On 10 August, Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, ordered the completion of a consequential military reorganisation: the merger of the Armed Forces General Staff, which develops strategic guidance and military policy, with Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, which directs joint and wartime operations. The two bodies had been separated by his father in 2016. Their recombination is intended to accelerate decisions and improve coordination between Iran’s regular armed forces, the Artesh, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

This is not a formal absorption of the Artesh into the IRGC. The two forces retain different identities and missions. But the reorganisation compresses the command structure above them, while a series of senior appointments has placed veterans of the Guard and internal-security apparatus at crucial junctions. It is a wartime reform, but it also has unmistakable implications for domestic control: the regime is trying to make hesitation, institutional divergence and fragmented command less likely in its next crisis.

That August move is a reason to revisit what happened in January. Iranians then did something extraordinary. Beginning with merchants angered by economic collapse, protests spread across the country and rapidly became a direct challenge to the Islamic Republic. No credible national headcount is possible under the communications blackout, but Human Rights Activists News Agency documented protest activity at 682 locations in 203 cities across all 31 provinces. The regime answered with organised violence on an unprecedented scale. HRANA later verified the deaths of 6,488 protesters and 236 children, within a confirmed total of 7,007 that also counts 207 members of the security forces, and left 11,744 additional cases under review. TIME reported that two senior Iranian Health Ministry officials placed the toll as high as 30,000, broadly consistent with a clandestine count compiled from hospitals by physicians and first responders. TIME could not independently verify those higher figures. The precise total remains disputed; the fact of a mass atrocity does not.

Yet the regime survived. That outcome is sometimes explained as proof that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is simply too powerful to overcome. It is a tempting conclusion, particularly after the IRGC’s subsequent consolidation of wartime authority. But it draws the wrong lesson from January. The uprising failed because a huge eruption of street opposition did not become sustained national non-cooperation, and because no consequential pillar of the state withdrew its support while the streets were still full.

That distinction matters because the demonstrations reveal opposition. They do not, by themselves, transfer power. A regime falls when it can no longer make the country function, when those who execute its orders begin to hesitate, and when enough institutions conclude that their future lies beyond the incumbent order. January reached the first stage, but not the others.

What was Missing in January

Research on civil resistance has repeatedly distinguished protest from non-cooperation. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan’s comparative work found that nonviolent campaigns have historically been more successful than armed campaigns in part because they can mobilise broader participation, erode the legitimacy of repression and induce loyalty shifts among a regime’s supporters. Later research has also shown that movements have become less successful when they rely too heavily on episodic mass demonstrations and neglect organisation, strategic sequencing and durable social coalitions.

January produced widespread demonstrations and some commercial closures, but not a sufficiently sustained interruption of the institutions on which the state depends. A government can survive enormous crowds if ministries continue operating, energy and transportation systems remain under direction, public employees report for work, the banking system processes orders, state broadcasters transmit the official narrative and security forces remain cohesive. Belarus in 2020 illustrated the danger: immense demonstrations continued for months, but the security........

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