Iran’s Divided Opposition Only a Unified Movement Can Threaten the Regime

by Sanam Vakil and Alex Vatanka

SANAM VAKIL is Director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program.

ALEX VATANKA is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute.

Whenever Iran is shaken by nationwide protests, as it was just last month, analysts and activists are consumed by the same two questions: will the country’s regime finally fall, and what will come next if it does? Answers abound. Some analysts think that the country’s leadership is surprisingly secure and that the regime can withstand more demonstrations.

Some believe it will collapse, only to be followed by another dictatorship under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most politically powerful branch of the country’s armed forces. Others are more optimistic, arguing that the entire system will go down and that an external opposition figure, perhaps the former Iranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi, will help the country transition to a democratic government or that Pahlavi will set up a constitutional monarchy. Those more optimistic still think that Iran might have a negotiated transition toward democracy, with regime figures offloading power to opposition ones.

Iran does seem poised on the brink of great change. The regime is exhausted, and Iranians are infuriated by decades of economic mismanagement. Its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is an 86-year-old cancer survivor. If upcoming talks in Oman between Tehran and Washington fail to break the nuclear impasse and address Iran’s other destabilizing activities, the Trump administration might also resort to attacking the country.

But current speculation about Iran’s day after (including among U.S. officials debating what course of action to take) glosses over the factor that will determine whether Iranians will have a better future: the state of the country’s opposition movement. That movement, unfortunately, is deeply fractured. Its members are divided into many factions—college students, ethnic minorities, diasporic monarchists, to name just a few—that are frequently at odds with one another. For example, opposition activists routinely accuse one another of secretly collaborating with the Iranian regime or with foreign governments. As a result of this fractiousness, they have struggled to capitalize on the Islamic Republic’s weakness.

If they want to take down the regime, Iran’s opposition groups must learn to work together. They need to adopt a basic, shared program that rests on principles everyone agrees on and postpone debates on everything else. They must come up with a plan to manage the country in the immediate aftermath of the regime’s collapse. Finally, they must be more inclusive, rather than constantly trying to freeze one another out. Otherwise, the Islamic Republic will persist not because it commands popular support but because there is no alternative.

NO LOVE LOST

Unlike some authoritarian states, such as Belarus or Venezuela, Iran’s opposition does not have a unifying infrastructure or a clear leader. Instead, it is best thought of as an archipelago of political islands divided by geography, generation, ideology, and exposure to repression. These groups include neighborhood associations, student cells, women’s rights circles, ethnic movements, and labor organizations. They have all participated in the waves of protests that have rocked Iran since 2009. But between intense state repression and reciprocal mistrust, they have struggled to coordinate their actions.

Consider, for example, the country’s labor groups. These organizations, made up of teachers, pensioners, transportation employees, and other kinds of workers, represent perhaps the most structured oppositional force in the country. They routinely articulate Iranians’ grievances about inflation, inequality, corruption, privatization, and other economic issues. These groups also share most Iranians’ anger over the ideological, aggressive, and militant foreign policy that the regime has pursued for decades, which has led to Iran’s isolation and impoverishment. And they have deep roots in Iran’s working and lower-middle classes. But the government has limited their activities and prevented them from coordinating with student groups, women’s groups and with human rights councils.

Iran also has opposition networks comprised of ethnic minorities—including Kurdish, Baluchi, Ahwazi Arab, and Azerbaijani groups—that have substantial organizational capacity. Their leaders call for not only the end of clerical rule but also the recognition of minority linguistic and cultural rights, the decentralization of power, and meaningful autonomy. But these organizations are usually wary of partnering. The former fear that the latter will replace the Islamic Republic with another Persian-dominated, exclusive, and centralized government, whereas and the latter fear that the former will empower secessionist movements or invite foreign meddling along Iran’s porous and conflict-prone borders.

The specter (and reality) of foreign interference in Iran remains a source of substantial discord. Almost every major Iranian opposition faction has accused some rival of being influenced by foreign countries—be it the Gulf monarchies, Israel, Russia, Turkey, or the United States. These suspicions are not entirely unfounded. Regional and global powers do meddle in Iranian politics, and opposition groups have courted outside support. But these claims are easily overstated, and they make coalition-building extraordinarily difficult.

