PROTESTS IN IRAN, DICTATORIAL VIOLENCE, AND STRUCTURAL OBSTACLES

 

The deep crisis gripping Iran, with thousands dead (estimated at around ten thousand between January 8 and 10, 2026), eerily resembles the processes of authoritarian decomposition seen in Libya, Syria, and Iraq. These are dictatorial regimes that, upon losing internal legitimacy and control capacity, did not necessarily open the door to democracy but instead led to scenarios of fragmentation, prolonged violence, and state collapse. Recent Middle Eastern experience shows that the fall of a dictatorship does not equate—politically or sociologically—to the construction of a viable democratic order.

Iran today is trapped in a historical paradox: an exhausted theocratic state sustained by repression, fear, and a clerical elite disconnected from a civil society that is increasingly educated, urban, and secular in its aspirations. However, that same society lacks the institutional, cultural, and geopolitical tools needed to transform protests into a stable democratic project of a Western mold that could envision a truly attractive future.

The current young generations, who seem less extremist, more open to Western modernization, and determined to topple the theocratic dictatorship, are deeply confused between the desire for real democratization and ancestral respect for Islamic traditions in the long term. Therefore, insurrection attempts are sacrificing their lives and truly helping to fight to destroy the ayatollahs, but without an effective roadmap for modernity and effective democracy.

Like in Syria and Libya, the Iranian regime opted for a survival strategy based on the militarization of power, ideological control, and the systematic neutralization of all dissent. This dynamic eroded any possibility of gradual internal reform. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has become an omnipresent economic, political, and military actor, reproducing a pattern similar to the cruelest coercive apparatuses in the region’s collapsed regimes. 

The Illusion of Democratization

However, the central problem is not just the dictatorship, but what comes after it. Recent history is relentless: the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 produced no democracy in Iraq. Gaddafi’s overthrow destroyed the Libyan state, and the revolt against Bashar al-Assad in Syria degenerated into an endless civil war. In all cases, the “power vacuum” was filled by militias, tribal factions, highly violent religious sectarianism, and opportunistic interventions by external powers.

Moreover, from the perspective of international relations expert and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Joseph Nye, contemporary international politics cannot be understood solely in terms of military power. The notion of “complex interdependence” emphasizes that states are connected through multiple channels—economic, technological, cultural, and normative—and that power is also exercised through cooperation, persuasion, and international institutions.

In theory, this approach would open the possibility for Western countries to contribute to weakening the Iranian regime, not just through sanctions, but via coordinated diplomatic pressures, support for civil society, conditional economic incentives, and the use of soft, persuasive power to erode the legitimacy of theocratic authoritarianism, promoting a legitimate process of liberal democratization and internationally supported socio-cultural reconstruction. But here emerge the structural limits of Nye’s framework, as interdependence does not guarantee democratization in the Islamic world, much less the survival of civil society in terms of transcultural liberation.

In dominant globalization, complex interdependence can contain conflicts, modify behaviors, and generate enormous costs for sustaining authoritarian regimes, but it does not replace the internal conditions necessary for reliably building a democratic order.

The underlying problem is that the current international system lacks a coherent project for global democratization. The Western world acts in a fragmented, instrumental, and often contradictory manner. Democracy promotion competes with energy interests, regional security calculations, and efforts to limit the influence of actors like Russia and China. Meanwhile, Iran has exploited these fissures through strategic alliances that reduced its effective isolation.

Furthermore, the collapse of a dictatorial regime in an Islamic country does not occur in a cultural vacuum. Tribal structures, sectarian loyalties, and religious extremism remain organized political forces capable of quickly occupying the space left by the Islamist-authoritarian state. Liberal democracy, based on individual citizenship, rule of law, and institutional pluralism, finds no immediate fertile ground in contexts where Muslim and tribal collective identity precedes modern legal order.

The great Iranian tragedy—as well as the sad history in Libya, Syria, and Iraq—is that of a civil society trapped between two evils: the continuation of an oppressive regime or the risk of collapse without a democratic horizon. Massive protests, led especially by women and youth, express a legitimate demand for freedom and dignity, but they still do not form a political subject capable of contesting power in an organized and sustainable way.

The complex interdependence of the globalized world can amplify these voices, partially protect dissidents, and weaken dictatorships in the long term. But it cannot replace the absence of internal democratic leadership, nor resolve the historical ethnic fractures traversing contemporary Islamism.

