Overview
The most recent round of popular unrest in Iran has quickly grown to historic size, with protests erupting in every one of Iran’s 31 provinces and the estimated death toll for protesters rising into the thousands. Alongside threats of US military intervention, the uprising likely represents the most serious threat to the survival of the Islamic Republic since its founding in 1979. Despite mounting challenges, however, the fall of the resilient and insulated regime in Tehran does not seem imminent. Nonetheless, the current demonstrations and the US’ response carry serious implications for Iran’s stability going forward, its regional power projection, and the US’ new interventionist foreign policy doctrine more broadly.
The Roots of Iranian Protests
Current mass demonstrations in Iran are driven by longstanding economic grievances and sparked by the dramatic plunge in the value of Iran’s currency in December (as of this week, the USD to rial exchange rate is 1:1.4 million, a 75% drop in just one year). Iran’s foreign exchange rate (part of a black-market dollar trade) is one of the only significant economic markers that the regime cannot easily manipulate or conceal, unlike official figures on inflation, unemployment, GDP, economic growth or trade balances. Nonetheless, those official markers – even if they are not the full picture, as is likely – are grim. Inflation is persistently high, the reported unemployment rate was over 7% (with youth unemployment at 20%), and an estimated 22% to 50% of Iranians live below the poverty line.
Tehran blames the US’ crushing sanctions regime for the country’s economic freefall. These punitive measures certainly play their part. Iran has historically been heavily dependent on oil exports to fund the government’s budget, and the loss of Western markets, plus the costs of sanctions evasion, have decimated the country’s oil sector. But economic mismanagement in the form of rampant corruption, inefficient government-controlled corporations, and market interventions to artificially inflate the managed exchange rate via hard currency injections have created a crippled economy. The economy failed to deliver a basic standard of living to its citizens, even prior to the stepped-up US sanctions regime. Further, a Despite Iran holding 10% of the world’s oil reserves, the country faces frequent outages and shortages that hamper business activity and contribute to a perception of economic struggle for the populace.
Iranians and external analysts also blame Tehran’s diversion of fiscal resources to proxy militias in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq for the country’s longstanding financial weakness. The US State Department has estimated that Iran spent more than $16 billion on proxy funding between 2012 to 2020, while Israeli intelligence estimated that $30 billion was devoted to supporting the Assad regime in Syria alone. Those numbers do not include the value of arms transfers, which have historically been plentiful. These investments in proxy militias do not produce any monetary returns but are seen by leadership in Tehran as an investment in regional power projection to combat American and Israeli influence. Grievances over the diversion of Iranian funds away from Iran are deeply felt by protesters: in recent days, chants of “not for Gaza, not for Lebanon, I give my life for Iran” have been widespread.
The current uprising is part of a record of mass protests in Iran that extends back to the country’s 1979 revolution. In 2022, protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police for not wearing her hijab correctly, led to a monthslong security crackdown that killed more than 500 and saw 22,000 detained. In 2019, protests over the price of gasoline caused major rioting, over 300 deaths, and the first large-scale instance of the Iranian government shutting off internet access to prevent organizing and suppressing news of protests from leaving the country. It seems likely that the current rial protests are the largest, or at least most deadly, in the history of the Islamic Republic. Activists report that some 2,000 have been killed (which cannot be independently verified) and over 10,000 arrested in just a few weeks, with protests taking place in all 31 of Iran’s provinces.
The Potential for US Intervention
In addition to the historic scale of the current protests in Iran, the US’ public appetite for involvement is unique. While the US has historically supported protesters in Iran, that support has not gone far beyond rhetoric out of a desire to avoid military entanglement or sour relations with Tehran during periods of negotiation. This time, the rulebook is different: shortly after the protests broke out over the New Year, President Trump openly threatened military strikes if regime actors continued to kill protesters, calling Iran’s use of lethal force a “red line.”
