The Crisis of the Islamic Revolution 1979–2009–2026

Chris Cutrone

Presented on a panel at the 18th Platypus Affiliated Society annual international convention with Grayson Walker (American Communist Party), Mateo Farzaneh (Northeastern Illinois University), Tirdad Kiamanesh (Northwestern University) at Northwestern University, Evanston, April 9, 2026.

Donald Trump has simultaneously claimed to have achieved a “regime change” in Iran as well as disavowed any intention to do so. It has come out that in the lead-up to the current war in Iran, Trump agreed only to pursue prospects for removing the top leadership and the degradation of the Islamic Republic’s capacity to wage war. Trump wants not a change of regime but of behavior of the existing regime. This is modeled on the replacement of Nicolás Maduro by his Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez, which left the power structure of the Venezuelan state in place. Trump seeks a similar outcome in Cuba. Trump has proudly declared that he can “get along with communists” — pointing to Zohran Mamdani, the “socialist” Mayor of New York. He wants not a change of politics but only of policy from adversaries.

The accidental “regime change” in Iran came not from American but Israeli action: it was Israel not the U.S. that killed the prior political leadership, including those Trump sought to negotiate with — as he complained about at the time. And Israel has continued to do so. At the same time, the Islamic Republic and its power structures remain in place. Trump seeks their “unconditional surrender” to his terms rather than their destruction. But to achieve this, there must be a credible threat that they could lose it all. For Trump, this was the significance of the January protests in Iran: they represented not a potential revolution but leverage against the existing state. Back then, Trump implored the regime to “take the deal” while also promising to “protect the protesters,” and warning the Islamic state against their repression — which followed on, regardless.

If the protests set the conditions, this was still not the trigger for the eventual military action Trump took. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner judged that the Iranians were not serious about their negotiations, but only stalling for time — as usual. The Iranians said they would not surrender in negotiations what could not be achieved militarily. Trump has obliged them. Israel presented the opportunity to “decapitate” the regime, as Israel had done with Hamas and Hezbollah leadership, and Trump assented to it, joining a war that was going to result from the decapitation anyway. Trump chose surprise and radical action to reset conditions, and to immediately offer to negotiate mere days into the campaign. When the Iranians refused to do so, Trump decided to continue the planned 4-6 week schedule of attacks to degrade Iran’s military capacities. Trump was recently threatening a second phase, broadening the war to include attacks on Iranian essential infrastructure as a further pressure on the regime to capitulate and negotiate. Whether Trump can achieve his goals this way — what Secretary of War Pete Hegseth calls “negotiating with bombs” — is unclear. But he will try. The current provisional ceasefire has behind it a threat to continue the war.

A note on the war itself, especially as regards Israel’s controversial role: Trump’s U.S. “Epic Fury” war in Iran is not the same as the “Roaring Lion” of Netanyahu’s Israel. Trump is most comfortable when he can serve as the negotiator, positioning himself between Israel and Iran as belligerents. Trump ultimately aims at a stable balance of power in the Middle East, in which neither Iran nor Israel will play the role of a unilateral rogue actor moving forward. Trump was sincere about expanding the Abraham Accords to include not only Saudi Arabia but Iran itself. The goal remains the same as American policy historically, in general: normalized relations between states. The only question is whether a revolution is necessary in Iran to achieve this — and, if so, what kind of revolution?  

I wish to clarify my previous writings on the 2011 Arab Spring and the 2009 Green Movement crisis of the Islamic Republic as well as on the original 1979 Iranian Revolution, on the question of the form and content, the terminology and substance of “democratic revolution.” What makes the 1979 Revolution in Iran so painful is that it was a rare occasion in which there was more than a mere regime change, but a thorough-going popular smashing and reconstitution of the state. While of course some Shah elements of the Iranian state continued, mostly it was purged, and the composition of the state in the Marxist sense — the “special bodies of armed men” — was changed. As with all revolutions after 1848, however, the question is the democratic outcome or absence of this as a result.

The “Left” in Iran rightly considered the Revolution to have been hijacked by Khomeini’s Islamists, that they had been tricked by Khomeini, whom they had wanted to use as a mere symbolic figurehead for the revolution, but who took control as Supreme Leader in more than just name. This did not happen all at once, but over a process, first in the early moments of the Revolution, then as a function of the war with Iraq, in which the new power-structures of the Islamic Republic were consolidated. The initial liberal political leader, Bazargan, was sidelined and driven out of power early on. But even the subsequent Bani Sadr government chosen by Khomeini fell quickly as an obstacle to Khomeini’s ultimate aims. So it was not a matter of a change in political leadership masking the continuity of the state and its bases of power. There was even a significant social content to the revolution, as much of the prior Iranian ruling class under the Shah fled with him and his officials into exile.

The new Islamic Republic state established in the Iranian Revolution and consolidated and strengthened through the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, however, soon exhibited reform impulses in the 1990s, following Khomeini’s death in 1989. By the time of the 2009 Green Movement election crisis 20 years later, it was clear that the state itself was in crisis and that mere reform was not only inadequate but impossible to achieve the necessary changes. The Iranian state has subsisted on an increasingly narrow basis since then, with periodic protests — and their repression — growing in scale and intensity, up to those of earlier this year. There has been a steady stream of middle-class emigration from Iran. Even many members of ruling class families have ended up living abroad. As with other countries, Iran exports its discontents. This hollowing-out of the state portends ominous results.

