Iran Unrest Is Stunning Blow to the Global Terror Complex

When the radical jihadist regime in Iran falls, and it now appears that it is only a matter of time before it does, the impact on the global campaign of terror will be sudden and immense.

Acts of jihadist terror will not disappear, but the greatest source of the movement’s funding, planning, incitement, and military capability will have been eliminated.

Control of the Iranian state is an irreplaceable resource for the malign and murderous quest to destroy Western civilization and replace it with a radical atavistic theocracy. Iran’s large population, now 91 million, its land size, and its strategic location have made it an important geopolitical player.

Succeeding the great Persian empire of antiquity, modern Iran experienced an explosion of prosperity in the post-World War I years under the rule of shahs of the Pahlavi dynasty from 1925 until 1979. Vast reserves of oil brought it immense wealth, and the country was on a promising trajectory.

But in 1979, radical Islamic figures led a popular uprising against the shah and his effort to modernize Iranian society. These extremists have controlled the nation for the past 46 years as a theocracy. They have turned Iran into the engine for jihadist terror directed at destroying Israel and the Christian civilization of Europe and the Western Hemisphere.

Over time, Iran recruited proxy nations and groups such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and militias in Iraq and Syria. Through these groups, Iran funded, supplied, and coordinated campaigns and acts of terror for decades against Israel and other targets, including the United States.

Internally, the ruling ayatollahs created the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution as a multi-service branch of the Iranian armed forces, answerable only to the Supreme Leader (who for the past 37 years has been Ayatollah Ali Khamenei). The IRGC was intended to be, and has served as, the internal enforcement arm of the regime, functioning much like the Gestapo did in Nazi Germany.

Widespread protests have occurred in Iran before in 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2022, but they were always brutally repressed by the IRGC.

In late December 2025, however, in reaction to a sharp devaluation of the Iranian rial to the dollar, and the subsequent hardships it imposed on many merchants and consumers, new protests broke out in Tehran, the Iranian capital.

Beginning with merchants in the main city bazaar closing their shops, the protests gathered momentum as Iranians in the capital and then other large cities began assembling in larger and larger numbers to express their dissatisfaction with economic conditions and eventually with the regime itself.

After more than two weeks of protests and violent confrontations, the uprising has now reached most cities and regions across Iran and has resulted in a reported large number of casualties. Estimates vary widely from 2,600 to more than 12,000 deaths, as well as thousands wounded. Iranian hospitals reportedly have been overwhelmed with the injured as well as the bodies of those killed.

Thousands of civilians have also been arrested.

After years of using proxies to attack Israel, Iran last year began a more direct approach in its war of terror against Israel. An earlier threat to create nuclear weapons had been initially halted by international pressure, but it became known to Israeli and other intelligence services that Iran was defying sanctions and secretly proceeding on its nuclear weaponry development.

This led to an extraordinary military campaign by Israel, later joined by the U.S., to destroy Iran’s facilities to immediately build a nuclear weapon.

Despite this defeat, Iran was reportedly continuing to develop its ballistic missile capability, and Israel was considering another military effort, possibly with the help or at least consent of American leaders. U.S. President Trump, who had adamantly opposed Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions, and had supplied the final blow to them last June, has warned Iran that if the current protests are met with violence by the regime and its IRGC forces, the U.S. will intervene to protect Iranian civilians.

The last shah’s son, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, has been in exile, but he still has a large following in Iran. He has publicly encouraged the protests and has offered to serve as a constitutional monarch in a new Iranian democracy.

Other Iranians support creating a democratic republic without a shah.

Khamenei and his regime have closed down the internet and cell phone communications throughout Iran and have begun a violent suppression of what has become a full-scale uprising using the IRGC.

Initially, the violence against civilians reportedly had the opposite effect, as more and more Iranians are reportedly turning out to larger and larger demonstrations.

But the massive use of deadly force against mostly unarmed civilian protesters, combined with the total public communications blackout, has reduced protest turnout.

There are reports that Khamenei and his inner circle already have a plan in place to fly to exile in Moscow (as Khamenei ally Syrian President Assad did when he was overthrown) should the uprising succeed.

Because of this total communications blackout, details of what is happening now in Iran are sketchy, but if the high casualty and execution numbers are accurate, it is quite possible President Trump will intervene.

Fearing that the regime has not yet sufficiently been weakened, many informed Middle East sources are counseling President Trump to delay U.S. actions until the regime’s ability to suppress and threaten the civilian population is significantly reduced.

This appears to be what President Trump is doing. He has a major carrier force on its way to the Middle East from the Pacific, and he has put the resources for his various options into standby readiness.

U.S. action, whatever form it takes, could happen at any time.

Meanwhile, with a debased currency, no dollars or other means to buy needed resources, water and food shortages, fading electricity and vital other utilities, heavy international sanctions against it, a wiped-out middle class, and disappearing public services, the Khamenei-allied oppressors have no way out of their collapsing regime.

Herald Boas is a writer for AMAC Newsline.