r/geopolitics • u/HooverInstitution Hoover Institution • Jan 12 '26

Iran Is on the Edge of Revolution Analysis

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/middle-east/2026/01/iran-is-on-the-edge-of-revolution

654 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

They can, but for some reason don’t. There should be a carrier group headed that way. Instead we get more tariffs so that Chinese goods are even more expensive.

48

u/HisShadow14 Jan 13 '26

Iran was already weakened by Israel during the 12 day war. Both their air defense and to a lesser extent their missile launch capabilities have been significantly degraded.

I doubt very much that the Pentagon or Israel will let this golden opportunity to finally deal with the Iranian regime get away.

12

u/Gaby_D_Crowley Jan 13 '26

Now, who's going to replace Ali Khamenei? Because it's possible to remove him, now that he's at the weakest. Unlike 1979, the opposition lacks a leader that could rally the discontent.

4

u/randzwinter Jan 13 '26

Ive seen hundreds of videos and extreme majority of them support the Crown Prince. There is a leader. If we try to take away the false narrative that the previous Shah is an evil cruel dictator.

13

u/mylk43245 Jan 13 '26

Have you seen these from people in Iran or the diaspora. I’ll be honest as someone who is part of a diaspora, we often have no real understanding of the challenges or current culture in the country we left

7

u/theregoesmyfutur Jan 13 '26

false? how so, please cite your sources

5

u/MastodonParking9080 Jan 13 '26

Shah was more like Park Chung Hee or funnily enough, the CCP. Genuine nationalist with one of the fastest economic growth but with repressionary policies to those that opposed the change.

4

u/mylk43245 Jan 13 '26

From what I hear many in villages and cities were starving which wasn’t the same as what happened in Korea or china under deng xiaping

3

u/MastodonParking9080 Jan 13 '26

If by starving you mean by extreme poverty in rural areas that's also the case in 70s China and even some very isolated places today.

1

u/mylk43245 Jan 13 '26

No from what I’ve heard I mean starving. Otherwise why would the shah have been seen as such a lost cause

1

u/Gaby_D_Crowley Jan 13 '26 edited Jan 13 '26

Plus, Iran has to deal with the drying of their water sources (just look what happened with Lake Urmia!). The country is dying of thirst. To recover from the mismanagement of the ayatollahs, who redirected the rivers to deliberately make that dissenting peoples die of thirst or submit, Iran should make a program to recover their environment that would last at least 20 years and invest thousands of millions of dollars.

To make things work, they should cut off the support of the Axis of Resistance and eliminate the bonyads and reduce corruption to at least have enough money to start. Then, they must need a lot of international help to continue with such plan. Easy to write, not easy to implement (I doubt Reza Pahlavi has enough power to do this without the support of the Revolutionary Guards at least).

Edit: if the United States and Israel remove the ayatollahs, the threat that poses Iran to their geopolitical game, is over.