Originally published Jan 16, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
By Michael A. Cessna, Military Affairs Correspondent
“My advisers built a wall between myself and my people. I didn’t realize what was happening. When I woke up, I had lost my people.” – Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
INTRODUCTION
On December 28th, 2025, protests erupted throughout the Islamic Republic of Iran. Decades of incompetence, corruption and incoherent policies have wrecked the Iranian economy to the point that the Iranian Rial (IRR) went from about IRR 48,000 to $1 USD in the first week of December, to crashing down to c.IRR 1.4 million to $1 USD on December 28. Clearly, this level of crash does not provide a sustainable economy.
These riots have the brutal “Islamic Republic” regime (which has abused and violated that nation for some 47 years) teetering on the brink of being overrun, and completely displaced. As of this writing, estimates of the death toll among protesters may be in excess of 12,000.
Decades of poor decisions have resulted in a fundamental undermining of both the natural environment and the rule of law in one of the most populated Muslim countries in the world. President Donald Trump, as this article goes to press, has made some provocative statements in support of the anti-regime protestors…and in doing so, risks disaster if he fails to follow through, or if he fails to follow through effectively (he may have followed through by the time this issue is released).
Essentially, he encouraged the ongoing unrest and declared “help is on the way.”
This report will get you caught up with where we are now and conclude with an analysis of Trump’s options once the “help is on the way” statement was made.
A. WHAT MAKES THIS REBELLION DIFFERENT
The most critical thing to understand about this particular series of anti-regime protests is that it began with the bazaari’s of the country – the small, bourgeoisie business owners who anchor the national economy.
This is important because the other massive protests that have erupted with regularity, beginning in 1999, and especially since 2009, were all based on angry students rioting over various issues, including women’s rights, but also over the deteriorating situation with the economy, making the degrees the students were working towards useless.
With this particular protest coming from the business underpinnings of the country, the tone was fundamentally different. Such a catastrophic collapse of the currency renders it virtually impossible for merchants – especially small merchants – to sustain business operations. These are not a bunch of angsty children demanding to be heard, but the base of what keeps the country running.
This, obviously, represents a breaking point for the regime. The escalating violence quickly shifted from mere economic anger to an all-out push by the common Iranian population to remove the current regime…in favor, apparently, of reactionary demands to return to a Constitutional Monarchy, led by the exiled heir to the Pahlavi throne.
The potential impact of a complete refutation of theological governance by one of the largest Muslim nations in the world by population is almost immeasurable. This is EXACTLY what Reza Pahlavi II is trying to do.
The ruling dynasty of Iran in 1979 was the Pahlavi Dynasty, headed by Shah Muhammad Reza. Much has been written about the Shah, and how he was a corrupt, vapid and brutal dictator, with savage secret police. The problem? Those claims are – without exception – the whole-cloth inventions of the current regime, and a hostile Western media establishment.
The Shah of Iran was the head of a functional Constitutional Monarchy, one that actually functioned as the concept is intended. He continually went out of his way to do everything he could to modernize and improve the condition of the Iranian people. The Ayatollah Khomeini, himself, had his death sentence commuted by the Shah…and repaid him by doing everything he could to undermine and unseat the Shah, proving that no good deed goes unpunished. This is especially ironic, given that the main driver of Khomeini’s commutation and exile was the head of the Shah’s SAVAK secret police.
The Shah was a progressive at a level that should make modern Liberal-Progressives blush with embarrassment. The Shah’s “White Revolution” not only enacted land reform, but also emancipated and empowered Iranian women, while trying to modernize the nation. The reason for the widespread anger at the Shah in 1979 had nothing to do with SAVAK, and everything to do with KGB-developed propaganda.
The endgame for Reza II is to apply what he has been working on for nearly five decades. Reza Pahlavi II has maintained a singular focus on his plan to transition the country out of its totalitarian-generated morass. It is for this reason that the protesters in Iran are chanting, “Long Live the Shah!”
B. FROM SHAH TO AYATOLLAH
Iran fundamentally changed in 1979. A combination of radical Islamists and Communists, both supported by the Soviet KGB, forced the then-Shah – Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, into exile. The Shah was terminally ill with cancer at the time, and without a strong statement of support from then-US President Jimmy Carter, the Shah decided that he did not want the blood of his people on his and his family’s hands, even though the Imperial Armed Forces were more than capable of suppressing the rioters.
As a result, the Islamic government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power. Almost immediately, they facilitated the 1979 seizure of the United States embassy in the capital of Tehran, which remains closed to this day. The weakness Khomeini and his radical theocrats imposed on Iran by gutting the Imperial Armed Forces in a Stalin-scale purge, encouraged Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to invade and attempt to seize major Iranian oil infrastructures at the northern end of the Persian Gulf.
This initiated the eight-year bloodbath of the Iran-Iraq War. It is a testament to the warfighting ability of the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces that they were as effective as they were, despite the purges.
