“But conflict has been building in recent years, with the union especially angry that Democrats in the State Legislature helped end mandatory daily hotel room cleanings, a Covid-era safety measure, in 2023.”

Union Leaders Get Tough With Democrats as Members Drift Toward Trump

“After the escalation of recent protests and with tensions rising between the U.S. and Iran, the world is preoccupied with the question of the regime’s stability. But Narges Bajoghli, associate professor of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), says the Islamic Republic’s government has reestablished control over the country after massive nationwide protests and shows no signs of immediate collapse. Here, Bajoghli, author of Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic, weighs in on Iran’s changing place in the global order and how the recent protests are both similar and different from previous ones the regime has faced. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. What’s your big takeaway on the situation in Iran right now? We just witnessed massive nationwide protests in Iran followed by an unprecedented massacre by state forces, the largest in Iran’s modern history. With the build-up of U.S. military assets in the region, the Trump administration aims to continue maximizing pressure on Tehran. However, the narrative being built—that the regime is ready to be toppled at any point, and that a U.S. strike would deal a death blow to the Islamic Republic—does not reflect the reality on the ground. The Islamic Republic is structured for siege. Bombing campaigns could significantly destroy military and civilian infrastructure in Iran, but for regime change, the U.S. would have to be prepared to fight not just a standing military in a country the size of Western Europe, but a system with decades of experience in asymmetric warfare. American analysts often underestimate the strength of the Iranian regime, which is structured for survival. The Iranian military has a dual architecture designed to resist coups and invasions: Artesh, the regular armed forces of around 420,000 men across ground, naval, air, and air-defense forces, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an elite, ideologically driven military with roughly 190,000 personnel across ground, naval, and air branches. Beyond them are vast paramilitary networks with hundreds of thousands of members embedded in every corner of Iranian society—across rural and urban areas, in neighborhoods, in the streets, and in schools. They aren’t just loyalists of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They are woven into a deeper idea of the state and are committed to the independence of Iran from outside powers. If a regime is going to change or collapse, you need to see its main institutions of power either buckling under pressure or experiencing huge defections, especially at the elite levels. You also need to see other nodes of power poised to fill the vacuum. We don’t see any indications of that at this point. There are no defections in the military or security realms. No defections are even happening across the political spectrum of the Islamic Republic itself. “If a regime is going to change or collapse, you need to see its main institutions of power either buckling under pressure or experiencing huge defections, especially at the elite levels. You also need to see other nodes of power poised to fill the vacuum. We don’t see any indications of that at this point.” Instead of traditional regime change, the outcome could be state or regime collapse. But what comes next will likely not be surrender. The Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, which helped organize militias across the region to bleed American troops in Iraq, is well positioned to do so again. These networks were established across Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to sow instability in the region. Israel has significantly weakened the existing militias, but Tehran retains the ability to foment militias against American interests in the region. This is one of the main reasons we’re seeing other regional actors so heavily involved in mediating efforts between the U.S. and Iran. In the eyes of many Iranians inside Iran, the Islamic Republic has long lost legitimacy, and the recent killings are unforgivable. But turning those grievances against the regime into an oppositional force capable of dealing with a vast and diffuse array of armed groups loyal to the state is a deep challenge. How are these protests similar or different from previous ones? It’s both different from and a continuation of protests and uprisings from the past. Since 2009, large segments of Iran’s population have called for “down with the dictator” in nearly every protest movement. The biggest difference this time around is the scale and how quickly it spread to provinces and small towns across the country, and the willingness by some segments to confront the regime with arms. The core issue of economic grievances and the involvement of the working class and poor in smaller towns is more similar to the uprisings that happened over the economic situation in 2018 and 2019. It’s different from the mobilization in 2023 over the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which was led by civil society activists and organizations. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement gained the biggest concessions in the history of the Islamic Republic by making the mandatory hijab a non-issue, but that came through sustained organizing and nonviolent campaigns of everyday resistance. The current uprisings in December and January did not start from existing spaces of civic and political organization on the ground. This was initially an outpouring of rage over the economic situation that then quickly turned into calls for the downfall of the regime. The other component of this that makes it very different is the level of violence, primarily by the state, as well as the willingness of some protestors to take up armed resistance, which is a departure from mass movements in the past 20 years in Iran. Iran’s situation is much different from what it was a year and a half ago. How has that affected the regime’s response? The situation across the region, in general, is changing very fast, not only with Iran and its allied groups and proxy groups but also with other nations. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman are putting pressure on the Trump administration not to launch strikes or engage in more confrontation with Iran because the spillover effects across the region are going to be bad for their national security. You also have the reality that while Iran and its allied groups in the region have been weakened, Turkey and Saudi Arabia see that Israel is becoming bolder in the region, and they’re hedging against that. What do you expect to see from the U.S. in the short term, and how could it impact the situation? I can’t predict what the president may do, but the fact is, he sent a very large armada to Iran recently. Some within the administration and some allies want confrontation, but the president also doesn’t seem to like prolonged, long-term foreign interventions. We saw that in the 12-Day War last June. We saw his preference for quick action rather than prolonged confrontation in Venezuela. The problem is that he doesn’t have a Venezuela-like option with Iran right now. This is what makes this a very difficult situation. It’s not just one strike, and that’s the end of it, because Iran sees this as an existential conflict and retains significant ability to inflict damage on U.S. assets and allies across the region, even despite it being battered over the past year. I think one of the reasons we haven’t seen a U.S. strike yet is because there is no easy or even obvious military option that does not lead to a longer conflict, which the president has signaled he is not interested in. Leaders across the region are worried because it could spark a major regional confrontation. We have to wait and see what decision the U.S. makes. What do you see as the most likely way this conflict resolves? The two options are either military confrontation or some kind of diplomatic deal. Currently, most regional actors are pushing for a diplomatic solution to avoid war and its spillover effects. But there is very little trust between the U.S. and Iran, especially since the 12-Day War. It is a highly combustible situation.”

The state of the Iranian regime after protests