by Kirill Semenov
[REGNUM] US President Donald Trump has been briefed on options for a military strike on Iran in response to the suppression of protests in Tehran, The New York Times reports.
The pro-Iranian Telegram channel Middle East Spectator, citing its sources, clarifies that the White House administration is seriously considering this possibility, but only if the White House considers the protests to have reached a "tipping point."
The US strategic goal is to prevent being drawn into a full-scale conflict with a completely unpredictable outcome, in which the fall of the Islamic Republic is not a guaranteed outcome.
WASHINGTON ASSESSES THE IMPACT'S STRENGTH
While no final decision has been made, officials say the range of actions being discussed ranges from targeted strikes on Iranian security forces to attacks on non-military targets in the capital.
As Axios points out, most of the scenarios presented to Trump are "non-kinetic" in nature and involve additional economic sanctions or cyber operations. However, the very existence of such discussions at the highest level indicates the extreme gravity of the situation.
The time for making a decision appears to be extremely limited: the protests are estimated to have reached a plateau, and any delay could lead to their suppression by security forces and, as a result, to a missed historic opportunity.
On the other hand, the risks of military action are colossal.
American officials openly warn that any strike could rally a fragmented society around the national leadership or provoke immediate retaliatory action against American personnel and assets in the region. Military experts point to operational complexities and the need for more time to prepare both for an effective attack on Iran and the defense of American assets in the region.
A separate and perhaps most dangerous threat remains the possibility of a preemptive or retaliatory strike by Iran against key US regional allies, primarily Israel, as well as against US bases in Iraq, Syria, and the Persian Gulf, which would instantly escalate the conflict into a new, unpredictable dimension.
DEADLY SYNERGY
By mid-January 2026, the Islamic Republic of Iran found itself at the epicenter of a crisis that, for the first time in its history, threatens the existence of the state precisely because of its dual, hybrid nature.
External aggression alone cannot undermine the foundations of a state. Protests and unrest without external support also do not pose an existential threat.
In the past, the ruling system has faced either intense external pressure (as during the debilitating war with Iraq) or serious internal unrest (as in 2009 or 2019) and successfully dealt with these challenges. For example, it managed to restore its military potential after the 12-day war with Israel in the summer of 2025.
Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran is forced to fight on two fronts, where each challenge not only adds up to the other, but multiplies it, creating a vicious circle that is becoming incredibly difficult to break.
The profound economic collapse, deliberately provoked by external sanctions, erupted from within as a wave of popular anger. This anger, in turn, was immediately interpreted and exploited by external forces as the perfect, almost legitimate pretext for potential military intervention.
Thus, the country finds itself in a strategic trap, a classic “fork in the road” situation: decisive suppression of unrest can be used to justify “humanitarian” aggression, while apparent inaction will be perceived as a sign of weakness, an encouragement to further destabilization from outside.
The wave of protests that began in late December 2025 bore the hallmarks of genuine, spontaneous social protest—it was a cry of despair from citizens who, due to hyperinflation and the collapse of the national currency, literally overnight lost the ability to provide their families with the basic necessities.
However, the root of this humanitarian catastrophe lies not in ordinary managerial inefficiency, but in the deliberate, multi-year strangulation of the economy by an unprecedented sanctions regime imposed by the United States and supported by its Western allies.
| I would argue that the root of the catastrophe lies in the deliberate strangulation of the human spirit by the revolutionary Mullahcracy’s totalitarian take on Sharia Law, both original generation and their current corrupt heirs. But I’m just a little American civilian housewife, not a professional Russian pundit, so what do I know? |
This is precisely what fundamentally distinguishes the current “Iranian winter” from the events of the “Arab Spring” a decade and a half ago.
Then, a wave of popular discontent became an unexpected force for the entire world, engulfing one country after another. External powers, caught off guard, only belatedly and not always effectively attempted to harness and redirect this wave to their own advantage—their interventions were reactive.
A completely different picture is observed today.
Iran has been the focus of global confrontation for many years, viewed in Washington and Tel Aviv not simply as an inconvenient and influential regional actor, but as a strategic adversary, the destruction or weakening of which is a pre-determined long-term goal.
Therefore, key external players approached the current "wave of anger" not as observers, but as parties that had long awaited this moment and meticulously prepared for it. When the protests erupted, they were already prepared not with abstract threats, but with specific, carefully crafted scenarios and intervention plans.
