The Rally of a Regime at the End of Its Rope

On Friday, Iranian state media showed crowds marching through Tehran in combat uniforms, and the state broadcaster put the number above 300,000. They waved flags, trampled American and Israeli banners, and pledged to take up arms. Western outlets described it as a show of defiance. That description is accurate in only one sense: it was a show. Anyone who reads it as evidence of popular support for the Islamic Republic is misreading what they are seeing.

Support at gunpoint is not support

In a free country, a rally shows what people believe. In Iran, a rally shows what the government can compel. Mass demonstrations for the regime are organized, funded, and enforced by the same security apparatus that decides who keeps a government job, who gets a university seat, and who disappears into Evin Prison. When your livelihood, your family’s safety, and your freedom depend on showing up, showing up proves nothing. Every rally like this happens at the point of a gun, or under the unspoken threat of one.

The truth is that the overwhelming majority of Iranians do not support this regime. Estimates of how overwhelming vary, with some putting it upward of 90 percent. The firmest number comes from a June 2026 survey of more than 31,000 Iranians: only 13 percent want the Islamic Republic, and roughly seven in ten want the system replaced. Iranians showed it in January, when nationwide protests swept the country and met the deadliest crackdown in the modern history of the Islamic Republic. They paid for it dearly. Human rights monitors verified more than 7,000 deaths and nearly 52,000 arrests. That is the conservative floor. Independent estimates of the toll run several times higher, and Tehran itself admits to 3,117.

Why the loyal minority will do anything

So who is left marching willingly? Largely the minority whose power, income, and survival are bound up in the system of oppression itself. That includes the Revolutionary Guard, the Basij, and the networks of patronage that feed them.

These people understand something outsiders often miss. If the system cracks, they will be the ones to suffer. They know what they have done to their fellow citizens, and they fear the reckoning. That fear explains the brutality. It is hard to believe that a person could shoot a neighbor. But for those who see the regime’s survival as their own, repression is not ideology. It is self-preservation. They will do literally anything to stay in power, because they believe losing it means losing their lives.

Repression is not ideology. It is self-preservation.

The appointment of hard-liner Hossein Taeb to lead the Basij, and his promise that these new volunteers will be a “nightmare” for Iran’s enemies, should be read in that light. The enemy he has in mind is not only abroad. The Basij’s main historical role has been crushing Iranian protesters.

Do not take the regime’s numbers seriously

No serious observer should accept the regime’s crowd figures at face value. Officials claim 600,000 registrants and over a million trainees. In May, they claimed that more than 30 million Iranians, a third of the country, had volunteered to die for the theocracy. These numbers are absurd. Even the Associated Press noted it could not independently verify them. A government that lies about what happens inside its prisons does not tell the truth about how many people fill its streets.

Staged strength is a sign of weakness

The most revealing fact about Friday’s rally is that it happened at all. Confident governments do not need to march their citizens through the capital to prove they are loved. Regimes stage these spectacles when they are failing.

This one is failing. Its ports are blockaded, and new sanctions are strangling an economy that was already collapsing. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains about 90 percent below prewar levels, and Iran’s own oil revenue is choking along with it. The regime’s leaders can see where this ends. The rally was not a display of strength. It was a flare fired by a government that knows the end is near.

The real question is for the West

The question now is not whether the Islamic Republic can survive. The question is whether the West has the courage to see this through.

Disruption in the Gulf means higher gas prices, and higher gas prices mean political pressure in Washington, London, Paris, and Berlin. There will be voices urging a quick deal that lets the regime survive in exchange for cheaper fuel. That would be a historic mistake. Short-term pain at the pump is the price of long-term stability, both in energy markets and in the region. A free Iran would mean a stable Gulf and an end to the proxy wars financed from Tehran. It would also give a generation of Iranians the future they have been denied, and bring lasting peace and prosperity to Iran, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.

The Iranian people have already shown their courage, many at the cost of their lives. The West must now show some of its own.