The Economist: After Iran’s massacres, tensions grow inside the regime

Key topics:Iran crushes protests; 3,900+ deaths, 24,000 arrests verifiedKhamenei’s rule questioned; reformists demand democratic changeIRGC loyalty uncertain; internal fractures risk future power shifts.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..From The Economist, published under licence. The original article can be found on www.economist.com© 2025 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved..The Economist.On the face of it, all is calm again. The regime has reasserted control. The ceiling of fear, briefly shattered, has been restored. Masked men impose an unofficial dusk-to-dawn curfew in the capital, Tehran. Security forces scour rooftops for tell-tale satellite dishes that reveal a Starlink set. Businessmen who dared to tweet support for the walkout by shopkeepers and for the protests are hauled away and their firms confiscated. hrana, a Washington-based human-rights monitor, has verified over 3,900 deaths and 24,000 arrests. People in Tehran, including officials, say the true toll exceeds 10,000.The Islamic Republic’s pecking order is so far unchanged. During the first week of protests Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president elected under a tightly qualified franchise, described the demonstrators and their demands as legitimate and let them spread from the provinces into the big cities. But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the unelected cleric who rules Iran as supreme leader, intervened and his prosecutor-general branded them “enemies of God”: a de facto death sentence. He unleashed his praetorian guard, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (irgc), and its auxiliary militia, the Basij. The shah, his advisers long believed, fell in 1979 for lack of steely resolve. Mr Khamenei has no intention of repeating that mistake..Read more:.Trump signals pause on Iran strike as protest crackdown appears to ease.Yet beneath the surface the system is reeling. Officials and hangers-on speak of “huge chatter”, says a frequent traveller in contact with officials in Tehran. “A line has been crossed. The status quo is unsustainable.” Another Iran-watcher, with relatives there, puts it starkly: “Iran is approaching a familiar but historically unresolved moment: the exhaustion of a governing ideology.” Many believe that time is running out. “The rulers have reached their limits by violently eliminating civil society,” declared a manifesto issued on January 18th by 14 reform-minded clerics and intellectuals. Unless those in power begin fundamental and peaceful reform, it warned, harsher change will eventually follow. One signatory says: “The system must stop suppressing and become more democratic.”Much of this internal criticism focuses on the 86-year-old Mr Khamenei, who has ruled for 36 increasingly despotic years. Critics complain about his intransigence in nuclear talks with America: by insisting on a token enrichment programme, they argue, he squandered a deal in 2025 that could have lifted sanctions altogether. Some go further. At least one cleric behind the manifesto called for him to stand trial for the state’s slaughter, according to another signatory. “We expect the supreme leader to exit within the next three to 12 months,” says an investor still operating in Iran, citing both Mr Khamenei’s age and unpopularity. Others wistfully seek Mr Trump’s intervention. “We used to worry we’d become Venezuela,” runs a joke in cafés frequented by civil servants. “Now we worry we won’t.”Others speak of inverting the political order. Instead of a cleric presiding over an elected president, some favour the idea of a constitutional figurehead who is subordinate to parliament or the presidency. Rather than change the regime, they seek to split it by scrapping Islamic institutions while salvaging those of the state, says a veteran Iran watcher in Washington. The financial savings for a cash-strapped regime could be large. It would “slash funding for seminaries and their puppet mullahs”, according to a seminary graduate. Mr Pezeshkian is widely seen as too weak to lead any palace coup. Attention may instead turn to Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, parliament’s speaker and a former irgc air-force commander, and Ali Larijani, a veteran powerbroker and son of an ayatollah, who now heads the Supreme National Security Council. Both have children who are living or have tried to live in North America.Such is the prevailing level of fear, however, that no one will move without the security forces. Even their loyalty is now questioned. There is no hard evidence for opposition claims of mass military or irgc defections. The guards are believed to still number around 170,000 men, while the regular army founded under the shah is about 400,000-strong. Yet the irgc is no monolith. It encompasses a tangle of religious, economic and military interests. Its command structure was badly damaged by Israel’s 12-day war last summer. It has just fewer representatives on the security council than the army, suggesting its clout is waning. Some irgc commanders may yet choose self-preservation over fealty. “It is loyal to Iran, not to Khamenei,” insists an official.For now, Mr Khamenei still calls the shots. He can count on a base—some 13.5m voters (to Mr Pezeshkian’s 16.3m in a population of more than 90m) who backed a hardliner in the last election—and a larger group that may yet prefer tyranny to chaos. For this group, limited concessions might suffice. One official proposes an amnesty and talks with royalist and other opposition groups in exile—provided they accept the Islamic tenets of state..Read more:.The Economist: Trump, Bibi - Wild cards raising stakes in mass protest convulsing Iran.Looming over everything, though, is the Damocles sword of Donald Trump. A naval taskforce as big as the one he assembled ahead of last summer’s attack is reportedly heading from Asia to the Gulf. This must concentrate minds in Tehran. Better change from within, says a merchant with ties to the regime, than change imposed from without.

The Economist: After Iran’s massacres, tensions grow inside the regime

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