Why Regime Change in Iran Remains Elusive
Hatred of a regime does not necessarily make people willing to risk their lives to overthrow it. That distinction is central to understanding why the Islamic Republic of Iran has survived repeated waves of public anger. Many Iranians deeply resent the Islamic regime and wish to see it gone, but wanting political change is very different from being prepared to confront a ruling system that has repeatedly shown its willingness to imprison, torture and kill those who challenge its authority. The decisive question, therefore, is not simply how unpopular the regime has become. It is what can make enough people overcome their fear of the consequences of a revolt.
Two forces can push people across that threshold. The first is when people feel their dignity has been violated and humiliation becomes harder to endure than the risks of confronting the regime. The second is severe hunger, when life under the existing order becomes less bearable than risking death to change it. These forces affect Iran’s nationalities differently, helping explain both the intensity of repeated protests and their failure, so far, to bring down the regime.
Among Kurds and Baluchis, dignity has long carried particular political weight. For many within these nationalities, dignity means more than personal respect. It means being able to live freely as Kurds or Baluchis without having to suppress who they are, while enjoying the same political, cultural and social standing as other citizens. When the regime treats their identity, language or political aspirations as a threat, resistance can become a means of defending their sense of identity and belonging, and ultimately their dignity. In this context, their grievances could not be reduced simply to wages, inflation or economy.
Yet dignity is not confined to national identity, and this is where the role of women becomes crucial. Across Iran’s nationalities, women have demonstrated that the violation of personal dignity can also overcome fear. During the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, many women openly challenged compulsory restrictions on their bodies and lives despite knowing the risks involved. Their actions showed that when submission itself becomes intolerable, the fear of repression can lose its power.
The central challenge for the opposition is that the courage shown by particular groups does not automatically spread to the wider population. Kurdish and Baluchi protesters, women and many others have displayed remarkable resolve, yet their example has not drawn sufficiently large sections of society into sustained action capable of threatening the regime’s survival. Sympathy alone is not enough. Millions may admire those who confront the regime while still being unwilling to expose themselves and their families to the same risks.
For those unwilling to risk their lives for dignity alone, another force must shift the balance. That force is hunger.
Hunger in this sense is not simply economic hardship. Inflation, unemployment, declining purchasing power and falling living standards can generate deep resentment without producing revolutionary action. As long as people believe they can somehow endure, the instinct to preserve what remains may outweigh the impulse to confront the regime.
But that calculation can change when the limits of endurance are reached. Once people have exhausted every means of coping and can no longer be confident of meeting their most basic needs, the fear of confronting the regime may begin to lose its power.
At that point, the psychological balance changes. A person who sees no credible prospect of improvement may begin to view continued existence under the same conditions as intolerable. The prospect of dying while resisting the regime may remain frightening, but it is weighed against a life that appears to offer only continuing deprivation and hunger. When enough people reach that conclusion at the same time, economic suffering can become politically explosive.
It is at such a stage that I would expect a genuinely decisive popular uprising to become possible among sufficiently large sections of Persian and Azeri society. People who were not prepared to risk death for dignity alone may become willing to take that risk when the alternative is a life they can no longer endure. What changes is not necessarily their political opinion; many already have wanted the regime gone for years. What changes is the price they are prepared to pay.
That broader breaking point, however, has not yet been reached. Economic hardship is severe and public resentment is deep, but for much of Persian and Azeri society the conditions have not deteriorated to the point where the risks of uprising appear preferable to continued endurance. Until that calculation changes across a sufficiently large section of the population, anger and dissatisfaction may remain widespread without developing into the kind of mass mobilisation capable of threatening the regime’s survival.
The Islamic Republic continues to survive because this threshold has been crossed unevenly across Iranian society. Kurdish and Baluchi protesters, along with many women, have shown that attacks on dignity can make people willing to accept extraordinary risks. Yet the courage of particular groups cannot by itself overcome a powerful security apparatus. Regime change would require that willingness to spread much further. Among many Persians and Azeris, severe and prolonged hunger may ultimately provide the force that dignity alone has not.
If that moment comes, the regime would face a fundamentally different challenge. Large numbers of citizens may feel they have little left to lose by joining an uprising.
Until that threshold is crossed, Iran’s central paradox is likely to remain. The desire for change may be widespread, hostility towards the regime deep and the courage of some protesters undeniable, yet the Islamic Republic can still survive.
Regimes do not fall simply because people want them gone. They fall when enough people are willing to bear the cost of bringing them down.
