By Siamak Namazi 

Middle East Institute: 

The last few weeks in Iran have retaught us lessons we already knew — lessons written in blood, courage, denial, and cruelty.

We were reminded that the clerical regime’s ineptitude in governing is matched only by its aptitude for repression and mass murder. Moreover, events have once more demonstrated that although the overwhelming majority of Iranians is utterly fed up with clerical rule and capable of astonishing bravery, it remains outmatched by a state whose survival strategy is simple and ruthless: kill enough people, fast enough, to terrorize the rest into submission. We saw again that the opposition in exile remains deeply fragmented, its leaders often lacking experience in organizing civil resistance and, more troublingly, an appreciation for the regime’s willingness to slaughter its own citizens. We witnessed people, long known for their patriotism, who have grown so desperate that some now openly say they would welcome foreign military intervention — though we have no reliable way of measuring how widespread that sentiment truly is. And once again it became clear that Iranians cannot rely on the president of the United States — or any foreign power — to protect them from getting slaughtered, no matter how clearly or repeatedly such assurances may have been made.

At the time of this writing, the Islamic Republic has forced the streets into silence through mass killing and what amounts to martial law. To conceal the scale of the violence and cripple the population’s ability to organize or communicate with the outside world, the regime has shut down the internet and is attempting to disrupt Starlink connections. Reports continue to surface of security forces raiding homes and apartment buildings to tear down satellite dishes, while checkpoints are set up to search citizens’ phones for images documenting the carnage.

Despite this, images and videos of the regime’s forces carrying out gruesome killings — including the use of heavy machine guns — have continued to trickle out, along with photos of bodies stacked in morgues. Eyewitness testimony and accounts from medical professionals — some now outside the country, others able to place rare international calls — are increasing. Reputable human rights organizations have confirmed the identities of nearly 4,000 civilians killed, while credible reports suggest the true toll may be three to five times higher, approaching 20,000 men, women, and children slaughtered in a matter of days. This figure does not begin to capture the vastly larger number of unarmed civilians left permanently injured, often shot deliberately in the eyes or groin — methods long favored by the regime’s security apparatus, which has also been raiding hospitals in order to hunt down and detain the wounded.

As if all this were not enough, the regime has demanded reimbursement for the cost of the massacre. Families who locate the bodies of their loved ones after sifting through hundreds of corpses piled in morgues are forced to pay a so-called “bullet fee” to retrieve the remains for burial — unless they agree to falsely declare that the deceased was a member of the Basij Resistance Force (a volunteer paramilitary organization linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC) killed by “rioters.”

The regime has driven people back into their homes by brute force. But that which cannot go on, will not.

Why the status quo cannot hold

The repression may have quieted the streets, but it has not restored equilibrium. The latest uprising did not erupt in a vacuum. It was triggered by yet another sharp collapse of the national currency — an all-too-familiar shock that, this time, pushed the bazaaris (merchants) into the streets. Shortly beforehand, reports emerged that one of Iran’s major private banks had effectively gone bankrupt and was “rescued” by being folded into a larger state-owned institution. This was largely theater. In reality, Iran’s entire banking system is insolvent, its balance sheets sustained by fiction rather than assets.

Eight years of captivity in Iran’s infamous Evin prison alongside regime insiders — including senior officials, well-connected businessmen, and bankers — offered me an unfiltered education in how this system works. Iran lacks a genuine credit-reporting system, so large loans are collateralized almost exclusively through property deeds. Over time, politically connected borrowers perfected a scheme: they bribed evaluators to inflate property values — sometimes by as much as tenfold — secured massive loans, and, when repayment came due, simply handed the property to the bank. The bank would then sell these toxic assets to another bank at a paper profit, which it duly booked. The second bank knew it was buying garbage, but it played the same game in reverse — offloading its own toxic deeds and booking another fictitious gain.

The result is a closed-loop Ponzi scheme, sustained by mutual deception and regulatory complicity. This practice has metastasized over the past 15 years and is far more extensive than this simplified description suggests. And this is only the banking system. Much of the rest of Iran’s economy is afflicted by similarly entrenched corruption and mismanagement.

This financial decay mirrors an equally profound crisis of governance. Over the past two decades, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has systematically replaced semi-competent technocrats and experienced military figures with loyalists, elevating obedience over capability. The result is a textbook kakistocracy: at precisely the moment the country faces existential challenges, those charged with managing them are often the least qualified to do so.

