Iran is facing its most consequential internal crisis in more than a decade, and this time the fault lines run deeper than before. Since late December 2025, protests triggered by a collapsing rial, inflation estimated at above 50 percent, and shortages of basic goods have metastasized into nationwide unrest spanning Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Ahvaz, Tabriz, and Qom. What distinguishes this moment is not only the scale but also the timing: Iran’s domestic fracture is unfolding amid acute regional and global pressures that sharply limit the regime’s room for manoeuvre.
At the centre of the crisis stands Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now 86, whose authority has long depended on a balance between ideological control, coercive force, and economic patronage. That balance is breaking down. President Masoud Pezeshkian, elected in 2024 as a nominal reformist compromise, has been politically sidelined, unable to deliver economic relief or rein in the security apparatus. Real power remains with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), commanded by figures such as Hossein Salami, who has overseen the violent suppression of protests alongside the Basij militia since early January 2026.
The state’s response has been uncompromising. On January 5, 2026, Iranian authorities imposed a near-total nationwide internet blackout, echoing tactics used in November 2019 and during the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests. By mid-January, human rights organizations and Western intelligence estimates suggested several thousand deaths and tens of thousands of arrests, particularly in Khuzestan and Kurdistan provinces. On January 20, 2026, the United Nations Human Rights Council convened an emergency session, supported by the EU, Canada, and Japan, and opposed by China and Russia, to address alleged crimes against civilians.
Iran’s leadership has framed the unrest as a foreign conspiracy. Official statements have explicitly accused the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia of fomenting instability, with state media naming CIA and Mossad operations as alleged instigators. While these claims play well to hardline domestic audiences, they mask a more uncomfortable reality: Iran’s economic implosion is largely self-inflicted, exacerbated by sanctions tied to its nuclear programme and its costly regional entanglements in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Syria (Assad regime), Iraq, and Yemen (Houthis).
Externally, Iran’s strategic position is weaker than at any point since the Iran-Iraq War. Negotiations over the nuclear file collapsed definitively in 2024, and since then, the United States, under President Donald Trump’s second administration, has tightened secondary sanctions while expanding naval deployments in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. Israel, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has escalated covert strikes against Iranian assets in Syria throughout 2025, calculating that Tehran is too constrained domestically to retaliate decisively.
China and Russia remain Iran’s principal external backers, but even their support is transactional. Beijing continues to buy discounted Iranian oil, yet has avoided overt political alignment during the current unrest. Moscow, consumed by its war in Ukraine, offers rhetorical cover but little material relief. Iran is increasingly isolated at the very moment its internal cohesion is under strain.
This convergence of economic collapse, legitimacy erosion, generational anger, and geopolitical pressure suggests Iran is at a turning point. The likely outcomes range from intensified authoritarian consolidation under the IRGC to a prolonged cycle of unrest and repression to, less likely but no longer unthinkable, a managed transition forced by elite fragmentation after Khamenei.
For the world, Iran’s crisis is not a spectator event. It directly affects energy markets, nuclear non-proliferation, regional war risks, and global norms around state violence. The question is no longer whether Iran can return to the status quo ante. That era has ended. The question now is what replaces it and whether global actors will shape that future through restraint and principle or stumble into escalation amid a collapsing order.
