Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and the chairman of United Against Nuclear Iran advocacy group, called the Islamic Republic "a barbaric, repressive, and dying regime,” responding to what he called a "delusional rant" by Iran's foreign minister on the recent nationwide protests in the country.
“The regime right now is on its last leg. It's on the verge of collapse. It's going to attempt every other means to yet again survive,” Iran’s exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi said in an interview with Fox News on Monday.
“That's why a definitive strike is going to completely reverse the odds in favour of the nation and defenseless people. That's what we need in terms of actual support,” he added.
Asked whether he meant American strikes, Pahlavi said: “It could be an American strike. It could be an Israeli strike. It could be whatever the Iranian people now are looking at the cavalry coming, because we can only hold the fort up to a point.”
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said lawmakers honored those killed in Iran with a moment of applause during the Parliament's first plenary session in 2026.
“The people of Iran don’t need silence. They have been kept forcefully silent for 47 years. They deserve to be free,” Metsola said in a post on X on Monday.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on Monday the World Economic Forum cancelled his planned appearance at its annual meeting in Davos due to what he described as political pressure from Israel and its "proxies" in the United States.
“The World Economic Forum cancelled my appearance in Davos on the basis of lies and political pressure from Israel and its United States-based proxies and apologists,” he said in a post on X.
“There is one fundamental truth to the recent violence in Iran: We had to defend our people against armed terrorists and ISIS-style killings openly backed by Mossad,” Araghchi added.
The Islamic Republic's resort to the deadliest crackdown on protestors in its history signals endgame for the theocracy, retired US Army General and ex-CIA director David Petraeus told Iran International Insight, the channel's town hall held in Washington DC.
“This regime is dying. Essentially it’s fighting, it’s killing again, but it is also dying," said Petraeus, a retired four-star Army general who now runs the Middle East business of US private equity firm KKR.
“I think it signals enormous questions about the regime's ability to sustain the situation,” he said, arguing Tehran is under more pressure now than at almost any point since the Iran-Iraq war.
Speaking to host Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, Petraeus painted a stark picture of the clerical establishment facing simultaneous existential challenges at home and abroad.
“Iran is essentially defenseless at this point,” Petraeus said, referring to the destruction of air and ballistic missile defense systems early in a June conflict with Israel and the United States.
The veteran commander, who led the so-called "surge" of US forces aimed at defeating an insurgency at the height of the US war in Iraq, said the scale of violence used against demonstrators reflects fear rather than control by Iran's leaders.
While he acknowledged the Islamic Republic may be able to suppress unrest in the short term, he warned that flooding cities and towns with security forces may not buy authorities a lasting reprieve from popular anger.
“This regime has lost legitimacy. The problem is it hasn’t lost the capability to kill.”
His assessment comes as Iran grapples with sustained nationwide unrest that began on December 28 among electronics and cellphone merchants at Tehran’s bazaar and quickly escalated into a nationwide uprising against the Islamic Republic.
At least 12,000 people were killed in just two days, according to medics and Iranian officials speaking to Iran International.
With the Iranian currency cratering, inflation climbing and purchasing power collapsing, Petraeus said Iran no longer has the financial tools it once used to calm the streets.
“At this time, there's not much Iran can do about it. They have very little capacity."
Asked about Trump's mooted pledge to intervene militarily to defend protestors, Petraeus stopped short of assessing the efficacy of any US attack but said the move would be well received and not bolster the leadership.
“I think we could take action against the regime and it would be applauded … not be a rallying cry for them.”
The latest wave of protests in Iran once more demonstrated both the depth of popular opposition to the Islamic Republic and the limits of mass mobilization in the absence of a decisive breakdown in the regime’s coercive capacity.
As observed by numerous scholars of revolution, opposition forces are almost never in a strong position to defeat a regime’s armed forces. Revolutions occur when, for whatever reason, those armed forces stop suppressing the opposition.
This can happen for different reasons. One is that personnel within the armed forces simply refuse to carry out orders to suppress the opposition, as occurred in the democratic revolutions in much of Eastern Europe in 1989 and in subsequent “color revolutions” elsewhere.
The Islamic Republic’s armed forces, however, have so far proven quite willing to suppress Iranian citizens.
Another possibility is that the regime is more frightened of its armed forces than of its opponents, and therefore does not allow them to act forcefully for fear that they might seize power after suppressing the opposition.
This is what happened in Iran in 1979. But while Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was unwilling to use force effectively against his opponents, the Islamic Republic has shown no such hesitation.
Yet another scenario is that a split develops within the ranks of an authoritarian regime’s armed forces, with significant elements defecting to the opposition.
A defection by a key commander can quickly cascade, as occurred over just a few days in the Philippines in 1986. When such a defection occurs, the remaining security forces are confronted not merely with suppressing unarmed civilians, but with fighting armed men like themselves—a prospect they often wish to avoid.
This has not yet occurred in Iran, but in my view it remains the likeliest path to bringing down the Islamic Republic.
What would it take for this to happen? Most probably, it would require officers to feel confident that their institution would survive the regime’s downfall and remain intact under a new political order.
The commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are less likely to feel such confidence than Iran’s regular armed forces. But even if elements of the regular military were willing to defect to the opposition, they would likely still have to fight the IRGC—unless the latter collapsed when faced with the prospect of confronting the regular army.
These are the fraught calculations confronting those within Iran’s armed forces who share the population’s opposition to the regime.
The Trump administration might be able to affect this calculus through attacks that degrade the IRGC, but not Iran’s regular armed forces.
In other words, for the regular military to risk turning against the regime, it would have to believe both that it could defeat the IRGC and its Basij allies, and that it would itself survive the fall of the Islamic Republic.
Alternatively, some kind of deal would have to be made with IRGC commanders, assuring them of integration into a new regime’s armed forces.
On its face, of course, such an idea is utterly repugnant.
There is also the hope that rank-and-file members of the regime’s armed forces might refuse orders to fire on demonstrators and instead turn their weapons against their commanders and the regime. This, however, does not appear likely.
That being the case, the only viable path to bringing down the regime may be some form of accommodation with key elements of its armed forces.
The Trump administration’s transactional approach to foreign policy might make it more open to attempting this. But America’s authoritarian Arab allies may be even more fearful of a democratic Iran than of a weakened Islamic Republic. The mere existence of a democratic Iran could inspire democratic movements in Arab countries—something their rulers are keen to avoid.
Conservative Israeli governments, too, have long taken a dim view of democratic movements in Muslim countries, which they do not expect to be as accommodating as certain authoritarian Arab governments that have signed the Abraham Accords.
Israel and Iran’s Arab neighbors, in particular, can therefore be expected to lobby the Trump administration about the dangers and unpredictability of political change in Iran.
Unfortunately, all this suggests that without key defections from within Iran’s armed forces—or efforts by the United States or other outside powers to encourage them—the Islamic Republic is more likely than not to remain in power.
The best hope for Iran’s democratic opposition is to secure an accommodation with key elements of the armed forces that would trigger the kind of security-force defections seen in successful democratic revolutions elsewhere.
This is far easier said than done. But where it has happened, it has often come suddenly and unexpectedly.
I sincerely hope this will happen in Iran.