Reuters —Despite Iran’s nationwide protests and years of external pressure, there are as yet no clear signs of fracture in the Islamic Republic’s security elite that could bring an end to one of the world’s most resilient governments.

Adding to the stress on Iran’s clerical rulers, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened military action over Tehran’s severe crackdown on the protests, which follow an air war between Israel and Iran last June in which the IDF, joined by US bombers, struck Iran’s nuclear facilities and key officials.

Responding to Reuters, a White House official said “all options” were at Trump’s disposal to address the situation in Iran.

But unless the street unrest and foreign pressure can prompt defections at the top, the establishment, though weakened, will likely hold, two diplomats, two government sources in the Middle East and two analysts told Reuters.

Around 2,000 people have been killed in the protests, an Iranian official told Reuters, blaming people he called terrorists for the deaths of civilians and security personnel. Human rights groups had previously tallied around 600 deaths. Some estimates of the death toll have been far higher.

Iran’s layered security architecture, anchored by the Revolutionary Guards and Basij paramilitary force, which together number close to one million people, makes external coercion without internal rupture exceedingly difficult, said Vali Nasr, an Iranian-American academic and expert on regional conflicts and US foreign policy.

“For this sort of thing to succeed, you have to have crowds in the streets for a much longer period of time. And you have to have a breakup of the state. Some segments of the state, and particularly the security forces, have to defect,” he said.

Iran’s foreign ministry declined to comment.

The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, has survived several past waves of unrest. This is the fifth major uprising since 2009, evidence of resilience and cohesion even as the government confronts........

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