Political Observer : Is now the propitious moment for Scott Anderson beat the War Drum against Iran!

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Jan 10, 2026

Headline: Scott Anderson on Why Iran’s Real Revolution Might Be Coming

Sub-headline: Yascha Mounk and Scott Anderson discuss how economic collapse has created the conditions for regime change—and what this could mean for the country.

Editor: Never forget that Yascha Monk is the amauences to Intelectual Pretender Francis Fukuyama! Let me offer The Reader this brief selection of from this- what to name it but propganda, that arrives at the most unpropitous historical moment, while Venezuela and Greeland awate. Given this context, what might a prudent action plan regarding Iran be?

Mounk: So we recorded a wonderful, deep, historical dive into Iran in, I believe, July of last year. And I was really looking forward to releasing that episode and thought perhaps we can wait for some topical hook that’ll make that episode more relevant. And boy, did we get a topical hook over the last days.

There are these wonderful, inspiring pictures that also make me a little bit scared about what may be around the corner from Iran with just huge numbers of people taking to the streets to call for the end of the regime of the mullahs in a more open and more concerted way than probably at any point since 1979. What’s your read on the situation in Tehran and so many other cities around Iran today? Should we get our hopes up for an end to this regime?

Anderson: I think more than probably ever in the last 45 years, the regime is in serious, serious trouble. There have been moments in the past when it was in somewhat trouble.

What’s different this time with these protests? The regime in the past has always been very adept at playing one segment of society off against another. The religious against the more secular, the rural against the urban. The Women’s Freedom protests of three years ago, they were able to talk about it being—she was a Kurdish woman, the woman who was killed by the morality police—to kind of play the ethnic card.

This time, that’s not going to work because this is an economic collapse that has happened with the devaluation of Iran. So everybody is affected. Playing off one side against the other is just not going to work this time. The second thing that’s quite different is you now have an Iranian president, Pezeshkian, who’s come out in sort of solidarity, or at least in sympathy with the protesters.

He doesn’t have an awful lot of genuine power—Supreme Leader Khamenei does—but what he has is a voice, and that voice cannot really be shut up. So you have a very different dynamic taking place now than you’ve ever had before.

Mounk: So we recorded a wonderful, deep, historical dive into Iran in, I believe, July of last year. And I was really looking forward to releasing that episode and thought perhaps we can wait for some topical hook that’ll make that episode more relevant. And boy, did we get a topical hook over the last days.

There are these wonderful, inspiring pictures that also make me a little bit scared about what may be around the corner from Iran with just huge numbers of people taking to the streets to call for the end of the regime of the mullahs in a more open and more concerted way than probably at any point since 1979. What’s your read on the situation in Tehran and so many other cities around Iran today? Should we get our hopes up for an end to this regime?

Anderson: I think more than probably ever in the last 45 years, the regime is in serious, serious trouble. There have been moments in the past when it was in somewhat trouble.

What’s different this time with these protests? The regime in the past has always been very adept at playing one segment of society off against another. The religious against the more secular, the rural against the urban. The Women’s Freedom protests of three years ago, they were able to talk about it being—she was a Kurdish woman, the woman who was killed by the morality police—to kind of play the ethnic card.

This time, that’s not going to work because this is an economic collapse that has happened with the devaluation of Iran. So everybody is affected. Playing off one side against the other is just not going to work this time. The second thing that’s quite different is you now have an Iranian president, Pezeshkian, who’s come out in sort of solidarity, or at least in sympathy with the protesters.

He doesn’t have an awful lot of genuine power—Supreme Leader Khamenei does—but what he has is a voice, and that voice cannot really be shut up. So you have a very different dynamic taking place now than you’ve ever had before.

…

Political Observer.