The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRNA) reckons that since the start of the year 2,500 protesters have been killed in Iran.

Most of them have been shot on the street. Others have been dragged to hastily convened special courts and sentenced to hang.

In 2024, a relatively quiet year for Iranian protests, the regime strung up 1,000-plus people for the crime of vociferously expressing their views. Iran is only second behind China (several thousand) in the world execution stakes.

US President Donald Trump has promised action against the regime if the killings continue. He refuses to specify what action, but he has said that America is “locked and loaded.”  The US and Britain also withdrew all non-essential military personnel from the region.

Towards the end of the week, Trump appeared to back away from his earlier threats. Possibly because his military leaders were warning him about involvement in another Middle Eastern war and the fact that regional allies Qatar and Saudi Arabia have refused to support him.

The son of the late Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, has said he is planning a return to his country and demonstrators have been chanting his name. Pahlavi says he wants to organise a referendum on what type of government the Iranian people want.

The regime has imposed a complete internet blackout in an attempt to disrupt communications between protest groups and communications with the outside world.  Chief Justice Gholamhossain Mohseni-Ejei has threatened “swift and harsh” justice.

Many are predicting that the repressive theocracy that has ruled Iran for 47 years is about to end. Maybe, maybe not.

Political temperatures have been rising since 2022 and the  death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amin. She died in custody after being arrested by the morality police for not wearing a head scarf. The current riots are led by shopkeepers in Tehran’s bazaar. They have taken to the streets to protest against 48 percent inflation. It was the shopkeepers 1979 protest that led to the fall of the Shah.

At last count there were demonstrations at more than 500 locations.

But arrayed against the demonstrators is a formidable political and military force.

To start with there is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard  (IRG). There are 195,000 Revolutionary Guards. There are another 250,000 in the IRG reserves. The IRG is under the direct command of the Supreme Leader Atyatollah Ali Khameinei and is responsible for protecting him in his heavily guarded Beit-e-Rahbari compound in Tehran.

In addition, Iran has another 420,000 traditional armed forces. On paper these troops do not have the same ties to the mullahs as the IRG, but so far they have proved loyal to the regime.

The Iranian regime has one of the deepest, most pervasive and most effective security apparati in the word. It has succeeded in crushing every protest so far—by killing and arresting thousands. Many of those arrested are tortured and released. Back with their family and friends, their horror stories create a deterrent to protest.

Then there is the political make-up of Iran. The urban population is large, cosmopolitan, liberal and mainly anti-mullah. There is, however, a significant proportion of the city  dwellers who support a theocracy. In the rural areas the support for the conservative-minded mullahs is overwhelming.

The divide was reflected in the last presidential election. All of the candiates had to have their religious credentials approved by Ayatollah Khameini. But some were more liberal than others. The final round of voting resulted in a win for the more liberal candidate—Mashoud Pezeshkian—with 54.8 percent. But mullah-backed Saeed Jalil still garnered 45.2 percent of the ballot.

Anyone wanting to overthrow Iran’s theocracy will have to take into account the fact that a large proportion of the population are deeply religious and Islam is a religion that demands its involvement in every aspect of life.

It should also be stressed, however, that Iran’s Shi’a clerics have historically been associated as defenders against tyranny and foreign control. The 1979 revolt against the Shah was not so much an uprising in favour of Islam as it was a rejection of the tyranny of the Shah’s rule and his close relationship with the US.

The greatest danger to Iran’s rulers may not be the crowds in the streets, but the slow erosion of fear that has sustained them for four decades. Guns and prisons can suppress revolt, but they cannot manufacture belief. If the regime survives this crisis—as it may—it will do so weaker, more isolated, and more dependent on force than ever before. And history suggests that systems which rule only by fear eventually discover its limits.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”