According to some reports, the Israeli leadership considered the dilemma of continuing the military campaign immediately after the end of the 12-day war: use future unrest as a pretext for aggression or launch a new aggression in order to provoke a devastating uprising within the country.
Thus, the internal discontent of Iranians was conceptually built in advance by external players into the framework of the “managed chaos” strategy and was seen as an ideal casus belli.
CONSTRUCTING AN ALTERNATIVE: SYMBOLS, RHETORIC, AND CULTURAL SHIFTS
An important part of this comprehensive preparation was extensive ideological and informational work to construct an acceptable alternative for the protest movement. In a context where organized political opposition within Iran is absent or marginalized, and external intervention requires at least some kind of "banner" for legitimization, an image created and cultivated abroad was brought to the forefront.
Reza Kir Pahlavi, son of the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, transformed himself almost overnight from an insignificant figure in the monarchical exile into a prominent media figure for some protesters. His appeals from overseas, despite the complete lack of a concrete political program and charisma as a leader, unexpectedly found some response.
This, however, required a subtle adjustment of Pahlavi's image itself.
He was destined to play the role of a "two-faced Janus," simultaneously symbolizing both the "golden age" of the pre-Islamic Persian monarchy and a bright democratic future. In the wake of protests, he abruptly shifted his rhetoric, abandoning his previous open calls for restoration. Now, he cautiously speaks only of a "transition period" and the need for "free elections"—the result of the work of political consultants correcting past failures.
| It does not seem to me that Crown Prince Reza is tough and wily enough to be a strong man ruler, no matter what his wants in his secret heart. A constitutional monarch, being more ceremony and symbolism, influencing rather than ordering, seems a better fit both for him and the times. |
He tries to portray himself as a guarantor of democracy, but the Pahlavi name itself remains an indelible symbol of authoritarian rule, the real lessons of which the younger generation who chant his name know very little about. Their support is more an emotional outburst, based on a poor understanding of their own history and a vague desire for a radical break with the present, than a conscious political choice.
This ideological shift is also clearly evident in the change in the cultural code of protest.
While revolutionaries in 1979 branded the Shah as Yazid, an archetypal symbol of tyranny and usurpation in Shiite thought, today radical youth protesters compare Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to Zahhak, the evil snake king from the ancient Persian epic Shahnameh.
This deliberate substitution of Islamic rhetoric for pre-Islamic, nationalistic rhetoric eloquently testifies to the profound erosion of the official revolutionary ideology in certain strata of society.
The protest seeks new points of support not in religion, but in a mythical Iranian past and Persian ethnonationalism, which objectively plays into the hands of the monarchical revanchism of the Pahlavis, for whom Kurush, Darius, and Khosrow were always closer than the Prophet Muhammad, Ali bin Abi Talib, and Imam Hussein.
| This is a good thing. Iran has ever been a heterogenous empire going back to when it was the kingdom of the Medes and Persians, and not only does it contain several opposing varieties of Islam, but a whole bunch of of pre- and post-Islam faiths that — counter to the Muslim idée fixe on conquest and surrender — should be accommodated rather than conquered. |
| The Mullahs managed to turn a large swathe of the populace against islam by the corruption of their practice. Congrats, guys! |
Such a turn of events also carries risks for the protest organizers themselves, as it could alienate moderate dissenters who, while criticizing the government, are unwilling to renounce their religious beliefs and consider attacks on Islam an insult to their values.
Moreover, this gives the authorities a powerful ideological tool for consolidating their base.
In response to the desecration of holy sites, spontaneous counter-demonstrations by supporters of the Islamic Republic began to spring up across the country on Sunday evening. Participants chanted "Allahu Akbar!" and "Death to the enemies of the faith!", raising the Quran above their heads and clearly demonstrating that a significant portion of society still identifies with the Islamic values that underpin the state.
This split—not only political but also value-based—creates an additional line of tension within Iranian society.
TEHRAN'S RESPONSE STRATEGY: BALANCING ON TWO FRONTS
Recognizing that the domestic crisis had turned into a theater of full-scale hybrid warfare, the Iranian leadership was forced to develop an extremely flexible and complex response strategy, balancing between two fronts. The primary objective was to prevent these threats from converging into a single destructive force.
On the foreign front, the response was marked by a strategic shift.
For the first time in history, Iran's National Security Council has declared the possibility of preemptive military action against external adversaries. This is a significant shift in doctrine—a shift from a purely defensive and retaliatory stance to a demonstrated readiness for a preemptive strike.
