I was born to be skeptical, and I believe that some countries and nations are meant to be fucked up forever. Therefore, regardless of a possible and hoped-for change of regime, I don’t believe there’s any democratic future for Iran, the same way I don’t believe there’s one for Venezuela.

❶ First, I wanted to understand the source of the current events in Iran. If it wins, it’ll be a Revolution; so far, it’s mostly a carnage, a butchery, a slaughter, a massacre.

Some “Facebook armchair historians” put it on the budget changes for 2026-27 that, combined with the inflation that’s pushing the country into stagflation (in contrast, Turkey seems to slowly win the war with inflation), were the proverbial last drop. Here’s the source of this interpretation: Tax Increase in Iran to Finance the IRGC and Religious Institutions:

The Iranian government has proposed a 63 percent increase in tax revenues in its draft budget for the next fiscal year, a move that underscores the Islamic Republic’s effort to redirect greater financial resources toward military, security, and religious institutions.

Budget documents for the fiscal year beginning March 21, 2026, show that direct allocations to military and security forces will account for 16 percent of the government’s total general budget—about $10 billion—marking a 6 percent increase compared with the current year.

One-quarter of that amount will go to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose budget has risen by 24 percent year-on-year. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ access to state resources, however, extends well beyond its formal share of the general government budget.

Under the current year’s budget, the government was required to hand over one-third of Iran’s exported oil to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This effectively made the Guard responsible for exporting approximately 600,000 barrels of oil per day and allowed it to retain the proceeds. Another third of oil export revenues went to the government, while the remainder was allocated to the National Development Fund, the National Iranian Oil Company, underdeveloped regions, and other needs.

In the budget for the coming year, however, the government has cut its own projected oil export revenues by 63 percent, allocating just 1,850 trillion rials—equivalent to about $2.17 billion at the official budget exchange rate.

Data from the commodity intelligence firm Kpler show that in recent months, Iran has been unloading around 1.2 million barrels per day at Chinese ports, much less than 2024 levels of roughly 1.5 million barrels.

At current prices, the value of just one month of Iranian oil unloaded at Chinese ports exceeds the government’s entire projected oil export revenue in next year’s budget. In simpler terms, although the draft budget does not explicitly state how much oil the government will provide to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, it will transfer the bulk of exports directly to the Guard. The government—together with the National Iranian Oil Company (14.5 percent), underdeveloped regions (2 percent), and the National Development Fund (20 percent)—will ultimately capture only about half of total oil revenues.

As a result, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ share of oil export revenues will rise from 30 percent this year to 50 percent next year. If exports continue at current levels, this will translate into more than $13 billion in revenue for the Revolutionary Guard.

In total, the real income that Iran’s military and security forces receive from the state amounts to around $23 billion. This figure does not include the vast economic and commercial empire that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls, both inside and outside Iran, which generates substantial revenues beyond the framework of the official state budget.

President Masoud Pezeshkian’s government has increased projected tax revenues by 63 percent in next year’s budget—meaning that the government will finance nearly half of its spending through taxes and duties—while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other institutions under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s authority remain exempt from taxation.

Put simply, the government has placed the burden of the budget squarely on the shoulders of citizens already struggling with widespread poverty and unemployment.

The draft budget also allocates 920 trillion rials—approximately $1.1 billion at the official budget exchange rate—to religious and ideological institutions. …

The government’s failure to address deepening economic and livelihood crises has coincided with a nearly 70 percent depreciation of the rial against the U.S. dollar in 2025. The dollar now trades at around 1.4 million rials on the open market.

❷ On the other hand, let’s see What’s New About This Wave of Protests in Iran:

The 2022 protests emerged from a social and moral crisis. The death of Amini in the custody of the morality police became a symbol of systemic repression, particularly against women. What followed was a movement centered on dignity, bodily autonomy, and personal freedom. The slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” captured a generational revolt against compulsory veiling and authoritarian control. Women and youth stood at the forefront, transforming everyday acts of resistance into a nationwide challenge to the regime’s legitimacy.

In contrast, the 2025 protests began with an economic shock. The collapse of the rial, accelerating inflation, and widespread unemployment ignited anger among shopkeepers, merchants, the urban middle class, and students. In Tehran’s Grand Bazaar and Lalehzar and Alaeddin markets, traders closed their shops and took to the streets. Their message was clear: Economic collapse and political misrule are inseparable.

