The Unraveling That Isn’t: Why Iran’s Protests Won’t Topple the Regime—But Will Reshape It
![industrial scale photography, clean documentary style, infrastructure photography, muted industrial palette, systematic perspective, elevated vantage point, engineering photography, operational facilities, A concrete coastal signal relay vault, its thick steel doors sealed and studded with rust, rows of buried fiber conduits fanning out like nerve endings into the dark earth, backlit by the flat crimson glow of a horizon at dusk, the air thick with salt haze and the hum of buried current, the sea behind it receding to reveal cracked sediment patterns like dried blood [Bria Fibo]](https://081x4rbriqin1aej.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/viral-images/6a87896f-2371-4ed4-9637-77e855e80693_viral_3_square.png "industrial scale photography, clean documentary style, infrastructure photography, muted industrial palette, systematic perspective, elevated vantage point, engineering photography, operational facilities, A concrete coastal signal relay vault, its thick steel doors sealed and studded with rust, rows of buried fiber conduits fanning out like nerve endings into the dark earth, backlit by the flat crimson glow of a horizon at dusk, the air thick with salt haze and the hum of buried current, the sea behind it receding to reveal cracked sediment patterns like dried blood [Bria Fibo]")
If the IRGC’s loyalty begins to fracture under prolonged economic strain, the regime’s capacity to contain dissent could diminish—though no such fracture has yet materialized.
History whispers a cautionary tale: revolutions rarely erupt from protest alone—they emerge when the machinery of control fractures. In 1979, Iran’s revolution succeeded not because of street numbers, but because the Shah’s army refused to fire on crowds, and the bazaars turned against him. Today, the inverse is true: the IRGC remains loyal, the regular army is marginalized but not rebellious, and the bazaars—once revolutionary—are now protesting not against the system, but for survival within it.
Consider the Ottoman Empire in the 1890s: economic collapse, foreign debt, and youth protests in Salonika and Izmir. Yet, Sultan Abdul Hamid II survived through surveillance, exile of dissenters, and playing factions against each other—until the 1908 Young Turk revolution, which required military defection (the Third Army in Macedonia) to succeed. Iran today resembles the Ottoman Empire in 1905—under strain, but held together by a security apparatus that fears chaos more than it hates the regime.
Even more telling is the Soviet Union’s final decade. From 1986 to 1991, protests flared in Lithuania, Armenia, and Kazakhstan—not due to sudden tyranny, but because of economic decay and environmental disasters (Chernobyl). Gorbachev responded with reshuffles and rhetoric, but only when the KGB and military withdrew support did the system crumble. Iran’s leaders watch this history closely: they know that as long as the IRGC eats, it will fight.
And yet, there is a silent shift underway. Just as the Soviet intelligentsia lost faith in communism by 1985, many Iranian clerics and bureaucrats now see the system as corrupt beyond repair. But they remain silent—waiting, like courtiers in a dying dynasty, for the first sign of collapse before declaring allegiance to the next order.
The real danger to Iran’s regime isn’t the protests—it’s the slow erosion of belief within its own ranks. When a general stops believing in the cause, but still commands troops, the state becomes a hollow shell. That moment has not yet come. But it may be closer than Tehran admits.
[Source: CaspianReport, "What’s really happening in Iran right now", 2025; Human Rights Activists in Iran; Ground News factuality reports; historical parallels drawn from Ottoman decline, Soviet collapse, and comparative authoritarian resilience studies.]
—Marcus Ashworth
Published January 21, 2026