The latest protest wave in Iran has plunged Tehran’s authorities into turmoil and significantly widened the region’s risk calculus. Nationwide protests erupted initially over Iran’s faltering economy, which has seen food inflation propelled above 70 percent, and the collapse of the Iranian rial, which has slid past 1.4 million to a dollar, only to spiral into anti-government demonstrations. Iranian political and security elites have deployed force, internet blackouts, and mass arrests to reassert control.

Meanwhile, outside Iran, the risk of instability spilling across borders remains high. Both Tel Aviv and Washington are escalating pressure on Tehran’s clerical rulers, with the Trump administration initially signaling its willingness to carry out military strikes on Iran’s political and military targets, though it has refrained so far amid opposition from Iran’s Gulf neighbors and Israel.

As a neighbor of Iran, Pakistan must closely track developments, and its policymakers need to brace for political, economic, and security contingencies while simultaneously bolstering border security.

Political: Shia Muslims and Pakistan’s Domestic Politics

Pakistan hosts one of the world’s largest Shia communities outside Iran, with Shia Muslims constituting 15 to 20 percent of the population, dispersed across four provinces and Gilgit-Baltistan. The 1979 Iranian Revolution and Zia-era Islamization forged deep clerical linkages between Pakistani and Irani Shia clerics via seminaries. In the 1990s, the then-leading Shia political party Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqah-i-Jafria (TNFJ) also ventured into militancy through its offshoot, Sipah-i-Muhammad, and settled scores with the Sunni militant group Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, itself an extension of Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam (JUI). This sectarian competition also took place in the regional backdrop of deepening Saudi-Iran rivalry, which later took the form of supporting their preferred religious seminaries within Pakistan.

Over time, new Shia political parties emerged pursuing rights-based politics. Majlis-e-Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM), for example, pivoted toward electoral participation and legal advocacy. Despite limited electoral reach, the MWM and Shia Ulema Council retain strong street mobilization capacities, such as processions, sit‑ins, and protection claims. In the 2024 general elections, MWM allied with the banned Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), amplifying its national profile; in October 2025, Imran Khan instructed PTI to support the head of MWM, Senator Allama Raja Nasir, as the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, which was recognized by the PML-N-led government after a delay of over four months.

“Pakistan must closely track developments, and its policymakers needs to brace for political, economic, and security contingencies while simultaneously bolstering border security.”

“Pakistan must closely track developments, and its policymakers........

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