The Iranian rebellion affects everyone, including us

A mass rebellion against the theocratic religious regime is taking place on the streets of Iranian cities. The reason for this is mainly dissatisfaction with the deteriorating economic situation in the country and the way its leaders are governed.

The protests are mainly driven by frustrated young people, which is not surprising. They can be attributed to similar protests of "Generation Z" that came into the world in the late 1990s, across the globe – we have seen them in the past two years in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Peru, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Madagascar and the Philippines.

At the same time, however, the Iranian crisis has a significant international political overlap. The unrest at home only underscores Iran's decline in influence in the Middle East. The project of regional dominance built over the past two decades, which was supposed to strengthen Iranian hegemony in the region, essentially failed in a clash with Israel and Saudi Arabia with the US at its back.

Israel has dealt heavy blows to Iran's allies – Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. A number of its top officials have been eliminated, and the same applies to the "heads" of the Iranian military command. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad also fell. And the twelve-day conflict with Israel in June, in which the US was also involved, which slowed down Iran's nuclear program, is still vividly remembered. And protesting Iranians may now be wondering whether the billions of dollars spent on supporting pro-Iranian forces are missing at home.

What the outcome of the large-scale protests will be is unclear at this point. An interesting insight was offered by Vali Nasr, a professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University. According to him, the Islamic Republic is in a vice, squeezed by an external threat from the US and Israel and an internal threat of a mass uprising. It is not easy to escape from this stalemate, the complete collapse of the regime is not necessarily imminent, but the Iranian revolution is now coming to an end."

This could affect the global economy and geopolitical developments. At the end of last week, the price of Brent crude oil rose sharply by more than five percent and reached a value of $63 per barrel. This is the reaction of traders to the likelihood of supply disruptions from Iran, which is the fourth largest producer of OPEC countries.

And if another regime came to power in Tehran, although not necessarily "pro-Western", it could weaken its close relations with Russia and China - both countries now declare a strategic partnership with the current Iran. Russia is using Iranian drones in the war against Ukraine, and China is a major importer of Iranian oil.

Perhaps, especially in this context, there is talk of the possibility of American military intervention to "support the protesting Iranians" - US President Donald Trump mentioned this.

But wouldn't the government's narrative of a U.S.-Israeli conspiracy be confirmed? Military intervention from the outside will hardly eliminate internal contradictions, on the contrary, it can lead to a war escalation in the Middle East. The idea of a repeat of the Syrian or Libyan scenario in Iran should be a warning. Iran's development is still difficult to predict.

Miloš Balabán, Právo Daily