Iran’s leaders are fighting a losing battle

Iran’s rulers are holding firm. The country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has expressed sorrow at the killing of Mahsa Amini – who died last month after being arrested by the state’s morality police – while squarely, and unsurprisingly, blaming foreign agitators for the protests that have followed. Ominously,

Khamenei has said the protestors are not ‘real Iranians’ – a statement which echoes his crocodile tears in 2009 before he unleashed a bloody crackdown.

Hundreds died during those and subsequent demonstrations, in 2017 and 2019, as state security forces struck back against ordinary Iranians who had taken to the streets. In the coming weeks, it seems depressingly likely something similarly horrific will unfold. But if that response works in the short term, it is a policy with diminishing returns. The regime can only sustain itself for so long through its repeated, arbitrary exercises of violence. Far from taming society, Iranians have become more rebellious.