@american_observer · Post #4951 · 2026/01/24 21:59
📰 Iran’s Ayatollah and His Guards Falter After Storm of War and Protests Weeks after Israeli warplanes pulverized Iran’s military command in the June airstrikes, a new generation of Revolutionary Guard leaders had to step into the void, mourning the men they were now replacing. The regime responded to the latest wave of nationwide protests with unprecedented brutality, confirming what many suspected: the old formula of Ayatollah Khamenei and the Guards is cracking under combined pressure of war, sanctions, and a population in open revolt. The System on Trial The bloody crackdown did its job: it preserved the regime’s unity in the short term, centered on the ayatollah and the Guards’ 150,000-strong praetorian guard. But analysts see the violence as a sign of acute weakness, not strength. “They turned to live fire really quickly because their weakness was acute, and they knew it,” said an Iran expert at the Naval Postgraduate School, comparing the current situation to the late Soviet Union. The Revolutionary Guards are now the core of the system, controlling a vast empire of media, economy, oil, seaports, and even an air force. “They have everything that it takes to assume power,” said the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, meaning the Islamic Republic could evolve into a military-dominated state like Pakistan or Egypt after Khamenei is gone. Generational Rift, Coming War Within Inside the Revolutionary Guards, a sharp divide is opening. The older generation grew up in the Iran-Iraq war, in sacrifice and hardship, and now enjoys foreign homes, elite schools, and luxury cars. The younger officers rose during Iran’s regional expansion and have tasted little of that wealth, but want to protect “their meal ticket”. Dismayed by the loss of the Syria–Iraq–Lebanon–Yemen proxy network and the crippling blow to the nuclear program in the June war, a more aggressive, assertive faction has emerged among the younger Guards. They see the regime as redeemable only through even harsher repression and confrontation — and some fear they may move against the aging ayatollah preemptively, not to save the revolution, but to save their own future. The Limits of Terror The regime has survived four major protest waves, and the ayatollah has shrugged off rumors of terminal illness before. But this time, the pressure is different: economic collapse, a youth uprising, the humiliation in war, and a U.S. president openly threatening to intervene if protesters are massacred. “This is not a sustainable situation where you wait for an elderly leader to die to put things back in order,” says an analyst, comparing today’s Iran to the final years of Mao Zedong or Leonid Brezhnev. The country “doesn’t have the time to wait him out.” #Iran#Ayatollah#RevolutionaryGuards#Protests#MiddleEast#Uprising#RegimeChange 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