Iran is running out of water. Its electricity grid is failing. The state struggles to provide basic goods, let alone repair its international isolation or bring down inflation. For years, the regime defended these failures by pointing to one remaining pillar of legitimacy: security. That pillar has now collapsed as well. The humiliating outcome of the recent Israeli-Iranian 12-day war shattered the last vestige of the regime’s implicit social contract.

Today, it is widely believed that an estimated 80 percent of Iranians view the system as illegitimate. At best, 20 percent can be counted as supporters — and even within that group, many are unwilling to kill their fellow citizens to preserve it. In a country of roughly 93 million people, nearly 80 million are effectively being held hostage by a small, violent minority.

That is not a stable equilibrium.

Why 1979 is the wrong analogy

In the early days of the mass protests, many observers predicted the regime’s imminent collapse. After the state once again succeeded in terrorizing people off the streets, a growing body of analysis swung in the opposite direction, emphasizing the regime’s durability and stressing how different today’s moment is from 1979, when Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was toppled.

In many respects, these differences are real. The shah, for all his political failures, ultimately chose to leave Iran rather than cling to power through mass slaughter. The clerical establishment and the IRGC have no such compunctions. In 1979, the opposition was also far more unified and organized than it is today. Analysts further note that many senior officials under the shah were able to find refuge in the West and resume professional lives after losing power, whereas today’s Islamic Republic officials — many with blood on their hands — have nowhere to flee and, therefore, view the struggle in existential terms: kill or be killed.

All of this is broadly correct. But it misses the most important distinction of all.

The shah’s regime, whatever its political shortcomings, was competent by regional standards. Iran in the late 1970s was economically dynamic, internationally engaged, and broadly respected. It was not a pariah state hollowed out by sanctions, institutionalized corruption, and systemic mismanagement.

Today’s Islamic Republic presides over the opposite. The comparison to 1979 is, therefore, not merely incomplete — it is misleading.  The situation in Iran at present does not resemble what it was under the monarchy in its final years. But a regime that has lost competence, legitimacy, and credibility — at home and abroad — cannot indefinitely substitute raw violence for governance.

The Islamic Republic has run out of pavement and will not last, at least not in its current form, for much longer.

The central variable: The end of the Khamenei era

All of the scenarios that follow are conditioned by one overriding factor: whether — and when — Ali Khamenei exits the scene.

Real change in Iran will not emerge while Khamenei remains in command. Since assuming the position of supreme leader in 1989, he has demonstrated — repeatedly and conclusively — that he will not permit meaningful political evolution within the Islamic Republic, let alone democratic transformation of the country. Faced with internal pressure, economic collapse, or international isolation, his response has been consistent: suppress, sideline, imprison, or kill — whatever is required to preserve a status quo he alone defines, even when that status quo has become patently unsustainable.

Khamenei has systematically eliminated or neutralized every figure within the system who showed signs of independent authority or reformist ambition. Presidents, ministers, clerics, technocrats, and commanders have all learned the same lesson: adaptability is disloyalty; competence is secondary to obedience. The kakistocracy that now defines the Islamic Republic is not an accident — it is the direct product of Khamenei’s governing philosophy.

Iran is already living in the shadow of a post-Khamenei order. At 86, the supreme leader is reportedly spending much of his time in hiding after recent Israeli strikes decimated the senior military leadership. Succession planning has quietly — but intensely — occupied the political system for years. What remains uncertain is timing, and timing matters enormously.

A prolonged twilight — marked by declining authority but continued survival — would likely reinforce repression, incentivize elite risk aversion, and delay meaningful fractures within the regime. By contrast, Khamenei’s sudden departure — whether through natural causes or otherwise — would represent a genuine inflection point. It would not guarantee democratic change, but it would remove the single most effective veto player against it.

A post-Khamenei Iran would reshape the political context in which every other variable operates.

What comes next — and what it depends on

The question, then, is not whether the Islamic Republic can return to the status quo ante — it cannot — but what replaces the current impasse, how long this phase lasts, and at what cost. The collapse of the regime in its present form now seems more plausible than its survival as a functioning state. Yet the emergence of a democratic Iran remains far from certain. Between these two outcomes lies a volatile and dangerous middle ground.

