li Montazeri, the successor designated by Khomeini, once said: “People in the world believe that the only activity practiced in Iran is killing.” The question now is whether the old man in the turban will have enough assassins to prevent the collapse of his theocracy.
Khamenei knows that small concessions lead to bigger concessions.
The question now is whether the old man in the turban will have enough assassins to prevent the collapse of his theocracy.
If protests grow and radicalize, Khamenei will tell his henchmen that preserving a theocracy, like winning a revolution, requires iron determination and bloodshed.
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).
The population of East Berlin was in ferment. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets demanding elections, freedom of the press and thought, freedom of movement; many, tempted by travel like the Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians, risked their lives to leave the communist state behind. The day before, in Leipzig, a massive demonstration saw 120,000 East Germans march chanting “Wir sind das Volk"-we are the people-demanding freedom of vote, opinion, movement, and the opening of the Wall.
The GDR fell like an overripe pear on the evening when Günter Schabowski, East Germany’s spokesman, mistakenly announced at a press conference on November 9, 1989 that the border could be crossed. A correspondent asked when the rule authorizing GDR citizens to travel would take effect. The unfortunate man replied: “Immediately.” He was misinformed, but those two little words were enough to bring down the Wall.
An estimated 600 people were killed between 1961 and 1988 trying to cross to the West. And suddenly the Wall fell, without a shot being fired. In Iran, three times as many are killed in a single year. Reports claim over 2000 killed over the weekend.
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.
It is not impossible that Khamenei could fall as Ceaușescu did—Ceaușescu, who was a frequent visitor to Tehran.
The scene was extraordinary. Ceaușescu addresses the great square of Bucharest. Confused shouts rise: protests, jeers, cries. Ceaușescu, under his astrakhan hat, is stunned. He promises a minimum wage increase. He talks about socialism. Minutes later, the two Ceaușescus flee by helicopter from the palace roof. In vain. They will be executed.
In general, communism in Europe collapsed without a shot being fired. (Margot Honecker, the “witch of the GDR,” ended up wintering in Chile.) No one-except the legions of useful idiots in free countries-believed in the system or was ready to kill and die to defend it. Havel’s Czechoslovakia fell in velvet. In Poland, General Jaruzelski stepped aside and handed power to Lech Wałęsa. Hungary began dismantling the Iron Curtain on its own. Bulgaria under the mummy Zhivkov changed hands without chaos or violence.
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.
Those who know coercion recognize it immediately. Those who mask it with good intentions always discover it too late.
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.
History is cruel. Those who know coercion recognize it immediately. Those who mask it with good intentions always discover it too late.
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?
The fact that in Western squares no one demonstrates for the heroic Iranians, but only for the cutthroats, does not bode well.
Is Europe the next Islamic Republic?
Published originally on January 12, 2026.