Still, Trump is cautious and conservative about seeking substantial political change in Iran, which he thinks is unnecessary to achieve his goals — the same goals as those of successive American Administrations, namely, to normalize Iranian behavior and relations, ceasing to be a “rogue state.” As usual, Trump paints a rosy picture of possibilities for Iran, if only its political leaders would choose a different course of action — a different policy. In many respects, this is realistic, as Trump seeks a regional power-balance that can contain conflicts, preventing instability and war from breaking out. There is no reason, in Trump’s mind, why Iran, the Arab states, Turkey and even Israel cannot coexist peacefully in a regional settlement of the Middle Eastern countries, putting an end to decades of dysfunction and failure. Is he wrong?

The “Left” gives specious explanations for why things have been as they are. In so doing, it is worse than the capitalist politicians, who seek action to ameliorate problems and improve conditions in ways barred to the “Left.” The “Left” is sunk in delusions where the capitalist policymakers are acting in reality.

So, what are the possibilities for more substantial change, if any? This is unclear. The long history of the past 40 years has seen the complete destruction of even the ostensible “Left” in the Middle East — with perhaps the partial exception of certain Kurdish political organizations and marginal hangers-on among Palestinians. The most powerful agents of change have come from the avowed Right, for many decades, now. The Islamic Republic political leadership is one of them — but even it is quite old and degenerate at this point.

Since 2009, the Islamic Republic has degenerated such that it has come to resemble its neighbors and other similar countries of the developing world, and increasingly lost whatever specificity it had as a result of the 1979 Revolution. It has become a corrupt kleptocracy in which its ideological legitimation has been undermined, more like Saddam Hussein’s Baathists in Iraq, and the governments of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Egypt’s Nasserite nationalist Mubarak, Syria’s Assad, etc. Degenerate nationalism was replaced by Islamism, which has itself now degenerated in its turn. Its heroic days are long past. Additionally, the youthful population of Iran today mostly was brought up after the Revolution and therefore have no particular allegiance to the status quo that would flow from having participated in bringing it about. They don’t have any particular investments in the political status quo.

The idea that the Islamic Republic will reinvent itself now as an Iranian nationalist state, after the assassination of Ali Khamenei and his inner circle, without a crisis in its power structure depends on the long history of frustrated democratic revolution throughout the world. No doubt, any democratic revolution will depend on existing state elements, even more so than in the case of the overthrow of the Shah. It seems that the transition is impossible without overcoming Islamism as an obstacle.

But there can still be a significant crisis — and change of policy, for instance in diplomatic orientation. The Iranian state has long tried to navigate world politics by avoiding succumbing to subordination to any other states. This has seemed tenuous at times, and there have been crises and humiliating episodes, but Iranian political independence has been preserved successfully for over a hundred years. Today, however, it is part of the Russian and Chinese spheres of influence, and dependent on them for survival. Trump wants them to be replaced by the U.S. instead, to become an American client, like Israel, Egypt, Turkey and the Gulf and other Arab States.

The problem is that it is precisely the radical character of the Islamic Revolution — its actual democratic (meaning, popular) character — which now threatens a deeper crisis for the Iranian state: a brittleness that goes beyond even that of the Shah’s state in 1979. It could be that the hitherto strength of the state will become a liability due to lack of flexibility.

And the global dynamics Iran faces are even greater today than in the past. The Islamic Republic might hope to balance the Russians or Chinese against the Americans, and to exploit differences among Middle Eastern states, but it is also the case that Iran, like many other countries, is actually weaker and more fragile today than in the past. The developing world was hard-hit by both the post-2008 Great Recession and the COVID crisis, which, as elsewhere, exposed deep societal deficits. That there is no movement and thus credible alternative to the existing state will not guarantee the survival of the latter but only the violence of its fall.

Trump is offering not to deliver the coup de grace but rather to rescue the Iranian state from its crisis, saving it from the fate of a further downward spiral into paranoid isolation that was perhaps always the true character and intention of the Islamic Revolution from the beginning. There are two aspects of Iran: the capitalist state; and its Islamist ideology. — Trump doesn’t think that either needs a radical change, but only a change of orientation and behavior. This is not impossible. The only question is how to achieve it.

The religious-messianic utopian fantasy of a Shia Islamic state transcending the strife of world politics in capitalism was never a viable proposition long-term. At best it served as an ideological framework that facilitated the reconstitution of the Iranian state after the demise of the Shah, for instance by integrating a rapidly urbanizing society under modern conditions better than the Shah’s state was able to do. It achieved a further basis in defending Iran against Iraqi attack. But it has long outlived this function and purpose. The only question is how radical a political change will be required to transition from the crisis of this ideology.

There is no reason why Iran cannot replicate the experience and become like Egypt, or Pakistan (itself officially an “Islamic republic”) or Turkey (with its Islamist government and ruling party), none of which is lacking independence or without differences or is otherwise in lockstep with American policy — but even those states have not been without dramatic political controversies and events of crisis in recent decades. But none of them became international pariah states with economic and political sanctions against them like Iran, as a result of their crises.

Iran today faces another. The war with the U.S. is not the cause but the effect. It is a symptom of the Islamic Republic’s terminal illness if not death agony. Iran has been uniquely isolated ever since 1979. Trump’s attempt to mediate and actively manage a transition for Iran might be ill-advised. But the crisis in Iran was and is real, with or without the war. It must be resolved based on changes within Iran. If they are inadequate, it will only be deferred — not avoided. Trump grabbing the opportunity to settle it on his watch — and how he did so — can be disputed, but what cannot be denied is that there was a real crossroads that had been reached.

Perhaps the Islamic Republic will save itself and remain alone, entrenched behind nuclear and conventional weapons like North Korea. But this won’t justify the regime but only condemn it, especially in the eyes of its own people. Perhaps the Islamic Republic’s efforts will lead to a settlement of regional and domestic conflicts in its favor, forced by resisting American intervention. Either way, it will be the end of the Islamic Revolution in substance if not in name. | P