Much will depend on four factors.

1. Foreign intervention

Whether and how the United States and other external actors choose to intervene will shape — but not determine — Iran’s trajectory. Limited military strikes are unlikely, on their own, to bring the regime down, particularly in the absence of a broader political strategy. A ground invasion is implausible, and the United States’ record of producing democracy through force is uninspiring. Moreover, it would be a mistake to assume that Washington’s priorities align with the aspirations of the Iranian people. President Donald Trump’s decisions will be driven first by personal and political calculations, then by perceived US interests. A deal with elements of the existing regime — or with a strongman emerging from within the IRGC — in exchange for concessions on oil, regional issues, or nuclear containment remains entirely conceivable. Such a development might suit this administration but will do little for the Iranian people and so is unlikely to produce real stability.

2. The behavior of the opposition

Symbolic popularity is not the same as organizational capacity. While figures such as Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah and the crown prince, clearly command attention and emotional resonance among segments of the population, the opposition as a whole remains fragmented, and divided by deep mistrust. The opposition abroad, in particular, is also inexperienced in leading sustained civil resistance. Moreover, Pahlavi’s actual standing inside Iran remains unclear in the aftermath of a mobilization that ended in mass repression. Many people responded to his call to protest only to face slaughter. Whether that experience has strengthened or weakened his credibility is unknown, but the latter seems much more likely. It is also impossible to determine how many of those chanting his name did so out of genuine political conviction, and how many did so simply to amplify the loudest available opposition voice in a moment of desperation. Inside Iran — and within the diaspora as well — there exists a large constituency whose primary political position is not allegiance to a particular leader but the belief that almost anything would be preferable to the current regime.

3. Information control and connectivity

Courage without coordination cannot scale. The regime’s ability to shut down the internet, disrupt satellite communications, and sever links between cities and regions remains one of its most powerful tools. Sustained mobilization, nationwide strikes, and collective action all depend on communication. As long as the state retains near-total control over information flows, popular movements will struggle to translate outrage into durable pressure.

4. Elite dynamics within the regime itself

The Islamic Republic is not monolithic. From the inside, it resembles a patronage-based system in which factions compete primarily over resources and survival. Yet history shows that when faced with existential threat, these factions closed ranks and coordinated repression. Meaningful change will require fractures within the regime’s hard core — particularly within the security services. Such fractures are unlikely as long as insiders believe they have no exit and no future outside the system. But should those calculations change, the balance could shift rapidly.

Where the real hope for a democratic Iran lies

If Iran is to emerge from this crisis as a genuine democracy — rather than the Islamic Republic with a different leader, a military strongman, or another authoritarian arrangement — the source of that transformation matters as much as its timing.

The most credible hope for a democratic Iran lies inside the country, among its civil activists, labor organizers, students, professionals, women’s groups, and reform-minded insiders who understand how Iran actually functions. Decades of corrupt and coercive rule have turned Iran into a byzantine system to govern. Any successful democratic transition will require intimate knowledge of the country’s political economy, its elite networks, its bureaucracy, and — most critically — the ability to secure at least passive cooperation from large parts of the state and security apparatus.

That cannot be orchestrated from abroad.

While opposition figures in exile can amplify voices, mobilize international attention, and help coordinate external pressure, they lack the embedded knowledge and operational leverage required to govern such a vast and diverse country. More importantly, it is unlikely that the leaders in the diaspora will be able to command the loyalty — or even the compliance — of Iran’s bureaucracy or military on their own.

In an ideal world, democratic forces inside Iran and supporters outside the country would work in close coordination: internal actors providing legitimacy, organization, and continuity, while external actors offer resources, protection, and diplomatic leverage. Together, they could help unlock Iran’s immense political, economic, and international potential.

But Iran is still far from that point.

A dangerous interregnum

The Islamic Republic as we know it cannot endure. However, its collapse or transformation does not guarantee liberation. What Iran is entering is not a revolution’s endgame but a dangerous interregnum — one in which brutality has proven effective, legitimacy has evaporated, and the future remains profoundly contested.

The tragedy is not that Iranians lack courage. It is that courage alone is not enough.

Siamak Namazi is a former senior strategy executive who is now a keynote speaker and advises leaders on decision-making, leadership, and policy under uncertainty. He was a US hostage in Iran from 2015 to 2023.