Despite their different causes, both the 2022 and 2025 movements share important similarities. In each case, protests spread rapidly through social media platforms such as X and Instagram, allowing images of defiance to circulate across Iran and beyond. In 2022, the hashtag #MahsaAmini went viral globally. This time around, videos of bazaar strikes and student gatherings again captured international attention. In both moments, the state responded with force. In 2022, more than 500 people were killed and thousands arrested. In 2025 and 2026, reports of violent crackdowns including state killings, mass detentions, and intimidation have already emerged, signaling that repression remains the regime’s primary coercive tool.

Yet the differences between the two movements are equally important. The 2025-26 uprising is broader and deeper in its early phase. The protests have been more geographically widespread, encompassing major urban centers such as Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad, and Hamedan and extending into smaller cities and economically marginalized areas. In 2022, however, particularly during the initial phases, protests took place mainly in major cities. The 2025-26 cycle, in its early stages, has also mobilized students, laborers, women, and ethnic minorities, suggesting the potential for broader mobilization amid unbearable economic conditions.

Another major difference lies in the international context. In 2022, global attention centered on human rights violations, and Western governments expressed rhetorical support while imposing limited sanctions. The Biden administration avoided full-scale economic pressure, prioritizing diplomatic containment over confrontation. By contrast, these protests are unfolding under a very different geopolitical environment.

President Donald Trump’s return to the White House and the revival of the “maximum pressure” strategy have intensified economic isolation. … On Truth Social, Trump invoked the prospect of American intervention to protect Iranian protesters. This would be an unprecedented step, and no doubt reinforces the Islamic Republic’s fear of Trump, his unpredictability and risk-readiness. The regime now frames the protests as the product of foreign psychological warfare, even as everyday Iranians struggle to survive.

Another difference between 2022 and now is the Iranian regime’s standing in the region. In 2022, the regime still maintained its proxy and partner network across the Middle East; its nuclear program, too, provided a protective shell. In 2025-26, the capabilities of its allies in the region have been eroded, and some former partners, like Bashar al-Assad, who provided a crucial bulwark for Tehran, are no longer in power. Additionally, Iran’s nuclear program has been severely damaged due to Israeli and U.S. military strikes in 2025.

Despite these differences, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is resorting to a familiar playbook for repressing protests, blending a passing acknowledgement of his system’s shortcomings with maximum deflection and defiance. In his first remarks since protests erupted last week, Khamenei—as he did in 2022 with the Mahsa Amini protests—recognized Iranian grievances.

In 2022, he said the killing of Mahsa Amini “deeply broke my heart.” In 2026, Khamenei similarly accepted the economic grievances of merchants. But in both instances he then segued into a conspiratorial message, arguing the demonstrations were part of the soft war of the West against the Islamic Republic. Despite Khamenei’s resolve, Iranians continued to defy him and poured into the streets the evening after his speech, just as they did in 2022-23.

A notable development in late 2025 was the ideological shift within the protest slogans themselves. While “Woman, Life, Freedom” remains symbolically powerful, new chants increasingly reflect monarchist sentiments. Calls such as “Javid Shah” (Long Live the King) and “This Is the Final Battle / Pahlavi Will Return” have echoed through the cities where the protests are concentrated. These slogans point to a renewed interest in the Pahlavi legacy and open calls for the return of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, representing a significant departure from the largely republican and rights-based framing of the 2022 movement. When combined with economic desperation, political exhaustion appears to be pushing parts of society toward alternative visions of order and stability.

…

History suggests that economic protests alone rarely succeed unless they evolve into broader political movements. Iran’s own past supports this pattern. Bazaaris, the merchant class, played a decisive role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and in earlier movements such as the 1906 Constitutional Revolution. If today’s economic protests expand to include workers, rural populations, and organized labor, they could develop into a more sustained challenge. The regime appears aware of this risk. The promises of dialogue and the resignation of the central bank governor reflect attempts to contain unrest before it spreads further.

❸ The “Bazaaris” have been invoked by others, too. However, while invoking this merchant class, some “Facebook wise people” add peasantry to the equation. Let me translate a part of such a story:

In 1979, Shah Reza was overthrown by a population outraged by the regime’s corruption, but especially by the speed with which this authoritarian leader was modernizing the country.

Iranians lived predominantly in rural areas. Iran had the highest economic growth rate in the world, over 12% per year, but it was also experiencing a demographic boom.

A natural phenomenon occurred, one that had taken place all over the world with industrialization: millions of peasants had come to the big cities. They could not read or write, so they could not find well-paid jobs. They were not used to the things they found beyond the borders of their villages.

