Anton Gerashchenko@Gerashchenko_en
The beginning of 2026 started as agony for Iran's regime: economic shock (inflation, devaluation, declining incomes) turned into a political crisis of legitimacy.
Rumors are circulating about a fear of a possible "Venezuelan scenario." Maduro's arrest seems to have made a huge impression on the leadership in Tehran and convinced them that the US could indeed take real action against leaders, prompting some of the elite to engage in separate negotiations with the West.
The regime responds to protests with well-tried methods - strong-arm tactics, communication blackout, information space control, and threats. The danger for the ruling Iranian elites lies not only in the scale of the protests, but also in the risk of them turning into sustained strikes in critical sectors (bazaar, transport, energy), i.e., into a form of "economic paralysis."
At the same time, the protest movement does not have a single center. Khamenei's opposition is a mosaic. There are internal "clans" (reformists/technocrats: Khatami, the Rafsanjani heirs, Rouhani) betting on a managed transition and a return to "modernization without disintegration." There is religious opposition (some of the Qom authorities, the Montazeri line, and Abdolhamid) that undermines the legitimacy of the Wilāyat al-Faqīh and promotes the idea of separating religion from politics. There are emigration projects - the Pahlavi monarchists and secular republicans (network coalitions around diaspora figures), who are strong in the media but weaker in their institutional presence within the country. There are radical ethno-regional movements (Kurdish and Baloch groups) capable of creating security pressure on the center, but with the risk of "separatist" framing.
Against this backdrop, President Masoud Pezeshkian is more of an internal dissonance than an opposition: formally, he represents the executive branch, but ideologically, he does not align with the conservative wing and has regional and ethnic social support. In a crisis of this type, the president can become either a "buffer" onto whom failures are offloaded or a temporary bridge to compromise between the conflicting parties.
The potential for a situational rapprochement between opposition segments is emerging right now, driven by shared hatred of Khamenei's vertical of power and the economic collapse. But the alliance is fragile: the groups are competing over the future form of the state, and the regime traditionally plays on fragmentation. Therefore, the decisive indicators remain:
◾️ whether protests turn into strikes and economic paralysis;
◾️ whether there will be signs of division/fatigue within the security apparatus;
◾️ whether a minimum common agenda for transition (communication, release, procedure for change of power) will be formed.
If these conditions do not come together, the most likely scenario is repressive stabilization with selective concessions; if they do come together, a window for a real turning point will open.
Amid the domestic political crisis, external threats to Tehran are also growing. The logic of the US and Israel boils down to finding an "opportune moment." Trump's public threats fit into this framework, but the key criterion for possible intervention is not humanitarian arguments, but an assessment of operational success.
The Iranian crisis has direct implications for Ukraine: Iran was one of Russia's key allies, providing technology and components for Shahed drones, chains for circumventing sanctions, and parallel financial and logistical channels. The weakening or fall of the regime in Tehran would mean the loss of an important supply hub and "sanctions adaptation" for Moscow, as well as a significant image loss. Roughly put, this could further narrow the circle of Russia's strategic allies.
