Limits of Dissent: An Analysis of the Iranian Opposition

The Iranian regime has weathered protest wave after protest wave, from the "Green Movement" to "Woman, Life, Freedom" to the January 2026 unrest. Each cycle reveals the same pattern: rapid mobilization, brutal suppression, then quiet. A new Wikistrat report explores the structural constraints that prevent Iran's fragmented opposition from translating widespread grievance into regime-threatening coordination, and identifies the conditions that could shift that dynamic

The report was written by Wikistrat expert Mohammad Shajari.

Download the report here.

On January 8, 2026, Reza Pahlavi posted a video calling on Iranians to take to the streets. Within hours, protests erupted across multiple cities. Crowds gathered in Tehran's Saadat Abad district. Shopkeepers in the Grand Bazaar shuttered their stalls. Images of burning Khamenei billboards spread across social media.

The regime's response came swiftly. Security forces flooded protest sites. Arrests mounted. Families searched for missing loved ones at a makeshift morgue in Kahrizak. Then the internet went dark, connectivity dropping to near zero and severing the links protesters needed to coordinate.

Within a week, the streets were quiet again. Anger at the regime remains widespread, but the opposition still lacks the organizational infrastructure to convert that anger into sustained pressure. Our latest report, Limits of Dissent: An Analysis of the Iranian Opposition, examines why this gap persists and what it would take to close it.

Download the report here.