Thread by Iran expert Karim Sadjadpour on Twitter:
5 conditions are often needed for a revolution: fiscal crisis, divided elites, a diverse opposition, a convincing narrative of resistance, and a favorable international environment. Iran meets nearly all of them.
In American politics, inflation rates of more than 3 percent can bring down administrations. Iran’s inflation rates—more than 50 percent across the board, 70 percent for food—are among the world’s highest.
In 1979, one US dollar was worth 70 Iranian rials; today, it’s worth 1.47 million rials, a depreciation of more than 99%. Iranian currency has become less a medium of exchange than a daily index of national despair.
Iran has 92 million inhabitants, perhaps the largest population in the world to have been isolated for decades from the global financial system. In addition to inflation, the country suffers from endemic corruption, mismanagement, and brain drain.
The second condition for state breakdown—the alienation of the elite—is also widely evident in Iran. What began in 1979 as a broad ideological coalition has, by 2026, contracted into a one-man party: the party of Ali Khamenei.
The regime has been hollowed out by decades of negative selection—the result of rewarding mediocrity and prizing ideological loyalty over competence. The effect has been to alienate the professionals and technocrats who once provided the state with its administrative backbone.
Much like the USSR of the 1980s, the Islamic Republic has mostly lost its convictions. As one Tehran-based political-science professor told me: “At the beginning of the revolution, the regime was 80 percent ideologues and 20 percent charlatans. Today, it is the reverse.”
Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American businessman held hostage by the regime for eight years, compared the regime to “a collection of competing mafias—dominated by the IRGC and its alumni—whose highest loyalty is not to nation, religion, or ideology, but to personal enrichment."
The seeming cohesion of the country’s security forces has until now prevented the Islamic Republic’s collapse. No senior IRGC commanders have defected as yet or voiced even mild public criticism of Ayatollah Khamenei. This would be game over for the regime.
The Islamic Republic’s political, economic, and social authoritarianism has created a diverse oppositional coalition. Mass protests have drawn participants from virtually every socioeconomic class, ethnic minorities, labor movements, women, bazaaris, etc.
The regime is a theocracy that rules from a moral pedestal, so examples of its graft and hypocrisy are particularly galvanizing. IRGC commanders oversee the brutal enforcement of the veiling of women—their daughters and mistresses are often spotted overseas without hijab.
The children of thousands of senior officials advertise their lives in Western cities on Instagram and LinkedIn. Protesters in the city of Yasuj recently chanted, “Their children are in Canada! Our children are in prison!”
The fourth condition for state breakdown is a convincing shared narrative that bridges a nation’s socioeconomic, geographic, and ideological divides. Shiite revolutionary ideology is being countered by a fierce, corrective nationalism.
The state’s shopworn mantras of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” are being drowned out by a demand for national self-interest: “Long live Iran.” The now-ubiquitous protest chant: “No to Gaza; no to Lebanon; my life only for Iran.”
A population largely born after the 1979 revolution seeks a “normal life,” liberated from a regime that micromanages people’s attire, intimacy, and private choices.
Every successful revolution requires both inspirational and organizational leadership. Many of the protesters in Iran’s 2026 uprising have rallied behind former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who has lived in exile since 1979.
The final and decisive catalyst for revolution is an international environment that helps sink the regime rather than bolster it. After North Korea, Iran may be the most strategically isolated country in the world.
Over the past two years—since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which Ayatollah Khamenei alone among major world leaders openly endorsed—Iran’s regional proxies and global allies have been decimated or deposed.
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Venezuela’s Nicolás Mauduro are no longer in power. Vladimir Putin is consumed fighting a war in Ukraine. China—the destination for 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports—has proved to be a predatory partner, demanding cheap oil.
When these conditions coincide—economic strain, elite alienation, widespread popular anger at injustice, a convincing shared narrative of resistance, and favorable international relations—the normal social mechanisms that restore order in a crisis are unlikely to work.
The Islamic Republic is today a zombie regime. Its legitimacy, ideology, economy, and top leader are dead or dying. What keeps it alive is lethal force. Brutality can delay the regime’s funeral, but it’s unlikely to restore its pulse.
The thread also includes a link to a long read in The Atlantic, by Sadjadpour which is free to read
The Atlantic:Is the Iranian Regime about to collapse ?
Babestation
Live Sex Latinas
Search
Help
Age Verify
Member List
