Iran's Crisis: From 1953 Coup to 2025 Protests and the Western Quest to Remake the Middle East

As Iran reels from what many observers now describe as its most severe internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the streets of Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and numerous other cities have become battlegrounds of defiance and repression. Protests that erupted in late 2025, initially driven by the catastrophic collapse of the Iranian rial – which plunged to record lows of around 1.4-1.5 million to the US dollar amid hyperinflation exceeding 40% – have rapidly escalated into a nationwide uprising demanding the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

Merchants in Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar shut their shops in protest against unaffordable imports and soaring prices for essentials, while students, workers and ordinary citizens joined in chants of "Death to the Dictator", "Death to Khamenei" and some calls for the return of the Pahlavi era. Human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, have documented mass unlawful killings by security forces using live ammunition, tear gas and even helicopter deployments, with death toll estimates ranging from the hundreds to several thousand in the most intense crackdown phases.

A nationwide internet blackout, now persisting for over a week, has isolated the country, while thousands face arbitrary arrest and swift executions ordered by the regime's judiciary.

Global context: fracturing world?

Iran's unrest is not an isolated event but part of a broader Trump-era strategy of maximum pressure and selective intervention to reshape resistant states, even as the US itself descends into political crisis and mass unrest. The economic strangulation of Iran through sanctions, combined with threats of strikes if the regime crushes protests, mirrors the playbook applied to Venezuela: weaken through isolation, provoke internal collapse, then exploit vulnerabilities for concessions.

Also read: Iran's Unfinished Democratic Revolution

The Greenland crisis, meanwhile, highlights how Trump's transactional bullying fractures traditional alliances, potentially emboldening rivals like China and Russia while isolating the US in its quest for dominance. Far from ending forever wars, this approach risks multiplying them, transforming "America First" into a doctrine of assertive hegemony that alienates allies and invites blowback. For Iran, these global tremors amplify the regime's siege mentality, making de-escalation even more elusive amid Washington's demonstrated willingness to act unilaterally against sovereign states.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

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US remaking of the world has its own dynamic but also plays a key role in diverting attention from domestic crises – especially the whole Epstein saga of elite rot and corruption, as well as increasing repression by ICE and other law enforcement against working people.

Repressive regime, besieged

The turmoil in Iran, however, should not be reduced to mere domestic mismanagement, corruption or the regime's authoritarian instincts – though these elements undoubtedly play a significant role. Rather, the current upheaval represents the long-term harvest of a deliberate, multifaceted Western strategy of regime change that has targeted the Islamic Republic since its inception in 1979. This strategy seeks to restore a pro-Western client regime in Tehran, much as the United States and Britain engineered the 1953 coup that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalised Iran's oil industry, challenging Anglo-American imperial control over resources.

Operation Ajax, orchestrated by the CIA and MI6, orchestrated riots, bribed military officers and reinstated Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a pliant autocrat, ensuring Western access to cheap oil while suppressing Iranian sovereignty. Historians such as Ervand Abrahamian have shown how this intervention planted the seeds of deep-seated anti-American resentment that culminated in the 1979 revolution.

Iran’s crime – a nationalist revolution

The 1979 Islamic Revolution, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, not only ended the Pahlavi dynasty but explicitly rejected Western hegemony, branding the United States the "Great Satan". In response, Washington and its allies adopted a policy of unrelenting isolation, economic strangulation and covert subversion. During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the Reagan administration provided Saddam Hussein with intelligence, arms and diplomatic cover – even overlooking his chemical weapons attacks on Iranian forces and civilians – to weaken Tehran and prevent the export of revolutionary Islamism that threatened pro-Western Gulf monarchies.

The 1990s and early 2000s saw neoconservative networks, including those associated with the Project for the New American Century, explicitly advocate regime change in Iran as part of a broader vision to remake the Middle East in America's image. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, ostensibly to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, also aimed to encircle and pressure Iran, though it ultimately backfired by empowering Iranian-backed Shia militias across the region.