During the war, the Islamic regime ramped up their oppression of the Iranian people, even as it rammed children as young as 12 into battle against Iraqi machine guns, artillery and poison gas. As the war with Saddam Hussein came to an end, rather than working to rebuild the highly developed technical and manufacturing infrastructure they inherited from the Shah’s government, the mullahs in charge of the country functionally looted the industrial and manufacturing sectors more efficiently than any Third World tin-pot dictator ever could.
The result is that by 2025, Iran has been reduced to the level of an artisan/craft economy – exactly the sector of the bazaari’s whose businesses were rendered moot by the currency collapse. Iran has precisely two sectors left that can be considered “high tech”: the oil industry, and a low-tier defense sector.
The oil industry is not as much of an economic underpinning as it was previously, both due to sanctions on Iranian exports, and on the low price of crude, now hovering around $60 per barrel. There are additional major questions concerning Iran’s oil production infrastructure. In combination, this has rendered Iran’s potential oil wealth a moot point.
The overall industrial picture as presented by the regime is deceptively rosy. While there appears to be a robust manufacturing sector, including steel and automotive production, the vast majority of those products are not being exported for foreign currency intake, but for internal use.
The defense industry is stunted, despite breathless claims of its viability. Iranian fixed and rotary aircraft are low-quality reproductions of Imperial-era designs, while their land systems, like tanks, are also of very poor quality, copying already poorly designed and built Chinese systems. Similarly, Iran’s capacity to build any naval craft above the level of “Boghammer”-style armed speedboats is laughable, no matter how dangerous they might be. The one defense export Iran has is its combat drones.
While producing a wide array of combat drones, like the Shahed 129 (similar to the Predator) long-endurance platform and the larger Shahed 149, plus the widely used delta-wings like the Shahed 136/131, these drones have significant military limitations.
Like most drones, these are only truly effective against forces lacking coherent air defense strategies. Even the Russians – desperate for weapons for its war in Ukraine, had to “modify” Iranian drones before they could be deployed in combat.
Likewise, the general industrial sector has stagnated since 1979, with many formerly stable companies being driven to bankruptcy due to nationalization and endemic central planning mismanagement by the regime. Coupled with a lack of foreign currency reserves, this has significantly limited the import of consumer products.
But these are just incidentals, as shocking as they are, because there is one overriding disaster that the incompetent regime in Tehran has stumbled into:
Water.
C. THE EXISTENTIALLY-BREAKING CONSTANT – NO POTABLE WATER
Water is one of those existential things that people generally do not think about – until it runs out. Without water, you have no crops, almost no electrical power at scale…and nothing to drink. The average human can last about three days without water before they are unable to function.
The roots of Iran’s water disaster ties directly back to the aftermath of their seizure of power in 1979. The mullah-led government, in the throes of a massive war with Iraq, launched a massive program of building dams wherever geography would allow one to go in, with no thought given to the impact on the water supply, because the corruption returns were too great to ignore.
Naturally, because the dams damaged natural flow and retention systems, the government massively pumped in artesian aquifers to keep the water supplies flowing. Unsurprisingly, this caused an eventual crash in the artesian systems themselves.
The conditions have deteriorated to the point that the regime was seriously considering relocating the capital out of Tehran before the current unrest, because their incompetence is continuing to rapidly depopulate the countryside, forcing rural populations to relocate to cities.
The regime has been trying to implement a large-scale desalination program to compensate. The program lacked any clear idea of the logistics involved…and those corruption returns, again, are – or were – highly attractive. The regime is strangling its highly profitable golden goose…because, simply put, they are so corrupt, they are incapable of making a right turn, not even to save themselves.
The broader implications of the regime’s corruption-driven failure in its water policy are a nightmare of inconceivable proportions waiting to happen. Iran has a population of about 92 million people. The possibility of massive displacement movements driven by thirst is very real and threatens to completely destabilize the entire region in ways not seen in living memory.
For outsiders, this is a highly dangerous situation, as it will completely up-end markets and investments, long before we factor in the raw security threats to personal and national safety. In the wider immediate, this situation directly threatens the viability of the Strait of Hormuz as a transit point for oil. In the broader scope, the potential closure of the Strait directly threatens the economies of the rest of the world.
This is not hyperbole. Despite the recent events in Venezuela, the South American state cannot make up the difference of the loss of that oil flow through the straits, despite its proven reserves, because a similar level of corruption and incompetence has left Venezuela with an oil infrastructure that is even more dilapidated than Iran’s.
The few overland pipelines running out of the Persian Gulf region cannot function as a viable bypass either due to a lack of volume and a lack of security, with a resurgent Islamic State terror group.
Russia is still bogged down in Ukraine, so it is in no position to act effectively, as the on-going U.S. seizure of several of their “ghost fleet” tankers has shown. Likewise, Communist China cannot fill the oil gap – if they can’t get to the oil, it doesn’t matter how many commercial tanker ships they have…which may well be why the Communist state is experimenting with arming its merchant vessels.
PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS
Right now, Donald Trump is riding high (geopolitically) as he nears his first full year in office. With an improving economy, serious movement on dealing with illegal migrants, and the recent wins against Venezuela and Russia (in terms of the seizures of the ghost fleet tankers), Trump has made some very definitive and provocative statements in support of the Iranian Street
The danger with these statements by Trump is that he tends to make provocative statements as a strategic or tactical bluff, while refraining from any practical measures – in this case, that means even limited military action, in the form of airstrikes. Here, however, that strategy could backfire massively.
If Trump, after making strong and definitive statements of support, fails to follow through on those statements, he would face the same disastrous position as George H. W. Bush in the second quarter of 1991,when Bush implied that the US would support the Iraqi people if they rose up against Saddam Hussein. Although he never explicitly promised support, he did imply it.
His failure to provide support when the uprisings did happen, while not the only reason for the defeat of his reelection bid the following year (another failed promise, “read my lips, no new taxes,” being the main reason), DID play a role in cementing his “untrustworthy” branding. In Iran, however, Trump has pointedly told the Iranian people “help is on the way.”
This is placing Trump’s credibility directly on the line. Failure to provide direct, meaningful support to the protestors before the end of January will mean both the collapse of resistance but will also critically damage Trump’s aura with those anchoring their support of the GOP in the 2026 midterms to his credibility.
ED. NOTE: It will also damage the credibility of any future U.S. administration that might promise hope to the next round of dissenters (should they still “need” it).
Conversely, actually providing support brings the very real risk of “mission creep”, with implications of a massive “boots on the ground” requirement, as well as managing the geopolitical fallout on his own.
The phrase “help is on the way” is unambiguous in a way Bush’s “take matters into your own hands” was not. Trump has made a promise, not offered encouragement. The Iranian protesters, risking everything in 200+ cities, have heard that promise. So has the regime, which will use any American support – or lack thereof – to justify its response. And so has the rest of the world, from allies wondering if American commitments mean anything, to adversaries calculating whether this is the moment American resolve finally breaks.
The strategic calculus is brutal: limited support (intelligence sharing, sanctions enforcement, cyber operations) may prove insufficient to tip the balance, leaving protesters exposed to massacre while still giving the regime propaganda ammunition about American interference.
But substantial support – no-fly zones, arms shipments, direct strikes on IRGC facilities – risks the very mission creep that destroyed American credibility in Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan (reports indicate perhaps Israel is already doing some of this). Either path carries enormous risks; the only certainty is that doing nothing after saying “help is on the way” would be catastrophic.
The question becomes: what does meaningful support look like without repeating Iraq’s mistakes? Options range from minimal to maximal involvement:
At the low end, it means enhanced sanctions (which he’s appears to be already doing) targeting regime leadership personally, freezing their offshore accounts, providing encrypted communication tools beyond Starlink, intelligence sharing with opposition forces about regime troop movements. These carry minimal risk but may prove insufficient.
Mid-range options include establishing no-fly zones to prevent helicopter gunship attacks on protesters (the same tactic that crushed the 1991 Iraqi uprising), targeted airstrikes on IRGC command facilities, direct arms shipments to organized resistance forces, and formal diplomatic recognition of a Pahlavi transitional government. These would materially aid the uprising but risk escalation.
Maximum involvement would mean direct military intervention to decapitate the regime – a path that leads inevitably to occupation, nation-building, and all the disaster traps that implies. The stakes extend far beyond Trump’s political fortunes.
A successful Iranian revolution ending theocratic rule would fundamentally reshape Middle Eastern geopolitics. It would eliminate the primary state sponsor of Hezbollah, Hamas, and most of the various Shia militias destabilizing Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. It could enable a genuine Arab Israeli normalization beyond the Abraham Accords. Most critically, a restored constitutional monarchy with Pahlavi’s detailed transition plans could begin addressing the water crisis before it triggers the displacement of tens of millions of people.
Conversely, a failed uprising followed by regime survival would entrench the mullahs for another generation, embolden authoritarian regimes globally, and accelerate the water catastrophe. Worse still, American abandonment of Iranian protesters after explicit promises would validate every adversary’s claim that American commitments are worthless – a message that would resonate from Taipei to Kyiv to Jerusalem.
The problem is that the protesters, after Trump’s statements, may be expecting maximal support, while Trump’s political constraints and strategic caution suggests the minimal involvement route. That gap between expectation and delivery is where credibility dies. There are few good options. While that lack is not Trump’s fault, he has inherited the situation, and now has to deal with it, because his statements of support are now water under the bridge.
ED. NOTE: As of the completion of this report on the morning of Friday, January 16, 2026, outside of tariff announcements by the President against nations that do business with Iran, the U.S. administration has not followed up on Trump’s claim, “help is on the way.”
FURTHER RESOURCES:
A History of Iran (Empire of the Mind) – Michael Axworthy
Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces – Steven R. Ward
The Shaw’s Iran – Abdolreza Ansari
The Shah of Iran: The Man and His Land – I.G. Edmonds