They were shocked to see emancipated women in Tehran, without hijabs, wearing jeans and smoking, bars, discos, music—a world foreign to the deeply traditional Islam in which they had been raised.

And then came the Revolution. Incited by imams who hated all this modernity with a passion, the people rose up and drove out the Shah. In his place came Khomeini, an imam who until then had presented himself as a “moderate.”

Bullshit, I say. I asked Kimi about this thing, asking it to only look for English-language references, and it answered as follows (with 16 links, of which I visited some, and I can confirm they’re trustworthy):

How the 1979 revolution is usually read

  1. A three-class coalition ran the show
  • Young intelligentsia (students, lawyers, writers) supplied the first open protests in 1977-78.
  • Bazaar youth + militant clergy planned most street actions and paid the bills.
  • Urban poor & rural migrants filled the demonstrations, but “functioned primarily as auxiliaries” rather than independent actors.
  • The peasantry itself is judged to have played “no significant role in any phase”.
  1. Why the clergy could hijack the revolution
  • Mosques were the only legal network left after the Shah banned parties; 10 000 mosques, 90 000 mullahs, 50 ayatollahs gave Khomeini a ready-made machine.
  • Half the population was still rural and two-thirds illiterate; taped sermons promising a “republic of the poor” travelled faster than any left-wing leaflet.
  • The Shah’s 1963-71 land reform had dispossessed part of the religious estate as well, so the clergy already had an economic grievance that dovetailed with popular anger.
  1. Women: mass supporters, then first victims
  • In 1978 photographs women in miniskirts march side-by-side with chador-clad bazaar women; the common denominator was “Down with the Shah”.
  • As soon as Khomeini took power the slogan changed. On 8 March 1979—less than a month after the regime change—hundreds of thousands of women poured into the streets when Khomeini decreed compulsory hijab. Clerics compared unveiled women to “animals brought by Allah to serve men” (the very sentence you quoted).
  • The regime hesitated, briefly withdrew the decree, then re-imposed it piecemeal once rival left-wing organisations had been crushed in 1980-81.
  1. Peasants after the revolution
  • The new Islamic Republic did not reverse the Shah’s land reform; instead it expanded rural schools and clinics.
  • Access to education let many peasant sons (and some daughters) move into urban jobs, but land inequality persisted: families that had received land under the Shah converted it into university credentials, while the landless stayed landless.
  • Thus the revolution’s social policy “levelled up” villages without creating an independent peasant power base inside the regime.

Bottom line

The dominant English-language interpretation sees 1979 as a clerical takeover of a multi-class protest, not a peasant revolution.

  • Peasants supplied foot-soldiers and later voters, not ideology.
  • Imams provided the only nationwide organisation and a language of justice that resonated with both bazaar money and rural migrants.
  • Women backed the revolt en masse, but their moment of open resistance in March 1979 became the first symbolic defeat of the new order—an omen that the revolution would be patriarchal as well as populist.

❹ Whatever happens, it won’t be anything straightforward. Getting Rid of Iranian Ayatollahs Is Not Like Toppling a Communist Regime:

Mass executions in Iran began after June 20, 1981. Since then, the number of political executions is estimated at over 120,000. In 2025, according to Human Rights Watch, 1,500 people sentenced to death were executed in Iran-a record in more than 35 years. The July 1999 student uprising caused 7 deaths, 200 injuries, and 1,400 arrests. Capital executions then rose from 165 in 2000 to 246 in 2008.

But with the youth revolts and feminist movements of 2009, 2017, 2019, and especially 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, repression intensified, reaching the highest execution rate in the world (relative to population): 388 in 2009, 544 in 2012, 576 in 2022, 853 in 2023, 975 in 2024, and 1,500 in 2025. From 2010 to 2024, 241 women were executed.

These are not the numbers of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

…

It is not impossible that Khamenei could fall as Ceaușescu did-Ceaușescu, who was a frequent visitor to Tehran. His final speech in Bucharest remains legendary in the annals of fallen dictatorships. Just days earlier, Ceaușescu had received Khamenei.

…

Islamic Iran is different.

While all of Latin America was a mix of right-wing and communist dictatorships-coups and generals-Venezuela was once the most democratic country in the hemisphere. Returning to democracy after decades of bloody Bolivarianism will be relatively easy. Democracy in Afghanistan, by contrast, failed because Afghans like Islamic law.

Gilles Kepel is right: “The fall of Iran would have repercussions comparable to the fall of the Soviet Union.”

