Will the Iranian people finally rise up in a ‘Persian autumn’?

International attention is focused on the likely impact of the decapitation of Hezbollah’s leadership, and on how the Islamic Republic of Iran might react to Israel’s dramatic escalation of its involvement in Lebanon. Few are paying attention to what might happen inside Iran itself.

A key basis of Iranian leader Ali Khameini’s authority has been the Ayatollah’s regime’s ability to project power abroad as a way of intimidating domestic opponents. Until last week, Tehran’s sponsorship of proxy Shiite radical paramilitaries from Lebanon to Yemen seemed to show the Islamic Republic was on the march.

The killing of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and key commanders, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ advisers, has shattered the sense of invincibility promoted by the Islamic regime.

Secular Iranians who reject the strict dress codes of the Islamic Republic and are cynical about its mix of fundamentalist slogans with making exceptions to the Sharia rules for the elite and their children have celebrated Nasrallah’s downfall.

More dangerous for the mullahs is the groundswell of discontent among ordinary Iranians who suffer shortages and hyperinflation because of the economic war with the West over the regime’s foreign policy and nuclear programme. Many grumble that they pay the price of Western sanctions while the regime uses its oil revenues to fund its proxies abroad rather than subsidise the poor at home – the very people who used to be its bedrock.

The mullahs’ enforcers have crushed waves of demonstrations since 2009, when a so-called “Green Revolution” seemed on the cards. Then and since, Iranian elections have been marred by allegations of fraud and certainly have seen desperately low turnouts, suggesting a collapse in the regime’s legitimacy.

That might be a worm eating away at the willingness of the hardliners’ thugs to crack heads or also raise the willingness of people to take blows if they think the regime’s control could break at last.

The discrediting of the regime’s key Revolutionary Guards and its intelligence service’s failure to prevent Israeli assassinations like that of Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran itself could be corroding their effectiveness and even their reliability.

Into this volatile mix came Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appeal to Iranians as “Persians” to liberate themselves. In a three-minute video clip in English, which he described as an address to the Iranian people, he blamed their leaders for plunging the Middle East “deeper into war”, said their government was bringing their country “closer to the abyss” – and that regime change would come sooner than they think.

Iran had a rich and ancient history long before the adoption of Islam after the Arabs defeated their Zoroastrian rulers 1,350 years ago. There were positive links between the ancient Hebrews and the first Persian emperor, Cyrus, who liberated them from their captivity in Babylon. Israel hopes to weaponise Iranians’ non-Arabic identity as a way of emphasising the Ayatollahs’ putting Arab issues like Palestine ahead of Iranians’ national interest since the fall of the Shah in 1979.

A potent mix of foreign setbacks and economic hardships could produce a variant of the Arab spring popular uprisings in Iran – a Persian autumn, if you will.

But we should remember the souring of the Arab spring following the early optimism in 2011. Political infighting and sectarian splits emerged, producing new authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt and civil war in Libya, Syria and Yemen. It would be naive to presume that regime change from below in Iran would necessarily produce harmony, democracy and prosperity there.

Understandably, people will hope anything must be better than the regime which produced such a dystopian mix of fundamentalism and cynicism.

Regime change would end sanctions and give a new government access to oil and gas revenues plus foreign investment which could revive the Iranian economy. But the Iranian state could face disintegration if its ethnic minorities – Kurds and Arabs in the west, and Baluchis in the southeast – see a collapse of the Ayatollahs’ regime as the moment to break away from the country. That could destabilise neighbouring states.

Iran’s biggest minority, Azeris, a third of the population, straddle the border with ex-Soviet Azerbaijan. They have so far aligned with Iran, and the Islamic Republic’s leaders, including Khamenei, have Azeri family links. But if Shiism ceases to be an integrating factor and family ties to a fallen regime no longer pull strings in Tehran, then Azeris might seek separation.

An independent, ex-Iranian Azerbaijan would be dangerous for Israel’s regional ally, ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, since its population would be five times greater and its capital, Tabriz, a more ancient centre of Azeri culture than Baku.

The danger that militant Iranian nationalism itself would rise out of the ruins of the Islamic Republic shouldn’t be ruled out.

What made the Ayatollahs’ regime formidable was its ability to synthesise Shiite fundamentalism with Iranian imperial patriotism. If the Islamic pillar collapses out of popular disillusion with the mullahs’ incompetence, corruption and external failure, Iranians might turn to nationalism, even if consecrated at the ballot box. They wouldn’t be the first nation to liberate themselves from one oppressive ideology only to fall for another.

But at least it is high time for Iranians to make their own mistakes freely. This autumn could be their chance.

Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford