A critical moment looms for Iran, and so for the Middle East. The global consequences of any upheaval in Tehran have been made amply clear since the revolution in 1979 that ushered in the rule of radical Islamist clerics. In Oman, the Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and his team have begun indirect talks with a high-powered US delegation. Many analysts believe the gap between the two sides is too wide to be bridged, and that a conflict is inevitable. Just this weekend, having already threatened military action, Donald Trump said regime change is the “the best thing that could happen” in Iran. The tension, and risks grow higher.
The hold on Iran of those who came to power in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution is now at stake. The ultimate objective of the US appears to be regime change. This may, in fact, already be under way. In December 2025 and January 2026, the most extensive wave of protest since the early 1980s swept Iran, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets from Mashhad to Abadan.
Such scenes prompted many to recall the last days of the shah of Iran, when millions took to the streets. And as we live through contemporary events, there are striking similarities between then and now that should inform the debate about what may happen, about our hopes and our fears. One obvious parallel is the central role of economics. Soaring inflation was a key trigger for the most recent unrest. It was almost 50 years ago as well. In 1977, the price of basic consumer goods rose as much as 27%. Then, too, the key actors were shopkeepers and businessmen in Tehran’s bazaar whose livelihoods were threatened.
A second parallel is emerging: a cycle of repression, grief and protest resembling that which unseated the shah. In 1978, this began when a conservative Iranian newspaper printed a scurrilous article about Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, prompting mass protests among his admirers. In the holy city of Qom, hundreds of religious students poured into the streets, attacking symbols of the shah’s rule and the modernisation he had sought to impose. Security forces used live ammunition to restore order and six students were killed. In Tehran there was further unrest.
The protests might have died away but for the tradition among Shia Muslims, who still nominally constitute the vast majority of the Iranian population, to observe a 40-day period of mourning before a final collective commemoration.
Ryszard Kapuściński, the celebrated Polish reporter, described how family, friends, neighbours and acquaintances – “the whole street, the whole village, a crowd of people” – gathered in the home of the deceased. “If the death was natural … this gathering consists of some hours of ecstatic, pathetic discharge, followed by a mood of dulled and humble resignation,” he wrote. But “if the death was a violent one, inflicted by somebody” then “a thirst for revenge seizes the people [and] … they pronounce the name of the killer, the author of their sorrow, and it is believed that, even if he is far away, he will shudder at that moment [for] his days are numbered”.
Exactly 40 days after the protests in Qom in January 1978, new demonstrations led to new killings, along with further mourning and commemorative processions that inevitably turned into new mass protests. These of course prompted further lethal repression. The cycle intensified until in January 1979 the shah, the “author of their sorrow”, left Iran – supposedly for a holiday – never to return.
That cycle could well recur. Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that merchants at Tehran’s grand bazaar had called on their counterparts across Iran to return to the streets at the end of the traditional 40-day mourning period for killings in the first week of January. The aim of the protest will be to “simultaneously, in their cities, keep the memory of the dead alive and continue the national uprising,” a trade association of bazaar workers quoted by the WSJ said on its Telegram channel. The goal is to “avenge the greatest street massacre in contemporary history”.
This may be a much bigger challenge to the regime than even the threat of US strikes if, as expected, talks fail. Ali Ansari, a leading historian of Iran, has put the total death toll in opposition to the shah in 1978 as approximately 2,800. Some believe up to 30,000 may have died in January. That means a lot of mourners and a lot of 40-day commemorations in the coming weeks.
Kapuściński, along with hundreds of international reporters and photographers, was on the ground in Iran in 1978, but there are no equivalents today, and the regime continues to restrict the internet. This makes it hard to work out exactly who was on the streets of Iran last December and in January. That the unrest was widespread, and an authentic expression of profound anger and alienation, seems clear. But the tragic biographies of casualties that have emerged offer only a fragmentary glimpse of the identities of those risking death and injury in the name of freedom.
We know that the 1978 revolutionary movement was a broad coalition. It included the radical clerics who followed Khomeini and the many millions of often poor, less educated Iranians who saw the exiled ayatollah as, sometimes quite literally, the answer to their prayers. But there were also others, many of whom had worked as hard and made as many sacrifices in the struggle to overthrow the shah.
On the streets in 1978 and 1979 were liberals and nationalists of every possible ideological flavour, socialists and feminists, moderate clerics and their students, even a few old-school communists. There were representatives of Iran’s ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities too. This variety had advantages and disadvantages. As Kapuściński wrote: “Everyone opposed the Shah and wanted to remove him. But everyone imagined the future differently.”
Even if the current regime is toppled, any new direction may not even be immediately clear, for it’s worth noting that Khomeini did not immediately seize power on his return. It took several years for his rule to be fully secured, built on war with Iraq, new institutions, a new constitution, and new security forces such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij. These were deployed to methodically destroy every potential opponent in Iran between 1979 and 1988, and were also the bloody spearhead of the regime’s response to the most recent unrest.
There is a lesson in this for the courageous men and women in Iran who seek the overthrow of their rulers today. Now, as then, their triumph can only come through the mass mobilisation of millions and the construction of a broad coalition. But though all will share many common goals, there will be as many different visions for the future of Iran today as there were among those who felled the shah in 1979. Back then, their sheer diversity became a weakness, allowing the one faction to impose an authoritarian rule and hardline vision at the expense of all others.
So the regime may fall, but if it does, the future is as hard to predict as it was amid the tumult 47 years ago. The people may prevail and find that the real battle for freedom, prosperity and security has only just begun.