Anarchy, not democracy, looms if Iran’s theocracy falls, historian warns

By Lia Avagyan

The collapse of Iran’s Islamic Republic, if it comes, is far more likely to produce anarchy than democracy, according to historian Ervand Abrahamian, who argues that external pressure and internal unrest are pushing the country toward state disintegration rather than a clean political transition.

Speaking to CivilNet, Abrahamian said the assumption that Iran’s theocracy would be replaced by a democratic order misunderstands both Iranian history and the present balance of power. “It’s not the idea of somehow democracy replacing theocracy,” he said. “It’s anarchy replacing the present republic.”

Abrahamian, a distinguished professor emeritus at City University of New York and one of the most influential historians of modern Iran, described the current wave of unrest as the most serious crisis the Islamic Republic has faced since its creation. Yet he rejected comparisons with the 1979 revolution, cautioning that the key conditions that brought down the shah are absent today.

One striking difference, he said, is the role of Iran’s traditional merchant class. “This is the first time since 1978 that the bazaar has been at the vanguard of the opposition,” Abrahamian noted, calling the development historically significant. But unlike the late 1970s, when mass strikes — particularly by oil workers — paralyzed the state, today’s protests have not yet produced a nationwide labor shutdown. “That hasn’t yet appeared,” he said. “So I don’t see the state collapsing and having basically a repeat of the revolution.”

Another crucial distinction is the loyalty of the security apparatus. Under the shah, Abrahamian said, the military was unreliable and unwilling to carry out mass repression. Today, the Revolutionary Guards are “unified, ideologically motivated and willing to kill large numbers of people,” making the state far more resilient than it was in 1979 despite its deep unpopularity.

The immediate trigger for the unrest, he argued, is economic collapse driven by years of sanctions. “The spark is basically the economic crisis due to sanctions,” Abrahamian said, adding that corruption and resource shortages have compounded public anger. But beneath the economic grievances lies a deeper ideological shift.

“The whole public discourse has changed,” he said. Whereas opposition movements in the 1970s and early post-revolutionary years were framed in Islamic terms, today’s protests center on individual rights and personal freedoms. Demands over dress codes, lifestyle choices and state intrusion reflect what Abrahamian described as a return to secular ideas rooted in the Enlightenment, which had influenced Iran in the early 20th century before being submerged by revolutionary Islamism. “People are sick of the clergy telling them what to do and what not to do,” he said.

That resentment, Abrahamian argued, stems from what he sees as a foundational deception at the birth of the Islamic Republic. During the revolution, he said, Iranians were promised a loosely defined “Islamic Republic,” not clerical rule. The first draft of the post-revolutionary constitution, he noted, was modeled largely on the French system. Only later did clerics impose the doctrine of velayat-e faqih — the rule of the jurist — transforming the state into a theocracy. “They pulled a fast one on the public,” he said, calling it the regime’s enduring Achilles’ heel.

Yet Abrahamian was skeptical that internal pressure alone would determine Iran’s future. He argued that the decisive actors are external — primarily Washington, whose Iran policy he said has effectively been outsourced to Israel. The collapse of the 2015 nuclear agreement, which strictly limited Iran’s enrichment levels under international monitoring, remains central to his analysis. “That was a perfectly good agreement,” Abrahamian said. “There was no way Iran could become a nuclear weapons power under that.”

He questioned what Israel and the United States now seek from Iran, arguing that regime change could backfire. A clerical collapse, he said, could bring a military dictatorship dominated by the Revolutionary Guards — “a worse nightmare” for Israel — or something more dangerous still: the dismantling of the Iranian state itself.

Drawing parallels with Iraq, Libya and Syria, Abrahamian warned that sustained external pressure risks fragmenting Iran along ethnic lines. “The implication wouldn’t be just a failed state, but disintegration of the state,” he said, pointing to long-standing discussions about autonomy or independence among Kurds, Baluchis and ethnic Azeris. Such a scenario, he added, would unleash a regional Pandora’s box, destabilizing neighbors and triggering mass migration toward Europe.

Stakes for Armenia

For Armenia, Iran’s southern neighbor, the stakes are particularly high. Abrahamian said Yerevan has long viewed Iran as a critical strategic outlet and would likely prefer the predictability of the current regime over the chaos of an unknown successor. “Chaos in the neighborhood is going to have a bad effect,” he said, warning that fragmentation in northern Iran could directly affect Armenia’s security environment.

He was equally dismissive of hopes that Iran’s diaspora or foreign military threats could engineer a clean transition. Many exiles have legitimate grievances, Abrahamian acknowledged, but he urged them to confront the costs of collapse. “They should ask themselves what’s the alternative,” he said, citing the enormous human toll that followed Saddam Hussein’s removal in Iraq.

The lesson of Iranian history, Abrahamian concluded, is sobering. Street protests are deeply rooted in the country’s political culture and have produced revolutions before. But history, he warned, does not guarantee repetition. “This could lead to disintegration of the state,” he said. “If that is the policy of foreign powers, then the future is very bleak.”

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The protests in Iran, which erupted in late December 2025, were initially triggered by a severe economic crisis marked by the collapse of the rial and soaring inflation, but quickly evolved into nationwide calls for the removal of the clerical system. Authorities responded with sweeping repression, including a near-total internet blackout beginning in early January 2026. International human rights groups and independent media report that as many as 20,000 people may have been killed, with tens of thousands more arrested.