Iran’s Next Inflection Point May Come From Within

After 25 Years of Escalating Protest, Repression and Rejection of the Islamic Republic, the Most Dangerous Front facing Tehran may not be Washington or Jerusalem. It May be its Own People 

Hamlet Yousef 

 

 

BIAS ALERT: As an Iranian-born immigrant to the U.S. after the Iranian Revolution, my family left everything behind for a new life in America. Therefore, labeling me as ANTI-regime would be an understatement. Having served in the federal government and closely following the Iran issue since birth, I possess a unique perspective on Iran. I believe that multiple administrations from across the political spectrum have failed to address the Iran issue effectively. Instead of taking decisive action, they have resorted to kicking the can down the road, which has now escalated to kicking the nuclear can—a move that will inevitably lead to disaster. The key to solving the Persian puzzle lies in regime change within Iran. However, regime change must be driven by the Iranian people themselves. They are capable and willing to take control of their own future. The role of the West and Iran’s neighbors is crucial in setting the conditions for the Iranian people to own the change for their future.

BLUF: For more than a quarter century, Iran’s protest movements have moved in a pretty clear direction. What started in the late 1990s largely as demands to reform the Islamic Republic has steadily become something much more fundamental: a growing rejection of the system itself. The 2009 Green Movement challenged the legitimacy of the political order. Bloody Aban in 2019 broke much of what remained of the social contract. The 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising became a generational and cultural revolt, and the nationwide protests of January 2026 pushed things further still, with demonstrators increasingly calling for the end of clerical rule itself. AP’s review of Iran’s protest history is a useful reminder that this has not been one protest movement. It has been a long political evolution.

Iran now enters another potentially combustible period. The United States and Israel continue tightening military and economic pressure through Operation Epic Fury and Operation Economic Fury, while Tehran’s leadership responds with the familiar mix of threats, missile rhetoric and pressure around the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, ordinary Iranians are dealing with inflation, sanctions, war damage, declining trade and an economy that was hardly a model of good management before any of this started. The U.S. Treasury has continued expanding the economic pressure campaign, while Iranian officials themselves are reportedly worried that additional economic pain could reignite unrest. (U.S. Treasury)

That may be the irony Tehran is missing. The regime is looking outward at Washington and Jerusalem while sitting on top of one of the biggest political powder kegs in the Middle East at home. There are more than 80 million Iranians inside the country, and a very large percentage of them seem to have concluded that the problem is not simply one bad president, one bad election or one bad economic policy.

This Did Not Start in 2026

One mistake outsiders repeatedly make with Iran is treating each uprising as an isolated event. A protest erupts, the regime kills or arrests enough people to regain control, the streets go quiet, and Washington more or less moves on until the next explosion. That approach misses the larger pattern. What Iran has experienced since the late 1990s is better understood as a 25-plus-year political evolution.

The grievances have changed over time. So have the triggers, the slogans, the cities involved and the people participating. But the general direction has been consistent: more Iranians have moved away from asking the Islamic Republic to reform itself and toward questioning why the Islamic Republic should exist in its current form at all. That distinction is important because it tells us a lot more about the regime’s long-term vulnerability than simply counting how many protests happened in a particular year.

1999: Reform the System

The July 1999 student uprising was one of the first major warning signs. Students originally protested the closure of the reformist newspaper Salam, but a violent attack on Tehran University dormitories quickly transformed a limited political dispute into the largest anti-government unrest Iran had experienced since the early years of the Islamic Republic. At least three people were killed and roughly 1,200 detained. (AP)

What stands out today is how limited the demands were compared with what we hear in Iran now. President Mohammad Khatami had come to power promising reform, and a meaningful part of Iranian society still believed that the Islamic Republic might be made more open and accountable. Students wanted freer media, greater political space, fewer restrictions and some ability to hold government officials responsible for what they did. They were mostly arguing about how the system operated, not yet demanding that the whole system disappear.

The regime responded with repression, which was also an early lesson in how reform works in the Islamic Republic: it is tolerated right up until it threatens the people who actually hold power. Iranian society did not forget that lesson. It would come back in a much bigger way a decade later.

