Iran International
Iran may not be Venezuela, but the Islamic Republic may at its most vulnerable point in its near 50-year existence as pressure builds from the streets, foreign intelligence services and inside the clerical establishment, analysts told Iran International.
US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a daring, deadly raid over the weekend and launched a surprise attack on Iranian nuclear sites in June.
His maverick military style may visit Iran once again after he twice warned Washington's sworn enemies in the Islamic theocracy against killing protestors, after which over 25 people have been killed.
The question now confronting Washington is whether Donald Trump will stick to pressure and covert tools or move toward a more dramatic confrontation.
Those who follow Trump’s foreign policy decisions see a clear pattern. He favors actions that create leverage without committing the US to open-ended wars.
Drawing on that record, Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Vice Provost and Dean at Missouri University of Science and Technology and a longtime scholar of Iranian politics, described a president inclined toward targeted operations rather than large deployments.
Trump, he explained, “prefers low risk and no boots on the ground model of a surgical attack.”
In the most extreme versions of surgical-strike planning, even the Supreme Leader appears as a hypothetical target, especially after Trump said during hostilities in June that the United States was well aware of his hiding place.
A broader conflict, Boroujerdi added, would come with serious complications.
“Any type of serious military intervention, meaning boots on the ground, in a place like Iran is going to be politically risky, legally contested and strategically rather complex.”
Is a Venezuela-style scenario possible?
The dramatic operation that removed Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro has raised questions about whether something similar could unfold in Iran.
Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, pointed to the depth of foreign intelligence penetration in Iran’s security apparatus.
“If we look at the 12 day war we just had in the summer of 2025, clearly Israel, certainly in the United States, I’m sure they have many eyes and ears inside the Iranian regime. Otherwise they could not have done the sort of targeted assassinations that they achieved.”
During the 12-day war, Israeli airstrikes targeted Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure, killing senior commanders such as Revolutionary Guards Brigadier General Davoud Sheikhian and several nuclear scientists including Abdolhamid Minouchehr and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi.
That level of access, Vatanka said, creates the possibility of deals inside the ruling elite if they decide the current path is unsustainable.
“That suggests defections. That suggest a good part of an existing regime decides, you know what, going forward things have to change and they might have cut a deal.”
Boroujerdi said Washington may not rely on exiled figures. Instead, it could negotiate with people already in power.
“The Venezuela model definitely shows … that instead of choosing an opposition figure, the Trump administration is quite content with striking a deal for a negotiated transition with the elements of the regime,” he said.
But Iran’s internal structure makes such transitions unpredictable. The Revolutionary Guard dominates key sectors of the economy and the security state.
Eric Mandel, director of the Middle East Political Information Network and a frequent adviser on regional security issues, warned that power might consolidate around them.
“I think the regime change in Iran could be one where the IRGC picks up the pieces because they're the most organized force.”
Prince Reza Pahlavi, the most prominent opposition figure outside Iran and son of the deposed last shah of Iran, has taken the opposite view. In recent interviews and opinion pieces, he argued that Iran does not need foreign intervention or a Venezuela-style operation.
“We don’t need a single boot of your military on the ground in Iran,” he told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Monday, saying the Islamic Republic is weakening from within and that a planned transition led by Iranians themselves could prevent chaos. Supporters see him as a potential unifying figure.
Many protest videos from inside Iran feature chants invoking Prince Reza Pahlavi to return.
Do Iranians actually want an attack?
Years of inflation, corruption and repression have pushed some Iranians to consider outside intervention as a price worth paying. Yet analysts caution against assuming most people are calling for war.
Boroujerdi emphasized the economic reality first. In his assessment, “hardly anyone is asking for war because that is going to amount to even worse economic conditions.”
Protesters in Iran have appealed to US President Donald Trump for help, according to videos sent to Iran International on Tuesday, with posts and signs reading 'Trump don't let them kill us.'
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday night aboard Air Force One that the United States was monitoring developments in Iran closely and warned that if Iranian authorities killed protesters, the country would face a strong response.
Meanwhile, the make-up of protests is shifting. Demonstrations are less concentrated among Tehran’s elite and increasingly driven by smaller cities and working-class families, once supporters of the clerical establishment and pillars of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“Right now, 70 plus cities and towns are protesting. This is a nationwide phenomena … It’s inflation, it’s unemployment, it’s the corruption,” said Vatanka.
Police in Abdanan, in Ilam Province, are seen in footage viewed by Iran International waving and cheering on protesters - an unusual scene in a system built on loyalty to the state.
What happens if there is an attack?
Mandel believes escalation remains possible, especially around Iran’s missile program.
“I think there’s a good chance that there will be a war with Iran,” he said, warning that Tehran could also strike first to distract from domestic crises and attempt to rally nationalist sentiment.
Iran’s newly formed Defense Council warned on Tuesday that the country could respond before an attack if it detected clear signs of a threat. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he and Trump would not permit Iran to restore its ballistic and nuclear program.
For Iranians already living with inflation, repression and unrest, the question is no longer whether pressure will continue. It is what form it will take, and how high the price will be.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.