There are opposition actors that have tried to bridge these divides and offer everyone some direction. Civil society and rights-based groups made up of lawyers, journalists, feminists, environmentalists, and religious minorities, for example, have worked to connect street activists with opposition figures in more elite circles. They have drafted joint manifestoes calling for political pluralism, secular governance, gender equality, the rule of law, and a peaceful, democratic transition. They have provided legal and logistical support to various opposition organizations. But these figures are often the first to be jailed, and they are typically the last to be included in opposition organizing. This exclusion is counterproductive for everyone involved. It means civil society groups cannot directly mobilize mass protests while leaving protest organizers without valuable institutional support, legal expertise, or channels for negotiation.

Then there are figures who currently belong to or once belonged to the government’s internal, mostly tolerated opposition. This cohort of hybrid insiders includes former President Hassan Rouhani, who has called for constitutional reforms and a less repressive reading of religious strictures, and former President Mohammad Khatami, who has called for fundamental reform of the current system. It also features former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, who helped lead Iran’s 2009 Green Movement protests, and Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former adviser to Khatami who has limited residual legitimacy among disillusioned loyalists and midranking officials even though he has demanded explicitly a transition to democracy.

In fact, many technocrats from Khatami’s tenure as president from 1997 to 2005 are still part of the state machinery, including the government of President Massoud Pezeshkian. But Rouhani, Khatami, Mousavi, Tajzadeh, and their peers all face a dual constraint. On the one hand, the state has severely restricted their ability to organize to prevent them from challenging the regime’s power. (Tajzadeh, for example, is currently in jail, and Mousavi has been under house arrest since 2009.) But on the other hand, younger protesters see them as compromised by their earlier participation in the system of the Islamic Republic. As a result, they cannot mobilize a broad base of Iranians against the government.

POWER STRUGGLE

The Iranian regime does have critics that it cannot easily repress: those in the diaspora. They are plentiful, and they have real power. Diaspora leaders, for example, command enormous financial resources, access to Western policymakers, and meaningful popular backing within Iran thanks to their media power. Satellite channels, YouTube programs, and social media accounts run by these figures help shape public opinion inside Iran, coordinate the country’s protests, and provide platforms for activists whom the regime would otherwise silence.

But the Iranian diaspora, much like the opposition inside Iran, is prone to infighting. Its members publicly feud in personal, conspiratorial tones; hawks, for example, routinely accuse expatriates who are opposed to attacking the country of being agents of the regime. The doves, meanwhile, often allege that hawks are warmongers. Such battles erode trust among activists and ordinary citizens inside Iran, feeding a perception that Iranian leaders in the diaspora are more interested in gaining renown than in actually taking down the government.

The monarchists provide a case in point. They are the most visible diaspora brand, given Pahlavi’s name recognition, and they feature a constellation of parties and influencers who argue that restoring the monarchy under his leadership is the best way to move on from Iran’s current system. Pahlavi’s core support historically lies among parts of Iran’s older, urban middle class, yet it has grown in recent years as the Islamic Republic’s failures have mounted. But his movement relies heavily on online backers and satellite television and has only a thin organized presence inside Iran.

What is more, advocates of the crown prince have alienated other opposition figures by repeatedly attacking them. Pahlavi’s support from Israel risks reinforcing regime narratives about the opposition being foreign-backed. Analysts have expressed concern that Pahlavi might prove to be like Ahmed Chalabi, the prominent Iraqi exile who successfully campaigned for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and promised he could lead the country—but then proved unable to shepherd Iraq into a post-Saddam Hussein future. And for ethnic minorities and many Iranian republicans, the Pahlavi name evokes fear of renewed centralization and unaccountable power. They do not want to replace the current Iranian dictatorship with a new one.

Other diasporic opposition groups are even more divisive. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a former militant organization that operates primarily in exile and is led by Maryam Rajavi, is perhaps the country’s most structured opposition force. But it is extremely controversial because of its alliance with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and credible allegations by former members and human rights monitors of cult-like internal discipline. It has the support of many prominent Western politicians, including the former U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Yet most Iranians view it with deep suspicion if not outright hostility.

Some diasporic activists, like their counterparts in Iran, have tried to bridge these divides. In February 2023, for example, eight Iranian exiles formed the Mahsa Charter to unite republican, monarchist, and other voices around shared principles of democracy, secular governance, gender equality, and an inclusive transition process. Its founders tried to sidestep the matter of who would lead their coalition. But April 2023, their efforts collapsed as a result of deep ideological differences and strategic disagreements.

