What began as protests rooted in socioeconomic distress as a result of sanctions-driven inflation, currency depreciation, unemployment, and declining living standards has gradually acquired regime-level implications and international reverberations in Iran.
In Washington, this evolution has triggered a response that is almost a reflex. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly brandished the military option against Iran, while senior US officials insist that “many, many options”, including air strikes, remain under active consideration.
Yet beneath this show of decisiveness lies a striking strategic void. What, precisely, would military force be intended to achieve in Iran?
The list of possible objectives is revealing in its incoherence: regime change, coerced compliance, controlled weakening of the Iranian state, or the deliberate introduction of prolonged internal instability.
The absence of clarity is not incidental. Washington itself appears uncertain, veering between threats of intervention and signals of diplomacy without articulating a credible endgame.
This ambiguity is consistent with a long-standing pattern in US Middle East policy, where military action precedes strategy rather than serving it. Iran now confronts the doctrine in its distilled form: strike first, think later.
The current demonstrations mark a rupture not in their existence but in their character. Iran has witnessed repeated protest cycles over the past two decades, ranging from economic grievances to political reform demands and social dissent.
What distinguishes the present moment is the extent to which external powers appear intent on converting the protests into a vehicle for regime change. The United States, Israel, and several European governments have moved beyond rhetorical support into open political agitation.
Israel in particular has abandoned any pretence of restraint, calling explicitly on Iranians to overthrow their government and presenting itself as a champion of democratic liberation.
Washington has reinforced this posture through escalating sanctions and renewed military threats, including the imposition of a 25 per cent tariff on countries that continue trading with Iran. In response, China has threatened to retaliate against the US.
Inside Iran, however, the reality is more complex than the external narratives suggest. Al-Ahram Weekly gathered perspectives from within the country that underscore both the seriousness of the unrest and the uncertainty surrounding it.
Nahid, a resident of northern Tehran, described daytime normalcy that gives way to nightly demonstrations. She stressed that accurately gauging the scale of the protests or the true number of the casualties has become extremely difficult due to the Internet blackout in recent days.
Nevertheless, she noted that the current unrest is marked by a level of violence unprecedented in her experience. According to reports, many protesters are armed, and approximately 100 police officers, along with many civilians, have been killed.
Reuters cited an Iranian official putting the death toll at around 2,000 people, including security personnel. UN human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence, citing UN sources in Iran, stated that the death toll being reported is “in the hundreds”.
Gilda, an academic in her 40s living in Tehran, has chosen not to participate, not out of indifference, but out of concern that the unrest could serve as a prelude to the country’s unravelling from within, with no clear plan for what would come next.
Seyed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and former advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, argued that Western intelligence agencies including Israel’s Mossad have played a direct role in intensifying the unrest.
He pointed to recent remarks by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as an implicit acknowledgment of such involvement.
“The objective is to foment chaos within Iran, or at the very least, to craft a narrative of chaos that could legitimise military intervention. But this is not a war the US can win. This is not the America of 20 years ago, and Iran is not Iraq,” said Marandi.
The protests remain serious but fragmented. They reflect deep economic pain and social anger, yet lack unified leadership, a coherent political programme, or consensus on the desired outcome, whether institutional reform, constitutional revision, or total systemic rupture.
This fragmentation limits their capacity to change from expressions of grievance into an alternative governing project. At the same time, the Iranian state has demonstrated its ability to mobilise supporters. On Monday, tens of thousands of pro-government demonstrators rallied in Tehran and other cities, according to state television footage, complicating portrayals of a regime wholly detached from society.
Supreme leader Ali Khamenei described these rallies as having “thwarted the plan of foreign enemies”, while senior officials framed the unrest as externally manipulated rather than organically revolutionary.
Structurally, the Iranian system remains embedded in a dense web of institutions: the clerical establishment, the Revolutionary Guard and its economic affiliates, the regular military, an expansive bureaucracy, and commercial networks shaped by sanctions and semi-formal markets.
Loyalty within these structures is sustained not by coercion, but by ideology, patronage, nationalism, and shared perceptions of external threats. Regime-collapse scenarios typically presume elite defection as a trigger, yet there is little evidence of coordinated fractures within Iran’s core institutions.
As the international outcry intensifies the pressure on Tehran, US officials have urgently advised American citizens to depart Iran immediately, citing warnings of violent protests and severely disrupted flights.
US officials have also confirmed that air strikes remain among the options, while insisting that diplomatic channels remain open.
The US administration has claimed that Iran is adopting a “far different tone” in private communications with Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. This dual-track approach of public coercion combined with private engagement has generated confusion rather than leverage, however.
Iranian officials acknowledge ongoing indirect communications, including via Switzerland, while criticising Washington’s “contradictory messages”. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has reiterated that Iran is “not seeking war but is fully prepared for war”, while expressing conditional readiness for negotiations “based on mutual respect”.
Europe, however, has moved closer to overt regime-change rhetoric. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared during a visit to India that the Iranian government was in its “final days and weeks”. Citing what he described as the regime’s lack of electoral legitimacy, Merz argued that “if a regime can only keep itself in power by force, then it is effectively at the end.”
In response, Iran’s foreign minister wrote on X that “of all governments, the one in Germany is perhaps the worst placed to address ‘human rights’. The reason is simple: its blatant double standards over the past years have obliterated any shred of credibility.”
“Do us all a favour: have some shame,” he added.
French President Emmanuel Macron condemned what he described as “state violence” against protesters, while the European Parliament banned Iranian diplomats from its premises, declaring that “business as usual” with Tehran is no longer possible.
Beyond the Western bloc, reactions diverge sharply. Russia has condemned what it calls foreign interference in Iran’s internal affairs, while China has reiterated its opposition to external intervention and called for restraint.
These positions underscore the lack of international consensus for coercive action. Regional actors, shaped by their own experiences with state collapse in the Middle East, have responded with caution rather than enthusiasm, viewing the prospect of Iranian disintegration as a destabilising catastrophe rather than a strategic opportunity.
Few figures express this tension more clearly than Ataollah Mohajerani, Iran’s former minister of culture under former president Mohamed Khatami. In a previous conversation with the Weekly, Mohajerani argued that Khamenei’s resistance to reform was driven by a central fear: that Khatami would become “Iran’s Gorbachev” — a sincere reformer whose overtures would be exploited by adversaries intent not on reforming the Islamic Republic, but on dismantling it.
Khatami’s project championed political and social openness, the expansion of civil society, and a “dialogue of civilisations” with the West. Yet, these efforts coincided with the imposition of additional US sanctions under the Clinton administration, a move that only hardened Khamenei’s position.
A second experiment followed under former president Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatic moderate trusted by the supreme leader. Rouhani pursued a model closer to the Chinese experience: economic normalisation without political pluralism, and openness without strategic vulnerability.
His wager was that sanctions relief and reintegration into the global economy would stabilise Iran while preserving its core power structures. The 2015 nuclear agreement with the West appeared to validate this approach, easing Iran’s isolation without triggering internal disintegration.
Iran today is neither on the brink of imminent collapse nor insulated from intense pressure. It remains a state under strain but institutionally intact; a society deeply dissatisfied yet politically fragmented; and in an international environment characterised by coercion without strategy.
In such circumstances, a military strike would not resolve Iran’s crisis. It would deepen it, once again demonstrating that attacking first and thinking later is not a solution, but a recipe for enduring instability.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 15 January, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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