On the Brink in Tehran

Economic despair at home and American bluster abroad have revived old fears of regime change in Iran.

Iran has seen protests before that have changed the course of its history. It has seen foreign pressure, sanctions and threats in abundance. But what makes the present moment unsettling is the coincidence of both. Ever since demonstrations spread across the country last month, sparked by a collapsing currency and surging prices, they have quickly become entangled with a far more combustible question whether Iran could once again find itself in Washington’s crosshairs.

Over the past year the Iranian rial has lost more than a third of its value against the dollar. Inflation is running above 40 percent. For ordinary Iranians, food, rent and fuel now cost far more than wages can bear. Shopkeepers were the first to revolt, shuttering their businesses in protest against mounting losses. University students followed. Soon, the streets filled with people from across social classes, in at least 23 of Iran’s 31 provinces. By official counts, at least 16 people have been killed and hundreds detained; unofficial estimates suggest more. Security forces have fanned out across major cities. Clashes have become routine.

Contradictory Responses

The leadership’s response has been characteristically contradictory. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, acknowledged the protesters’ economic grievances. Yet he coupled sympathy with menace, insisting that “rioters must be put in their place,” which has been widely read as a licence for a harsher crackdown. The government, meanwhile, has reached for fiscal palliatives. From January 10, it plans to offer a monthly allowance, roughly $7 per person, credited for the purchase of basic goods. Whether this film calms the streets is doubtful.

The unrest has unsettled not only Tehran but also capitals farther afield. India, which has nearly 3,000 medical students in Iran, has issued a travel advisory and is quietly dusting off contingency plans. Iranian diaspora communities, from Europe to North America, have staged solidarity protests, amplifying international scrutiny. Yet it is Washington’s reaction that has most alarmed Iran’s rulers.

President Donald Trump has issued fresh warnings amid his bellicose theatrics. “If they start killing people like they have in the past,” he said recently, “I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States.” What, precisely, would be “hit” remains unspecified. But ambiguity, in this case, is the point. Iranian officials accuse America and Israel of stoking unrest. Unverified reports have even circulated that Khamenei has contemplated decamping to Moscow should matters spiral further.

Trump’s threats against Iran come in the shadow of his recent strike in Venezuela, which has sent ripples of anxiety across capitals from Latin America to the Middle East. Since that operation he has issued warnings - some explicit, others oblique - towards a grab-bag of countries including Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and even Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark. On January 4, he declared that America was “in the business of having countries around us that are viable and successful and where the oil is allowed to freely come out.” Few missed the implication.

What is striking is not only the breadth of Trump’s targets but also the muted response from much of the world. Russia and China have confined themselves to platitudes about sovereignty. Europe has wrung its hands.

Growing Unease

Even within America, unease is growing. Some of Trump’s allies have begun to question the wisdom of another flirtation with overseas intervention. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, warned that military adventurism was precisely what many of the MAGA faithful believed they had voted to end. With inflation stubborn, public services strained and taxpayers weary of foreign entanglements, she argued, America has little appetite for funding another distant conflict. Thomas Massie, a congressman from Kentucky, was blunter: Venezuela, he said, was “not about drugs; it’s about oil and regime change.”

Those criticisms underscore a central paradox of the present moment. Trump’s rhetoric suggests a willingness to use force to bend recalcitrant states to America’s will. Yet the domestic and strategic constraints on such action remain formidable, and nowhere more so than in Iran. A full-scale invasion would be a last resort, and for good reason. Iran is vast, populous and far more militarily capable than America’s past adversaries in Iraq or Afghanistan. Any ground war would be costly and could easily metastasise into a regional conflagration, drawing in Iran’s network of allies and proxies across the Middle East. After two decades of grinding wars, American public opinion shows scant enthusiasm for another.

That reality has shaped Washington’s Iran policy for years. Sanctions, diplomacy, cyber operations and limited military actions have been the preferred tools. Confrontations have been indirect, as in naval incidents in the Gulf, shadow wars in cyberspace, tit-for-tat strikes through proxies. Nuclear negotiations, however fraught, have offered an off-ramp. This pattern is more likely to persist than a dramatic march on Tehran.

Still, the combination of internal unrest and external pressure is combustible. Iran’s leaders insist they remain firmly in control, festooning Tehran with banners warning foreign powers against intervention. Yet history suggests that regimes under economic strain are more brittle than they appear. At the same time, history also counsels caution to would-be interveners. The kidnapping-style removal of a sovereign leader as in Venezuela’s case sets a very ugly precedent indeed.

For India, the moment calls for watchfulness. New Delhi has long prided itself on a foreign policy grounded in strategic autonomy and a certain moral fastidiousness. As the new year begins, the world finds itself watching Iran with a familiar mix of anxiety and fatalism. The convergence of economic despair and Trump's geopolitical swagger has made Tehran, once again, a fault-line in a jittery world.