The Weak and Murderous Iranian Regime

By Judson Berger

Friday, January 16, 2026

 

The authoritarian regime in Tehran is as dangerous as it is desperate.

 

As of this writing, activists say nearly 2,500 protesters have been killed, and thousands more detained, in the Iranian government’s overwhelming crackdown — an operation so lethal it may have suppressed demonstrations for now. An accurate picture of the unrest and the response to it is difficult to form given the communication blackout, but the New York Times has described this as one of the deadliest crackdowns in over a decade.

 

“A killing spree,” is how one protester put it, amid accounts this week of government forces opening fire on demonstrators and scenes of body bags on floors. Noah Rothman notes that activists outside Iran estimate the number slain to be closer to 12,000, if not higher, the victims of “an unspeakable massacre.”

 

The ferocity of the response betrays the tenuousness of the regime’s position, as economic discontent has converged with longstanding resentment toward the government, at its most vulnerable point in decades in the wake of strikes against its nuclear program and the decimation of key regional allies. Amid the slaughter, there is still hope. “It is possible to imagine that we could be about to experience a bookend, from 1979 to 2026,” Rich Lowry wrote, before an “eerie quiet” settled over the country.

 

Whether and how the Trump administration might intervene is a live question. “HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” President Trump posted Tuesday, urging protesters to “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS.” For obvious and recent geopolitical reasons, the ayatollah can’t assume he’s bluffing. Yet it’s unclear whether that was reckless online instigation or the prelude to hard-power backup; Trump pedaled backward a day later, saying he’s been assured “that the killing has stopped, that the executions have stopped.” The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump was advised a major strike is unlikely to topple the government and could make things worse, and the U.S. would need more regional firepower anyway. This, as the Pentagon reportedly is moving the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group toward the Middle East, and Trump keeps options open — in other words, the only person who really knows what Trump will do is Trump, and even that might assume too much.

 

Michael Rubin writes for NRO that the U.S. president should learn from his predecessors’ mistakes — with China, with Iraq, with Iran — and “help the Iranian people end the Islamic Republic.” Jim Geraghty notes as well the legitimate concerns that a U.S. strike could be used to discredit the protesters. Regardless of our level of involvement, Noah Rothman has observed from the start that these protests might, in fact, be different, and even the cynics among us should look with fresh eyes.

 

If the regime has put down the protests for the time being, embers burn. Andy McCarthy is cautiously optimistic about the opportunity for regime change, though “only the Iranian people” can achieve it. Noah warned on The Editors that if the regime does survive, it may be another generation before the opportunity to uproot it returns. Working against the mullahs, however, are the five decades they’ve spent making themselves loathed by the people they rule — the biggest determinant for whether 1979’s upheaval indeed sees a bookend this year.

 

As protests in Iran were spreading, I happened to be reading a memoir about its postrevolutionary period, Reading Lolita in Tehran. The book portrays lives filled with small indignities, amounting to large ones. Iranian-born author Azar Nafisi (who left for America in 1997) recalled how pro-government motorcycle thugs used to show up to the scene of bombings during the Iran-Iraq War to extol the regime, blocking mourners and protesters. She recounted all the ways women, many of whom had tasted pre-revolutionary freedoms, were concealed and put under the guardianship of men. One of the most peculiar but memorable passages describes an evening at a closely monitored concert:

 

We were greeted by a gentleman who insulted the audience for a good fifteen or twenty minutes. . . . [The band members] weren’t allowed to sing; they could only play their instruments. Nor could they demonstrate any enthusiasm for what they were doing: to show emotion would be un-Islamic. . . . Every time the audience . . . started to move or clap, two men in suits appeared from either side of the stage and gesticulated for them to stop.

 

Imagine being controlled in this way for 47 years by bearded Karens.

 

The regime in Tehran is not just evil and fanatical, an exporter par excellence of global terrorism — it is a tragic, civilizational joke. May they be laughed off the stage, for good.