2009: The Target Becomes the Regime

The Green Movement was different because it began inside the system and then started challenging the legitimacy of the system itself. After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed reelection, millions of Iranians took to the streets demanding to know, “Where is my vote?” Initially, this still sounded like a dispute over an election. As the demonstrations continued and the government responded with violence, the anger moved upward.

It was no longer only directed at Ahmadinejad or some election official nobody outside Iran could name. Protesters increasingly challenged Ali Khamenei and the entire power structure sitting behind the election. “Death to the dictator” became a common refrain, and Reuters documented protesters openly chanting it in Tehran while attacking Khamenei’s legitimacy. (Reuters)

That was a bigger psychological transition than it may look like in hindsight. The Islamic Republic had spent decades presenting the Supreme Leader as something above ordinary politics: guardian of the revolution, ultimate authority, supposedly insulated from the petty dysfunction of day-to-day government. By 2009, millions of Iranians were effectively saying that the problem did not stop with the president. It went straight to the top.

There was also some historical irony in the slogans. For decades, the regime had institutionalized Marg bar Amrika — “Death to America” — as almost part of the official soundtrack of revolutionary Iran. Eventually protesters started borrowing the regime’s language and redirecting it: “Death to the dictator,” “Death to Khamenei,” and increasingly Marg bar Jomhuri-ye Eslami — Death to the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic spent decades teaching Iranians how to chant “Death to” their enemies. A growing number of Iranians simply changed the target.

2017–2018: The Revolt Moves Beyond Tehran’s Intellectual Class

The next warning came from somewhere even more uncomfortable for the regime: the provinces. The 2017 and 2018 protests initially grew out of food prices, unemployment, government subsidies and basic economic frustration. Demonstrations then spread from Mashhad and other cities, while slogans increasingly turned against the political establishment itself. (AP)

That mattered because the regime could no longer easily write off dissent as a bunch of wealthy, westernized students in Tehran complaining about politics. The anger was showing up among workers, small merchants, lower-income families, religious communities and people living in provincial cities that had historically provided at least part of the revolution’s political base. The demographic map of opposition was getting wider.

The economic and political complaints also began merging. Why is inflation destroying our savings? Why is infrastructure deteriorating? Why are jobs disappearing? Why is Iran spending money in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere while Iranian families struggle at home? Those are economic questions on the surface, but when people ask them long enough, they tend to arrive at a political answer: the people running the system.

Bloody Aban: When the Social Contract Broke

Then came November 2019: Bloody November, or Aban 1398. The immediate trigger was a sudden increase in gasoline prices, but gasoline was really just the match. Years of corruption, economic mismanagement, sanctions, inequality and resentment toward the ruling elite had already piled up underneath it.

Protests spread rapidly across the country. The government shut down much of Iran’s internet access, security forces opened fire, and the crackdown was brutal. Amnesty International has documented more than 300 killings. A Reuters investigation based on Iranian government sources put the toll at approximately 1,500 people in less than two weeks. (Reuters)

The precise number remains disputed, in no small part because the regime that carried out the crackdown also did its best to shut down communications while it was happening. But arguing forever over whether the correct number is several hundred or closer to 1,500 can obscure the more basic point: the Islamic Republic demonstrated that it was prepared to kill a very large number of its own citizens very quickly if that was what staying in power required.

The slogans were also harder to dismiss as requests for policy reform. “Death to the dictator.” “Death to the Islamic Republic.” “No Gaza, no Lebanon, my life for Iran.” Large numbers of Iranians were not asking Tehran to become slightly more efficient at governing. They were asking why an ideological government was spending so much energy and money on revolutionary causes abroad while ordinary Iranians struggled at home.

Bloody Aban was an inflection point because the regime showed exactly how far it was willing to go. Iranian society saw it, absorbed it and carried that memory forward. The next generation would challenge the government on something even more fundamental: its right to control everyday life.

Mahsa Amini Changed the Equation Again

On September 16, 2022, 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini died after being detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating compulsory hijab rules. A later United Nations fact-finding mission concluded that her death was unlawful and resulted from physical violence while she was in state custody. (Reuters)

What followed became the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, and it was different from what came before. This was not only a political protest. It was social, cultural and generational at the same time. Women removed their hijabs. Teenage girls confronted government officials. University students challenged security forces. Young men joined them, while protesters burned images of Khamenei and openly targeted the symbols of the Islamic Republic. Reuters documented chants including “Death to the dictator,” “Death to Khamenei” and “We want regime change.” (Reuters)

More than 500 people were ultimately reported killed and tens of thousands detained. (AP) Tehran eventually regained control of the streets, but I would not confuse that with regaining control of society. One of the clearest examples is compulsory hijab. The law remains on the books and the state still has police, courts and prisons, yet huge numbers of Iranian women simply stopped cooperating.

