The Iranian Regime Is Nothing but an Occupying Force Now: An Interview with Roya Hakakian
Its very illegitimacy might make it more brutal if it hangs on
What began in December as protests over Iran’s collapsing currency and water shortages has rapidly intensified into widespread calls for regime change—for Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1989, to be ousted from power.
The ayatollah declared that “rioters must be put in their place,” authorizing the use of lethal force against protesters. On Wednesday, Iran’s judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, advised the ruling regime to move forward with rapid trials and executions. A prominent cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, explicitly called for the state to execute protesters in a sermon carried on Iranian state radio.
The Revolutionary Guard Corps, which controls vast swaths of Iran’s economy and holds a monopoly on organized violence, shows no signs of relinquishing power.
But if the regime does fall, what’s next for Iran? What will emerge on the other side? How have Trump’s recent bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites and his expressions of solidarity with Iranian protesters, including promises to intervene on their behalf, affected the situation?
To get clearer on these issues, we spoke to acclaimed Iranian American journalist and author Roya Hakakian, who has in the past provided testimony to Congress about authoritarianism in Iran, about what this uprising means for the country’s future.
What follows is a short Q&A in which Roya discusses these questions and more.
Berny Belvedere: What is happening in Iran right now, and how does it compare to previous uprisings? Will this one last?
Roya Hakakian: In December, a new round of protests began in Iran. The value of the Iranian rial had plummeted. The bazaar, the marketplace in the nation’s capital, Tehran, which historically is highly conservative and supportive of the regime in power, took to the streets. The protests then widened and spread to the rest of the country.
Over the past two days, however, after a massive, bloody, horrific crackdown, the likes of which contemporary Iran has never known, people have dispersed. Many others—too many others—are simply trying to recover the bodies of their loved ones.
Belvedere: What are Iranians actually protesting for—economic relief, political reform, or fundamental regime change?
Hakakian: Iranians are protesting the regime above all. They have economic, political, and basic needs grievances. A few months ago, one of the most important stories throughout Iran was how the current water scarcity was going to force the regime to move the capital from Tehran to elsewhere. So daily life in Iran has only worsened.
Those underlying issues have always been there. For the past 15 years, since the 2009 Green Movement, there has consistently been a demand for regime change in Iran.
Belvedere: The regime in power in Iran has implemented a brutal crackdown to stamp out the protests. Regime forces were given authorization to shoot protesters. Estimates vary, but the death toll is reportedly anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands of Iranians dead. How does the scale and brutality of this crackdown compare historically, and can the regime survive it?
Hakakian: The scale of brutality that the regime has exercised in this past round is unlike anything anyone in this country has ever known. One indication of it is that we all know someone within our community who has suffered loss or injury. The stories that are emerging of the brutality and ruthlessness that the state has used are staggering. Families are being denied the corpses of their loved ones because they can’t pay the price that the regime requires in order to return the bodies to them. There are even reports that families who are unable to pay to retrieve their loved ones’ bodies are being offered them for free, if they are willing to publicly state that they were “martyrs.” That means that they were killed because the protesters were armed and violent—so the violence the regime had to use was justified—and the “martyrs” were caught in the middle.
In terms of the death count, it’s hard to get precise numbers while we’re in the thick of it, but the speed with which the numbers are growing is staggering. Various organizations very quickly went from reporting a few dozen dead to a few hundred, and now the numbers are growing by the thousands. This is a massacre whose proportions we will not know for a while. [Human Rights Activists News Agency has the number at under 3,000, while CBS News reported that, as of two days ago, anywhere from 12,000 to 20,000 had been killed.]
Belvedere: How do regional developments and international interventions—from the weakening of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” to Trump’s threats to involve himself on behalf of the protesters—affect this uprising’s trajectory and outcome?
Hakakian: The war that took place between Iran and Israel and then the bombing of the nuclear sites by the American military weakened Iran in a profound way. The social media posts from President Trump in support of the protesters, saying that the United States was locked and loaded to come to the aid of the protesters, gave them a sense of confidence that they would be safe to be out on the streets. All these factors played a very important role in drawing people out from nearly the entire country—every corner, every province, every city.
Belvedere: Let’s consider both scenarios: That the regime survives this or it falls. If it survives it, will that make it stronger or weaker? If the Islamic Republic falls, what comes next? What is the possibility of a genuine democratic transition?
Hakakian: If the regime survives, it will, from this moment forward, be an occupying regime. It will no longer have any legitimacy. It has not had any for a while, but after this horrific crackdown, there is no possible way that it can rehabilitate its image or its place among the public. It’s hard to imagine that it falls entirely, but it is possible that some leading figures within the regime will depart or somehow be forced out of power and allow some others who are within the system to rise up through the ranks.
If it survives in its current form and with its current hierarchy of leadership, it will certainly become even more brutal than it has ever been—because their survival will be an affirmation of their power. In such a case, their brutality will have been rewarded. But if they recognize that, in order to survive, they need to agree among themselves to let some new faces emerge and take leadership, that could bring about some changes to the current system. But it’s hard to imagine that the system would fall in its entirety as it is.
The control that the Revolutionary Guard Corps enjoys over every aspect of Iranian life and society is just far too deep to end quickly. Certainly the ones who benefit from that reality would be unwilling to simply walk away. So the question is, is it possible to convince some of these figures to make changes or reforms, to distance themselves from a supreme leader in order to guarantee their own survival or not? That’s the most pragmatic change that I can foresee.
I hope that a democratic transition can come about. I think that it would need a coalition of various Iranian opposition groups and figures, which has yet to be built. Without putting in place some sort of unified, or even just semi-unified, coalition, one that brings people of diverse opinions, nationalities, and beliefs together to discuss and engage in the discourse of democratic transition, it’s hard to imagine that it will happen on its own. But the Iranian diaspora and, certainly, Iranians within Iran, are talented, thoughtful, and highly motivated to create such a coalition and to strive towards such a future. I can only hope that it will happen.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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