First with the fall of the Shah, then with the American embassy hostages, then with the Rushdie fatwa, and so on for half a century, Iranian mullahs have made Islam a global cause. The implosion of the mullahs would represent an enormous psychological setback for Islamic expansionism.

In Iran, the majority of the population is secular (anyone who has met an Iranian in exile will have found a brother in values and mindset), but the sharia regime, in order to preserve power, will not behave like some Schabowski. It still enjoys a certain popularity among a minority of the population. Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore speaks of 20 percent of Iranians supporting the regime-that is, about 25 million people.

The price of freeing oneself from the dictatorship of Islamic slippers will therefore be far higher than the fall of one of those gray communist mini-states beyond the Rhine where nothing worked.

…

Thus another scenario advances, of which no one speaks: while Arab countries no longer send their children to study with us for fear that we will radicalize them, are we not heading toward an upside-down world in which Europe becomes the new global base of Islamic power?

…

Is Europe the next Islamic Republic?

OMFG.

❺ Then, Coming Soon: The Iran Civil War of 2026? “Even If Iran’s Current Protests Intensify, a Clean Democratic Transition Is Unlikely”. Subtitles from the article:

  • Why Iran Won’t Be Syria—and Why That May Be Worse
  • Illegitimate Regimes Do Not Always Fall
  • Cleric versus Cleric in Iran
  • General vs General
  • The Failure of Diaspora Politics
  • Foreign Interference
  • The Scramble for Control and an Iran Civil War

And Syria is already a lost cause! Will the great Persian civilization go extinct for good?

❻ Enter Reza Pahlavi Jr., this asshole. Let me remind you that Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was no democrat whatsoever. True, under his rule, the bourgeoisie enjoyed a Western-style life in the major cities, but the overall situation wasn’t enviable.

From Geographica: World Atlas & Encyclopedia by H.F. Ullmann, ©1997 Tandem Verlah Gmbh, text ©1999 Random House Australia Pty Ltd, p. 183:

In the seventh century it was overrun by an invasion of Arabs who introduced Islam, a religion which under the Safavids in 1502 became the Shi’ite form of the faith that prevails today.

Oil was discovered in Iran in 1908. From that time on Persia (retitled in the 1920s by a Shah who adopted the name Iran because it meant “Aryan”) became of growing interest to the great powers, and the requirements of international oil companies began to figure in Iranian life.

After the Second World War the Iranians found the corrupt and despotic rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi intolerable, and in 1979 he was overthrown in the first national revolution to be led by Islamic fundamentalists. This event has had profound effects and repercussions throughout the Muslim world. Iran’s subsequent support for Islamic radicalism abroad soon led to strained relations with Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and North African nations, as well as the USA.

Maybe the problem was that the only force capable of overthrowing a dictatorship was a religious one.

To also quote from Wikipedia, Mohammad Reza Shah introduced reforms that modernized the country; too bad he liked massacres as much as today’s regime does!

During World War II, the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran forced the abdication of Reza Shah and succession of Mohammad Reza Shah. During his reign, the British-owned oil industry was nationalized by the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had support from Iran’s national parliament to do so; however, Mosaddegh was overthrown in the 1953 Iranian coup d’état, which was carried out by the Iranian military under the aegis of the United Kingdom and the United States. Subsequently, the Iranian government centralized power under the Shah and brought foreign oil companies back into the country’s industry through the Consortium Agreement of 1954.

In 1963, Mohammad Reza Shah introduced the White Revolution, a series of reforms aimed at transforming Iran into a global power and modernizing the nation by nationalizing key industries and redistributing land. The regime also implemented Iranian nationalist policies establishing numerous popular symbols of Iran relating to Cyrus the Great. The Shah initiated major investments in infrastructure, subsidies and land grants for peasant populations, profit sharing for industrial workers, construction of nuclear facilities, nationalization of Iran’s natural resources, and literacy programs which were considered some of the most effective in the world. The Shah also instituted economic policy tariffs and preferential loans to Iranian businesses which sought to create an independent Iranian economy. Manufacturing of cars, appliances, and other goods in Iran increased substantially, creating a new industrialist class insulated from threats of foreign competition. By the 1970s, the Shah was seen as a master statesman and used his growing power to pass the 1973 Sale and Purchase Agreement. The reforms culminated in decades of sustained economic growth that would make Iran one of the fastest-growing economies among both the developed world and the developing world. During his 37-year-long rule, Iran spent billions of dollars’ worth on industry, education, health, and military spending. Between 1950 and 1979, real GDP per capita nearly tripled from about $2700 to about $7700 (2011 international dollars). By 1977, the Shah’s focus on defense spending to end foreign powers’ intervention in the country had culminated in the Iranian military standing as the world’s fifth-strongest armed force.

