Why internal disputes over repression reveal not strength, but the erosion of legitimacy and strategic coherence
When dictatorships confront existential crises, they rarely begin by revisiting the social contract. Instead, they often retreat into what political theorists describe as structural closure—a narrowing of decision-making that substitutes coercion for legitimacy.
What is currently unfolding within Iran’s regime goes far beyond routine bureaucratic disagreement. It reflects a profound disintegration within the power structure over the scale, intensity, and consequences of violence as a tool of governance.
The regime now finds itself in a condition that Hans Morgenthau famously termed “political rigidity”—a stage at which every available option, whether reform or repression, carries prohibitive and potentially irreversible costs. In such circumstances, decision-making ceases to be strategic and becomes reactive, driven by fear of collapse rather than a coherent vision of rule.
This crisis becomes most visible at the apex of power, where traditional agents of repression increasingly treat any hesitation in the use of force as weakness or incompetence.
Rooted in an ideological conception of security, this mindset dismisses international costs and reputational damage as irrelevant concessions. The depth of this divide was publicly exposed by Ahmad Alamolhoda, a senior clerical figure closely aligned with the regime, who openly criticized officials concerned about being labeled violent.
“One official said we cannot act harshly because we will be accused of violence,” Alamolhoda recounted. “I told him: is it worse to be accused of violence, or to be accused of incompetence and inability?”
Such statements are revealing not for their brutality, but for what they signify: the insistence on violence itself is evidence of declining hegemonic authority. Durable power does not need constant demonstration through force. When coercion becomes the primary language of rule, legitimacy has already eroded.
Morgenthau, particularly in his classic work Politics Among Nations, emphasized that political power is not reducible to military or coercive instruments. It is sustained by credibility, consent, and legitimacy.
When a governing structure responds to internal pressure not with adaptability but with dogmatism, it enters a phase of political ossification. In this phase, the substitution of dialogue with force serves to conceal weakness rather than project strength.
This theoretical framework sheds light on the regime’s current contradictions. While senior military figures attempt to project overwhelming force, regime-affiliated media and official statements tell a different story.
The claim by Abdolrahim Mousavi that security forces could have ended the unrest “within two hours” if they had fully deployed their weapons reads less as a military assessment and more as a strategic deflection—an effort to mask an inability to restore control.
The contradiction becomes sharper when juxtaposed with official reports by law enforcement agencies announcing the discovery of 60,000 firearms. Far from indicating restored dominance, such figures underscore the uncontainable scale of public anger. The regime is no longer confronting symbolic protest, but a society that has crossed a psychological threshold and is prepared to resist by all available means.
Historically, the entry of weapons into mass protest movements represents a nightmare scenario for authoritarian systems. It marks the end of unilateral fear and the beginning of reciprocal confrontation. At that point, repression ceases to deter and instead accelerates the logic of regime collapse.
On another front, the reported decision to maintain internet restrictions until Nowruz 1405 constitutes a tacit admission of failure. A regime that has lost the capacity to persuade its citizens resorts to isolating them—from one another and from the international community.
This digital isolation, combined with unusually frank acknowledgments of structural corruption by regime insiders such as Mohammad Khatami and regime’s president Masoud Pezeshkian, reinforces the image of a system caught in what can only be described as a historical vise.
The internal rift over the use of violence is therefore not a tactical disagreement but a strategic crisis. The regime is trapped between two opposing forces: on one side, hardline enforcers who equate survival with escalating bloodshed; on the other, a society armed with anger, awareness, and diminishing fear. In this context, the closure of physical and digital spaces may delay confrontation, but it cannot alter its outcome.
Historical experience is unequivocal on this point: structural paralysis combined with legitimacy collapse does not produce stability—it precedes regime downfall.
