Equator: Much of the media coverage of the protests has focused on their superlative nature – the ‘most momentous,’ the ‘most widespread’. In your mind, how do these protests differ from previous eruptions in the last half century of Iranian political life? What should we be paying attention to?

Arang Keshavarzian: These are the most intense protests we’ve seen in post-revolutionary Iran. They include major cities like Tehran and Mashhad, small towns across the country, and peri-urban neighborhoods on the outskirts of large cities. They span multiple classes, too; we’re well beyond the initial days of protest which centered on traders in commercial centers responding to the plummeting value of the rial and skyrocketing inflation.

But by intensity, I’m also referring to the anger that’s palpable among Iranians. An anger rooted in a pervasive sense of despair and hopelessness. The scale and confluence of the crisis is considerable: financial, ecological, and above all political. Many don’t trust the government is able to or even interested in meeting their basic needs.

What should we be paying attention to? There’s an enormous amount of bravery and willfulness on display. People are emboldened in part by the weakness of the regime, but also because society has been brimming with energy from both previous national protests and daily claim-making by nurses, teachers, truck drivers, farmers, pensioners, oil workers and many others. These protests don’t exist in a vacuum.

The comparisons to 1979 – some lazy, some not – have also rolled in. Is Iran indeed a country on the brink of revolution?

The comparison with 1979 is lazy because it assumes that history is a model that repeats itself in exactly the same way. So when the bazaaris protested and closed their shops in late December, many “Iran-watchers” perked up, suggesting that this moment would result in an overthrow of the state. In fact, whenever there’s turmoil in Iran people reach for the 1979 analogy, a move that narrows our political imagination and stunts our analytical capacities.

1979 can offer some rough general threads to look for. We can ask: Are there cross-class coalitions being forged? Do these coalitions weaken the ability of the state to function? For instance, in 1978, labor strikes in the oil fields and in bureaucracies not only mobilized people, but also reduced the capacity of the monarchy to rely on a functioning state. This hasn’t happened today. The state is still intact. We‘re far from a revolutionary situation.

There are other differences between then and now. For me it was strange that in the opening days the protests in the bazaar and at Tehran University didn’t lead to organisers marching from one location to the other. That was a key axis in 1979, while in the 1953 oil nationalisation movement a key axis was between the bazaar and the parliament. The protesters and those fanning the flames from abroad could have seized upon those historical lessons.

There have been gruesome accounts of mass death in the past days. At least one friend announced that the situation was much like Covid: “Everyone knows someone who was killed.” This is a remarkable statement. It will of course take time to sift through these accounts of state violence and make sense of them, but what do you make of the images of body bags piling up at the morgue, released by the government no less?

The image of people wandering among dozens of body bags searching for their loved ones is hard to shake. As you say, we don’t yet know the full extent of the brutal violence meted out, but it’s undeniable. It’s chilling that the state media is sharing the morgue images, arguing that the dead are their supporters who were in fact killed by ‘terrorists’. While some state security personnel were indeed killed and buildings were set on fire, we know that this statement is far from the truth. In a way, the images can also be interpreted as a warning to the Islamic Republic’s opponents.

Strikingly, Mike Pompeo, the former US Secretary of State, wished Iranians a happy new year in the earliest days of these protests and referenced the Mossad agents walking among them. We know there’s a long history of Israeli infiltration in Iran. How implicated is Israel in the stoking of current tensions? And what is its end game vis-à-vis Iran?

The role of Israel and outside armed groups in this uprising remains unclear and will be debated for years to come. You’re right that as recently as this summer’s war, Israel was able to effectively infiltrate the country. While the Iranian government has claimed to uncover and execute some of these operatives, it’s likely that they’ve played a role in stoking some of the unrest, especially in western Iran, which seems to have experienced some of the most intense night-time protests.

It's evident that an Israel that continues to be unencumbered by international law and unconditionally backed by the United States seeks to stoke tensions and create a chaotic, falling-apart Iran. We should be able to hold this reality alongside the fact that there is a grassroots political movement that is at the core of this uprising. Both things are true.

The information wars are intense and pyrotechnic – always – when it comes to Iran, often pitting enthusiasts of external intervention with others who might call for an indigenous solution. The frenzy around Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah, has added a new dimension. What do you make of the monarchist discourse, the suggestion that a fair amount of Iranians inside Iran are ready to accept Pahlavi as a transitional figure?

Even five years ago, I would have scoffed at this suggestion. Reza Pahlavi hardly represented a serious political movement. I still don’t see a well-articulated, let alone coherent, political project, but we have to acknowledge that something has shifted and a return to Pahlavism has become meaningful to many Iranians. I can’t give you percentages, but we see it in urban areas and across many classes. That said, this is a reflection of the lack of viable alternatives to the Islamic Republic. At every turn in the past decades the Islamic Republic has cut off avenues for participation, representation, and for imagining a new political future. At the same time, it has violated the moral economy that was one of the core tenets of the revolution – that wealth and development was for all.

