Surprise Protests Expose Iran’s Hidden Weakness

How the Iranian regime responds will influence the entire Middle East region.

The protests that spread like wildfire across Iran have caught everyone by surprise: the Iranian regime, its foreign foes and allies, and even the liberal Iranians who supported the Green Movement demonstrations of 2009.

The so-far leaderless protests have already exposed a major internal weakness of the Islamic Republic just as it enjoyed unprecedented regional sway, with significant military and political successes in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon following the defeat of Islamic State.

How the Iranian regime—with its struggle between relative conservatives and reformers amid the looming succession of 78-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei —responds to this challenge will influence the entire Middle East in coming months.

While a brutal crackdown could stamp out the current unrest, it could also provoke an insurgency or even civil war, a nightmare scenario for European nations that fear another refugee wave. Yielding to some of the protesters’ demands could end up liberalizing the Iranian system and bolster reformers—but, if taken as a sign of weakness, it may also precipitate an even more violent confrontation down the road.

These fresh protests are targeting not just Mr. Rouhani’s camp but the entire government system of the Islamic Republic. In town after town, protesters destroyed images of Mr. Khamenei, criticized Iran’s involvement in Syria and other costly foreign wars, and even chanted slogans calling for a return to the monarchy that was overthrown in the 1979 revolution.

While dozens of deaths have been reported, so far the Iranian security forces have been responding with more restraint than they showed in 2009. Mr. Rouhani has said that Iranians have the right to express their grievances and protest. Both he and Mr. Khamenei, however, accused Iran’s foreign enemies of instigating the demonstrations as part of a conspiracy to undermine the Islamic Republic. On Wednesday, the government organized massive rallies to show popular support for the regime.

the protesters in out-of-the-way towns are often angry not just with the Shiite clerical establishment that’s effectively ruling Iran but also with the privileged—and often liberal—elites of northern Tehran. In a reflection of that, those uneasy with these protests include many of the relative reformers who supported the Green Movement in 2009 and voted for Mr. Rouhani in last year’s elections—but don’t actually want Iran’s entire post-1979 system overthrown.

Many Iranians, after all, are all too aware of the tragedies that befell Syria after that country’s regime attempted to crush similar protests in 2011.

Amir Toumaj, Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative think-tank in Washington [said,] “What the regime will do is to try to double down and fight until the end”. “These guys will do it even if this means that they will have to burn down the whole country.”

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