No clear leader, no unified front: Iran’s opposition at a crossroad

Iran’s fragmented opposition groups think their moment may be close at hand, but activists involved in previous bouts of protest say they are unwilling to unleash mass unrest, even against a system they hate, with their nation under attack.

Exiled opponents of the Islamic Republic, themselves deeply divided, are urging street protests. In the borderlands, Kurdish and Baluchi separatist groups look poised to rise up, with Israeli strikes pummelling Iran’s security apparatus.

While the Islamic Republic looks weaker than at nearly any point since soon after the 1979 revolution, any direct challenge to its 46-year rule would likely require some form of popular uprising.

Whether such an uprising is likely – or imminent – is a matter of debate.

The late shah’s son, U.S.-based Reza Pahlavi, said in media interviews this week he wants to lead a political transition, proclaiming it the best chance to topple the Islamic Republic in four decades and saying “this is our moment in history”.

Triggering regime change is certainly one war goal for Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing Iranians to say “we are also clearing the path for you to achieve your freedom”.

Within a ruling system long adept at quashing public displays of dissent, there are signs it is readying for protests.

Mohammad Amin, a member of the Basij militia that is often deployed against protesters, said his unit in Qom had been put on alert to root out Israeli spies and protect the Islamic Republic.

However, while the strikes have targeted a security hierarchy that crushed previous bouts of protest, they have also caused great fear and disruption for ordinary people – and anger at both Iranian authorities and Israel, the activists said.

“How are people supposed to pour into the streets? In such horrifying circumstances, people are solely focused on saving themselves, their families, their compatriots, and even their pets,” said Atena Daemi, a prominent activist who spent six years in prison before leaving Iran.

MASS PROTESTS

Daemi’s concerns were also voiced by Iran’s most prominent activist, Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, in a social media post. Responding to an Israeli demand for people to evacuate parts of Tehran, she posted: “Do not destroy my city.”

Two other activists Reuters spoke to in Iran, who were among the hundreds of thousands involved in mass protests two years ago after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, said they also had no plans to demonstrate yet.

“After the strikes end we will raise our voices because this regime is responsible for the war,” said one, a university student in Shiraz, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.

Another, who had lost her university place and been jailed for five months after the 2022 protests and who also requested anonymity, said she believed in regime change in Iran but that it was not time to take to the streets.

She and her friends were not planning to stage or join rallies, she said, and dismissed calls from abroad for protests. “Israel and those so-called opposition leaders abroad only think about their own benefits,” she said.

Apart from Pahlavi’s monarchists, the main opposition faction outside Iran is the People’s Mujahideen Organisation, also known as the MEK or MKO. A revolutionary faction in the 1970s, it lost a power struggle after the shah was toppled.

Many Iranians have not forgiven it for then siding with Iraq during the stalemated war of 1980-88 and rights groups have accused it of abuses at its camps and of cult-like behaviour, both of which it denies.

The Mujahideen are the main force behind the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which like Pahlavi has cultivated close ties with some Western politicians. At a Paris forum this week, the council’s leader Maryam Rajavi reiterated her opposition to any return of the monarchy, saying “neither the shah nor the mullahs”.

How far opposition groups outside Iran enjoy any support inside the country is uncertain. While there is fond nostalgia among some Iranians for the period before the revolution, it is an era that most are too young to remember.

Within Iran, the successive rounds of national protests have also focused around differing issues. In 2009, demonstrators flooded the streets over what they saw as a stolen presidential election. In 2017, protests focused on falling living standards. And in 2022 women’s rights were the trigger.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the election candidate protesters said had been cheated in 2009, has been under house arrest for years and is now 83. His policy was to reform the Islamic Republic rather than replace it – the goal of many protesters in later movements.

For opponents of the Islamic Republic inside Iran, those unanswered questions of whether or when to stage protests, what agenda to pursue, or which leader to follow are only likely to grow more pressing as Israel’s airstrikes continue.