Iran: Neither intervention nor trivialization
First published at Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.
Today, as Iran is being targeted by military attacks from Israel and the United States, and only a few weeks after the January massacre, a primary force shaping the political landscape remains estisaal: Often used in Persian to describe both a psychological and practical condition, the term refers to the point of convergence between social deadlock and psychological exhaustion. Trapped in a problem with no imaginable solution, one experiences a profound helplessness and desperation marked by frustration and the loss of agency. It describes a situation in which people are confronted with political forces that determine their lives while foreclosing any meaningful possibility of influencing or altering them.
This estisaal emerges from a relentless chain of crises that have defined everyday life in Iran over the past decade: massive inflation, brutal suppression, and mass civilian killings in January 2017 and bloody November 2019; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s missile downing of Flight PS752; COVID-19 and catastrophic state policies costing thousands of lives; the Jina uprising's violent repression — killings, blindings, mass arrests of activists; the June 2025 twelve-day war; and finally January's massacre of nearly 30,000 people.
However, this cycle of crisis and the blockage of agency is not produced by the Islamic Republic alone, but also by networks of external powers. Sanctions policies for example — especially the strategy of “maximum pressure” — have been justified as a means to weaken the regime, yet in practice have primarily affected ordinary people, contributing to massive poverty, inflation, more class disparity, and the deterioration of everyday life, often exacerbated by corruption and mismanagement. Today, through direct military intervention — most recently during the twelve-day war and the ongoing attacks — external powers once again reshape the lives of civilians.
Within this dynamic, the Islamic Republic has not only survived but often reproduced itself through the management and instrumentalization of crises, while systematically repressing any attempt by civil society to respond politically. From student movements and labor unions to schoolchildren’s protests, feminist networks, and dadkhahi (justice-seeking) initiatives, nearly every form of collective organization has been criminalized and suppressed — often through imprisonment, and at times through death. Political action is consistently framed as a “national security issue,” leaving civil society trapped between internal repression and external pressure, with little space for meaningful agency.
Thus, society finds itself increasingly empty-handed in the face of estisaal. This condition does not only affect those inside but also extends beyond the borders of Iran and affects the diaspora as well. Iranians abroad experience a constant urge to act in solidarity in all of these states, yet almost every practical path is blocked. Efforts to raise funds for victims of war or repression, to support people on the ground, or even to provide access to communication tools quickly encounter the dense machinery of sanctions and regime surveillance. The mere mention of “Iran” in financial transactions can lead to delays or outright blocks, while the country’s near-total exclusion from the SWIFT network makes the transfer of resources nearly impossible. Even when workarounds are found, they remain vulnerable to state surveillance, exposing recipients to accusations of collaboration with the enemy. During moments of internet shutdown—such as in January or right now—the question becomes even more urgent: how can communication be restored without placing users at further risk?
This condition of enforced impossibility brings into sharp focus a question that now emerges more urgently than ever before: how can a regime that holds a near-monopoly over life and death, and has repeatedly shown no hesitation in massacring protesters, ever be overthrown?
Confronted with this question — rooted in the condition of estisaal — , different political forces have begun to articulate divergent and often conflicting answers: from calls for foreign military intervention to invitation to mass protest, from appealing to the army to join the protestor to a promise of an internal collapse of the forces, from coming back to reformist ideas to change from within to appeals for support from Kurdish armed groups. Among these, one has gained increasing visibility in the recent months.
The pro-military intervention stance
The pro-military intervention stance — most strongly promoted by monarchist forces — has gained increasing visibility in recent months, largely due to its messianic promise of a rapid and decisive resolution. Often articulated through slogans such as “ This is the last battle!” or Donald Trump’s claim that “Help is on the way,” this position frames foreign intervention as a quick and ultimate solution capable of ending suffering and leading Iranians out of estisaal.
This narrative draws on the regime’s long history of violence against civilians to legitimize war as a form of “precision intervention” that could bring about a swift collapse. It suggests that no level of destruction — not even that caused by U.S. or Israeli military action — could exceed the ongoing violence of the Islamic Republic. In this way, accumulated trauma is mobilized to make the idea of foreign intervention appear not only acceptable, but necessary.
Yet this position produces a false sense of agency by projecting scenarios that remain largely disconnected from material realities on the ground. Narratives amplified by figures such as Reza Pahlavi and media outlets like Iran International circulated claims of mass defections of something around 50,000 within the military and state apparatus, alongside expectations of imminent U.S. intervention. These narratives fostered the illusion that security forces would hesitate, that collapse was imminent, and that external support would guarantee protection.
Despite this lack of grounding in actual conditions, such discourses have had real consequences to create a political discourse that manages and shapes life-and-death realities: encouraged by these promises, and assurances of external backing, many people took Pahlavi’s call for demonstrations to the streets on the nights of 8th and 9th of January, believing that the regime’s capacity for repression had weakened. In some cases, entire families participated in protests under the assumption that a decisive shift was underway — only to face the possibly largest massacre of protesters in Iran’s modern history, with a death toll of up to 30,000.
