One can be excused for wondering why the Islamic Republic of Iran has consistently beaten accusations of near-death since its inception in 1979. The regime in Tehran has held onto power through successive internal and external crises regardless of doomsday prophesizing in Washington or Tel Aviv. As the Iranian government faces one of the most difficult moments in its brief existence—both internally and externally—the question now, as the U.S. sends a second aircraft carrier to the region is will this time be different?
Much has changed in the Middle East since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023. Nowhere is that more apparent outside of occupied Palestine than in Iran and its now-deflated “Axis of Resistance” militia network across the region. Israel’s ability to weaken major non-state actors aligned with Tehran, including Lebanese Hezbollah and Gaza’s Hamas, opened the door for direct hostilities between the two archrivals. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria and clear checks on Iraqi militias have also played a role, alongside increased U.S. support for Israel’s military actions—including conducting direct strikes on Iran with Israel that largely wiped out the country’s air defense capabilities while deeply weakening its nuclear program and ballistic missile production capacities.
In Tehran, long-standing corruption and repression on the part of regime officials, worsening environmental dynamics, and the economic components of Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign drive domestic strife. The economic malaise impacting Iran initially set off the protests that spanned the end of 2025 and beginning of 2026, eventually evolving into widespread anti-regime protests on par with the country’s largest protest movements of the past.
That movement was brutally crushed in mid-January in arguably the worst act of repression the country has witnessed since the 1979 revolution and its post-revolution purges. Human rights organizations have confirmed thousands of protestor deaths as a result of the crackdown in a clear violation of the most basic universal human rights principles and international law. Simply put, no government willing to enact such a high degree of pain on its people for exercising such rights—especially peacefully—should be treated as a normal country.
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