Editorial Note: This blog post was written before the beginning of US military action against Iran on February 27. The post has not been edited to reflect these developments. Readers may evaluate the utility of applied historical analysis by comparing these reflections to the reality of unfolding events. 

A former student wrote me last week to share a popular meme depicting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio clad in the black turban and robe of the Iranian clergy. While I am unfamiliar with the meme creator (@PrisonMitch), the joke itself is easy enough to follow. When President Donald Trump suggested that the United States was going to be "running things for the foreseeable future" after the recent military operation in Venezuela, social media memes dubbed Rubio the “Viceroy of Venezuela” and portrayed him as a Latin American caudillo.

Now, as Trump publicly promises Iranian protestors that “help is on its way,” new memes show Rubio exchanging the caudillo’s uniform for clerical garb. The former student, whose family is from Iran, added their sincere hope that "Trump keeps his promises" and helps the Iranian people in their struggle against tyranny. While I did not have the heart to throw cold water on their fervent wish for a better future in Iran, I fear that the lessons of history suggest little reason for optimism.

Revolutionary Pitfalls

President Trump's declaration that "help is on its way" was a dual message to the Iranian people and state, encouraging popular resistance and warning against state retaliation. Like most fantasies of regime change, the promise imagines a semi-autonomous revolutionary process on the ground, requiring simple logistical support or protective aircover to allow the people to triumph. Well-aware of the disastrous consequences of US-imposed regime change in Iraq, which provided Trump with critical ammunition against Jeb Bush in his first presidential primary, the president would almost certainly balk at any real commitment of US troops as "boots on the ground." 

When chants evolve from defined policy grievances to revolutionary sloganeering (whether liberal, leftist, or loyalist), the state's response will necessarily change as well.

It seems to me highly unlikely, however, that the current Iranian protests have any real potential to develop into a viable revolutionary movement, even with limited US support. The Internet blackout means that we simply do not know how many Iranians have participated in the current protests, or how many have been killed by the Iranian state, but anecdotal evidence suggests that both numbers are in the tens of thousands. In the decades following the Iranian Revolution (1978-79), several protest movements have challenged state authority, most notably the "Green Movement" (2009-10) and "Women, Life, Freedom" (2022-23) protests. While both movements brought tens of thousands of Iranians into the streets, defiantly challenging their government's manipulation of electoral results and brutal punishment of transgressions regarding veiling, the gap between "protest" and "revolution" remains extraordinarily difficult to breach.

The Iranian state has proven surprisingly attentive to popular grievances. In response to the Green Movement, the state declined to replicate its 2009 electoral shenanigans in the following elections in 2013. And it has almost totally abandoned veiling enforcement in response to the Women, Life, Freedom protests. Those two movements had relatively well-defined objectives and seem to have achieved them; the current protest movement does not. When chants evolve from defined policy grievances to revolutionary sloganeering (whether liberal, leftist, or royalist), the state's response will necessarily change as well. Instead of pressuring state leaders to make key reforms or concessions in the interest of self-preservation, any movement with revolutionary aims must grapple with how to dislodge the leaders from power. 

Mechanics of Change

It is comforting to believe in the power of the people to radically transform their states and societies through direct action. Most visions of political activism and collective action in the United States are premised on some version of this belief and an accompanying rejection of any fatalistic acceptance of tyranny and oppression. Well-intentioned liberals in the United States working to challenge key policies of the Trump Administration have taken heart from Erica Chenoweth’s research, which illustrates that historical movements with a popular participation rate of at least 3.5% have usually succeeded in accomplishing their goals. With participation rates in the "Hands Off" and "No Kings" protests hovering near that rate, many liberals optimistically opined, perhaps change is on the horizon in the United States. The same logic fuels optimism about the potential for Iranian protests to succeed. 

Rates of popular participation are not independent variables that force states to make key concessions based on their own perceptions of public approval.

In both cases, unfortunately, this logic suffers from a severe lack of attention to the actual mechanics of historical change. Rates of popular participation are not independent variables that force states to make key concessions based on their own perceptions of public approval. The 3.5% thesis itself suggests that the protests react against a state's refusal to abide by laws and norms or implement popular policies. For dictatorial and authoritarian states, there is simply no reason to seriously listen to the demands of protestors unless and until those protests constitute a credible threat. The state does not make concessions because mass mobilization and unrest in the streets increases the risk of military intervention, or because general strikes paralyze the economy and force the quiet majority of the country to enter the fray.

Historians understand that contingencies matter and that quantitative "if/then" arguments ("IF 3.5% of the population participates in mass action, THEN protests are overwhelmingly likely to achieve their desired outcomes") cannot ignore the mechanics of how popular protests are supposed to move a state's response. Some states are simply more willing than others to kill significant numbers of civilians as a tool of intimidation. Some states feel greater security than others that the military (both leaders and soldiers) will remain loyal, even if called upon to kill civilians. The rapid shift of the current Iranian protest movement to revolutionary sloganeering and (allegedly) violent engagements with security forces seems to me to have completely ignored these mechanics of change. I can certainly understand why suffering people precipitously engage in acts of resistance without a coherent strategy for victory, but I must nonetheless recognize that such actions make victory unlikely. 

US Promises

There is perhaps a missing variable to consider in the current crisis in Iran. The protestors may well be aware that they cannot possibly defeat a strong and hostile state but still envision their actions as a rational step toward victory. The ever-recurrent promise (or threat) of US military intervention might inspire hope that domestic protests need only provide the spark and that the mechanics of change will be handled by the United States. Even if Rubio does not don the garb and powers of the Supreme Leader, US military might can represent a tantalizing deus ex machina, a shortcut around the difficulties of organizing popular revolutions. In Venezuela, for example, a short and spectacular US intervention accomplished in hours what years of civil activism failed to do, i.e. unseating President Nicholas Maduro. 

It is simply unrealistic to expect any sudden deployment of US ground troops, and airstrikes alone are simply not going to do the difficult and dirty work of revolution.

I would caution against such expectations for several reasons. First, the intervention in Venezuela appears to have relied on a quiet agreement with Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. Not only is there no reason to expect a side deal with an equivalent figure in Iran, this sort of handshake deal that leaves the regime fundamentally in place would do nothing to satisfy the grievances of the population. Second, the US raid that captured Maduro benefitted from certain strategic advantages that are not present in Iran; at the most basic level, Caracas is much closer than Tehran to the offshore naval destroyers. Third, the United States is highly unlikely to risk the mass US casualties that would inevitably result from a larger military action. While President Trump's policies have not always been consistent over time, his strong criticism of the US occupation of Iraq has remained essentially unchanged from the Republican Party primary in 2016 until the present day. It is simply unrealistic to expect any sudden deployment of US ground troops, and airstrikes alone are simply not going to do the difficult and dirty work of revolution. 

Supreme Leader Marco Rubio, for better or worse, is not coming to the rescue.