Street Protests Alone Cannot Overthrow Iran’s Regime

On 10 August, Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, ordered the completion of a consequential military reorganisation: the merger of the Armed Forces General Staff, which develops strategic guidance and military policy, with Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, which directs joint and wartime operations. The two bodies had been separated by his father in 2016. Their recombination is intended to accelerate decisions and improve coordination between Iran’s regular armed forces, the Artesh, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

This is not a formal absorption of the Artesh into the IRGC. The two forces retain different identities and missions. But the reorganisation compresses the command structure above them, while a series of senior appointments has placed veterans of the Guard and internal-security apparatus at crucial junctions. It is a wartime reform, but it also has unmistakable implications for domestic control: the regime is trying to make hesitation, institutional divergence and fragmented command less likely in its next crisis.

That August move is a reason to revisit what happened in January. Iranians then did something extraordinary. Beginning with merchants angered by economic collapse, protests spread across the country and rapidly became a direct challenge to the Islamic Republic. No credible national headcount is possible under the communications blackout, but Human Rights Activists News Agency documented protest activity at 682 locations in 203 cities across all 31 provinces. The regime answered with organised violence on an unprecedented scale. HRANA later verified the deaths of 6,488 protesters and 236 children, within a confirmed total of 7,007 that also counts 207 members of the security forces, and left 11,744 additional cases under review. TIME reported that two senior Iranian Health Ministry officials placed the toll as high as 30,000, broadly consistent with a clandestine count compiled from hospitals by physicians and first responders. TIME could not independently verify those higher figures. The precise total remains disputed; the fact of a mass atrocity does not.

Yet the regime survived. That outcome is sometimes explained as proof that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is simply too powerful to overcome. It is a tempting conclusion, particularly after the IRGC’s subsequent consolidation of wartime authority. But it draws the wrong lesson from January. The uprising failed because a huge eruption of street opposition did not become sustained national non-cooperation, and because no consequential pillar of the state withdrew its support while the streets were still full.

That distinction matters because the demonstrations reveal opposition. They do not, by themselves, transfer power. A regime falls when it can no longer make the country function, when those who execute its orders begin to hesitate, and when enough institutions conclude that their future lies beyond the incumbent order. January reached the first stage, but not the others.

What was Missing in January

Research on civil resistance has repeatedly distinguished protest from non-cooperation. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan’s comparative work found that nonviolent campaigns have historically been more successful than armed campaigns in part because they can mobilise broader participation, erode the legitimacy of repression and induce loyalty shifts among a regime’s supporters. Later research has also shown that movements have become less successful when they rely too heavily on episodic mass demonstrations and neglect organisation, strategic sequencing and durable social coalitions.

January produced widespread demonstrations and some commercial closures, but not a sufficiently sustained interruption of the institutions on which the state depends. A government can survive enormous crowds if ministries continue operating, energy and transportation systems remain under direction, public employees report for work, the banking system processes orders, state broadcasters transmit the official narrative and security forces remain cohesive. Belarus in 2020 illustrated the danger: immense demonstrations continued for months, but the security apparatus and state administration remained cohesive enough to keep Alexander Lukashenka in power. The streets can appear revolutionary while the machinery of government remains intact.

Iran’s communications blackout compounded that weakness. Local action could be isolated, rumours could replace coordination, and the regime could concentrate coercive forces city by city. Surveillance was not only digital. Amnesty International documented checkpoints, searches of mobile telephones, curfews, device confiscation and armed patrols. No application can eliminate those risks. A resilient movement therefore needs pre-agreed objectives, trusted personal networks, decentralised local initiative, diaspora communications relay and plans capable of continuing when national internet access disappears. January’s movement had moral clarity, but not yet a structure resilient enough to continue when visible gatherings became lethal.

Most importantly, January did not produce significant defections within the military, security or political establishment. Romania in December 1989 provides the comparison: Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime collapsed rapidly once the regular army stopped repressing demonstrators and aligned itself with the uprising, leaving his personalised security apparatus isolated. Iran saw no decisive formation of regular army units refusing orders, no senior officials abandoning the government in numbers and no administrative institutions declaring neutrality. The regime therefore faced mass public rejection without an internal break in the chain of command. It chose massacre, and its coercive apparatus obeyed.