In the 1990s and early 2000s you could speak of political factions and dissident voices using alternative vocabularies, but they have since been sidelined, muzzled or exiled. At the same time, the large number of Iranian researchers, journalists, lawyers, students, and others who have left and reside in North America and Europe have not formed meaningful political parties or remained relevant inside Iran. In this barren political terrain, Reza Pahlavi stands out. Meanwhile diasporic media outlets like Manoto and Iran International have been pumping out an idyllic image of the pre-revolutionary period as a fairytale era when people didn’t have to grapple with economic strain or the drum beat of political turmoil. In this context, “Make Iran Great Again” is a powerful, if vacuous, message resonating among many Iranians who feel they’re out of options.

How does this Pahlavi mania inflect the western coverage but also the vivid discourse wars among exiles?

The western media is always looking for short cuts to political change, so many end up speaking about the Shah’s son. This has only polarised opposition politics. If one raises questions about the democratic or organisational credentials of Reza Pahlavi then that opens you up to accusations that you’re divisive and not supporting the people’s movement. Likewise, if commentators make analytical points about the complexity and challenge of overthrowing a regime, that becomes grounds for calling you a regime apologist. The polarisation only feeds infighting in the diaspora, which in the end is good for the Islamic Republic – an entity that traffics in the discourse of the people versus the enemy.

The Iranian regime is vast and has multiple poles of power. Do you have any sense of the internal debates that may be happening about how to handle the current discontent? If there’s a sense that the Supreme Leader, 86 years old, won’t capitulate to western demands vis a vis the nuclear program, might there be others in the regime, pragmatists as it were, who are more hungry for a deal with the US – even engagement with that part of the world? How has the regime responded to the protesters beyond brutal violence?

One would need a crystal ball to answer this question but we do know that when the protests began in late December, it looked like President Pezeshkian wanted to avoid a hardline security response and called for discussions with representatives of the merchant class. But as the protests went beyond merchants and when in particular the night-time rallies began it looks like Pezeshkian’s approach was quickly sidelined by the security apparatus.

Right now the regime’s focus is on controlling the streets. Protesters had turned the streets into vehicles for dissent and the state violently cracked down, both clearing and occupying the streets, adamant that they belong to them. Iranians report that it feels like living under de facto martial law, especially after nightfall. Meanwhile, last Monday, pro-government rallies were organised in several cities and with significant turnout. These are both attempts by the political leadership to show the world, and possibly themselves and their social base, that they still have support.They’ve been describing the protests as a foreign-backed terrorist conspiracy and a continuation of the 12-day war with Israel. They’ve held elaborate funerals and processions, all of which have been televised, to emphasise the violence of what they’re calling ‘rioters’ and ‘terrorists’. This is also a way to suggest that either Reza Pahlavi wanted to see such violence or lacks the leadership skills to maintain discipline among his followers.

What to make of Trump’s promise to intervene, i.e. ‘help is on the way’? It’s striking that he used the language of freedom when it comes to Iran whereas that discourse was wholly absent in the Venezuelan scenario. Two oil rich countries wilting under authoritarianism; might a Venezuela-style option exist here for the US? Which is to say, plucking the leadership but keeping the essential structure of governance intact?

It’s hard to predict what Trump will do. We know he likes quick, spectacular actions like assassinating Qassem Soleimani, bombing nuclear installations overnight, or sweeping in and abducting the Venezuelan president. But beyond the obvious logistical challenges, a regime change by simply expelling the Supreme Leader is a messier scenario in Iran than in Venezuela. Maduro represented just one faction in the Chavismo movement. Khamenei has been around since 1989 and is far more integral to Iran’s political system. He operates a whole office with an amorphous set of advisors involved in economic, religious, political, and security affairs reaching across the entire state apparatus and deep into Iranian society. Removing Khamenei will by definition restructure governance and might necessitate the rewriting of the constitution. I can’t see Trump or his advisors having the patience for that. Some speak of a takeover by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and the security apparatus as a pathway out of this volatility – a sort of Bonapartist solution.

So a reshuffling of the deck?

Yes.

We’re hearing that the street movement may have been crushed in the past couple of days. Where do you see this energy being channeled? How do you see the coming weeks and months?

Even if protesters go home and the so-called apolitical “grey” strata of the population remains unmoved, I don’t see these energies dissipating. There are so many challenges facing Iranian society. Even if the government makes some reforms in the next couple of months, citizens will inevitably make a new round of claims. The streets are likely to remain a battleground in certain neighborhoods and towns – especially among younger protesters and in the evenings. I expect that 40th-day ceremonies commemorating those killed in the protests will offer another set of flash points. The internet will have to come back on, since all basic dimensions of life and commerce depend on it, and that will become another sphere of struggle. In the end, this explosion has been long in the making. In many ways, this is just the beginning of the story.