As Iranian shopkeepers chant “Death to the Dictator” in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar and university students openly defy the regime’s enforcers, the Trump administration faces a choice that will define Middle Eastern geopolitics for a generation. The protests that erupted this week over Iran’s currency collapse represent more than economic grievance – they signal a regime crisis a decade in the making. The question is whether Washington will seize this moment or repeat the catastrophic errors of 2009.
When millions of Iranians took to the streets during the Green Movement sixteen years ago, President Obama chose silence. His calculation was clear: preserve the possibility of nuclear negotiations by treating the Islamic Republic as a stable partner rather than a dying regime.
Obama’s 2009 Nowruz message prioritized dialogue with the ayatollahs over solidarity with protesters. Worse, his administration signaled that sanctions relief and diplomatic recognition awaited Tehran – providing the financial lifeline the regime desperately needed to survive its most vulnerable moment.
The result? The Green Movement was crushed, its leaders imprisoned or killed, and Iran’s nuclear program accelerated anyway. Obama’s strategy wasn’t neutral: it was a choice to stabilize authoritarian rule at precisely the moment when popular pressure might have forced democratic opening.
Today, the Islamic Republic faces convergent crises that dwarf 2009’s challenges. The June war with Israel exposed the regime’s hollow deterrence: its nuclear facilities destroyed, air defenses shattered, and senior Revolutionary Guard commanders assassinated in their bunkers. The “Axis of Resistance” that Iran spent decades building has collapsed – Assad’s Syria fallen, Hezbollah degraded, Hamas contained. The Iranian rial has lost 60% of its value since June, wiping out savings and making basic necessities unaffordable. And Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86 and ailing, presides over a succession crisis with no clear resolution.
Traditional supporters of Iran's regime are demanding change
Most significantly, the protesters demanding change today aren’t just students and intellectuals – the bazaaris, traditionally regime supporters, are leading the charge. This is a cross-class coalition united by economic devastation and frustration with a government that prioritizes ideological purity over national prosperity. Unlike 2022’s hijab protests, which the regime dismissed as Western-influenced elite grievances, economic collapse affects everyone.
But protests alone don’t topple authoritarian regimes. No unarmed population can defeat a militarized state through street demonstrations. Every successful democratic transition – from Egypt in 2011 to the Soviet collapse in 1991 – required one critical element: security force defections. Iranian democrats need the Revolutionary Guards to fracture.
There are reasons to believe this is possible. The IRGC isn’t the monolithic force it pretends to be – it’s a constellation of competing factions and commercial interests held together by Khamenei’s authority. His looming departure will expose these fault lines. Junior officers watched their commanders humiliated by Israeli intelligence penetration. They see their salaries devalued by currency collapse. They face a choice: tie their futures to a dying theocracy or position themselves for post-Khamenei Iran.
Creating conditions for military defection requires sustained external pressure – not American military intervention, but strategic use of economic, informational, and diplomatic tools to compound the regime’s internal contradictions.
FIRST, MAINTAIN and intensify economic sanctions targeting regime revenue while ensuring that humanitarian goods flow freely. The ayatollahs must feel the costs of their choices without starving ordinary Iranians. No premature sanctions relief that provides financial oxygen to a suffocating regime. This is the critical lesson from 2009: financial lifelines extended to gain leverage in negotiations instead of prolonged authoritarian survival.
Second, support unfettered information access. Uncensored internet and satellite communications let Iranians coordinate, document regime abuses, and access alternative narratives. The regime’s legitimacy depends on information control – deny them that weapon. When protesters can broadcast their defiance globally and regime brutality is exposed in real-time, the calculations of fence-sitting military officers shift.
Third, actively undermine regime legitimacy through aggressive information operations. This means more than rhetorical support for protesters – it requires a sustained campaign to expose corruption, document human rights abuses, amplify dissident voices, and highlight the regime’s incompetence. Broadcast the names and Swiss bank accounts of IRGC generals living lavishly while ordinary Iranians suffer. Publicize the ayatollahs’ failures: the destroyed nuclear program they bankrupted the country to build, the proxy network that collapsed, the air defenses that couldn’t stop Israeli jets. Remind Iranians daily that their leaders chose ideology over prosperity, martyrdom over development, and “Death to America” over jobs and dignity.
The goal isn’t just to support protesters – it’s systematically delegitimizing the Islamic Republic in the eyes of its own citizens and, crucially, its own security forces. When IRGC commanders see their regime exposed as corrupt and incompetent, defection becomes not just possible but rational.
Fourth, establish redlines on repression. Freeze assets and impose travel bans on commanders who order mass violence. Signal that IRGC officers who crack down will be held personally accountable, but those who stand aside will have a place in Iran’s future. This creates a perverse incentive structure for the regime: the more violently it responds, the more it accelerates defections among security forces calculating their post-transition prospects.
Critics will invoke Iraq and warn against neoconservative overreach. But this isn’t 2003. No one is proposing military invasion or imposed regime change. The strategy is Reaganesque: apply pressure until internal contradictions become unsustainable. Reagan didn’t invade the Soviet Union – he created conditions where the USSR’s own failures precipitated collapse.
The parallel also holds true: Iran has all the makings of a prosperous, influential nation – an educated population, vast resources, a proud history. What it lacks is accountable government. While Persian Gulf neighbors became global hubs, Iran squandered wealth on failed regional adventures and a nuclear program that brought only isolation.
President Trump has an opportunity that Obama squandered: to support Iranian democrats at the moment it matters most. The choice is whether to provide the external pressure that enables internal transformation – or watch another generation of Iranians crushed by a dying regime that Washington helped to survive.
The writer is a fifth-year doctoral candidate at Northeastern University, focusing on international relations theory.