A Regime Cannot Govern by Force Alone

The Islamic Republic is exceptionally well designed to prevent just such a break. Iran does not have one unified military institution. The regular armed forces, or Artesh, are charged principally with defending the country. The IRGC was created to defend the revolution and has become an ideological, military, intelligence and economic power centre. The Basij, under IRGC authority, supplies a locally embedded network for mobilisation, surveillance and repression. Police, intelligence bodies, courts and patronage networks add further layers.

This architecture makes an early IRGC defection improbable. The Guard is not merely protecting the regime; in important respects, it operationalises the regime. Its senior commanders’ authority, wealth and exposure to accountability are tied to the system’s survival. The assumption that the IRGC will suddenly join demonstrators is therefore a poor basis for strategy.

The Artesh is different, although no one should romanticise it. Its leadership is vetted, monitored and integrated into the state’s command structure, and regular forces may obey orders for institutional or national-security reasons even when individual soldiers dislike the government. Still, the Artesh draws from the broader population, carries a national rather than explicitly revolutionary identity, and has less of an institutional stake in clerical rule. If a future crisis produces military fracture, neutrality or selective refusal is more plausible there than at the core of the IRGC.

Canada’s policy should reflect that distinction. Having listed the IRGC as a terrorist entity, Canada should not treat Iran’s regular armed forces as institutionally identical to the Guard. Individual members of either force must remain accountable for crimes, but Ottawa should signal that Artesh personnel who refuse unlawful orders, remain neutral and help preserve civilian institutions need not be excluded from a lawful transition. Conflating the two forces would remove an incentive for the very neutrality a peaceful transfer of power may require.

The practical objective is therefore not to defeat the IRGC in a contest of weapons. Militarising a popular movement would narrow participation, give the authorities a stronger justification for indiscriminate force and make the regular military less likely to view the opposition as representing the nation. The decisive question is whether the coercive apparatus can be politically isolated while the country’s civilian institutions progressively stop sustaining it. Put simply, the regime falls only when ordinary government stops supporting the institutions that repress its opponents.

What a Successful Sequence Could Look Like

A more credible path begins with renewed public protest, but it cannot end there.

First, demonstrations must become sustained national non-cooperation. Bazaar merchants matter, but so do transport workers, teachers, civil servants, industrial employees, professionals, students and employees of state-linked enterprises. The object is not one dramatic day in the streets. It is an expanding inability of the authorities to restore normal governance without making political concessions.

Second, the movement must remain broad enough to represent Iran rather than a single class, province, ethnicity or ideology. That includes Persians and minorities, religious and secular citizens, monarchists, republicans, labour organisations, professionals and those who simply want competent government. A coalition need not agree on Iran’s final constitution to agree that the population must be allowed to choose it.

Third, sustained non-cooperation must produce an institutional withdrawal of support. That is more precise than describing the process as elite separation. Identifiable political figures, clerics, business leaders, municipal authorities, professional associations and public administrators must begin distancing themselves from repression by resigning, refusing illegal directions, demanding investigations, declaring neutrality or acknowledging that a political transition has become necessary. Their motives may be principled or self-interested. Either way, each withdrawal reduces the cost of the next one.

Fourth, the security dilemma must move inside the state. Police units may first avoid confrontation or fail to report. Conscripts may refuse deployment. Artesh commanders may keep their troops in barracks, protect public facilities without attacking demonstrators or state publicly that the regular armed forces defend Iran rather than a political faction. That was the choice that deprived Ceaușescu of a unified state in 1989. The crucial development would not necessarily be the army joining the revolution. Neutrality at the decisive moment could be enough to deny the IRGC the appearance of a united state.

