DESPITE Iran’s nationwide protests and years of external pressure, there are as yet no signs of fracture in the Islamic Republic’s security elite that could bring an end to one of the world’s most resilient regimes.
Adding to the stress on Iran’s clerical rulers, United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened military action over Teheran’s severe crackdown on the protests, which follow an Israeli and US bombing campaign last year against Iran’s nuclear programme and key officials.
But unless the street unrest and foreign pressure can prompt defections at the top, the regime — though weakened — will likely hold, according to two diplomats, two government sources in the Middle East and two analysts.
About 2,000 people have been killed in the protests, an Iranian official said, blaming “terrorists” for the deaths of civilians and security personnel.
Human rights groups had previously tallied around 600 deaths.
Iran’s layered security architecture, anchored by the Revolutionary Guards and Basij para-military force —which together number close to one million people— makes external coercion without internal rupture exceedingly difficult, said Vali Nasr, an Iranian-American academic and expert on regional conflicts and US foreign policy.
“For this sort of thing to succeed, you have to have crowds in the streets for a much longer period of time. And you have to have a break-up of the state,” he said.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, has survived several past waves of unrest.
This is the fifth major uprising since 2009, evidence of the regime’s resilience and cohesion even as it confronts a deep, unresolved internal crisis, said Paul Salem of the Middle East Institute.
For that to change, protesters would have to generate enough momentum to overcome the state’s entrenched advantages: powerful institutions, a sizeable constituency loyal to the clerical rule and the geographic and demographic scale of a country of 90 million, said Alan Eyre, a former US diplomat and Iran expert.
Survival, however, does not equal stability. The Islamic Republic is facing one of its gravest challenges since 1979. Sanctions have strangled the economy with no clear path to recovery.
Strategically, it is under pressure from Israel and the US, its nuclear programme degraded, its regional “Axis of Resistance” proxy armed groups weakened by crippling losses to allies in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.
Nasr said while he didn’t think the Islamic Republic had reached the “moment of fall”, it was “now in a situation of great difficulty going forward”.
The protests began onDec 28 in response to soaring prices, before turning squarely against clerical rule.
Politically, the violent crackdown has further eroded what remained of the regime’s legitimacy.
What sets this moment apart and raises the stakes, analysts say, is Trump‘s explicit warnings that the killing of demonstrators could trigger an American intervention.
Trump was due to meet with senior advisers yesterday to discuss options for Iran, a US official said.
Iran said it is keeping communications open with Washington.
Trump, who says he may meet Iranian officials, on Monday threatened tariffs on countries that trade with Iran. China is Teheran’s top trade partner.
In a phone call on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the possibility of US intervention in Iran, according to an Israeli source present for the conversation.
Trump’s interest in the protests, the analysts say, is likely tactical rather than ideological.
The aim could be regime pliability — weakening the state enough to extract concessions such as curbs on Teheran’s nuclear programme, Salem said.
The idea of a “Venezuela model” has growing appeal in some circles in Washington and Jerusalem, a diplomat and three analysts said.
It envisions the removal of Iran’s top authority while signalling to the remaining state apparatus: stay in place, provided they cooperate, they said.
Applied to Iran, however, it collides with formidable obstacles — a security state entrenched for decades, deep institutional cohesion and a much larger and ethnically complex country.
David Makovsky at The Washington Institute, a think tank, said if Trump acts, he expects a swift, high-impact action rather than a prolonged campaign —consistent with the president’s preference in recent conflicts for a single decisive action rather than deploying ground troops.
“He looks for this one gesture that might be a game changer, but what is it?” Makovsky said.
The writer is from Reuters
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