As political unrest grew throughout Iran in the late 1970s, the Shah’s position was made untenable by the Cinema Rex fire and the Jaleh Square massacre. The 1979 Guadeloupe Conference saw his Western allies state that there was no feasible way to save the Iranian monarchy from being overthrown. The Shah ultimately left Iran for exile in January 1979.

But Reza Pahlavi Jr., when he asked Iranians to revolt, did he present excuses for what his father did? Obviously, not for the investment in industry, education and health! Unless everything is 100% disinformation and the Shah was an angel.

❼ It was complicated. Western powers wanting Iran’s oil—what a surprise! So the nationalizations and the authoritarianism seemed justified.

It then became strange. In fact, only the 1978 protest-turned-massacre in Jaleh Square should have been a legitimate reason to overthrow the regime. But even this event was manipulated:

The military opened fire on the protestors, killing at least 64 and at most more than 100. 205 more were injured. According to the military historian Spencer C. Tucker, 94 were killed on Black Friday, consisting of 64 protesters and 30 government security forces.

Black Friday is thought to have marked the point of no return for the revolution, and it led to the abolition of Iran’s monarchy less than a year later. It is also believed that Black Friday played a crucial role in further radicalizing the protest movement, uniting the opposition to the Shah and mobilized the masses. …

Initially, opposition and western journalists claimed that the Iranian army had massacred thousands of protesters. The clerical leadership announced that “thousands have been massacred by Zionist troops”. …

Initially, Western media and opposition reported “15,000 dead and wounded”, but Iranian government officials reported that 86 people had died in Tehran in the whole day. French social theorist Michel Foucault first reported that 2,000 to 3,000 people had died in Jaleh Square, and he later raised that number to 4,000. …

The BBC’s correspondent in Iran, Andrew Whitley, reported that hundreds had died. …

Since the 2000s, some former Pahlavi Iranian politicians, such as former Minister of Education Manouchehr Ganji, have suggested greater ambiguity in the situation, in particular the presence of Palestinian guerrillas in Iran, who they believe were agitators.

As for the Cinema Rex fire:

The Cinema Rex fire happened on 19 August 1978 when the Cinema Rex in Abadan, Iran, was set ablaze, killing between 377 and 470 people. The event started when four individuals, who were militants motivated by Islamic extremism, doused the building with airplane fuel before setting it alight.

The governing dynasty initially blamed “Islamic Marxists” for the fire and later reported that Islamic militants started the fire, while anti-Pahlavi protesters falsely blamed SAVAK, the Iranian secret police, for setting the fire. Even though Islamic extremists were responsible for the attack, the Islamic opposition benefited greatly from the disaster in terms of propaganda because of the general atmosphere of mistrust and wrath. Many Iranians accepted the disinformation, which fueled growing anti-Shah fervor.

According to the military historian Spencer C. Tucker: “In Abadan, four Islamic militants bar the door of the Cinema Rex movie theater and then set the building on fire, killing 422 people inside. Khomeini blames the shah and SAVAK, and many Iranians believe the lie. Tens of thousands march in the streets chanting Burn the shah! Soon hundreds of thousands of Iranians are taking part in renewed demonstrations.”

According to the sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar: “The burning of the Cinema Rex in Abadan on August 19, 1978, where around 400 people were killed, was perpetrated by the Shah’s Savak secret service, according to street protesters. This contributed to the revolutionary ardor of Islamic militants and society at large against the besieged regime of the Shah. Later findings confirmed that the fire was ignited by Islamist militants on the side of the pro-Khomeyni revolutionaries and not the Shah’s regime. But the result was detrimental to the Pahlavi regime and favorable to the Islamic revolution.”

According to the historian Abbas Milani: “More than four hundred innocent spectators burned to death. The government was slow to respond. Its attempt to lay the blame on the opposition fell on deaf ears. Although in retrospect the dastardly act has all the hallmarks of Islamic terrorism, and although in future years evidence emerged showing the culpability of the clergy, the people at the time blamed the government.“

According to the historian Michael Axworthy: “Government and opposition both accused each other, but events, trials and investigations in later years indicate that a radical Islamic group with connections to ulema figures was responsible.”