Pahlavi himself later stated, “This is war, and war has casualties,” thereby revealing the extent to which such narratives displace responsibility onto those exposed to its risks. Yet, a part of diaspora led the mass cheering for a foreign military invasion.
More than three weeks into the war, none of the promised scenarios have materialized. There are no visible cracks within the regime’s internal power structure, nor any signs of fragmentation within the security forces.
Intervention without strategy
The killing of Khamenei, even as a very joyful event for most of those who lived under the tyranny of the Islamic Republic, did not bring the regime to collapse. Instead, power was rapidly consolidated, with Mojtaba Khamenei assuming leadership and the state apparatus maintaining continuity. At the same time, the war has been instrumentalized by the regime to intensify repression: armed Basij checkpoints confiscate phones; near-total internet blackout since February 28; police chief Ahmad-Reza Radan warns protesters are now “enemies of the state” with forces’ “hands on the trigger”; nighttime Basij militia chants terrorize streets; state media reports 500 arrested for “spying.”
What this reveals is the absence of any coherent political strategy behind the interventionist position. More than three weeks into the war, it has failed to deliver its promise of a “fast and easy” overthrow. It's now clear that neither Reza Pahlavi, nor Donald Trump, nor Benjamin Netanyahu has any coherent vision beyond the fantasy that “ Iranians would rise up” and the regime would “collapse on its own.”
In this sense, the promise of intervention does not resolve the condition of estisaal, but rather deepens the situation of crisis. It replaces blocked internal agency with an equally illusory external one, offering the appearance of a way out while leaving the underlying structures of power intact.
With the massive destruction of basic infrastructure — such as desalination plants and refineries — caused by the war, over 3,000 people killed, and over three million displaced, a country and society already devastated have been pushed into an even deeper and more acute crisis that would threaten their existence. While immediate in its impact, this destruction will also shape life in the long term, leaving behind a toxic legacy for both people and the environment.
The limits of anti-imperialism
At the same time, the war has also strengthened another front: an anti-imperialist, pro-regime position that calls for putting aside political differences and supporting the state in the face of external war, regardless of one’s stance toward it. This perspective argues that, despite opposition to the Islamic Republic, the government must be defended when confronted with a foreign enemy, since it is not the aggressor in this conflict.
Similar to earlier wartime moments, this position has gained visibility in response to a clearly imperial military intervention. It rejects foreign intervention and correctly identifies the aggression of external powers. The level of violence and destruction of this war — specifically through attacks that have killed civilians, including schoolchildren in Minab — has further reinforced this perspective, exposing how the rhetoric of “targeted strikes” (noghte-zani) often functions as little more than war propaganda.
Yet this position also has significant limitations. By focusing almost exclusively on opposing imperial intervention, it often fails to acknowledge the condition of estisaal and the profound impossibility of living under dictatorship—the misery in which many people in Iran were already living long before the war and will likely continue to endure after it. By downplaying the internal dynamics of authoritarian rule, it struggles to imagine concrete paths out of the current situation and overlooks the dangers faced by a population that must continue to live under an increasingly militarized regime emerging from war.
Opposing intervention without minimizing the regime’s crimes
Both the call for foreign intervention and the anti-imperialist defense of the regime emerge as responses to the same condition of estisaal — attempts to resolve a political impasse that, in different ways, reproduce it.
As devastating as this war has become, the prospect of a weakened yet surviving Islamic Republic clinging to power remains a nightmare for many Iranians — plunging them into a deeper condition in which life continues under constant threat. In this situation, both the continuation of war and its end under an even more militarized regime become unlivable conditions. A regime that was consolidated through the eight-year war with Iraq is likely to emerge from this war even more brutal, deepening the condition of estisaal.
Faced with these deeply divided positions in a moment marked by massacre, crisis and war, the left confronts a profound dilemma: how to resist being drawn into either of these opposing fronts while articulating an anti-war position capable of addressing the condition of estisaal experienced by those living under these circumstances. If the left is serious about building an anti-militarist movement, it must formulate a position that opposes imperial intervention without minimizing the regime’s necropolitics or the conditions under which people in Iran are forced to live — both before and after this war. Only by confronting both external aggression and internal authoritarianism can it address the profound misery and political deadlock at the heart of the current crisis, in which people’s lives are caught between internal repression and external power.
Sanaz Azimipour is an author, activist and speaker. Her academic and activist work focuses on social movements, transnationalism and feminist philosophy. Mahtab Mahboub is an Iranian feminist activist and a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen, funded by the RLS. Her research focuses on gender, migration and intersectionality within the Iranian diaspora.