The new waves of protests in Iran expose the exhaustion of a political model that combines theocracy, security apparatus, and a besieged economy under sanctions and proxy wars to maintain a regime increasingly disconnected from its society. The Iranian streets once again become the stage for an asymmetric conflict between a heavily armed state and a fragmented but persistent population that no longer fears directly challenging the Supreme Leader.
The current crisis is the synthesis of three structural tensions. On one hand, an economy permanently suffocated by sanctions and mismanagement, which pushes large sectors into precariousness and fuels waves of revolts, from the traditional bazaar to the urban peripheries. On the other hand, the political system responds to any challenge with lethal repression, mass arrests, and information control, thereby reproducing a pattern of impunity that has been consolidated since the protests of 2019 and the “Woman, Life, Freedom” cycle.
Finally, the geopolitical dispute: Iran projects power through networks of armed allies in the region but sees its territory turning into a battlefield, targeted by Israeli attacks and direct pressure from the United States on its nuclear program. In this context, the energy dimension inextricably links Donald Trump’s determination to promote regime change in Tehran. By seeking to overthrow a hostile government and replace it with an elite more predictable to Washington, the White House aims at the possibility of more directly controlling Iranian oil and other strategic natural resources. It reorganizes contracts, concessions, and export flows in favor of major American companies.
In an era of slow energy transition and competition for hydrocarbon markets, weakening a central OPEC actor and realigning it with the US orbit reshapes the balance of power in the Persian Gulf, impacting areas from Baghdad to Riyadh. The paradox is that the more the Iranian regime insists on legitimizing itself through anti-imperialist rhetoric, the more it reveals its dependence on internal repression and external negotiation to survive.
The intermittent nuclear negotiations, the constant threat of “snapback” sanctions, and the risk of direct attacks function as instruments of strategic blackmail. Meanwhile, the ruling elite uses American hostility—and, in particular, Trump’s regime change agenda—as a justification to criminalize any internal dissent, labeling it as a fifth column in the service of foreign interests. From a regional perspective, what is happening in Iran is not merely a “domestic issue,” but a test for the future of order in the Middle East.
If Tehran manages, once again, to contain the mobilizations by force, without significant reforms, it will continue to fund and coordinate its allies from Baghdad to Beirut. Despite the setbacks of 2025, he will preserve a sphere of influence that disturbs Washington, Tel Aviv, and the Gulf monarchies. These actors would benefit most from a more predictable Iranian oil regime. If, on the contrary, the combination of internal social pressure and external restrictions reduces Iran’s ability to project power, it will open space for a regional reconfiguration less centered on the logic of militias and more on institutional disputes between states.
In the short term, however, the most likely scenario is the continuation of the repression-protest spiral: the regime concedes limited gestures of dialog, occasionally retreats on tariffs or unpopular measures, but preserves the core of its theocratic-military power intact. Iranian society, in turn, learns to test the limits, reinvent forms of protest, and articulate demands that combine economic dignity, civil rights, and rejection of foreign intervention—including the regime change agenda dictated by Washington. It is this tension, between a post-revolutionary order unable to renew itself and a population that refuses to go back home.
