Western experts and political scientists keep insisting that regime change in Iran is impossible - and they keep being proven wrong by events on the ground. Ali M. Ansari, a historian at the University of St. Andrews who directs the Institute for Iranian Studies, has challenged this consensus head-on, invoking Hannah Arendt's observation that "revolutions are impossible before they happen and inevitable after they happen."
As "Hvylya" reports, citing a weekend interview published by The Wall Street Journal, Prof. Ansari argued that international-relations specialists and social scientists "have become so wedded to their templates that they can't see" the reality unfolding in Iran.
The historian pointed to a pattern that Western analysts routinely dismiss. After Iran's brutal repression of protests in 2019 and again in 2022, the conventional wisdom held that the protest movement had concluded street action wasn't worth the risk. "Then suddenly, this burst on the scene in January," Ansari said, describing the latest uprising as more rebellious than anything before. He sees an "accelerated means of protests - mounting, mounting, mounting" - a "persistent and recurring tendency to protest and try to fight for their liberty."
Ansari traced this resilience to the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, which won Iran a "liberal constitution in the Anglo-American tradition" and planted the ideal of the rule of law. While the 1979 Islamic Revolution dominates Western attention, the 1906 legacy has "had a much more profound impact on political ideas and activism," Ansari argued in his 2024 book "Iran." This tradition remains a live alternative - Iran is no nation-building project but a real nation with a modern state that the ayatollahs inherited from the shahs.
The professor stressed humility about predictions - nobody knows if the regime will fall. But he rejected the claim that the protest movement was crushed for good in January, particularly now that U.S. and Israeli airstrikes are creating a new opening. Students had already resumed protesting before the strikes began on Feb. 28.
Also read: The Bush Trap: Why Experts Warn Iran Could Become Trump's Iraq