As popular protests against the Iranian regime's coercive practices continue, much can be learned from the country's current landscape. First and foremost is breaking through the wall of fear that has kept many segments of the Iranian people from joining previous protests. This is a turning point in the regime's relationship with the people.
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Breaking the wall of fear against the tight grip of the security forces was the beginning of the collapse of many regimes in our region due to sustained pressure from the people. The significance of this event is that breaking the wall of fear means that the underlying protests and anger will not just stay that way. Rather, they will become a chronic state of protest from which the regime suffers.
This will undermine its ability to hold together in the face of constant internal pressure.
The simplest expected outcome of this situation is that the regime will fall into a state of weakness and conditions will facilitate a split: either to escape an inevitable fate or to survive under a new authoritarian brand, either through an internal coup or through alliances that grip onto power and curb the influence of the hardliners and radicals within the regime.
In any case, the general mood among Iranians does not seem to buy into a regime facelift from within. All regime faces are familiar. Iranians are fed up. It would be hard to find such a compromise to end the current state of protests. The sacrifices Iranians pay make it difficult to back down or take a middle ground.
Indeed, quashing the protests will go hand in hand with the detention of thousands of people in custody and jail. So there is no way back, both for the regime, maxing out security measures, and for the protesters, left with no choice but to carry on and join the young schoolgirls and Iranian women who were the driving force behind the 1979 revolution against the Shah.
Iran won't be what it was yesterday. Admittedly, its chances of controlling the security situation are still high at this moment. But the Iranian people are not what they were before Mahsa Amini's killing.
This time the rage tops all previous times. The level of social tension is high and climbing. Demands are no longer just about economic and livelihood reforms. They're geared toward regime change.
They grumble at the Supreme leader. It's not easy, in fact, to build consistent expectations about the Iranian regime's future and how the current protests will fare. We should not presume an inaccurate assessment of the situation here, in the absence of concrete information from inside Iran that would help define realistic scenarios.
But despite all this, I am interested in a few points. First, regardless of the fate of the regime, Iran is on the threshold of a qualitative change, the extent and limits of which are difficult to assess anyway. However, the most dangerous scenario in this regard is if the regime succeeds in suppressing this wave of protests. The risk factor here is that the regime is unlikely to make any concessions in order to survive. Rather, it will rely on keeping a tight grip on power, parlaying the influence of hardliners into continued control of the state apparatus and turning Iran into a powder keg simmering across the Gulf.
This is not in the long-term interest of regional security and stability. Not only because it could lead to an internal explosion at any moment.
But also because it will encourage the regime to create new crises and fuel new fires to try to distract the rest of the Iranian people from what is going on inside, to justify expected violent crackdowns on opponents, to make claims of a foreign plot and other accusations the regime keeps hurling. Another scenario concerns the next phase in Iran.
This is the country's entry into chaos and turmoil as protests escalate and spiral out of the security forces' control. This scenario is rather complicated to realize. But it should certainly be considered, on analogy with recent experiences in other Middle Eastern countries and given the lack of information and uncertainty of the security situation.
Iran is a high-density country. So, any internal development in this country must be met with great precision and caution. The fragments of a large bomb can scatter over a large geographical area.
The bottom line is that the Iranian anger scene offers the regime a valuable lesson. It should rethink its policies, learn from what happened, and avoid throwing accusations around and arbitrarily dishing them out sometimes to Israel, sometimes to the US, and sometimes both.
Common sense speaks that millions of young Iranians will not put up with a state of oppression and degradation in a country supposed to be rich in natural resources.
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