That kind of civil disobedience creates a different problem for an authoritarian government. A protest march can be broken up. An organizer can be arrested. It is much harder to arrest a culture that has decided it no longer recognizes the government’s right to tell people how to live.

January 2026: The System Reaches Another Threshold

The uprising that began in late December 2025 and exploded in January 2026 started in a place anyone familiar with Iranian history should pay attention to: the bazaar. Shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar closed businesses as the rial collapsed, inflation surged and economic conditions deteriorated. Economic protest quickly became political revolt, which by now is almost a recurring pattern in Iran.

Within days, demonstrations had spread across the country. The language increasingly moved beyond complaints about prices or the currency and toward demands for an end to clerical rule. Amnesty International says the crackdown on January 8 and 9 included massacres in which the death toll reached into the thousands and described January 2026 as the deadliest period of repression it has documented in Iran in decades. (Amnesty International)

The final casualty numbers remain contested because Tehran again imposed a communications blackout. By July, HRANA said it had documented more than 7,000 deaths and more than 50,000 arrests, while Iran’s own government acknowledged more than 3,000 deaths. (AP) Whatever number history eventually settles on, the political progression is what stands out: 1999 was largely about reform; 2009 challenged legitimacy; 2019 rejected the economic and political bargain; 2022 challenged the social and ideological order; and by 2026 large numbers of people were openly rejecting the Islamic Republic itself.

That is a remarkable political evolution in barely one generation.

 

 

 The 80/20 Problem

I have often described Iran using a rough 80/20 framework. It is not supposed to be scientific precision, and polling under an authoritarian government always deserves some skepticism. But the broader premise is not pulled out of thin air. A 2022 survey by the Netherlands-based GAMAAN research group found 81% of respondents inside Iran would vote “No” to the Islamic Republic in a free referendum, while later research still found a large majority opposed continuation of the existing system. (GAMAAN)

My shorthand is that perhaps 80% of the country wants some version of fundamental change while roughly 20% remains tied, directly or indirectly, to preserving the current system. More important, that 20% is not one group. There is a genuine ideological hard core made up of revolutionary fundamentalists, committed clerical ideologues, senior elements of the security apparatus, Basij and IRGC figures who actually believe in Khomeini’s original revolutionary project.

Then there are what I call the hardline lights. They are not moderates, despite the West’s strange habit of repeatedly finding “moderates” inside a system where almost everyone with meaningful power has spent years proving otherwise. These are businessmen, political insiders, bureaucrats, oligarchs, IRGC economic beneficiaries and people tied into patronage networks. Their politics may be less theological and a little more practical: keep the money, keep the influence and, preferably, stay alive long enough to enjoy both.

That distinction matters because true believers and kleptocrats do not necessarily behave the same way when a regime starts facing an existential crisis.

After Khamenei: Hardliners Took the Wheel

Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening U.S. and Israeli strikes on February 28, and his son Mojtaba Khamenei was subsequently installed as Iran’s third Supreme Leader. Reuters reported that the Revolutionary Guards forced through his selection, overriding objections from political and clerical pragmatists. Sources also suggested the outcome could produce a more aggressive foreign policy and even harsher internal repression, with the IRGC exercising unprecedented influence over the state. (Reuters)

Mojtaba’s early rhetoric has not exactly suggested a new era of moderation. Within days of assuming power, he reportedly rejected de-escalation proposals and insisted that the United States and Israel first be “brought to their knees.” (Reuters) So much for the next great Iranian moderate.

The larger point is that the Islamic Republic appears to have moved further toward the Revolutionary Guard and the faction most willing to absorb enormous punishment in pursuit of ideological survival. That is where the martyrdom mindset becomes strategically dangerous. A kleptocrat usually wants to preserve his money and survive. A true believer may be much more willing to burn down the house if he thinks history or God will vindicate him. If pressure inside Iran reaches another breaking point, that difference may become very important.

