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Anti-government protests in Iran expand daily, amid what one Iran expert called a “perfect storm” of conditions. “Everything that could go wrong in the country is not working,” said Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum and a former advisor to the Israeli government, on Washington Watch. “Simple shopkeepers, commercial merchants, truck drivers, even government workers … can’t even afford basic goods like milk, eggs, bread.” The Iranian regime is tottering; the question is what, if anything, will tip it over the edge?

The question is relevant because previous waves of Iranian protests had hopeful beginnings before collapsing under brutal regime suppression. Iranian protests in 2009, 2011, 2017, 2019, and 2022 all failed to dislodge the Islamist regime from its position of control.

However, “in great moments in history, it’s one kinetic event” that changes everything, Roman argued. “Perhaps it’s the son of the Ayatollah leaving Tehran. Perhaps it’s marching on the Iranian parliament. You might even get to the point where there starts to become fissures in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

Cracks in the Regime: When Enforcers Join the Protests

A possible early sign of such fissures came at a Tuesday night protest, where “soldiers … in sniper positions around a small town outside of Tehran … all of a sudden went down from their sniper perches and joined the protests against the regime,” related Roman. “When your rank and file enforcers, who are supposed to be beating and arresting and even in some cases killing protesters, start joining the protest — you may see yourself at the tipping point.”

“I think what the Iranian people need to know is, is that a catalytic event … would have to take place,” Roman proposed, “very much like before the 1979 revolution really started going.”

Indeed, Roman saw a parallel to the 1979 protest in the way these protests began. The Iranian rial was “devalued [to] an all-time low on December 26th, day after Christmas,” he explained. “A day later, the Iranian bazaar, which went on strike back in 1979 that was considered largely to be the death knell of the Shah’s government … went on strike again, 49 years later.”

Additionally, noted Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, “the government doesn’t have the capacity at present to squash this” protest as they did in previous years. “They’ve been exposed. They no longer have all of their outlying surrogates … to deceive the world. … Even the people in Iran … see that this is not the same regime that it was two years ago.”

“It’s not even the same regime it was six months ago, prior to the Israel-Iran war,” Roman reiterated. “The protests that started in September of 2022 … [were] over the mandatory wearing of hijab.” The Iranian regime brutally suppressed the popular uprising in 2022, killing over 500 protestors.

Yet, “after the June [2025] War, there was a general protest movement against the hijab six months ago, where a lot of women started walking around Iran’s capital … no longer wear[ing] the hijab. [But] the morality police didn’t crack down because they knew that their ability to respond … would be weakened.”

Could International Support Trigger Iran’s Tipping Point?

One important factor in the success of the protests is the measure of international support and approbation they can attract. “The Green Movement [protests] back in 2009 … would have succeeded had President Obama not said to the public that this was an internal Iranian issue,” Roman declared. “The more public outcry that comes from world leaders, I think, the more successful you may see the Iranian people stand up for their rights.”

“President Trump giving support to the Iranian protesters … has really given a new wind of support in the sails of the Iranian protest movement. And I think we finally see the Iranian people stepping up and saying, ‘We’ll take care of this ourselves. Just make sure that you have our back in case we need you,’” said Roman.

“The U.S. can help … without having to fire a shot,” he added. “They can create strike funds for members of the Iranian rank-and-file working class to have sustenance without having to rely on the regime. There are many things that the U.S. can do through information warfare, through psychological operations.” If necessary, the U.S. could even carry out cyberattacks or airstrikes, all without putting U.S. boots on the ground.

The aim of such an operation would be to replace the Iranian regime with a friendlier country. “Prior to 1979, Iran was a diverse country. … You had all these religions living peacefully together,” said Roman. “And I think that that’s the direction that the country wants to move back to — to have that great Persian pride, but also to embrace the West. … There’s 3,000 years of Persian history, which is on the side of the Iranian people, which I think that they would very much enmesh and embrace.”

According to some transition plans, he explained, regime change in Iran would have a minimal footprint, most notably by leaving state institutions intact. “Take off the political leadership. We allow the mid-level bureaucrats to continue doing their job. And you put into place a consultative constitutional assembly that will try to bring freedom and liberty and other items by the Iranian people, decided for the Iranian people without any Western influence,” he proposed. “I think the second that you lift sanctions on a government that is not the Islamic Republic, everything else will fall into place. … Just give them the keys. They’ll know how to drive the car.”

A renewed Iran would bring positive change to the Middle East, Roman argued. It would isolate the remaining terrorist threats from the Yemeni “Houthis and Iraqi Shia militias.” And it would allow Israel to step into an expanded role as a regional guardian of Middle East minorities, especially Christians and other religious minorities.

That said, Roman warned that “the removal of Iran does not mean that the Middle East is a less dangerous place,” as the downfall of Iran’s Shia terrorism could create a vacuum to be filled by Sunni extremism backed by Turkey, Pakistan, or Qatar. It’s good to be clear-eyed about this future possibility, but current policy leaders can only deal with the adversaries they face right now. And that adversary is an increasingly unstable Iranian regime.

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Republished with thanks to The Washington Stand. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.