Let’s hope that that is not what we see here in Iran, but there are lots of scenarios that are not at all good for either Iran or the West. FWIW, I think if you look at Venezuela a revolution there would surely go well because there is an obvious leader in Machado, who has a very anti socialism, very pro freedom policy viewpoint. Iran? Not so much. It could easily descend into an anarchy that allows the uprising of some of the worst forms of government.
And let us hope and pray that President Trump, who seems more interested in foreign policy and Nobel Peace prizes than “making America great again” lately, does NOT get involved militarily, and that he restrains the spooks from Langley whose track record in these matters is one of utter failure and ironic incompetency.
How so? It’s not Trump who is fighting to overthrow the Islamic Republic, it’s large crowds of Iranians in the streets.
Perry, re “how so?”, maybe JohnK was saying that while Venezuela’s potential “transition” has a definite Trump influence, maybe Cuba too, but Iran only because of these other movements. So the Trump influence/effect is indirect, at best?
Which of these regime changing events would have happened if Trump were not POTUS?
My take: some of them (Iran?) likely would be happening anyway, but not all (Venezuela NOT).
llamas – I apologize for my error.
As for President Trump – he is not sending the Islamic Republic of Iran regime vast sums of money to prop them up, which is what President Obama.
Genius? No President Trump is not a genius – but he is not a traitor either, and most Western heads of government and heads of state ARE traitors, or the puppets of traitors.
The Western establishment, including in the United States, is actively working to destroy the West – that is treason, and treason of the worst kind.
Sure, if Venezuela’s vile government falls, that’ll be down to Trump. But in Iran the USA is a bit-part player, much as it was in 2014 in Ukraine.
The Iranian people’s PERCEPTION of Trump and Netanyahu might be a bigger player than Trump himself in this chapter.
Revolutions don’t always go well, as Fraser Orr states, but the perception that benign and supportive powers are out there willing to help might affect the people’s willingness to take that risk.
Trump using bunker busters against IRGC nuclear sites sends a pretty clear signal
Several years ago I watched several documentaries with loads of original footage from 1979-80 era Iran. What came out was that the Khomeini revolutionists looked very well organised and disciplined, the liberals and communists who had also helped remove the Shah did not look well organised and disciplined. Unsurprisingly the former inherited the revolution, the latter were destroyed or fled into exile. Khomeini had the backing of the clergy and the merchant class (bazaari), the liberals and the socialists etc had nothing equivalent.
At the time of the Arab spring when Mobarak was overthrown in Egypt I remember thinking the pro-democracy and liberal Egyptians in the streets were not going to take over in Egypt as they had no highly organised and disciplined groups with many roots in Egyptian society. The only organisations in Egypt with that were the military and the Muslim brotherhood. Unsurprisingly these are the two groups who have had spells ruling Egypt since 2011. The liberals, westernisers, marxists etc got nowhere
Fraser Orr:
The thing is that this train came with the overthrow of the Shah, it is hard to see how anything worse could come out of Iran given that we have had a nuke-seeking bunch of fanatics bent on spreading revolution and terror running the place for over 45 years.
IOW: Do not let the imperfect be the reason for sticking with the evil.
And the signal was “we’d rather you didn’t have nukes”. Not convinced that means USA is a significant factor in Iranian people taking to the streets right now.
Perhaps you are more imaginative than me 😀 Please describe a worse form of government for Iran than a totalitarian Islamic state with nuclear aspirations that has been destabilising the Middle East for decades & backs the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Why is it that I hear, once again, the distant echo of The Who (Maximum – R&B!) in my headphones? Maybe it’s all those optimistic predictions that we have heard over the last, oh, God knows how long, about regime changes in the Middle East, where it’s all going to be sunshine and puppies – and yet, inexplicably, it always turns out that one tinpot tyranny is simply replaced by a different tinpot tyranny, and the vile scumbags who were in power last week, are this week’s “refugees” and “asylum seekers”. Perhaps I’m just a hopeless cynic, but I prefer to think that I Won’t Get Fooled Again.
llater,
llamas
C’mon, llamas, you can denigrate our past efforts all you want, but we’ll always have Operation Frequent Manhood to look back on.
– – –
No, wait, I mean Operation Urgent Fury. They all run together . . .
Iran is an entirely different society to Syria and indeed Arab countries generally. It has been independent for many years and has a developed civil society.
The Iranian diaspora generally still has family and assets there and will wish to grow Iran.
@Mr Ed
The thing is that this train came with the overthrow of the Shah, it is hard to see how anything worse could come out of Iran
History says “Hold my beer.”
I’m hopeful that things will improve, but there are no guarantees.
Reminds me of the movie, “The Flintstones”. Didn’t watch it except somehow I saw the opening scene (maybe I watched the trailer?). Newspaper gets tossed onto Fred’s front lawn, stone table newspaper naturally. Headline? “Middle East Peace Breaks Down” That was around 20,000 BC. Pretty much the same since.
One quibble: The Iranians we LIKE will want to return to Iran.
The Iranians who wish us dead will be running from there to here. Our Democrats will work like hell to let them in.
Iranian crowds in the streets are shouting for the return of Reza Pahlavt. I note that he doesn’t seem to have been mentioned here. Surely an importsant factor for the opposition to coalesce around pending a more permanent solution.,
Paul:
As you say, it is amazing what can be done when your leader is not a traitor. I see that Sir Keith Spanner has proclaimed that Britain was not involved with the operation to catch Maduro. As if anyone ever thought we were. If the SAS had been involved the Attorney General would have had them arrested when they got back home.
The Substack of Andrew Fox is an excellent guide to what is going on in Iran.