Why This Fall Matters

September marks four years since Mahsa Amini’s death. Anniversaries matter in Iran, as do funerals, forty-day mourning cycles and symbols that can quickly turn personal grief into political mobilization. I am not predicting an uprising on September 16; revolutions are not scheduled like conference calls. But the conditions going into the fall of 2026 are worth watching closely.

Iran is dealing simultaneously with military damage, sanctions, maritime pressure, declining oil revenue, weakened trade, a battered currency and extraordinary inflation. Reuters recently reported annual inflation reaching 66% in July, with food prices up 128% year over year. Iranian political insiders told Reuters that the government’s larger concern was not simply economic pain but the possibility that worsening hardship could reignite nationwide unrest. (Reuters)

The regime’s own behavior is also telling. Hossein Taeb, one of the architects of earlier crackdowns, has been placed in charge of the Basij. Iran International reported on leaked audio from a closed Basij cyber meeting in which officials openly discussed the possibility of another round of protests, monitoring anti-government activity and concerns that individual Basij members could be identified online. (Iran International)

When the people responsible for crushing the next uprising are already discussing the next uprising, it is worth paying attention.

The Split That Could Matter Most

The single most important variable may eventually be whether the regime’s hardline lights decide they are unwilling to sink with the ideological hard core. Authoritarian systems often look much stronger from the outside than they really are. Security services stay loyal until parts of them stop being loyal. Business elites support the system until supporting the system threatens their money, their families or their ability to get out.

That is why the real inflection point may not simply be another million people in the streets. It could be another million people in the streets at exactly the same time that meaningful fractures start appearing inside the regime. Renewed protests combined with worsening Economic Fury, continued kinetic pressure, disrupted oil revenue and elite doubts about whether the leadership can survive indefinitely would create a very different situation from 2009, 2019 or even 2022.

At that point, insiders may face a fairly brutal choice. They can go down defending Khomeini’s ideological experiment, or they can look for a way to preserve themselves in whatever comes next. That does not mean Jeffersonian democracy appears the following morning. A post-Islamic Republic Iran could initially look much messier, perhaps something closer to a Moscow-style kleptocratic authoritarian system: less ideological, still corrupt and security-heavy, but willing to loosen social restrictions and normalize relations with the Gulf, Europe and eventually the United States in exchange for sanctions relief and investment.

That would not be the outcome many Iranian democrats want, but it could still represent a major break from revolutionary theocracy. History rarely gives anyone a clean transition.

The Martyrdom Doctrine: How Iran’s IRGC Turns Ideology into Strategy (prior Substack)

REGIME CHANGE WARNING: Many people (myself included) have regularly noted that we need regime change in Iran. We are already in the midst of regime change. As I have noted in my prior write-ups, a large swath of Iranian hardline leadership was taken out by Israeli and U.S. strikes in March 2026, so technically we are in the midst of regime change. Right now, the HARDLINE radicals who have a martyr’s mindset are in 100% control. If the hardline-lights take over, the people won’t have free reign on deciding their own future, and we are likely going to end up with “less bad” and not as religiously radical a band in charge.

On the downside, if the Hardliners fend off all challengers, the regime we end up with could be as bad or if not worse than what we have. Cautionary tale to the “Iran doves/moderates”: if we know this regime is driving the region off the cliff and we don’t know which way to steer to avoid doom, doing nothing is not an option either. So for now, I still remain wedded to what I have long said we need: IRAN REGIME CHANGE (From within, not abroad)

Escalate to De-Escalate, From Both Directions

This also comes back to something I have written about repeatedly: escalate to de-escalate. Washington and Jerusalem are increasing military and economic pressure because they believe additional pain will create leverage. Tehran is doing exactly the same thing in reverse. The Strait of Hormuz, missile attacks, threats against Gulf infrastructure, proxy warfare, oil prices, shipping insurance and gasoline prices are not separate issues. They are instruments in the same negotiation.

That negotiation is taking place with bombs, markets, sanctions and information simultaneously. It is irregular warfare wrapped around kinetic warfare, and a large portion of it is cognitive warfare. Iran does not need to defeat the United States military, and despite the propaganda coming out of Tehran, I suspect even the IRGC understands that would be a fairly ambitious project. What it needs to do is convince Americans that continuing the confrontation costs more than whatever Washington hopes to gain.

