Iran at Tipping Point, Desperate Regime Fights to Hang On
Iran has been convulsed with popular revolts since the 1979 overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as the Iranian people realized their drastic mistake in replacing a monarchy with a brutal theocratic dictatorship.
It’s now been 47 years since the Ayatollah Khomeini flew back to Tehran to impose his Velayat-e Faqih vision for governance that flung a modern, Westward-looking population backward to the 7th century.
What followed has been a sequence of popular uprisings: the 2009 Green Movement, fuel protests in 2019, and the women-led hijab protests of the Women, Life, Freedom that began with the bludgeoning murder in police custody of Mahsa Amini in 2022.
In between each of these major revolts has been nearly continuous defiance of the mullahs' regime by courageous Resistance Forces, led by young men and women of Iran who refuse to surrender their dreams of freedom for their country.
The courage of the Iranian people, time after time, to rise up against the savage repression of the Bassij and Pasdaran units of the regime's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been incredible.
Until now, until this time, each uprising was put down with sheer terror, killing, and torture.
But this time, after Israel's Operation Rising Lion and the American Operation Midnight Hammer severely degraded Iran's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities in June 2025, and in the face of unrelenting sanctions pressure, the regime is much weakened.
That international pressure from abroad has only compounded the effects of decades of regime corruption, incompetence, and resource diversion to its nuclear program that has devastated Iran's water and electricity supply and drastically reduced the value of its national currency to the point that the Tehran's rule over its people is in its most debilitated state since the 1979 revolution.
The likelihood that this regime can long survive in the face of these factors combined with the determination of the Iranian people to be done with the theocratic rule of ayatollahs and their IRGC enforcers shrinks by the day.
The crowds in streets shout, "Death to the Dictator!" and "Death to Khamenei!"
They march in the millions now, standing steadfast even in the face of the regime's desperate resort to shoot live fire into unarmed gatherings.
Protests now are reported in virtually all the 31 Iranian provinces amid reports also of protesters setting fire to government buildings and attacking prisons to free those held inside.
In response, Tehran has cut off internet and other communications across Iran in a vain attempt to block people from organizing or getting information and videos out to the world that would show the scale of the protests or the brutality of the regime's crackdown.
Tesla Founder and former DOGE (Dept. of Govt. Efficiency) chief Elon Musk has stepped in to provide Star Link connectivity to the Iranian people, thus ensuring word about developments is made available to the outside world.
Perhaps most importantly, President Trump has warned the Iranian regime that if it continues to kill unarmed protesters, he will "rescue" them.
He's also promised on his Truth Social platform to step in and come to the aid of the Iranian people (although it’s not certain what form such help might take).
And even though some Iranians are chanting for the return to Iran of Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah who has not been back to Iran since he was 17 but instead made a successful business career in the United States since 1979, others are heard to insist "No to mullahs, no to Shah!" and instead are calling for a democratic republic in Iran.
For his part, the Crown Prince has used social media to call the people into the streets and ask President Trump to "intervene to help the people of Iran."
Pahlavi has also declared he is "prepared to return to the homeland so that at the time of our national revolution's victory, I can be beside you, the great nation of Iran."
None of Iran’s opposition groups, however, has provided a policy blueprint for a future after the Islamic Republic has fallen except for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
Under the leadership of Maryam Rajavi, the NCRI's President Elect, the NCRI first published in 2006 a 10-Point Plan that calls for a pluralistic democratic republic in Iran based on separation of religion and state, universal suffrage and gender equality, abolition of the death penalty, equality of representation for ethnic minorities, an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions.
The plan additionally calls for freedom of speech, press, and assembly, an independent judiciary, and more that echoes our own U.S. Bill of Rights.
This 10-Point Plan further envisions a 6-month transition period following the collapse of the current regime during which a National Constituent and Legislative Assembly would be elected by free and fair popular elections.
With that election, the provisional 6-month provisional government would hand over its resignation to the Assembly and the people of Iran.
Many challenges lie ahead for Iran and its people.
A desperate regime is now fighting to hang onto power even as the whereabouts of some 400 kilograms of missing enriched uranium remain unknown.
Opposition groups remain divided. Options for flight destinations for regime figures are dwindling. What is certain, though, is that the Iranian people are determined to take back their liberty from decades of repression — and that this time, it looks increasingly likely that they will succeed.
Clare M. Lopez is the Founder/President of Lopez Liberty and a Newsmax blog site contributor. Read more Clare M. Lopez Insider articles — Click Here Now.
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