How Iranians Can End the Regime

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not immortal. It is not even stable. It is fractured, paranoid and may finally be crumbling. What has kept it alive for 45 years isn’t strength — it’s fear, fragmentation and a lack of widespread coordinated action from the Iranian people. But, with Israel striking key assets and command centers, the regime has never been more vulnerable. The window for meaningful action has never been more open — but change can’t fully happen on its own. 

Here’s what the Iranian people — inside the country and around the world — can do to make sure this moment becomes the end.

The first steps involve targeting, and collapsing, the regime’s operating capacity. The Islamic Republic maintains its stranglehold on the people through a sophisticated apparatus of control, which, like any other machine, can be disabled. Their internal communication and logistics systems must be disrupted. Internet monitoring systems in Karaj and Qom, cyber-policing officers in Tehran, and Basij and Sepah databases and outposts should be targeted and shut down as critical facets of the regime’s control. CCTV networks in major cities should be sabotaged to protect protesters and frustrate the security apparatus. And there should be mass organized efforts at civil disobedience, through wide strikes in critical sectors like oil, transport and education as well as the encouragement of tax refusal, mass withdrawal of funds from state banks and avoidance of regime-owned businesses. Without electrical engineers, truckers, port workers and oil gas fields, the regime’s economy grinds to a halt, and momentum can build quicker when protesters work together.

Organizing the people around mass protest and resistance will also involve coordinated narrative warfare. Using encrypted social media channels like Telegram and Signal or even shortwave radio, Iranians should spread footage of regime abuses and corruption as well as inspiring footage of protesters and brave acts of disobedience. This will encourage public defection from moderates, clerics or military insiders who may be unhappy but afraid.

With these measures taken, the next step will be a coordinated mass uprising. Iranians have protested for years, but the regime has survived each time. What it cannot survive is a coordinated, national and multi-city movement that destroys its ability to function. The people must revolt, simultaneously, in cities across the country from Tehran to Shiraz. No single area is strong enough alone, but together, they can overwhelm the regime’s limited forces, which will already be stretched thin dealing with the ongoing Israeli assault. Target government buildings, police stations, and military checkpoints, not for pure destruction but for seizing control. The Basij, Iran’s paramilitary force for suppressing dissent, must also be neutralized. This force is not comprised of brave heroes — its members are low-paid thugs and in most cities, the people outnumber them 50-to-1. When the people rise and work together, the Basij can break. These efforts can be helped along by a strategy of encouraging peaceful defections, offering amnesty and future protection to police and other regime members who defect, as well as a public-facing strategy of controlling the narrative. Use drone footage, cell phone videos and satellite links to show the world that cities are being liberated, drawing strength and support from supporters around the globe as inspiration to carry on.

Iranians have protested for years, but the regime has survived each time. What it cannot survive is a coordinated, national and multi-city movement that destroys its ability to function.

Israel’s ongoing precision strikes — targeting IRGC bases, weapons convoys, cyber units and intelligence officials — are already accelerating this effort. Every Iranian officer killed by Israel is one fewer to suppress uprisings in Tehran, and every weapons depot destroyed by the Israeli Air Force weakens the regime’s ability to arm its militias. This isn’t just a foreign conflict; it’s groundwork that helps clear the path for a different future.

When this future arrives, and the regime collapses, the moment must be seized and the void must quickly be filled with organized resistance leadership. Iranians must quickly unite under one provisional front instead of sinking into useless infighting, with different factions signing a unified framework for day one. The remnants of the regime must be hunted and extinguished, even from abroad, with governments around the world pressured to freeze regime-linked assets, especially the known IRGC family properties in Canada, Australia and the EU. Any Western banks or law firms that enable their continued money laundering should be publicly named and shamed.

This will require sustained support from the diaspora, who should use our voices for global advocacy and ongoing attention, and spend our dollars on meaningful programs like medical and financial aid as well as getting Iranians the tools they’ll need to communicate — expanded satellite internet access, private information operations that create secure communication channels, VPNs. We may need to raise our voices to the highest levels of global affairs, all the way up to the U.N. But if we don’t speak up for our people, nobody else will.

If these efforts are successful, there will be a day one of a new and different future in Iran. This possibility carries much excitement and hope as well as much potential for chaos and disorder, with the IRGC regrouping or an even more radical Islamist faction somehow seizing the reins. To maintain order, there needs to be a transitional council of high-skilled technocrats as well as opposition leaders, based both in Iran and abroad. This government can serve for around a year, stabilizing daily life and overseeing emergency reforms. At the same time, the IRGC must be fully disbanded and its remnants extinguished, with commanders prosecuted and their assets seized. There should be strict oversight of key areas like nuclear sites, airports, and banks while a different government is implemented, preventing a slide into instability. And eventually, there should be elections and the drafting of a new constitution, which guarantees Iranians the freedoms and values they’ve lacked for so long — women’s rights, freedom of speech, separation of religion and state and protections for minorities.

The Israeli military is doing for Iran what the West has failed to do for decades — systematically decapitating its war machine. But they are not liberating the country. That job falls to the people, who have been given the first real opportunity in years to finish what so many Iranians have died trying to start. The regime is already falling, and now the question is, will the people push?

Dr. Sheila Nazarian is a MMM Board Certified Plastic Surgeon and Assistant Professor, USC.