That means images of burning ships, rising oil prices, higher gasoline prices, nervous Gulf allies and a steady drumbeat of stories arguing that the war is too expensive or cannot be won. It means American politicians looking toward November and worrying about voters. Reuters has reported that fuel prices and the duration of the conflict are already becoming politically relevant ahead of the U.S. midterms while Tehran continues threatening offensive action around Hormuz. (Reuters)

My assessment is that Tehran increasingly sees time itself as a weapon: survive the pressure, escalate enough to raise the political cost for Washington, avoid the blow that actually breaks the regime and push the pain toward the U.S. midterms. Then hope a politically weakened Trump becomes more cautious afterward. It is a logical strategy from Tehran’s perspective, but it may also be a serious miscalculation because Iran is acting as though this game has only two players.

The Missing Player Is the Iranian People

The United States has military power. Israel has military and intelligence capabilities Iran has now experienced firsthand. Tehran still has missiles, asymmetric tools, proxies, geography and the ability to create serious problems for global energy markets. But there is a fourth source of power in this conflict that almost every geopolitical model tends to underweight: the Iranian people themselves.

For more than 25 years, opposition to the Islamic Republic has become broader, deeper and more openly directed at the regime. The clerical state has survived every round, but each time survival has required more arrests, more censorship, more internet shutdowns, more executions and more bloodshed. Every crackdown creates more families with a personal grievance. Every prison sentence creates another network of people with a reason to oppose the state.

That is not the same thing as stability. It is accumulated pressure, and eventually the question becomes whether the next protest collides with conditions that earlier movements did not have: severe economic crisis, war fatigue, elite fractures and weakening cohesion inside the security apparatus. The next uprising could certainly be suppressed again. Anyone confidently predicting the regime’s imminent collapse should remember that authoritarian systems can survive astonishing amounts of dysfunction.

But if regime change ultimately does come, I continue to believe it must come principally from within Iran. The United States cannot bomb democracy into existence. Israel cannot manufacture political legitimacy for an opposition movement, and Washington cannot select Iran’s next government and expect the Iranian people to accept it.

That does not mean the outside world has no role. The West can help keep communications open, expose corruption, identify officials responsible for atrocities, support circumvention technology when Tehran shuts down the internet and pressure the financial networks that keep the regime functioning. It can help Iranians communicate with one another and make it harder for the government to carry out a massacre in darkness.

It can also make clear to people inside the system that refusing illegal or murderous orders does not automatically mean they have no future. That is very different from externally imposed regime change, and it is a much more sustainable approach.

This Time, “Help Is on Its Way” Has to Mean Something

There is one final lesson Washington should keep in mind. During the January uprising, President Trump publicly told Iranian protesters to continue demonstrating and declared that “help is on its way.” He never clearly explained what that help meant. (Reuters)

That may sound like ordinary political rhetoric sitting in Washington. It sounds very different to someone standing in an Iranian street facing men with rifles. Words matter when people may die believing them, and the Iranian people have already paid an extraordinary price for challenging this government. If the next inflection point comes this fall, next year or five years from now, Washington needs to be careful about making promises it cannot or does not intend to keep.

Supporting the Iranian people does not mean sending American troops into Tehran. In almost every plausible scenario, it should not. There are much more useful forms of support: communications technology, cyber assistance, intelligence, information operations, targeted economic pressure on regime networks, documenting those ordering killings and helping Iranians get information in and out of the country when the government tries to shut the doors.

It also means watching the right things. Watch the bazaar, the universities and the women who continue ignoring compulsory hijab laws. Watch the workers, the provincial cities, ethnic minorities, the Basij and the IRGC business class. Most importantly, watch for the first meaningful cracks between the people who still genuinely believe in the revolution and those who decide they would rather keep their villas, businesses and children overseas than become martyrs for somebody else’s ideological experiment.

The Islamic Republic remains fixated on America and Israel, and given the military pressure it faces, that is understandable. But after more than 25 years of protests, crackdowns, arrests and steadily escalating resistance, Tehran might want to spend a little more time looking over its shoulder. The most consequential threat to the regime may still be the one standing directly behind it: the Iranian people themselves.