Iran is facing one of its most pivotal turns in modern history. The first fully-fledged Shi’a-based government lasting for nearly half a century seems to be coming to a dramatic and tumultuous end. Since 1501, when Shi’ism was first adopted as the state religion, never a government in Iran ruled exclusively by clerics at the helm. In 1979, however, Ruhollah Khomeini the designated leader of the Islamic Revolution changed that, assuming the self-crafted exclusive and all-powerful clerical mantle of guardianship of the jurist i.e. absolute power with no accountability whatsoever.
His Islamic Republic, until his death in 1988 and ever since under Ali Khamenei, have wrought an array of financial, political, social and diplomatic crises that have crippled the country and have periodically brought millions of Iranians to the streets in protest.
The response of the Islamist authorities has always been suppression and crackdown sometimes with deadly force.
The latest episode of the protests was on 8 and 9 January 2026, which were met with lethal brutality of the security forces killing over tens of thousands of demonstrators and injuring over 300,000. Another 200,000 are now in overcrowded prisons awaiting trial and possible execution.
Ideologically, the structure of the Islamic Republic resonates that of the former Soviet Union in that it is utilizing the mantle of statehood to promote a set of beliefs it considers superior to others. National interests come second to ideological goals, and the very concept of nation is relegated beneath that of a global religious community called ummah. However, as the case of former USSR showed, statehood will not be able to survive the pressures of the international system if exploited for objectives other than those it was originally crafted for.
It is therefore unlikely that the theocratic regime in Iran will be able to endure the tensions it generates to achieve its goals. Those tensions work themselves in the international structure producing outcomes that will threaten the very religious autocracy that has produced them in the first place. The current standoff between Washington and Tehran with possible military engagement is a clear expression of that discordancy.
Nationally also the Iranian people have clearly demonstrated time and again that they seek to retain their national heritage and identity that predates Islam. Their unremitting desire for the return of monarchy in the shape of Crown Prince Reza, now in exile in the US, manifestly indicates that longing. Such national sentiments chanted by protestors while being shot at by security forces on 8 and 9 January, will not die with bullets and are immune to torture and death in prisons at the hands of the Islamic Republic.
Iran is to undergo changes that will reshape the entire country and impact the region and the globe. Nationally and internationally factors that support fundamental change in Iran are present and new beginnings are awaiting Iranians with the dawn of a new era.
Change is inevitable.
