Key Highlights
- As protests spread across Iran and the government responds with lethal force, amid increasing reports claiming thousands have been killed, a growing question is being debated by analysts and Iranians alike: Is the Islamic Republic facing its most serious threat since the 1979 revolution, or does it still retain enough coercive power to survive?
- For Mehdi Ghadimi, an Iranian journalist who spent decades protesting the regime before being forced to leave the country, this moment feels fundamentally different from anything that came before."From 1999, when I was about fifteen, until 2024, when I was forced to leave Iran, I took part in every street protest against the Islamic Republic," Ghadimi told Fox News Digital.
- "For roughly half of those years, I supported the reformist movement.
- But after 2010, we became certain that the Islamic Republic is not reformable, that changing its factions is a fiction." EXILED IRANIAN CROWN PRINCE APPEALS TO TRUMP AS IRAN PROTESTS MARK ‘DEFINING' MOMENT Demonstrators burn pictures of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei outside the Iranian embassy during a rally in support of nationwide protests in Iran, in London, Britain, Jan.
- 12, 2026.
