Negar Mojtahedi 

Iran International: 

Iranians are increasingly discontented with how their country is run but the Islamic Republic persists because of its ability and willingness to crush dissent by force, ex-CIA analyst and National Security Council director Ken Pollack told Eye for Iran.

Pollack’s assessment comes as Iran faces overlapping crises at home and abroad.

The country is under intense economic strain, social dissent has become more visible and the Islamic Republic is recalibrating after military setbacks suffered by the June war with Israel.

Yet despite the pressure, Pollack said the system remains intact for a simple reason.

“Revolutions only succeed when regimes lose either the capacity or the willingness to use force,” he said. “The Islamic Republic learned from 1979. It is determined not to repeat the Shah’s mistake.”

“There is no question this country is in a pre-revolutionary state,” Pollack added. “They’re trying to have a revolution.”

Pollack pointed to Iran’s long cycle of unrest, tracing repeated efforts to challenge the Islamic Republic back to the 1999 student uprising.

Since then, protest waves have erupted every few years, including nationwide demonstrations and the women-led revolt that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.

Each time, he said, the population pushed harder, experimented with new tactics and widened the social base of dissent.

What stopped those efforts, Pollack said, was not a lack of public anger but the clerical establishment's consistent readiness to deploy force.

Pollack said episodes of unrest, such as at a public memorial service on Friday for a lawyer who died under mysterious circumstances, highlight the paradox defining Iran today: visible cracks in social control paired with an unflinching security response.

Looking ahead, Pollack identified the eventual death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the most serious potential inflection point.

At 86, the health of the veteran theocrat has become a subject of quiet speculation even inside Iran. Succession, Pollack warned, can destabilize authoritarian systems by exposing elite rivalries or paralyzing decision-making.

“Succession can just as easily lead to chaos, fragmentation or something worse,” he warned. “These systems often survive by becoming more repressive, not less.”

Pollack also criticized US policy for focusing too narrowly on Iran’s nuclear program while sidelining Iran's regional behavior and domestic repression. He warned that treating nuclear negotiations as the central problem risks missing broader forces shaping Iran’s future.

“The nuclear program is an irritant,” he said. “The real issue is the regime’s drive to dominate the region and its willingness to repress its own population to survive.”

For now, Pollack said, Iran remains suspended in a dangerous middle ground: a society actively trying to change its political fate and a state still capable of stopping it.

“These regimes can endure for a long time,” he said. “But when they finally break, it usually happens faster than anyone expects.”