Iran’s current protest cycle is unlikely to culminate in regime change, barring a collapse into instability caused by heavy foreign strikes. More plausibly, unrest will settle into a lower-intensity rhythm with periodic flare-ups punctuating a deeper, unresolved crisis.
This trajectory raises the more consequential question of why change has not occurred, and what conditions would be necessary for it to do so.
There is no shortage of reasons to believe the Islamic Republic is structurally brittle. Protesters enjoy broad international sympathy; the economy is trapped in a chronic crisis; opposition movements exist both abroad and, more diffusely, at home; and elite cohesion is thinner than official displays suggest.
Layered on top is a generational rupture. A below-30 population representing slightly less than half the population, economically stranded and socially constrained, confronts a leadership that is ideologically rigid, geriatric, and strategically paralyzed. In this sense, the claim that the Islamic Republic cannot endure indefinitely in its current form is persuasive.
But inevitability is not imminence. As long as elite fractures do not translate into moderates persuading the military and security establishment to step aside, and as long as there is no credible opposition with a coherent and reassuring vision, the system can endure or collapse in ways that produce state failure rather than transition. For now, mid- to lower-level officials who privately doubt the system do not hold the keys to change without incurring existential risk, while the Supreme Leader remains firmly opposed to any meaningful change.
The top security establishment remains the final arbiter of power, and absent an inviting alternative, it has little incentive to spearhead meaningful change. This is why scenarios centred on an “IRGC takeover” are not plausible. In addition to not being a monolith, the Guards are, as their name suggests, guardians of the post-1979 order. Their power and identity derive from preserving the system and its subsequent iterations. Any internal reshuffle would recycle authority rather than resolve the social, economic, and legitimacy crises driving unrest.
Equally simplistic is the idea that Iran is now ruled by purely predatory mafias devoid of ideology or a support base. A more nuanced reality prevails. The highest political offices remain dominated by aging true believers with loyal but economically struggling supporters. Around them sits a slightly younger cohort—often sons or networks—who control important economic levers, benefit from sanctions-distorted markets, and appear less ideological.
Yet they lack formal political power and, for now, have little reason to upend a status quo that rewards them. Meaningful change likely requires both generational turnover and the erosion of these economic rents—a process that could, in theory, be accelerated but not guaranteed by President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Where the picture truly breaks down is the opposition. A viable alternative cannot be built on maximalist, anti–Islamic Republic rhetoric that alienates a sizable minority of Iranians who remain supportive of the system or, more commonly, ambivalent toward any alternative. Persuasion, not purification, is key.