While American strikes were not immediately triggered, as initially suggested (up to 1,500 protesters are thought to have been killed since Trump made his initial threat), the White House has continued to signal its intention to intervene in Iran in some capacity. Over the weekend, the President held meetings to discuss a range of options for responding, with any action at least several days away. Actions under consideration range from the amplification of anti-regime voices online, to cyber attacks against Iran’s domestic security apparatus, to full-on military strikes akin to June airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. While those attacks avoided striking regime targets and narrowly focused on kneecapping nuclear development, new strikes would likely explicitly target regime leadership and domestic security in an attempt to fracture loyalty from internal security forces or weaken Iranian leadership.
The US has already taken non-kinetic action to support protesters and punish the regime. Earlier this week, the White House announced 25% secondary tariffs on governments still doing business with Iran. Further details about the tariff are scarce (despite announcements that it would be “effective immediately”). The tariff would largely attempt to impact fuel sales (already operating illicitly to evade existing US sanctions) as well as trade with China, Iran’s largest trading partner, and regional US partners like the UAE and Iraq. President Trump is also working with Elon Musk to restore internet access in Iran via Starlink, which is currently blocked by the regime alongside traditional internet access.
Regime Survival
Even more so than previous mass uprisings, the current rial protests in Iran are being framed abroad as a uniquely existential threat to the survival of the Islamic Republic. While the scale and scope of the protests is certainly historic, the regime is notoriously and single-mindedly resilient. Regime survival – at any cost – has been Tehran’s watchword since 1979, and the Ayatollah and senior leadership perceive the country has been under attack from external forces continuously since the revolution. The government’s many-layered security structure protects against defections, and entrenched clerical rule does not rely on public popularity or even credibility to govern. Further, while enthusiastic, the protest movement is politically fragmented and disorganized; no credible alternative to the Ayatollah exists (despite efforts by the eldest son of the last shah of Iran, to establish himself as a leader in exile – the legacy of the repressive US-installed monarchy remains deeply divisive in the country).
However, the potential for US military involvement is what makes these protests a uniquely existential threat for leadership in . Military strikes on leadership or internal security forces could contribute to a break within their ranks, which could weaken the regime’s response to the protests, lead to a military coup, or simply bolster popular ire at the government for courting regional conflict. Regime decapitation – currently not reported as under discussion – could prompt an internal political crisis, given that the elderly leader has never named a successor.
While damaging, US strikes are not expected to cause the immediate fall of the government in Tehran. Regime survival, however, does not mean regime stability. Whatever the resolution of current protests, the Islamic Republic is likely to limp along, facing more intense and more frequent challenges in the form of popular uprisings, economic collapse, further sanctions pressure, and the depletion of whatever internal and external legitimacy has survived. Paired with the loss of its proxy networks and setbacks to its nuclear regime, Iran is entering 2026 much weakened – but not yet down.
Regional and Global Implications
A destabilized – or, in the future, fully collapsed – Iran will have significant consequences for the region. Despite the potential for a far-future Middle East without the malign influence of Iran and its proxy networks, near term implications are highly risky. A desperate Iranian regime may be more likely to engage in regional conflicts, make last-ditch attacks against Israel and other regional rivals, or accelerate the development of a nuclear weapon to signal strength and establish what deterrence it can. Collapse into a failed state would likely create a power vacuum, which would create destabilizing migration flows and a platform for terrorist and militia activity. Deprived of a sponsor, Iran’s proxies throughout the region would not cease to exist and, though weakened, would likely continue to operate and threaten Israeli and American interests.
Zooming out, the US’ willingness to intervene militarily (or at least credibly threaten to) speaks volumes about the Trump Administration’s new foreign policy doctrine of muscular intervention in the internal affairs of rival countries. Shortly on the heels of a successful military operation to extricate Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, the US is signaling a historic willingness to engage militarily where US action once would have stopped at diplomacy. Iran has already contended with the lengthening arm of US foreign policy; meanwhile, Colombia, Cuba, and Greenland are newly weighing these implications as well.
