WINNIPEG — By any historical or strategic measure, mass protests alone rarely topple hardened dictatorships. Iran is no exception. The Islamic Republic will not collapse simply because brave citizens flood the streets, chant slogans, or defy morality police batons. The regime will fall only when the pillars that enforce its power crack from within. That means the army, the police, and ultimately elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps must lay down their arms and side with the people. Short of that, the current protest cycle, like many before it, will be crushed.
This is not a judgment on the courage of Iranian protesters. It is a sober assessment of how regimes survive and how they die.
For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic has perfected one central skill: suppressing dissent through organized violence. It does not rule by popular consent. It rules by fear, coercion, and the monopoly of force. As long as that monopoly holds, protests remain symbolic rather than decisive.
History makes this clear.
Authoritarian regimes collapse not when people lose fear, but when security forces do. In Romania in 1989, Nicolae Ceaușescu fell only after the army refused to keep firing on civilians. In Tunisia, Ben Ali fled when the military declined to defend him. In the Soviet bloc, regimes unraveled when police and soldiers stopped enforcing orders. In contrast, regimes like North Korea and Iran endure precisely because their security apparatus remains loyal, compartmentalized, and well compensated.
Iran’s ruling system was designed with this lesson in mind.
The regular army, the Artesh, is intentionally underpowered politically. The police are fragmented and tightly monitored. The IRGC was created as an ideological force whose loyalty is not to the nation, but to the revolution itself. It controls elite units, intelligence networks, vast economic interests, and proxy militias. Its commanders understand that regime collapse would likely mean prosecution, exile, or worse.
That is why the IRGC has shown a consistent willingness to kill Iranians to preserve power.
Protesters know this. They chant “our enemy is right here” not out of naivety, but clarity. They understand that the regime’s violence is domestic before it is regional. The same system that exports terror to Israel, to Judea and Samaria, to Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza, first terrorizes its own people.
Yet courage alone cannot overcome Kalashnikovs, armored vehicles, surveillance drones, and prison systems.
This is where many Western observers, and some well-meaning activists, misread the situation. They confuse visibility with leverage. Social media virality, international statements, and celebrity endorsements may raise awareness, but they do not dismantle command structures. Regimes do not fall because the world is watching. They fall when those ordered to shoot refuse to do so.
For Israel and the Jewish world, this distinction matters deeply.
The Islamic Republic is not merely a domestic tyranny. It is the central banker of global antisemitism, terrorism, and instability. It funds Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It arms Hezbollah with precision missiles aimed at Israeli cities. It directs militias that target Jews and Israelis worldwide. Every chant of “Death to Israel” begins in Tehran before it echoes elsewhere.
A collapsed Iranian regime would be a strategic earthquake. A wounded, enraged regime that survives protests is arguably more dangerous. History shows that Tehran responds to internal pressure by escalating external aggression. When threatened at home, it lashes out abroad.
That is why wishful thinking is dangerous.
The current protests are historic in scope and moral force. They represent a generational rejection of clerical rule. Women removing hijabs, workers striking, students defying security forces, ethnic minorities rising in solidarity. This is Iran’s conscience speaking.
But conscience does not command tanks.
For the protests to succeed, three things must happen.
First, fractures must emerge within the security services. Not symbolic defections, but operational ones. Units that refuse deployment. Officers who delay orders. Police who look the other way. These cracks matter more than any viral video.
Second, the economic interests of the IRGC must become liabilities rather than assets. Sanctions that target IRGC front companies, shipping networks, and overseas investments increase internal pressure. When loyalty becomes financially unsustainable, ideology weakens.
Third, the regime must lose confidence in its own survival. Authoritarian systems collapse suddenly when elites believe the end is inevitable. That tipping point comes not from crowds alone, but from the realization that force will no longer guarantee obedience.
Israel understands this logic better than most.
For decades, Israel has warned that the Iranian regime is not reformable. It cannot be moderated, appeased, or negotiated into benevolence. Its ideology is revolutionary, antisemitic, and expansionist by design. The same realism applies to regime change. It will not happen through slogans alone.
This does not mean Israel or the Jewish world should be passive observers. On the contrary, we should be unapologetic in exposing the regime’s crimes, amplifying Iranian voices, isolating the IRGC internationally, and rejecting the moral confusion that paints this regime as a legitimate actor.
But we must also be honest.
Without a decisive shift inside Iran’s coercive institutions, protests will be met with bullets, prisons, and executions. The bravery of the Iranian people deserves more than comforting illusions. It deserves a strategy rooted in reality.
The Islamic Republic will fall only when its enforcers decide it no longer deserves to be enforced.
Until then, every protest is a spark waiting for oxygen. The question is not whether the Iranian people are ready for freedom. They have proven that repeatedly.
The question is when those holding the guns will finally lay them down.