Even if Iran’s diaspora groups could bridge their differences, they would need to unify with the country’s domestic opposition to truly affect change in the country. And that will, if anything, be a more difficult task. The diaspora, after all, is distant from Iran by definition. It is particularly removed from the daily economic struggles that Iranians have to endure and from the further chaos and deprivation Iranians would face in the event of widespread U.S. and Israeli attacks. Many activists in Iran therefore see the diaspora’s push for escalation as reckless. Calls for maximalist measures sound different when issued from Berlin or Los Angeles than they do when issued from Karaj or Kermanshah.

COME TOGETHER

To be fair, no group, inside or outside Iran, can bring about a transition by itself. To succeed, this diverse opposition ecosystem will need to form a coalition—a process that would begin with the adoption of a narrow common platform. This should be achievable. For all their differences, opponents of the Islamic Republic agree that clerical supremacy over political and public life should end, that the state must guarantee basic civil and political freedoms, that Iran’s territorial integrity needs to be protected, and that Iran should embrace a time-bound, internationally observed transition from the current regime. Opposition leaders and their followers can therefore rally around these four principles rather than arguing over whether Iran should be a monarchy or a republic, whether it should decentralize power, and what direction its foreign policy should take. Such questions are best left to a future elected constituent assembly, which could better reflect the views of all Iranians.

A common platform, of course, is just the first part of coming together. Iran’s various opposition groups must also build institutional connections to one another. To survive the state’s heavy-handed crackdowns and surveillance, internal groups should coordinate through networks that are decentralized and thus harder to stamp out. They should create joint, community organizations that provide social services and advocate around local economic and social issues, which could make these groups more popular among ordinary Iranians.

The diaspora, for its part, will need to forge a functional coordination mechanism for its own members. This should not be a government in exile, but rather a forum for discussion with transparent rules, systems for settling disputes, and maybe even rotating leadership. Diasporic groups should also invest in secure communications that can help them coordinate with internal actors. But they will have to earn the trust of Iran’s internal dissidents and adopt realistic expectations. They must accept that those who pay the price inside Iran should have disproportionate influence over strategic choices.

Iran’s opposition cannot operate purely at the theoretical level. Its members will need to agree on some kind of tangible program for what happens immediately after the regime falls to avoid state collapse. But it should be nonideological and technocratic, focused on stabilizing the country’s currency, keeping basic services running, and preventing looting and violence. The opposition should have a clear timeline for elections and forholding a constitutional convention. Without such planning, fear of chaos will continue to be the regime’s strongest weapon. Many insiders who might otherwise defect will stay on to avoid civil war, cycles of revenge, and territorial fragmentation.

Finally, any transition framework must be explicitly inclusive. During the 1979 revolution, a diverse coalition of secularists, leftists, nationalists, and Islamists united to topple the monarchy. But the movement was then hijacked by an ambitious and organized clerical establishment that purged its opponents and consolidated power. A future transition led by a group that marginalizes minorities, secular activists, and religious or rival political traditions would risk replicating that cycle under a different banner.

Building a successful and inclusive movement will be extraordinarily difficult. In addition to state repression and mutual suspicion, Iran’s opposition is haunted by the country’s long, traumatic past. The 1979 revolution, the purges of the 1980s, and the crushed demonstrations of the years since have all left deep scars.

Yet there is reason to hope these groups can succeed. Each one, after all, brings formidable capabilities to the table. The country’s civil society activists, such as the imprisoned Tajzadeh and Narges Mohammadi (now a Nobel peace laureate), may not have great institutional reach, but their writings and statements provide essential practical and moral guidance. Labor leaders and student organizers have repeatedly shown they can turn out thousands of people. Ethnic movements, especially among Iran’s Kurdish and Baluchi peoples, possess decades of mobilization experience. Local networks in cities such as Ahvaz, Mashhad, Sanandaj, and Zahedan can provide social trust that Iranians often lack. And reformists at the regime’s fringes, including some dissenting clerics and technocrats, can challenge the Islamic Republic from within and help steer any transfer of power through the turbulence. The United States, meanwhile, might be able to help by assessing the opposition’s strengths, liabilities, internal fragmentations, and organizational needs and then giving it the tools and the support needed to evolve into a coherent actor.

But whatever Washington does, these groups need to start working together, and quickly. The Islamic Republic has reached a dead end. It refuses to meet popular social demands and is incapable of fixing the country’s many economic problems. It will thus have little choice but to rely ever more heavily on fear to keep itself in power, making further protests inevitable. The question, then, is not whether Iran will have new crises. It is whether the opposition will be ready when those crises come