Israel’s shadow war

Israel's strategic calculus has been integral to this long-term campaign. Viewing the Islamic Republic as an existential threat due to its support for Hezbollah, Hamas and its anti-Zionist rhetoric, Tel Aviv has waged a shadow war through assassinations of nuclear scientists, cyberattacks like Stuxnet in 2010, and relentless lobbying for US "maximum pressure." The 2018 US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the 2015 nuclear accord – under Donald Trump reimposed crippling sanctions that slashed Iran's oil exports, triggered hyperinflation and eroded living standards.

This economic warfare, combined with the 2020 assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, aimed to provoke internal collapse, echoing the pressures that destabilized the Shah's regime in the late 1970s. The June 2025 twelve-day conflict with Israel and the United States, which damaged Iran's nuclear facilities and exposed military vulnerabilities, further accelerated economic freefall and eroded regime legitimacy.

External pressures, internal fractures, a New Middle East

These external pressures have converged with internal fractures to produce the current proto-revolutionary moment. Sanctions have starved Iran of essential medicines, technology, and investment, amplifying grievances over water shortages, unemployment, and subsidy cuts. The rial's dramatic depreciation in late 2025, exacerbated by global oil volatility and severed trade links, ignited the bazaar protests that quickly morphed into political demands.

Also read: Iran: The 1953 Anglo-US Coup Ushered in a Period of Oppression. But Now the People Are Fighting Back

Slogans evolved from economic cries – "Bread, work, freedom" – to explicit calls for regime change, reflecting accumulated disillusionment with the clerical establishment's prioritisation of regional proxies over domestic welfare.

This crisis fits squarely within the broader Western and Israeli vision for a "new Middle East" – a region purged of independent powers resistant to US dominance, free of significant Chinese and Russian influence, and secured for Western-aligned states. The early twenty-first century formulation of the "birth pangs" of a new order by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice amid Israel's Lebanon war encapsulated this ambition: a Middle East reshaped through regime change in Iraq, Syria, and ultimately Iran.

Tehran's deepening ties with Beijing – via the 2021 twenty-five-year cooperation agreement promising USD 400 billion in investments – and Moscow – through arms deals and coordination in Syria – directly challenge this hegemonic project. By crippling Iran's economy and fostering unrest, the West seeks to sever these alternative alliances, preventing the emergence of a multipolar order that dilutes American primacy.

The irony is stark: decades of intervention have often strengthened Iranian hardliners, justified repression and accelerated nuclear pursuits. The JCPOA's collapse pushed Iran toward higher uranium enrichment, while proxy conflicts have drained resources. Yet, as protests persist and security forces show signs of strain, the regime's grip appears fragile. Elite networks in Washington – think tanks, foundations and bipartisan policy makers – continue to frame Iran as a rogue state requiring containment or overthrow, prioritising imperial primacy over genuine de-escalation.

For Iran, survival may depend on the loyalty of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij militias, but sustained unrest could fracture these pillars. For the West, overt intervention risks catastrophic regional war, alienating allies and hastening multipolarity. A path toward de-escalation – lifting sanctions, reviving nuclear diplomacy, and abandoning regime-change fantasies – remains only faintly possible, though unlikely under current leadership. In the absence of such a shift, the cycle of external pressure and internal resistance will endure, exacting a heavy human cost in pursuit of a Western-dominated Middle East that remains elusive.

And the domestic blowback effects of America’s global offensive should not be underestimated.

Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics and associate dean of research in the School of Policy and Global Affairs at City, University of London and St George’s, University of London, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and writes the American Imperium column at The Wire. He is an International Fellow at the ROADS Initiative think tank, Islamabad, on the board of the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences, USA, and on the advisory board of INCT-INEU, Brazil, its leading association for study of the United States. Author of several books including Foundations of the American Century, he is currently writing a book on the history, politics, and crises of the US foreign policy establishment.

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