Perhaps a Cynical Reading of the Iranian Uprising Is No Longer Warranted

By Noah Rothman

Friday, January 09, 2026

 

It’s a learned and possibly shrewd impulse to write off the protests that have convulsed Iran for nearly two weeks. After all, there have been similar outpourings of anti-regime sentiment, all of which failed to topple the theocracy in Tehran. We’ve seen this all before, the thinking goes. But have we?

 

Sure, we’ve witnessed massive protests before, and we’ve seen the Iranian regime cut off internet and phone access to its citizens in successful efforts to quell that unrest. But have we seen protests of this scale? Not according to the Iranian source on the ground in Tehran, who told CBS News that the size and scope of the demonstrations was “unprecedented.”

 

Nor has there ever been a time like now, when Iranians can circumvent the Islamic Republic’s censorious internet restrictions:

 

There you have it. Thanks, @elonmusk! https://t.co/2q8nHBVAk4 pic.twitter.com/l8JJHiKnhs

 

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) January 8, 2026

 

Of course, we have seen quasi-insurrectionary activity by anti-regime demonstrators. But even during the so-called green revolution of 2009, they were outgunned by special forces and the Basij paramilitary police. Today, however, there are reports of sporadic uprisings of armed protesters sufficient to push back regime forces.

 

“A resident in the southern city of Bushehr said the crowd was so large there that the security forces retreated,” the New York Times reported on Friday. In the Iranian capital itself, “security forces had fired their weapons into the air and fired tear gas canisters, but did not disperse the crowd.”

 

And was there ever an occasion in which Iranian regime officials were openly confessing to Western reporters that their colleagues were “at a loss of how to contain the avalanche of protests?” When were multiple Western outlets reporting in detail the plans of high-ranking regime officials to seek exile in Moscow or Paris if (or, perhaps, when) the regular police and military declined to follow orders, leaving the regime’s survival to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps?

 

There have been anti-regime attacks on government symbols and regime facilities before, too. But when have the regime’s enforcers lacked the resolve or, perhaps, the very means to defend them, as we’re seeing now?

 

Even the most jaded among us should readjust our priors when the evidence warrants it, which is precisely what U.S. intelligence is doing. “US intelligence agencies are reassessing their view from earlier this week that the protests in Iran did not pose a threat to the regime,” Axios reported Friday. Israeli intelligence may also be revising its assessment of the threat that the uprising poses to the Islamic Republic’s stability.

 

Those of us who would love to see the Iranian theocracy meet the justice it is due at the hands of its captive people have been burned before. It’s an understandable psychological defense mechanism to avoid over-investing in the success of the anti-establishment protesters in the streets of every major Iranian city. But at a certain point, that defense mechanism becomes a blindfold, obscuring the truth that’s right in front of our eyes. Reflexively dismissing the objective novelty of the conditions on the ground in Tehran today, merely to spare yourself the letdown if they fail once again to liberate Iran, is cynicism masquerading as wisdom.

 

Maybe this time, optimism isn’t an expression of naïveté. Maybe this time, the uprising doesn’t just “feel” different. It is different.