Iran has witnessed cycles of protests in the recent past, but the popular uprising that ignited on Dec. 28 is something altogether different—broader in scale, more desperate in tenor, and far more threatening to the survival of the Islamic Republic.

The spark for the uprising was the market. When the Iranian currency, the rial, plunged yet again, bazaar merchants in Tehran—the traditional backbone of the Islamic Republic—walked out of their shops and into the streets. The protest quickly metastasized into an anti-regime storm. Within days, unrest radiated out from provincial towns to the capital, university campuses, industrial centers and neglected borderlands.

The brave people of Iran knew the risks. Iranian security forces have—yet again­­­­—met dissent with batons, bullets and mass detentions: thousands of protesters have been killed and tens of thousands arrested. The real numbers are likely to be far higher than published figures given an almost total internet blackout.

A nation of 90 million people, Iran is the most combustible place in the Middle East right now, caught between the iron fist of its regime’s oppression and the looming specter of U.S. military intervention. The stakes could hardly be higher: mismanaging the crisis in Iran won’t affect Iran alone; it could undermine regional economic and political stability.

The uprising in Iran unfolding in the aftermath of the 12-day war between Iran and Israel and American military strikes on Iran in June 2025—a conflict that shredded key parts of Iran’s nuclear program, decimated segments of its military leadership, and exposed the sheer vulnerability of the Islamic Republic. Iranian leaders spun mere survival as victory. The Islamic Republic, they claimed, had endured the worst blows its enemies could deliver—a resilience owed to domestic cohesion and revolutionary resolve.

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But the war highlighted the Islamic Republic’s decay. It further eroded its........

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