Iran’s future will be decided by Iranians, not by the US or exiled princes

There are moments in the life of a political order when repression ceases to restore authority and exposes its exhaustion. Iran appears to be living through such a moment now. What we are witnessing across the country is not simply another cycle of protest and crackdown – of which the Islamic Republic has become grimly adept – but something closer to a reckoning long deferred, now arriving under conditions that the regime itself has helped to make irreversible.

The demonstrations that have spread from Tehran to provincial towns and peripheral cities are animated, as always in Iran, by an accumulation of grievances rather than a single cause. Economic collapse has provided the immediate spark: A currency in free fall, wages rendered meaningless by inflation, and a daily erosion of dignity for those who were once promised moral purpose in exchange for material sacrifice. But economic pain alone does not explain the persistence of the unrest. What distinguishes the present moment is the growing conviction, widely shared, that there is no longer any corrective mechanism within the system itself. The state can punish; it can no longer persuade.

The regime’s response has been predictably violent and revealingly unimaginative. Internet blackouts, mass arrests, lethal force, and ritual invocations of foreign plots have followed a script perfected over decades. Yet repetition has drained these tactics of their authority. When a government relies exclusively on coercion, it tacitly admits that consent – the quiet, indispensable lubricant of rule – has evaporated. What remains is fear, and it is a wasting asset.

It is tempting, particularly outside Iran, to frame such moments in terms of imminent collapse or democratic breakthrough. History counsels caution. States often survive long after they deserve to, and revolutions rarely unfold on the schedules of those who anticipate them. Still, it would be equally mistaken to treat this uprising as merely another chapter in a familiar cycle. Several features mark it as different, and potentially more consequential.

For the first time since the early years of the Islamic Republic, an opposition figure has emerged who functions less as a saviour than as a focal point. The former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s appeal does not lie in a promise of restored monarchy – an idea for which there is scant appetite – but in his symbolic usefulness as a transitional figure, a placeholder for a future not yet fully imagined. His prominence reflects less a yearning for the past than a hunger for political continuity without clerical domination. In a country where opposition has long been fragmented, this alone matters.

The regime’s predicament is compounded by its lack of credible internal alternatives. In earlier crises, the Islamic Republic could gesture toward reform, however insincerely, or rotate elites in ways that preserved the system while relieving pressure. That repertoire has been exhausted. The state cannot meet the protestors’ demands because doing so would require dismantling the very networks of privilege, corruption, and impunity on which it depends. Reform is no longer a path forward for either the ruling elite or the average citizen.

Externally, Tehran finds itself more isolated than its rhetoric admits. Russia and China, so often invoked as strategic partners, maintain unmistakably transactional relationships. Their interest lies in leverage and stability, not ideological solidarity. An Iran weakened by unrest and economic collapse offers diminishing returns. There will be statements opposing “foreign interference,” but no meaningful guarantees of rescue. The age of revolutionary camaraderie has given way to the colder arithmetic of cost and benefit.

Hovering over all of this is the shadow of the United States. The Trump administration’s response – combining public threats, economic pressure, and vague offers of engagement – has deepened Tehran’s sense of vulnerability without offering a plausible exit. Iranian leaders remember all too well the deception and miscalculation that preceded the brief but punishing war with Israel and the United States. Negotiation now appears both necessary and dangerous: A gamble undertaken from weakness, haunted by precedent, and constrained by domestic unrest that leaves little room for compromise.

The result is a regime trapped between fear of its own society and distrust of the outside world. It cannot repress its way back to legitimacy, nor can it negotiate its way out of isolation without risking further internal fracture. This is what political exhaustion looks like: Not collapse, but paralysis.

Whether this moment becomes a turning point remains uncertain. Transitions are rarely linear, and history offers no guarantees. But what is clear is that the Islamic Republic has reached the limits of its governing imagination. It no longer knows how to adapt without undoing itself. That, more than the crowds in the streets or the slogans shouted at night, is the most telling sign of change.

Iran’s future will be decided by Iranians, not by foreign governments or exiled princes. Yet the present unrest suggests that the old order has lost its claim to inevitability. The critical question now is how much damage it will inflict on ordinary Iranians before accepting that its time, at last, is up.

The writer is associate professor of International Studies at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University, and the author of several books on Iran’s political development and US-Iran relations