After a week of the largest nationwide demonstrations in years, Iran’s streets were once again quiet and violently suppressed.
One resident of Tehran compared the atmosphere in the capital to the days around Nowruz, Iran’s new year, when many people leave the city and shops close early.
But they said there was no festive cheer, just an eerie silence. Life continues under the shadow of a deadly crackdown on protesters and the specter of a possible new military showdown with the United States. The Islamic Republic hopes to celebrate the 47th anniversary of the revolution that established its government next month. Gather the audience and blast out revolutionary songs. But the celebratory mood in Tehran’s halls of power is likely to be far less intense as the regime faces its biggest threat yet to its survival.
Proven repression strategies could have quelled the recent wave of protests. But the underlying grievances animating the protesters remain.
Last Thursday and Friday have emerged as some of the most important days in recent Iranian history.
Economic protests that began in Tehran’s bazaars suddenly morphed into what may be the biggest threat facing the Islamic Republic since its founding in 1979.
Large crowds took to the streets across the country, chanting death for the dictator and calling for the fall of his regime, with some demanding, in a relatively new development, the return of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah.
The scale of the ensuing crackdown shows that the Iranian regime, scarred by Israel’s war with the United States last summer and losing its regional proxy, was unwilling to compromise.
The unprecedented digital lockdown that has cut off Iranians from the rest of the world means the true scale of the atrocities is still not fully understood. More than 2,400 people have been killed since the start of Iran’s crackdown on dissent, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
Will the US and Iran come into conflict?
Over the past few weeks, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran if his administration uses violence against protesters.
But on Thursday, President Trump told reporters he had received information from “very sensitive sources on the other side” that the killings had stopped in Iran, suggesting there would be no immediate military action by the United States. Gulf officials also told CNN that Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have warned the United States of security and economic risks that could affect both the United States and the broader region and urged it to avoid attacks on Iran. These diplomatic efforts appear to have helped ease tensions.
However, it may be temporary. Analysts say the threat of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran is far from over.
“There was no resolution to the actual root of the tensions,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible States, told CNN, adding that tensions between Israel and Iran were never about the protests.
Officials told CNN on Thursday that the U.S. military is moving an aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East. It is expected to arrive in the Persian Gulf by the end of next week.
But for now, there is more talk of negotiations than war drums. President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been in direct contact with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragushi over the past week, also struck a conciliatory tone, speaking in Florida on Thursday.
Even if Iran and the US try to revive diplomacy, Iran will do so from its weakest position yet. Compared to previous talks, the balance of influence has changed rapidly. Iran’s main nuclear facilities were severely damaged in a U.S. attack last summer, crippled key parts of Iran’s program, and most of the proxy facilities used by Iran for power projection were effectively neutralized by Israel.
Although Iran still maintains a significant stockpile of highly enriched uranium, a key component of a nuclear bomb, the physical and symbolic blow would be significant.
“Iran has lost a lot of leverage in many ways,” Parsi said, predicting that “President Trump will take a very extremist position” if negotiations resume.
Beyond the nuclear issue, new talks are likely to cover a wider range of issues. The United States wants to curb Iran’s missile program and support for proxy groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as Shiite militias across the region. Things can get even more complicated here.
Iranian leaders have so far shown some leeway in the nuclear deal with the United States, but have treated its missile program and support for what it calls “resistance groups” as non-negotiable. Any compromise on these fronts would amount to a complete capitulation to American demands.
But this is not the first time revolutionary Iran has been forced to accept an incomplete deal. At the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, the Islamic Republic agreed to a ceasefire it had long resisted, but revolution founder Ruhollah Khomeini famously said, “It’s like drinking a poisoned chalice.” Nearly 40 years later, the regime finds itself in an even more precarious predicament.
They may be willing to make painful compromises to ensure their survival once again. But even if that happens, it may not be enough to regain the legitimacy it lost among its own people after killing so many of its own citizens.
Experts say the recent protests show that the social contract between the Islamic Republic and its people is irreparably broken. States have not only failed to protect their people from foreign attacks, to bring them economic prosperity, and to allow them political and social freedoms. It has also repeatedly shown a willingness to use brutal violence to silence them.
The social contract was already weakened, Parsi said. Now it is “permanently ruined.” After the 2022 protests, the people achieved some victories in terms of relaxing hijab regulations, but today’s insecurity is very different, and Parsi said this is due to unprecedented levels of violence by the regime.
For many Iranians, fundamental changes will be enough. It’s a very difficult job.
For decades in power, Khamenei and his vast security apparatus have systematically suppressed all forms of domestic opposition that might pose a serious challenge to his rule.
Figures such as former deputy interior minister Mostafa Tajzadeh and Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights activist Narges Mohammadi have spent years in prison for dissent from within the regime.
If meaningful change does emerge, it is likely to come from within the same security and power structures that have benefited most from the regime, rather than from a steadily hollowing out reformist camp.
“The most likely scenario is that there are other variations of the regime through elements within the same regime,” Parsi said. “Beheading the top leadership and maintaining security are two different issues. You can’t just behead someone.”
Outside Iran, the situation is even more uncertain. Foreign-based rebel groups remain deeply divided. Reza Pahlavi, the last shah’s exiled son, has re-emerged as a potential rallyer. He claims he intends to be a transitional leader guiding Iran toward a more prosperous democratic future. But after more than four decades in exile, he has struggled to build diverse coalitions across politics and devise plans for change that don’t involve U.S. intervention. And he’s not President Trump’s favorite candidate for national governance either.
Dina Esfandiary, head of the Middle East at Geneva-based Bloomberg Economics, said most of the opposition figures are out of the country and are not really “active,” adding that someone like Pahlavi is “a very divisive figure, and he would greatly divide the Iranian people.”
This uncertainty weighs heavily as many Iranians consider how far they can push change. Another potential concern is whether the potential collapse of the regime would lead to the collapse of the Iranian state. There is ethnic and regional diversity, and with some groups openly calling for secession, the risk of fragmentation may be clear.
It is probably only a matter of time before a new wave of protests emerges. And as Tehran’s leaders will no doubt remember, the 1979 revolution itself was the culmination of a year-long protest movement that waxed and waned before finally toppling the Shah’s regime.
“I don’t think this is the last protest,” Esfandiari said. “The line has been crossed and we have reached the point of no return.”