Such rhetoric is intended to serve a deterrent function, raising the potential cost of aggression for Washington and Tel Aviv and forcing them to take into account Tehran's unpredictable reaction.
On the domestic front, the authorities are demonstrating a more selective and differentiated approach.
The Iranian leadership is trying to draw a fine but strict line between what they call the “legitimate” socio-economic demands of citizens, which they officially express their willingness to listen to, and the actions of “rebels,” “warmongers,” and “agents of foreign intelligence services.”
This new rhetoric was clearly articulated on January 11 by President Masoud Pezeshkian, who made it clear that protests were allowed and would be heard, but that such behavior—riots and unrest—must be fought with all possible force. Official media increasingly began referring to the latter as "ISIS-like terrorists."
Thus, the tactic is aimed at dividing the protest field and depriving external forces of a single, convenient humanitarian point of attack. The authorities understand that brutal and total suppression of any dissent will play into the hands of those seeking a pretext for intervention, and so they have chosen a riskier but potentially more effective tactic of controlled decompression, which, however, implies the ruthless elimination of those classified as "terrorists."
POSSIBLE SCENARIOS: FROM THE "SYRIAN MODEL" TO A NEW REGIONAL BALANCE
For the most catastrophic scenario for Iran to materialize—a complete collapse of statehood along the lines of Libya or Syria in 2011—a critical, irreversible split in the security forces is necessary, primarily in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the army.
Today, despite all the tension, there are no signs of such a split.
The neutrality of the regular army, as in 1979, would not be sufficient today, since the system has a powerful, ideologically motivated and loyal support base in the form of the multi-million-strong IRGC and the Basij people's militia.
Probably, recognizing this institutional strength and the possible US refusal to take military action, Israel will try to act independently and adapt to Iran a more sophisticated and long-term model, tested in Syria in 2024–2025.
Its essence lies not in the bet on an instant national uprising, but in provoking and escalating conflicts between the central government and ethnic or religious minorities (Kurds in the northwest, Ahwazi Arabs in the southwest, and Baloch in the southeast, with the inclusion of Azerbaijanis and Lurs).
The subsequent dragging of the country into a smoldering localized civil war would have legitimized larger-scale direct external intervention under the pretext of protecting civilians.
In the initial phase, such a scenario could involve airstrikes and air support for the rebels to establish firm control over some border territories. Even if nationwide protest activity subsides, these captured enclaves will remain a constant, bleeding wound, demonstrating the central government's weakness, fueling new waves of discontent, and constantly diverting government resources.
This strategy of "attrition at the periphery" is aimed at gradually undermining the power and authority of the state and drawing it into civil war.
However, on this path, supporters of the power scenario are faced with a fundamentally new regional reality.
As Syrian-American analyst Hassan I. Hassan notes, no Arab country today is interested in total collapse and chaos in Iran; on the contrary, they fear such a scenario.
This stands in stark contrast to the pre-2023 era and deprives a potential broad intervention of the necessary regional support and legitimacy.
The Gulf states (primarily Saudi Arabia and the UAE), after restoring diplomatic relations with Tehran, view it more as a difficult but necessary neighbor, whose sudden collapse threatens unpredictable consequences for their own security – from a surge in cross-border terrorism to uncontrolled migration and the growing influence of other external players.
Thus, Israel, in its intransigent position, may find itself increasingly isolated.
| Probability greater than zero, of course. But how much greater is the question. |
The Iranian leadership is currently balancing in the grip of unprecedented pressure.
It needs to contain a social explosion without providing an obvious and unambiguous pretext for foreign intervention, and at the same time prepare to repel—and perhaps even launch a preemptive strike against—external adversaries that Tehran considers ready to attack at any moment.
The country finds itself at a unique historical juncture, where its internal socio-economic crisis has become a bargaining chip in a global geopolitical game.
The outcome of this multidimensional confrontation will determine not only the fate of the Islamic Republic, but also the future balance of power throughout the Middle East.
In the modern world, the fault lines between internal despair and external aggression, between spontaneous rebellion and a calculated regime change operation, have been blurred beyond recognition. The strength of its security institutions and the changed, more pragmatic geopolitical situation in the region currently leave Tehran with an extremely narrow, but still realistic, room to maneuver.
However, the cost of any mistake in this game, where the very existence of the state is at stake, has become truly exorbitant.