Domestic dissidents call for end to Islamic republic, while moderates back reforms within the system

Najmeh Bozorgmehr, Tehran correspondent

Financial Times

Prominent Iranian dissidents, political leaders and intellectuals are seizing on last month’s deadly crackdown on protesters to step up calls for radical change.

The country’s limited domestic opposition has been galvanised by the deaths of thousands of citizens and is pushing for total regime change. But moderate members of the political establishment are instead looking to drive change within the current set-up.

Former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the country’s most prominent dissident, argues the mass killings are yet more evidence that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s theocratic regime will never reform and must be replaced.

“Put down your guns and leave office,” the 83-year-old, who is under house arrest, said in a statement addressing the regime. “The game is over.”

Mousavi and his supporters are pushing for a constitutional referendum to enable a “democratic and peaceful” transition of power. “In what language should people tell you they don’t want you anymore?” he asked.

Others have stopped short of endorsing regime change. Centrist former president Hassan Rouhani, the architect of the 2015 nuclear deal that was later jettisoned by US President Donald Trump, has remained loyal to the regime while still calling for “major reform” to ensure that “people feel their message has been received”.

He has criticised the Islamic republic for “obstinate resistance” to popular demands. He has long believed a deal with the US for sanctions relief is the only way out of the current economic crisis, and has warned that a refusal to adapt now would risk far greater instability later.

The unrest began in late December, triggered by a 40 per cent collapse in the national currency after Israel’s brief war with Iran in June. After merchants took to the streets to protest the rial’s fall, largely peaceful demonstrations spread across the country, with a focus on economic hardship.

The dynamics shifted after Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of Iran’s last shah, called for nationwide demonstrations and Trump said he would support protesters if the regime used lethal force. Many Iranians began expecting decisive foreign support. The state responded with overwhelming force.

Authorities say more than 3,000 people were killed during the unrest, including members of the security forces, making it the deadliest episode of protest violence in Iran’s modern history. But the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency puts the confirmed toll at almost 7,000 so far, while opposition groups abroad claim the number runs into the tens of thousands.

For some reformists, the scale of the violence has laid bare just how bloody serious change would be.

Hatam Ghaderi, a Tehran-based political scientist who supports regime change, said the killings showed that any transition would be “very bloody”.

“The hard core of the system will hold on until the very last moment unless the soft core manages to push it aside, which is unlikely,” he told Radio Farda.

Ghaderi was among 17 prominent figures, including jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, to call for a referendum and a new constitution in a public letter describing the violence as a “crime against humanity”. Three signatories, including former student leader Abdollah Momeni, were arrested last week.

Iranian officials claim armed mercenaries, trained and funded by the US and Israel, were active on the ground, causing scenes in parts of Tehran and other cities that resembled civil war. The fate of Syria or Libya has since haunted public debate, leading to fears that abrupt regime change could cause Iran to disintegrate.

A business executive with ties to the regime said calls for outright regime change by Mousavi and other activists had made “an already critical situation even more fragile”, hardening resistance among security elites.

The fear of total collapse has reinforced the belief, shared by some local observers and western diplomats, that any eventual transition must emerge from within the system, potentially involving the powerful Revolutionary Guards. But many in the guards and other power centres remain openly hostile towards reformists.

Rouhani has drawn the brunt of their ire.

Lawmaker Hamid Rasaei has said he believes the US and Israel want Rouhani to lead the country. “They will be buried with this wish,” he said.

Another hardliner, Nasrollah Pejmanfar, said “major change” would only mean “arresting and hanging Rouhani” and dismantling what he alleged was a corrupt network around him.

Khamenei has shown no interest in concessions. On Sunday, he claimed the unrest was a “failed coup” orchestrated by the CIA and Mossad and suggested any fresh challenge could be crushed, saying his supporters would have a “divine mission” to act.

The supreme leader’s apocalyptic religious language has further estranged secular Iranians.

Most Iranians want a modern nation-state, rather than “multiple divine burdens . . . at the end of which they cannot afford a bag of rice”, Tehran-based sociologist Mohammad Fazeli said in a YouTube programme. “Iranians ask what they have gained from this ideology other than misery.”

Former vice-president Mohammad Ali Abtahi said the violence had caused an irreparable rupture between state and society. That has left only one path forward, he told the reformist ILNA news agency: a “return” of government “to the people” and the sidelining of radical hardline forces. “But,” he said, “I don’t see that happening.”