Protests drive Iran's Saudi deal

Even to expert observers, the agreement – facilitated by China – came as a surprise, since talks between Tehran and Riyadh over the last two years had failed to produce any results. For the Saudi kingdom, the deal could bring more security, avoiding a repetition of the September 2019 drone attacks – blamed on Iran – which halved oil production at its Abqaiq and Khurais facilities.

For the Islamic Republic, seeking detente was primarily motivated by the urge to ward off any ramifications ensuing from the unique pressure it has been under ever since revolutionary protests erupted last autumn. In the process, Tehran signalled to its domestic audience that it was still capable of pushing back against increasing international isolation and manoeuvring in international diplomatic waters. And to the international community, especially the West, the regime aimed to rebrand itself as a constructive actor with a role to play in contributing to peace and security. Meanwhile, it is too early to say whether the deal will lead to a genuine turning point in regional geopolitics.

Facing an existential threat

Some five years ago, then-U.S. President Donald Trump declared a policy of "maximum pressure" against the Islamic Republic of Iran, imposing not only severe economic sanctions upon Tehran, but also diplomatic, political, and military pressure, such as the killing by drone of General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force. Iranian officials have described that period as "the hardest years after the [Islamic] revolution" that the regime has ever gone through.

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Since protests began in Iran last September, however, a new quality of maximum pressure has been gearing up, one that may have the capacity to translate into an existential threat to the Islamic Republic.

This unofficial maximum pressure is being exerted by Iranians both inside and outside the country as a result of unprecedented unity in the fight against the ruling regime in Tehran. Their common denominator – not to mention central goal – of seeking the collapse of the Islamic Republic is the result of a paradigm shift. There has been a collective realisation that reform within the confines of the Islamic Republic is no longer an option and that the only path forward is a revolutionary one.

Guardian Council member Ahmad Khatami, who enjoys close ties with the Iranian top leadership, admitted that the recent protests had imposed upon the regime "the hardest days over the last 44 years". While Iranian officials often refer to the 2009 Green Movement as "sedition", General Hassan Karami, commander of the special units of Iran’s police, described the recent protests as "super-sedition". So what is driving this unofficial maximum pressure, and why it is perceived as a serious threat by Iranian authorities?

Iran's clerics forfeit their base

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has warned that "the enemy's goal was to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees by creating discord and mistrust within the country". Meanwhile, the former head of IRGC's intelligence organisation Hossein Ta'eb has acknowledged that the existing rift between state and society poses a significant threat. Thanks to the regime's loss of social capital, the very existence of the Islamic Republic is in danger. Domestically, significant changes are taking place across Iranian society, forming the backbone of that unofficial maximum pressure against the regime.

Athletes have refused to sing the national anthem or use the official flag. Prominent artists and directors did not participate in the major state-sponsored Fajr Film Festival. And more importantly, many women are still walking the streets bareheaded, while people continue to chant anti-regime slogans from their rooftops or windows, despite the recent decline in street protests.

This time, moreover, the de-legitimation of the regime is not limited to the middle class. Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic, has acknowledged that the regime's loss of the lower classes – traditionally seen as its social base – is dangerous. Indeed, in Iranian society today, all walks of life are engaged in protesting, thereby sending a message to the leadership that they too no longer believe in the current political system.

While the authorities try to pretend that nothing has changed in the country and the protests have ended, society is once again at risk of reaching boiling point, re-igniting a new wave of protests that could prove even harder to contain.

Iranian diaspora united

Mohammad-Reza Bahonar, a prominent principlist politician who was an MP for 28 years, has warned that while some officials believe the "riots" (the term often used for protests in regime parlance) have been terminated, various problems, which are likely to provoke more unrest in the future, remain unresolved. He also admits that he has "never ever seen the Iranian diaspora so united" in amplifying the voice of protesters inside the country.

For the leadership in Tehran, street protests are therefore not the only problem. Although the regime witnessed nationwide protests in 2009, 2018, and 2019, a new dimension of the recent uprising is that the Iranian diaspora has been actively engaged in elevating protesters' voices to the world, e.g. by staging several massive demonstrations and urging Western countries to imposing more pressure on the regime.

A campaign is currently pushing for the European Union to designate the IRGC – the Islamic Republic's lifeline in political, economic and military terms – a terrorist organisation. In turn, diaspora activism has helped intensify pressure at home, fuelling an unofficial campaign of maximum pressure.

Abbas Araghchi, current secretary of Iran's Strategic Council on Foreign Relations (SCFR) and top nuclear negotiator during the former Hassan Rouhani administration, recently emphasised that "we should not allow regular demonstrations against Iran in the EU [or the] U.S.", adding that a "project of defamation, securitisation, and de-legitimisation of the Islamic Republic in the world" was underway.

Ali Fathollah-Nejad & Amin Naeni

© Qantara.de 2023

Ali Fathollah-Nejad is McCloy Fellow on Global Trends with the American Council on Germany (ACG), associate fellow & author of Iran in Focus, Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy & Int’l Affairs (IFI), American University of Beirut (AUB), author of Iran in an Emerging New World Order: From Ahmadinejad to Rouhani (2021), and initiator & co-host of the Berlin Mideast Podcast (Konrad Adenauer Foundation).

Amin Naeni is a doctoral candidate at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI), Deakin University, Australia.