Why dictatorships are more vulnerable from within than to external strikes

After facing one of the largest waves of protest in recent years this past January, the Iranian regime managed to temporarily contain the movement through massive repression. But this apparent respite does not signal stability; on the contrary, it reveals the regime’s deep fragility.

In this context, the decisive threat comes not from outside, but from the emergence of an organized resistance within society itself.

Political science has long established that external threats tend to produce a “rally-around-the-flag” effect. Even authoritarian regimes can benefit from this, partially restoring internal cohesion. War allows them to legitimize repression, discredit the opposition by portraying it as “linked to foreign powers” and restrict civil society in the name of security and wartime necessity. The stability of an authoritarian regime generally rests on three pillars: legitimacy, elite cohesion and the capacity for repression. It is the simultaneous weakening of these three that opens the way to systemic change.

External military pressure primarily affects coercive capacity. Even when it eliminates certain officials, it can strengthen cohesion within the ruling core. By contrast, an opposition rooted in society can simultaneously erode legitimacy, weaken elite solidarity and undermine the effectiveness of the repressive apparatus. This is what makes it an existential threat to the regime.

Even a militarily unsuccessful operation can have lasting political effects when it originates from a socially embedded force. Its impact lies less on the battlefield than in collective perceptions: It makes change conceivable.

On Feb. 23, just days before the outbreak of the recent conflict in Iran, units affiliated with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (the main opposition movement to the clerical regime) carried out an operation targeting key centers of power, among the most heavily secured in the country. Although around 100 of the attackers were killed or arrested, the authorities chose not to publicly acknowledge the event, fearing its potential political impact.

History shows that the collapse of a regime begins when the repressive apparatus hesitates to carry out orders. This hesitation is more likely when confronting an internal force, as the boundary between “enemy” and “society” becomes blurred – particularly at the middle and lower levels.

In August 1988, Operation “Eternal Light,” carried out by the same opposition movement, although not militarily successful, illustrated this mechanism: A force perceived as internal – even when operating from outside – can trigger significant political shock. Its importance lay less in its military outcome than in its ability to crack internal cohesion and introduce doubt within the repressive apparatus.

Power relies on a form of collective consent, while violence emerges when that consent erodes. An external attack may temporarily reinforce this consent, whereas internal mobilization directly undermines it.

Finally, when economic tensions, inequality and perceptions of injustice converge with organizational capacity, society enters a phase of uprising – a moment when regimes become truly vulnerable.

Ultimately, what brings an authoritarian regime to the brink of collapse is not so much the intensity of external strikes, but the ability of a socially rooted force to simultaneously erode legitimacy, disrupt the networks of power and activate collective mobilization.