‘This country will not be fixed until we bury the mullahs.’ This slogan captures the prevailing mood on Iran’s streets today. What began as demonstrations triggered by the rapid devaluation of the Iranian rial has quickly evolved into open unrest against the regime. Nationwide protests have now entered their ninth day with no sign of de-escalation, spreading well beyond major urban centres into rural towns and villages that were long considered regime strongholds. More than 108 cities and towns have experienced protests, with particularly intense mobilisation in Ilam, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, and Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari provinces – regions once viewed as pillars of the Islamic Republic’s social base.

In turn, the regime has resorted to its usual tactics, unleashing a brutal wave of suppression against unarmed protestors. This includes slowing down the internet, deploying its domestic militia – the Basij – on the streets, and mass beatings and arrests. More than 40 civilians have been killed so far, with thousands detained. This violent crackdown – spearheaded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – has even seen the regime’s security forces break into hospitals to kidnap and detain wounded protestors.

Ongoing protests in Iran are not an isolated event, nor are they a flash-in-the-pan moment. Instead, what we are witnessing on the streets of Iran today is a continuation of a new trend of unrest that began in 2017. Since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei assumed the position of Supreme Leader in 1989, the Islamic Republic has faced repeated waves of popular protest challenging his rule. These episodes of unrest can be broadly divided into two distinct phases. The first, spanning roughly 1999 to 2009, consisted mainly of reform-oriented movements.  The second phase, which began in 2017, reoccurred in 2019, erupted again in 2022-23, and continues to the present, reflects a far more radical rupture, with overt demands for regime change.

There are fundamental differences between these two phases of protest in Iran: from underlying causes, size and frequency, to the tools they deploy and the visions they offer.

The first difference between these two protest phases is the social composition. The protests in Iran from 1999 to 2009 – the first phase – were primarily a movement driven by the middle class and directed by insider elites, who demanded political reform and a sharing of power with the Supreme Leader and the IRGC. The ongoing protests, which belong to the second phase of unrest in Iran beginning almost a decade ago, are explicitly anti-regime and driven by the Iranian poor and lower social classes.

Another key difference between phase one and two is in the size, scale and frequency of the protests. The reform-oriented movement was limited in scale. The student protests in 1999, for example, saw demonstrations concentrated in three cities – Tehran, Babol and Tabriz. Fast forward to the 2009 Green Movement uprising, sparked by the fraudulent elections, and the protests took place in at least 10 major cities. In contrast to this, the second phase of protests in Iran has not only grown in terms of scope, but they have also become far more frequent, with unrest occurring on average every two to three years. In 2017-18, unrest spread to more than 80 towns and cities – a number that would pass 100 in November 2019. In 2022, more than 100 cities were involved; in 2026, after only eight days, protests were seen in more than 108 cities throughout the country.

The major difference is in the tools used by protestors, underpinned by access to communication and information. Earlier Iranian protests, such as the 1999 student uprising and the 2009 Green Movement, relied little on social media because internet access was limited. Mobilisation depended mainly on word of mouth, SMS, and street networks. While the 2009 protests were often described as being a ‘Twitter Revolution’, this was in fact overstated, as access to Twitter was very limited among Iranians at the time.

By contrast, protests since 2017 have been shaped by widespread social media use and coverage. Millions of Iranians have used Telegram, Instagram and similar platforms to document repression in real time, coordinate decentralised actions, build solidarity and attract global attention. This shift from limited social media access and usage in the first phase to social media being one of the most important, if not the most important, communication method in the second phase is significant.

In turn, the spread of social media in the second phase has also enabled the Iranian diaspora – millions in their number – to play an essential role in engaging with protests inside Iran. Unlike earlier periods, when exiled Iranians relied on delayed, filtered information from satellite television or foreign media, digital platforms now provide real-time access to videos and testimonies from inside the country. Large-scale emigration since 2010, especially among students and young professionals, has expanded and politicised diaspora communities, most of them tech-savvy and connected. Diaspora networks now play a critical role in international advocacy, media amplification, fundraising and political lobbying, all of which have strengthened Iran’s protest movements despite the regime’s efforts to isolate them.

What caused the protest movement in Iran to transition from phase one – seeking reform – to demanding regime change in phase two? The answer lies in the ideological nature and incompetence of the Islamic Republic. Iran’s ailing economy has been caused by a combination of mismanagement, corruption and international sanctions in response to the ideological foreign policy the regime has pursued: from exporting terrorism and its pursuit of nuclear weapons to seeking to annihilate Israel.

Likewise, its efforts to forcefully Islamise every aspect of Iranian society and culture have resulted in political repression, a process that is exemplified by the imposition of the mandatory hijab on women and flagrant human-rights abuses – all of which are symptoms of its ideology. Similarly, the incompetence of the system, characterised by mass corruption and mismanagement, has resulted in the regime’s failure to provide even the basics, such as water and electricity, for the Iranian people.

Ironically, in the past few years, not only has the regime been unable to find solutions but its elites have actually ended up exacerbating the crises it faces. This is no coincidence and it partly explains why protests have become more frequent and radical in phase two. In recent years, Khamenei has sought to completely personalise power in the Islamic Republic. In pursuit of this, the ageing ayatollah has purged the regime’s managerial class in order to install his cult of personality across positions of power in the regime. Practically speaking, this purge has meant giving precedence to ideological commitment over technical expertise or experience, removing the final remnants of meritocracy in the system. The rise of a deeply ideological and incompetent class has produced the ‘dumbification’ of the regime, pouring fuel on the fire.

Over the past decade, the Islamic Republic has steadily lost its political legitimacy, the capacity to co-opt elites, deliver social services and satisfy basic demands. Unable to sustain consent through ideological appeal, patronage or welfare provision, the regime increasingly abandoned governance based on performance and inclusion. In its place, it expanded and empowered an extensive security apparatus, treating coercion as a substitute for legitimacy. Repression, surveillance and the routine use of violence became not temporary responses to crises but the core strategy for maintaining order. As a result, force and intimidation have emerged as the primary instruments through which the state governs and preserves its rule.

This can be seen explicitly in the way in which the Islamic Republic has dealt with phase two of protests when compared with phase one. The regime has resorted to more violence to reassert control: from killing 1,500 civilians in just three days in 2019 to its bloody crackdown in 2022-23, which saw a systematic and coordinated campaign to blind Iranian protestors.

Suppression has become the only answer the Islamic Republic has to the crises it faces. It is for this reason that the security forces – centred on the IRGC – constitutes the single most significant barrier to regime change. They have repeatedly demonstrated that the regime has not only the capabilities but also the willingness to repress a determined yet largely defenceless population through brutal force and unrestrained violence. As long as this coercive advantage remains intact, cycles of protest and suppression are likely to continue without producing systemic change. Regime survival, under these conditions, is not accidental but structurally reinforced.

A meaningful shift would require altering the balance of power between the Iranian people and the regime’s suppressive apparatus. Without external pressure, the Islamic Republic retains sufficient tools to suppress unrest and deter elite defection. More active western engagement could, however, tilt the balance of power between unarmed protestors and the regime’s radicalised, coercive machinery. Effective pressure must therefore target both pillars of repression: the willingness to use violence and the capacity to sustain it. This means targeted military strikes that can neutralise key commanders and units as well as the critical headquarters of the suppressive apparatus. Beyond military means, coordinated strategies such as naming and shaming individuals who are actively involved in suppressing unarmed civilians, targeted sanctions and the full diplomatic isolation of the Islamic Republic can raise the costs of repression and weaken the foundations on which the regime’s control ultimately rests.