Not on the brink: Why protests and airstrikes alone are unlikely to bring revolution in Iran without a split in the armed forces

Several thousand people have been killed in the protests that began sweeping Iran in late December, the largest wave of unrest since 2009. For now, the security services remain cohesive, and in response to appeals to Iranians by Reza Pahlavi, the son of the country’s last shah, the authorities have tightened repression, hoping that mass arrests will intimidate the population. The prospects of U.S. or Israeli intervention remain unclear. After the summer war of 2025, the Iranian regime took steps to protect its leadership, and the armed forces are difficult to neutralize because of their size. The greatest risk for Iran’s authorities could be the fragmentation of the regular army, which has never been as loyal to the regime as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, writes Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) senior research fellow Antonio Giustozzi.