Iran Survives The Uprising — But The Islamic Republic Is Hollowing Out From Within
(ANALYSIS) As of Tuesday morning, Iran’s government has not collapsed, the protests that nearly paralyzed all 31 provinces have dissipated, and President Donald Trump has stalled his “help is on its way” threat. The New York Times describes corpses heaped in trucks and along roadsides.
In reports on Sunday based on sources within Iran, Time magazine said some 30,000 demonstrators were killed, and the London-based Iran International counted 36,500, along with myriad arrests. This uprising exceeded those in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022, and appears to be the most potent since the Islamic Republic was established under theocratic clergy leadership in 1979.
Trump has not ruled out future military strikes, and the current lull neither ends roiling dissent nor prevents further convulsions, because there is little evidence the current rulers are capable of solving the causes of dissent.
READ: How Social Media Is Driving Iran’s Protests
The economy and currency are teetering, inflation is running a ruinous 40%, people scramble for everyday food and water, the nation is vulnerable militarily and its Mideast partners are enfeebled. By most accounts, persistent incompetence, injustice, oppression, brutality and corruption have fomented massive hatred of clerical rule.
The geopolitical implications of this strategic land of 93 million are weighty, and public discussion is lavish. There’s far less attention to the high stakes for the future of Islam, the world's second-largest religion, with two billion souls concentrated in 57 officially Islamic countries.
A shocking revelation in 2023, reported by Middle Eastern and religious outlets, won little or no mention in the Western mainstream media. A speech to students by high-ranking cleric Mohammad Abolghassem Doulabi stated that two-thirds of the nation’s mosques — 50,000 out of 75,000 — have been closed due to declining worship attendance.
Doulabi, who is the liaison between Iran’s seminaries and the government, cited these numbers to plead for more educational funding. London-based Iran International reported that Doulabi forthrightly blamed Iran’s mosque disaster on “the humiliation of people in the name of religion,” “depriving people of a decent life and creating poverty in the name of religion” and “falsification of religious concepts and teachings.”
Months later, Minister of Culture Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili called this mosque slump “highly alarming.” He said he believes “the majority of cultural and artistic activities should take place in mosques,” which “are not merely places where congregational prayers are held three times a day.” And yet many mosques that remain open “lack even this minimal function.”
The obvious implication: The Islamic Republic, created to impose a rigorous form of the faith domestically and spread it internationally, is undermining Islam from within. Americans might think of their own debate on the extent to which religion should be politicized, and politics religionized.
Iran, however, is far different, fostering militant Muslim fervor around the globe, not just in its own minority Shia branch of Islam but among the Sunni majority. Multitudes have come to associate Islam with terrorism, death, torture, antisemitism, authoritarian rule, cruelty, misogyny, and violation of human rights. A regime change in Iran could help change Islam's image and its reality.
Importantly, Doulabi is among the clergy in the Assembly of Experts, the body that will choose the successor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who turns 87 on April 19. The Assembly also monitors the Supreme Leader and in theory could remove him from office. According to Brittanica.com and other sources, Khamenei from the start lacked the requisite religious credentials to lead the Islamic regime but manipulated Assembly politics to succeed the revered revolutionary founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He was then proclaimed an ayatollah himself.
Journalist Bartle Bull, author of a 2024 history of Iran/Persia, writes that in spiritual stature as opposed to raw political power, Khamenei is a “clerical mediocrity” without “major legitimacy or consequence in the Muslim world.”
The World Christian Encyclopedia depicts Iran’s incredibly diverse population. Only 34% are Persians, with 20% Azerbaijani Turks, and 5% Kurds, with 75 smaller ethnic groups. In the Wall Street Journal this month, Melik Kaylan proposed a seemingly far-fetched “best option” for Mideast peace with minorities in border areas breaking away from the “murderous regime,” resulting in “a downsized Iran.”
In religion, by contrast, 98.6% of Iranians are at least nominally Muslim, with Sunnis complaining of discrimination by the dominant Shias. Due to long-running Muslim suppression, Zoroastrians, who have perpetuated the great national faith from ancient times, are reduced to 60,000.
The 220,000 Baha’is suffer marked hostility because their creed is regarded as a heretical offshoot of Islam. Christianity, Iran’s second-largest religion with 607,000 followers counted by the World Christian Encyclopedia, originated long before Islam as early as the year 48 A.D.
Iran’s mosque meltdown occurs alongside claims from Western missionaries, impossible to verify, that a million Iranian Muslims have lately become Christians. Gains are not occurring among the ancient Armenian, Assyrian and Chaldean ethnic churches, which are tolerated if they avoid outreach. Rather, clandestine evangelical home meetings are growing through personal contacts and audiences of radio and other outside media.
This month’s annual World Watch List on Christian persecution from Open Doors ranks Iran as the 10th worst among the nations, and describes wide-ranging oppression with believers seen as subversives due to the Hamas-Israel war, and “virtually all Christian activities” outlawed.
Anthropologist Michael M.J. Fischer wrote in “Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution” that leading up to the 1979 Islamist revolution, the tyrannical Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi “attempted to control or neutralize religion, while the religious leaders struggled to preserve a narrowing sphere of autonomy.” The government’s success in “suppressing overt political opposition” made “religion the primary idiom of political protest,” and that was the context for his overthrow.
Scholarly Substack columnist James M. Dorsey, who covered that revolution in person, thinks the current situation is far different. The 1979 Iranian Revolution could build from an existing network of clergy and Muslim charities, along with disgruntled bazaar merchants and secular reformers.
Today’s mass protests are spontaneous, leaderless, and lack coherent organization. No internal movement supports the best-known opposition figure among expatriates, U.S.-based Reza Pahlavi, 65, the exiled son of the despised Shah. He advocates a transition to a constitutional monarchy or republic.
Instead, Dorsey expects “inevitable change” will occur, but through maneuvers among the current rulers, because there’s no sign of rebellion from the military or the fearsome Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is thought to control 20% to 40% of Iran’s economy through its oil riches.
It’s impossible to tell whether such an internal reshuffle away from religious control would embrace moderation in order to salvage the nation or turn even more hardline.
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He is a recipient of the Religion News Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.