Following the massive nationwide uprisings of December 2025 and January 2026, the Iranian regime finds itself at a historic impasse. The ruling clerics only managed to maintain their fragile grip on power through the massacre of thousands of protesters.

However, recent developments inside the country demonstrate a profound shift in the dynamics of the Iranian street: the homegrown resistance movement has not been stifled. Instead, it is rapidly evolving, moving beyond unorganized protests into a capable, organized force systematically dismantling the regime’s machinery of repression.

The illusion of appeasement and the reality of organized resistance

For years, Western policymakers have harbored the illusion that the Iranian regime would either moderate itself, collapse spontaneously, or be overthrown through social media campaigns alone. This miscalculation has only fueled a destructive policy of appeasement.

Speaking in Brussels on March 18, 2026, Mohammad Mohaddessin, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), urged European leaders to abandon these failed policies. “We have repeatedly warned that this regime is incapable of reform,” Mohaddessin said, adding that appeasement is “like nurturing a snake in one’s sleeve — it inevitably leads to war.”

Addressing the flawed notion of passive regime change, he emphasized: “Experience in recent years has proven that illusions such as........

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