Fifth, once refusals become visible, a cascade becomes possible. Provincial officials hedge. Clerics seek safe passage or distance themselves from collective punishment. Technocrats preserve records and public services rather than carry out last-minute orders. Parts of the police stop enforcing directives. These shifts would be driven less by sudden ideological conversion than by changing calculations of survival. If officials conclude that the regime can no longer protect or pay them, and if the opposition credibly promises continuity of public services, individual rather than collective accountability, and protection for those who refuse illegal orders, neutrality becomes less dangerous than continued loyalty. The IRGC may remain repressive to the end, but it becomes an isolated faction confronting a society it cannot administer and a state whose other components no longer reliably obey.

Only then does a representative transitional authority become essential. Announcing a government-in-waiting too early would invite factional rivalry, create a target for the security services and pretend to possess authority that has not yet shifted. A transitional body becomes credible near the end of the cascade, when it can receive defections, negotiate the continuity of essential services, prevent score-settling and establish a lawful route to elections and constitutional choice.

A Common Songbook Not a Premature Government

This does not mean opposition figures inside and outside Iran should remain silent until the final stage. They need not agree on a leader or create a cabinet in exile, but they should articulate a common minimum programme. Reza Pahlavi, republican organisations, civil-society networks, labour voices and minority representatives would strengthen the prospects for a peaceful transition if they repeatedly affirmed Iran’s territorial integrity and equal citizenship for all communities; freedom of religion and conscience; a state that does not impose clerical rule; and universal civil and political rights, including equality for women.

The same programme should promise a referendum and genuinely free elections through which Iranians choose their form of government. It should protect essential public services, records and property through the transition. It should also commit to individual accountability for crimes established through law and evidence, while rejecting collective retribution against conscripts, civil servants, religious families or ordinary members of institutions associated with the old order.

Canada’s large and politically diverse Iranian diaspora could help establish that common songbook. Monarchists, republicans, minority communities, human-rights advocates and professional associations need not settle Iran’s final constitutional structure in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal. They could nevertheless agree to repeat the same minimum commitments in Persian and English through community organisations, media and their relationships inside Iran. Canada can convene and protect that dialogue without selecting its outcome. The purpose would not be to create a Canadian government-in-exile, but to make the democratic guarantees familiar enough that Iranians inside the state can judge what a transition would and would not mean.

The final principle may be the most immediately consequential. People within the state are less likely to abandon a failing regime if they believe defeat means punishment for their family, profession or social group. A credible distinction between individual criminal responsibility and collective revenge is not softness. It is a mechanism for accelerating lawful defections while protecting Iran from another cycle of revolutionary vengeance.

External governments should reinforce these principles without attempting to manufacture Iran’s leadership. Foreign military action may damage command structures, but it cannot create the social trust or legitimate institutions required for a democratic transition. Open foreign ownership of an uprising can also make repression easier to justify and defections harder to secure. The decisive agency must remain Iranian.

The Lesson of January

Since January, Iran’s political order has become more, not less, militarised. Ali Khamenei’s death was followed by the elevation of his son Mojtaba as Supreme Leader. Reuters reported that wartime decision-making had concentrated in a narrower circle rooted in the Supreme National Security Council, the Supreme Leader’s office and the IRGC, with Guard commanders driving military strategy and key political decisions while Mojtaba largely legitimised their choices. The August merger of the strategic staff and joint operational command, and the placement of Guard-linked figures around it, should be understood as an attempt to reinforce the institutional cohesion that preserved the regime in January. Dynastic succession has further weakened the republic’s ideological claims, but institutional weakness should not be confused with imminent collapse. A regime can be brittle and still be brutally durable.

The January uprising demonstrated that Iranians across the country may be prepared to reject the Islamic Republic even at extraordinary personal risk. It also demonstrated that street protest alone leaves the regime with a choice it has repeatedly shown itself willing to make: clear the streets through terror and wait for normal life to resume.

A successful movement would remove that option. It would connect public protest to sustained national non-cooperation; turn moral rejection into administrative paralysis; encourage an institutional withdrawal of support; create space for police and Artesh neutrality; isolate an IRGC that may fight to the end; and only then establish a transitional authority capable of receiving power and protecting the country.

January did not reveal an absence of public resolve. It showed that resolve must be converted into a sequence. The decisive moment will come not when the streets are at their fullest, but when the institutions behind the gun no longer agree on whom they are protecting.