ANALYSIS

As Iran steps up a deadly crackdown on nationwide demonstrations, some analysts warned that if US President Donald Trump does not act on his vow to protect protestors, the unrest he helped galvanize may be stamped out.

As Tehran faces its sharpest internal challenge since the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests, the ruling elite’s ability to withstand sustained popular protests now rests not only on domestic coercion but increasingly on backing from Moscow.

Internet experts are warning that Iran’s sweeping nationwide internet blackout is being used to shield lethal crackdowns on protesters, cutting off evidence of state violence as unrest continues across the country.

In a speech on Friday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei left little doubt that Tehran intends to confront the current wave of protests with force rather than concession.

The idea that Iran could change course through a shift at the top—without the collapse of the structure itself, and with a pragmatic figure opening up to the world—rests on a false assumption about how power actually works in Tehran.

It began with metal shutters dropping in Tehran. At two neighboring shopping centers, shopkeepers on Dec. 28 pulled down their doors as security forces moved in, and the first chants rose from the corridors into the street.

Iran may not be Venezuela, but the Islamic Republic may at its most vulnerable point in its near 50-year existence as pressure builds from the streets, foreign intelligence services and inside the clerical establishment, analysts told Iran International.

As Venezuela enters a volatile phase following Nicolas Maduro’s capture by US forces over the weekend, Iran’s strategic investments in the country’s oil refining sector are facing a sudden and uncertain reckoning.

Iran’s protest slogans have shifted from reformist appeals in the 2009 Green Movement demonstrations to more prominent calls to reinstate the monarchy ousted in 1979, transcending Tehran's central political divide between moderates and hardliners.

The fate of the Iranian economy is increasingly shaping debates about the country’s future—one that may prove decisive regardless of how its current political struggles unfold.

Prolonged economic exhaustion and a broader loss of confidence in the Iranian state after historic military and foreign policy setbacks in 2025 means 2026 may be the Islamic Republic's hardest ever year.

Within a week of the outbreak of protests in Iran against the Islamic Republic and its rulers, US President Donald Trump weighed in twice with direct comments.

A phrase used by US President Donald Trump in support of Iran’s protesters carries a specific military meaning, analysts say, going beyond political rhetoric to signal a state of readiness for action.

Iran’s draft budget for the coming year, submitted to parliament this week, is being widely described by economists as the most contractionary in decades, shifting the burden of deficit control onto workers and consumers.

Tehran’s newly announced fuel price changes have been presented as a long-overdue reform of an unsustainable subsidy system, but they amount to an undeclared form of austerity aimed at rolling back subsidies with minimal political exposure.

Mohammad Javad Zarif’s latest Foreign Affairs article follows a familiar pattern in his narrative: recasting Tehran’s militarization and domestic repression as reactive responses to external pressure rather than deliberate internal choices.

Tehran’s recent gestures of apparent flexibility—from looser enforcement of the hijab to an embrace of nationalist symbolism—recall moments in Communist history when a brief opening exposed risks the system ultimately moved to contain.

As the Middle East enters the final weeks of 2025, the aftershocks of two years of regional war since October 7, 2023 are yielding to a quieter, consequential realignment of regional power.