As the event occurred during the revolutionary period, it was quite difficult to identify the perpetrators, making ill-conceived accusations rather prevalent. …

While initial rumors blamed Shah and SAVAK for the fire, after the revolution, more evidence suggested the four-person arson team was indirectly in touch with Shia clerics. The order came from them. Ayatollah Nouri Hamedani is reported by Mohammad Nourizad to be one of the faces behind the arson.

This is how “revolutions” take place. Through manipulation.

❽ The current upheaval in Iran, which so far has evolved into providing material for a national meat grinder, will probably lead to the fall of the Ayatollah’s regime. What’s next?

A last link: How Will Reza Pahlavi Return to Iran? And Can He Stay Alive When He Gets There?

Well, maybe. If Trump puts him there as governor of the American Commonwealth of Iran. Then, the Iranian oil will pour to the United States “for the benefit of the Iranian people.” Trump will make Iran “great again” and food prices “the smallest in the world.”

I’m born to be cynical, you know. So the “Bazaaris” overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the same “Bazaaris” want Reza Pahlavi Jr. for Shah. Unbelievable. His father banned political parties, thus making ayatollahs the only viable opposition. Once you ignore the massacres, history is so much fun!

Meanwhile, Ayatollah Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin seems unfazed. Emperor of the World Donald the First can’t be bothered to challenge him.

UPDATE: Revolutions disappoint in the medium-to-long run even in “simpler” cases. To quote an LLM that I won’t name:

Tunisia is the Arab Spring revolution that was apparently triggered by a revolt stemming from merchants’ (specifically street vendors’) experiences with police corruption and harassment.

The spark came on December 17, 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old street vendor (a classic example of a small-scale merchant in the informal economy), set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid after municipal officials (often associated with police corruption) confiscated his cart and produce. This followed repeated demands for bribes, arbitrary fines, confiscations, and humiliation — common practices targeting street vendors who lacked formal permits. His act of desperation directly protested this petty corruption and economic suffocation, igniting immediate local protests that quickly spread nationwide, leading to the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 and kicking off the broader Arab Spring.

The Tunisian revolution (often called the Jasmine Revolution) of 2011 is widely regarded as the most successful of the Arab Spring uprisings in the short-to-medium term — it was the only one that led to a genuine democratic transition, with free elections, a progressive new constitution in 2014, and a period (roughly 2011–2019/2020) where Tunisia was routinely called the region’s sole functioning democracy.

For about a decade, it stood in stark contrast to Egypt, where the 2011 uprising toppled Hosni Mubarak but quickly reverted to military-backed authoritarianism under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi after the 2013 coup (a “meh” state that many describe as worse than pre-2011 in terms of repression, with mass arrests, media control, and economic struggles persisting).

However, as of early 2026 (15 years after the revolution), Tunisia’s success story has significantly unraveled under President Kais Saied:

  • In July 2021, Saied invoked emergency powers, suspended parliament, dismissed the prime minister, and began ruling by decree — a self-coup that many analysts call the start of democratic backsliding.
  • He rewrote the constitution in 2022 (via a low-turnout referendum) to dramatically expand presidential powers and weaken checks and balances.
  • Opposition figures, journalists, judges, activists, and critics (including former parliament speaker Rached Ghannouchi) have faced mass arrests, politically motivated trials, and imprisonment.
  • The 2024 presidential election saw Saied re-elected with over 90% of the vote amid extremely low turnout (~29%), boycotts by major parties, and the exclusion/imprisonment of most viable challengers — widely criticized as neither free nor fair.
  • International assessments reflect this decline: Freedom House rates Tunisia as Partly Free in its 2025 report (score 44/100, down sharply from earlier years), with major drops in political rights. It’s now classified as a hybrid regime (not a full democracy) in indices like The Economist’s Democracy Index.
  • Protests continue (e.g., thousands marched in 2025 against the “authoritarian regime”), but repression has intensified, creating what some call a “kingdom of fear.”

Economically, Tunisia remains stuck in a tough spot — low growth (1-2% in recent years), high youth unemployment, inflation, public debt, and rejected IMF deals have fueled public disillusionment. Many Tunisians feel the revolution delivered political freedoms initially but failed to deliver tangible improvements in daily life, which helped enable Saied’s populist rise (he campaigned on anti-corruption and “dignity” but has delivered more centralized control).

In short: Tunisia’s revolution was successful for a while — the Arab Spring’s brightest hope — but recent years show it has largely failed to consolidate into a lasting democracy. The current state feels more like a disappointing regression than outright collapse, but it’s far from the inspiring beacon it once was. Many observers now call it a cautionary tale of how fragile democratic transitions can be, especially without strong economic progress.

Case closed. In a casket.