Iran is heading toward an inevitable transformation, though not necessarily toward democracy. The comparative experience of Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and even Ukraine warns that the end of a dictatorship can be just the beginning of deeper destruction. From Joseph Nye’s optic, international cooperation and interdependence offer tools to contain violence and limit authoritarian power, but they are far from founding a new democratic, equitable, and functional international order that benefits civil society.

Structural Obstacles

Today, political lucidity demands recognizing this uncomfortable reality and not prematurely celebrating the likely sinking of the ayatollahs. Without institutions, without a democratic culture, and without a coherent international project, the fall of the dictatorship in Iran could once again reproduce the tragedy of contemporary Middle East: greater cultural fragmentation, painful civil wars, tribal executions, ethnic hatreds, and greater religious radicalism to, supposedly, reconstruct the Islamic soul that has paradoxically led the entire Muslim world to the most dramatic tragedies of the 21st century.

The violent protests in Iran and the ayatollahs’ brutal repression continue to spread massively with economic, social, and political demands, generating thousands of deaths and the systematic criminalization of protesters. Although the mobilizations express a deep desire for democratic transformation, several “structural obstacles” hinder these protests from producing a lasting, democratizing solution.

One key explanatory factor lies in the theory of Greek political scientist Stathis Kalyvas, for whom violence is not a chaotic or irrational phenomenon but follows strategic dynamics linked to territorial control and the incentives of political and civilian actors. In the Iranian case, the state maintains an almost absolute monopoly on coercive instruments: police forces, Revolutionary Guard, military intelligence, and security apparatuses that employ indiscriminate violence to suppress dissent, with the explicit goal of neutralizing any serious political challenge.

This use of state violence not only represses protests but also dismantles civil organization, dissolving mobilization networks and wearing down the social fabric necessary for building cohesive democratic forces. State violence becomes a strategic tax to prolong the regime, not an anomaly overwhelmed by conflict.

The protests in Iran encompass a broad spectrum of demands and social groups, from urban economic sectors affected by the crisis to youth, women, and ethnic minorities. However, there is no unified leadership capable of articulating them into a viable political alternative. Attempts to organize opposition coalitions, even among prominent diaspora figures, have failed due to ideological, strategic tensions, and trust issues. This fragmentation weakens the ability to build a common discourse and strategy, obstructing negotiations with the state and blocking support from parts of the state apparatus that could tip the balance toward a peaceful transition.

From Kalyvas’s perspective, conflicts and protests do not follow a single axis of action but emerge from complex interactions among multiple local and national actors. The absence of a collectively shared organizational logic makes it more likely that violence will perpetuate without leading to democratic institutionalization.

If state violence can be more effective at fragmenting and confusing opponents, selectively isolating real or potential ones, it better explains why the regime employs both indiscriminate and selective violence and why it does not yield to democratic demands.

A democratizing solution theoretically requires the security apparatus to split or dismantle from within. However, the regime’s tight control over the armed forces and paramilitary groups dramatically reduces the probability that factions loyal to the dictatorship will suddenly change strategy and promote significant actions favorable to the opposition. This, rather than facilitating democratization, deepens the cycle of repression and fear.

Conclusions

Sustainable democratic transition demands an organized civil society—political parties, unions, independent press, community organizations—that can build broad consensuses and mediate the articulation of demands. But in Iran, decades of repression have eroded these institutions, and the institutional vacuum translates into a lack of legitimate channels to channel demands within the existing political system.

This institutional absence also means that much of the violence and protest operates on improvised terrain, which can aggravate conflicts as actors not formally aligned with a common project might act opportunistically, increasing fragmentation and cycles of violence without advancing toward a structured political solution.

The Iranian regime has promoted narratives attributing the protests to “foreign agents,” eroding the internal legitimacy of the demands and reinforcing a national security crisis discourse. Instrumentalizing external threats can legitimize further internal repression and make it harder for democratic change processes to appear as genuine forces, which is crucial for the success of lasting democratic transitions. The perception that changes are driven from abroad can further polarize internal social structures and block the bridges of trust essential for a peaceful solution.

All structural obstacles—strategic state violence, opposition fragmentation, institutional weakness, and dominant dictatorial discourse—constitute profound barriers to a sustainable democratic transition. Kalyvas’s theories of violence and conflict remind us that political violence is not an irrational overflow but a complex, rationalized process that, without strong institutional counterweights or internal ruptures in state power, tends to reproduce cycles of repression and fragmentation without truly democratizing solutions.