Tehran ignored warnings of unrest, chose force over reform
Behrouz Turani
Iran International
The protests that erupted across Iran in January 2026 may have appeared sudden to outside observers but inside the country, they were anything but.
Iran International
The protests that erupted across Iran in January 2026 may have appeared sudden to outside observers but inside the country, they were anything but.
For more than a year, Iranian political analysts, sociologists and even establishment insiders had warned that mounting economic pressure and social exhaustion were pushing the country toward a nationwide rupture.
The state, unable or unwilling to pursue reform, appeared to place its faith instead in a familiar instrument: brute force.
When unrest finally broke out, it was met with an exceptionally violent crackdown that claimed thousands of lives. The predictions came true in the worst possible way.
‘Boiling point’
In October 2025, former labor minister and government spokesman Ali Rabiei wrote in the reformist daily Sharq that Iranians were “fed up with the government’s promises.” Without meaningful economic relief, he warned, the country risked sliding into civil unrest.
A month later, sociologist Taghi Azad Armaki described the situation as “critical,” calling for national dialogue rather than denial. Accumulated social dissatisfaction, he told the moderate daily Etemad, had pushed society to its “boiling point.”
Moderate commentator Abbas Abdi went further weeks later, writing in Etemad that Iranian society had reached “the point of no return.”
State-affiliated news agencies — including Revolutionary Guards-linked Fars — did highlight economic grievances, but largely downplayed the likelihood of widespread protest, framing any potential unrest as the work of foreign actors.
A crisis mapped in advance
The clearest articulation of what lay ahead came in late December 2025, just as protests were beginning to spread and foreign-exchange and gold prices were surging.
Writing for the reformist website Rouydad24, analyst Amir Dabiri Mehr argued that Iran’s fate now hinged almost entirely on how the government chose to respond. He outlined four possible scenarios, ranging from de-escalation to catastrophe.
In the first two — economic reform or restraint by security forces — the government would seek to calm public anger without violence. Dabiri Mehr treated both as increasingly unlikely. Events soon confirmed that assessment.
The third scenario, a violent crackdown, did unfold. Security forces suppressed protests across cities including Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan and Rasht, temporarily silencing dissent through force.
Ignoring it all
Dabiri Mehr’s fourth scenario envisioned escalation: a severe crackdown combined with the portrayal of protesters as “enemies” or “foreign agents,” pushing unrest toward militarization and raising the risk of foreign intervention or broader confrontation.
He cautioned that a social media blackout would not contain anger but displace it — forcing dissent from online spaces into the streets and transforming economic frustration into a wider social movement. Repression alone, he warned at the time, would not resolve the crisis.
The tragedy now unfolding was foreseen not only by contemporary analysts but, metaphorically, by Iran’s own literary tradition.
In Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, written a millennium ago, a line captures the logic of the present moment: When a man’s fortune darkens, he does everything he should not do.
The warnings were clear. The alternatives were understood. What followed was not inevitability, but choice—and its consequences are now unfolding.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.