Iranians Do Not Want a West-Led Change of Their Repressive Regime

The Wire

25-06-2025

We may have to wait for another moment when, unguided or prompted by the saviours of democracy in the west, the people of Iran will do the needful for themselves.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
For the moment the US seems to have decided that regime change is a bridge too far in Iran. They have agreed to a ceasefire and have ordered the Israelis to accept as well. The US realised that they were tempting hubris in getting involved in another war in the region.
A regime change may have been the Israelis' fondest goals but they have clearly lacked the means to accomplish it and have also suffered unprecedented battering from Iranian missiles. Without air defence, Iran was helpless in resisting the Israeli-American bombing campaign and so has quickly grasped the ceasefire.
The choreographed ending of the war with Iran launching 12 missiles at Al Udeid air base in Qatar – equal to the number of bombs the Americans had dropped on Iran – and that too after warning the Americans in advance, seems to suggest that the parties of the war agree to live to fight another day.
Two recent events tell us a lot about nationalism and the resilience of societies.
On February 21 and 22, 2022, the Russian attack on Ukraine focused a major thrust by Spetsnaz elements towards Kiev. This was part of a 'shock and awe' strategy of capturing the capital city of Ukraine through a coup de main.
The attack devolved into a fiasco. The Russians were repelled, not only did Ukraine stand firm, but the event led to the consolidation of Ukrainian nationalism that continues to successfully battle the Russians today.
On June 13, Israel launched a similar 'shock and awe' attack on Iran declaring that not only would they finish off the Iranian nuclear programme, but effect a regime change in the country. The attack was accompanied by decapitating strikes to assassinate a cross-section of the Iranian security and nuclear establishment. The police headquarters was struck, as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) intelligence directorate and the state television broadcaster. The Israelis threatened to 'take out' Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In an interview with Fox News on June 15, Netanyahu said that the government in Teheran was very weak and given the chance '80% of the people would throw these theological thugs out.'
Netanyahu was wrong here, as he was in Iraq when he egged on the US to remove Saddam Hussein because the Iraqis would welcome it. But as the Americans and the world learnt to their cost, regime change was not quite the same thing as regime destruction.
Iran's central location and size marks it out as a major country in West Asia. The vast country has an ancient history and a strategic location in West Asia and is rich in natural gas and oil. They have a theocratic government system that gives primacy to Mullahs or clerics, and from the outset they have been bitterly opposed to Israel and seek to expel the US from the region. Their defence strategy has involved supporting militants in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Yemen and they have good ties with Russia, China and North Korea.
Necessity has led to the development of a sophisticated defence industry that produces its own missiles, drones, aircraft, armoured vehicles, small arms, naval vessels and electronic warfare systems. With a negligible air force, they have relied on missiles and drones for deterrence. All this has been built by a sophisticated industry, dependent on their substantial educated class which features a large number of STEM graduates, especially engineers.
In recent years the Mullah regime has faced a steady attrition of its position – its ally Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December 2024, between October 7, 2023 to now, the Hamas and Gaza itself has been virtually levelled by Israeli bombs, in September 2024, Hassan Nasrallah's death marked the near-demise of the Hezbollah. In April 2024 Iran and Israel fought their first round of war which saw the destruction of Iran's air defence network. And now in June 2025, Iran has suffered the decapitation of its military and civil leadership and destruction of its nuclear programme.
Iran's economy has suffered for long on account of mismanagement and the US-led embargo on its oil exports and from the fact that its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, 86, has no clear successor. The repressive Mullah regime has progressively tightened its grip on the country following the popular unrest in 2022 following the killing of Mahasa Amini, an Iranian woman, for not wearing her hijab. The protests saw the killing of 1500 people and over 20,000 arrested and were spread across social classes, universities and schools.
These protests had followed those in 2019 that shook more than 21 cities following the hike in oil prices. The protests saw widespread destruction of public property and affected all classes of people. The protestors called for among other things, the overthrow of Ali Khamanei and were the most violent protests since the 1979 disturbances that saw the overthrow of the Shah of Iran.
The Israeli government, and some elements in the US felt that these events were an indicator that the geopolitical setbacks of 2024 could be translated into an uprising against the regime. But despite the deep unpopularity of the mullahs the people of Iran were not about to work along the plans thought up in Tel Aviv and Washington. No doubt the Mossad and the CIA would have worked hard in the last week to trigger some kind of an uprising, but it just did not occur.
The Supreme Leader's (Rahbar) government is a carefully constructed autocracy. Rahbar himself is appointed for life by an Assembly of Experts and is supreme in all affairs. For example, he had issued a fatwa against making nuclear weapons in 2003, and it seems to have been obeyed by his government.
The Assembly of Experts are 88 clerics elected from among the clergy every 8 years. Theoretically they supervise and can dismiss the Supreme Leader.
Then there is the Guardian Council of 12 members, of which 6 clerics are appointed by the Supreme Leader and 6 jurists nominated by the judiciary and approved by the Majlis or Parliament.
The Guardian Council vets candidates for all elections – president, parliament, Assembly of Experts, and all laws. It has veto powers over parliament laws.
The President is the head of the government and is elected by popular vote every four years for a maximum of two years. He managed the domestic and economic policies and the foreign policy of Iran, all under the Supreme Leader's supervision.
The Majlis is elected every 4 years by popular vote and handles issues of everyday governance, though its laws must be approved by the Guardian Council and have all its members also vetted by it.
The Expediency Council is appointed by the Supreme Leader and advises him and resolves disputes between the Majlis and the Guardian's Council.
The Judiciary head is appointed by the Supreme Leader is independent, but has to align itself to Islamic laws. It enforces laws and prosecutes crimes.
The Supreme Leader's sword arm is the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) which is parallel and even more powerful than the Iranian military itself. But for the average citizen, the most feared is the Basij volunteer militia that is one of the branches of the IRGC and which enforces the Islamic laws.
As can be seen, this cruelly constructed autocracy is designed to preserve the authority of the theocracy and repress the average citizen. Contrary to its stated goals of creating an ideal Islamic republic, the Mullah government is riven with corruption and rivalries. Its handling of the economy has been poor and there has been no effort to reform the system. Dissent has been brutally crushed and the Mullah ideological control have alienated the young Iranians for generations.
Perhaps the worst aspects of Islamic rule are its treatment of women. Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic 'revolution' took away the rights of the women and removed restrictions on polygamy and child marriage. The ban on the hijab was lifted and complete covering of women's hair made compulsory by imprisonment and even death.
Yet in one area Iranian women have achieved a great deal. Education of women is a particular success story. Today the youth literacy rate among women is at 98% and their overall literacy is 85.5%. Fully 70% of STEM graduates are women, more than that of the US and, in some fields like engineering, Iranian women are ranked first globally. But patriarchy has restricted their abilities to get jobs related to their competency, indeed, there are legal and societal limits to their workforce participation, to their rights to divorce and travel.
But Iranians who face this repressive system, do not want to participate in western-led regime change because they have seen what has happened in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. People who were promised freedom are instead grappling with chaos and anarchy. Their attitude is that bad government is preferable to no government. So we may have to wait for another moment when, unguided or prompted by the saviours of democracy in the west, the people of Iran will do the needful for themselves.
Manoj Joshi is a distinguished fellow with the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
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