Iran: An Opening Phase Toward a Path of Transformation
- sara john
- Jan 18
- 3 min read
Since late December 2025, Iran has been moving at an accelerated pace toward a dangerous trajectory—one that cannot be sufficiently described as merely “livelihood protests.”
The current wave of protests appears closer to a serious test of the political system’s future, not only because the streets have filled, but because the rules of the game themselves have undergone a profound transformation. When the expected returns of internal actors—authority, protesters, hesitant elites, coercive apparatuses, and corruption networks—change, the conflict shifts from a debate over prices to a wager on the state model in its entirety.
The significance of place here outweighs that of slogans. The spark this time erupted from Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, which is not merely a market, but a historical node within the founding social contract of the regime. The bazaar’s role has shifted from a “social balancing valve” to a “theater of protest,” signaling that the economy is no longer a neutral arena and that the Revolutionary Guard’s dominance over trade and finance has pushed small and medium commercial classes into margins unable to withstand inflation and sanctions.
Here, the conflict advances from the periphery to the core: the core of revenues, interest networks, and the legitimacy of managing livelihoods.
This fragility is compounded by a recent memory. The June 2025 war, followed by U.S. strikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, inflicted a massive rupture—not only in the structure of national deterrence, but also in the regime’s “victorious” national legitimacy narrative.
Domestically, it has become difficult to market the “regional cost” of Iran’s proxies as a successful investment when citizens perceive that the state failed to protect the country and that those proxies are effectively finished.
In game theory terms, possessing deterrence tools is insufficient; they must be credible to others, both internally and externally. Regardless of its details, the war introduced doubt into “credibility and commitment” more than it instilled fear.
Media blackout further complicated calculations. While near-total internet shutdowns allow for rapid disruption of horizontal mass coordination, they simultaneously amplify rumors and prevent the formation of “common public knowledge” necessary for a peaceful exit from crisis. In crises, lack of information can be as dangerous as its excess; a single breach or image can flip survival expectations, turning obedience into hesitation, and hesitation into contagion.
Nevertheless, the regime still retains a solid core of resilience structured around a triangle: rent, ideology, and elite cohesion.
Rent persists through oil revenues flowing into the hands of the regime and the Revolutionary Guard, yet it is a sanctioned rent—its capacity to purchase loyalty diminished under sanctions, war damage, and currency collapse.
Although ideology continues to mobilize the hard base and justify repression, it erodes as economic and service performance legitimacy declines, along with national deterrence legitimacy.
Elite cohesion, despite factional differences, remains likely for now, as elites prefer “organized repression” over chaotic regime collapse.
Here lies the paradox of power: repression secures temporary control while accumulating conditions for future explosion. Protesters possess latent power through strikes, revenue disruption, and erosion of loyalty reserves, yet they suffer from weak organization and commitment due to the absence of unified leadership and a credible vision for the day after—an issue that deters hesitant actors from joining the streets.
The decisive factor remains the “agents” on the ground: the security apparatuses. The relationship between leadership and field agents is a classic “principal–agent” dynamic; as personal costs rise—economically, prospectively, and reputationally—the likelihood of discontent increases. Thus, equilibrium rarely collapses due to protester numbers alone, but rather through shifts in survival expectations within the regime itself.
Externally, experience shows that direct military intervention at the peak of protests serves regime national narratives, whereas softer tools—communication support, targeted sanctions, and multilateral pressure—allow protest development without granting the authority the “enemy” pretext. In the background, Russia plays the role of “regime stabilizer” diplomatically and securitically, while keeping its options open for sudden shifts.
Between six and eighteen months, four trajectories emerge with approximate probability estimates: short-term containment with chronic instability (about 55 percent); managed transition through limited elite division and difficult guarantees (about 25 percent); rapid collapse with high impact tied to broad security defection (about 10 percent); and escalating internationalization of the crisis as a permanent risk—potentially devolving into unknown paths if external actors become involved (about 10 percent).
Thus, Iran’s current condition represents a phase in which a path of transformation opens almost inevitably, where time—not slogans—will be the most ruthless and decisive actor.
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