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“Revolution has become more conceivable today”

By Nahid Siamdoust

This article is a repost from Qantara.de, where this Interview by Mohammed Magdy was originally published.

Is Iran’s regime at a breaking point? Nahid Siamdoust assesses the significance of the recent uprising, examines its potential leaders and outlines five possible scenarios for what comes next.

Mohammed Magdy: Last week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said “we are now witnessing the final days and weeks” of Iran’s regime. Do you agree? 

Nahid Siamdoust: The Islamic Republic is in a very vulnerable place. The feeling, both inside and outside the country, is that this is the last battle, which is in fact one of the chants heard on the streets: “in akharin nabarde”, sometimes followed, by royalists, with “Pahlavi barmigarde” (“Pahlavi will return”). Iran has experienced extreme sanctions for decades, as well as a corrupt, inept government that’s filling the pockets of its own while depleting those of ordinary Iranians. Iranians have risen up several times in nationwide protests to demand more rights and freedom. The current state—a devastated economy, the rial plunging to record lows and extreme inflation—cannot continue. But whether the Islamic Republic will fall is another question.

Colorful graffiti showing a blue flower in the center.
Graffiti in London, 2024. Photo by Georges Khalil.

In 2023, you told Life and Letters that for a revolution to happen, enough people have to believe that it can happen and argued—drawing on the sociologist Charles Kurzman—that revolutions become possible only once they are widely conceivable. Is that the case today? 

Yes. Even during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising of 2022/2023, the revolution had become conceivable. But that uprising wasn’t perceived to be as inclusive as what we’re seeing now. Revolution has become more conceivable today because it’s based on many layers of demands and uprisings—student uprisings, union uprisings and women’s rights uprisings. Now this economic disaster has hit the country, and all these different factors are converging.

Human rights groups report thousands of deaths and arrests amid a widespread internet blackout, which has now been only partially eased. How does the level of repression compare to previous protest waves?

Because of the complete communication shutdown after January 8th, we still don’t know the extent of the killing of protesters that has taken place. Some reports have trickled out, but there is still a blackout on the internet and most communications abroad, so we don’t have a complete picture.

However, we do already know that the brutality of the repression has been much greater than it was during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, when more than 500 people were killed. Some not very reliable sources, such as the Iran International TV channel, have the number of dead as 12,000, which is an incredible number to fathom. Others have kept their estimations around 2000. All Iranians are waiting to understand the full extent of what’s happened.

We have heard that this time, security forces were given license to shoot protesters with live ammunition. They’ve killed many more people directly and intentionally than in previous protests. An image surfaced from the Kahrizak prison in the south of Tehran showing dozens of black body bags. This was actually something that was broadcast on Iranian state television itself, with the rationale, I assume, that it would act as a warning to people. It’s been very difficult to obtain accurate news. The only information or footage that we’re getting is from people who have filmed on the streets and then left the country, or had a Starlink connection before those too were shut down.

President Masoud Pezeshkian initially called the protests “legitimate”. Supreme Leader Khamenei later called protesters “saboteurs”. What do these contrasting messages reveal? 

The president’s conciliatory language came early, when the state still believed it could contain the protests. But once the protests spread beyond the bazaar, quickly engulfing all 31 provinces in Iran, the Supreme Leader spoke and has not changed his stance since. He continues to refer to the protests the way he has in all uprisings, as foreign-instigated.

To what extent does open US and Israeli support for the protests impact the movement?

We’ve seen the impact of Western interventions in Iraq and Libya. When the war broke out in June, with Israeli and then US attacks on Iran, Iranians came together to oppose the war. In fact, the notion of Western intervention is what the regime and others are using to discredit these protests. They claim these protests are instigated by Mossad [Israel’s intelligence agency] on the ground and are not authentic. Mossad forces may very well be on the ground, but that does not mean that the core of these protests is not authentic. These are the legitimate demands of the Iranian people.

We can’t deny that people who have repeatedly risen up to improve their political situation without success are at an impasse, with some in Iran saying, Can’t Trump just come and take out Khamenei? Can’t he do what he did with Maduro?”

How central is the current economic crisis to the expansion of the protests, compared to broader political demands? 

Obviously, the economic crisis is central to these protests. Even though the economic situation was not great a few years ago, Iranians were still able to afford to live and, if they really couldn’t put up with the Islamic Republic and its restrictions, to leave the country, as many have. Now, because of the devaluation of the rial and extreme inflation, even leaving has become impossible for most.

At the heart of the scene are bazaar merchants who played a pivotal role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and have maintained ties to the regime ever since. They now seem to be reconsidering their loyalty. Do you sense a significant shift?

Iranians know that during the 1979 revolution, the moment that the revolution really gained ground was the oil strikes and the bazaar merchant strikes. That is when things became inevitable. For that reason, seeing the bazaar merchants and other unions on strike has been so important for Iranians this time. Bazaar merchants are at an impasse; they’ve said they won’t end their protest until the government does something drastic. The currency crash is existential for them. They can’t import goods or run viable businesses.

Keep reading on Qantara.de.


About the Author

Nahid Siamdoust is an Assistant Professor of Media and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She was raised in Iran and Germany, and is the author of Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran (Stanford, 2017). In 2025/26 she is a EUME Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Humboldt University in Berlin, where she is researching Iran’s post-revolutionary public sphere.


Citation: Nahid Siamdoust, “Revolution has become more conceivable today”, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 29.01.2026, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/64121

 

 


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (January 29, 2026). “Revolution has become more conceivable today”. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved February 7, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15l9y


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