The Iranian people are deeply divided in many ways—and have been for much of Iran’s modern history. Iran has long been divided between a more modern and largely urban educated minority and a more religious and conservative mix of rural and urban poor. As the Green Revolution showed, many Iranians do want a more liberal, modern, and developing Iran. Many other Iranians, however, who have supported Khomeini’s revolution “reforms,” believe in more conservative state, and see the West and Saudi Arabia as a threat.

So far, however, the regime has succeeded in steadily limiting overt political opposition. It has...

Outsiders also need to be careful about assuming that large numbers of Iranians will seriously oppose Iran's military build-up and actions outside Iran. On the one hand, Iran's spending on security almost certainly sharply exceeds its public budget figure, and may well have an equivalent cost closer to $25 billion when all of the costs of Iran's efforts to create a defense industrial base, interventions in other states like Iraq and Syria, and support for the internal activities of the IRGC and Basij are considered. On the other hand, they have given the regime very powerful instruments to use in...

There also are hard data showing that the vast majority of Iranians have suffered in very practical ways from the mismanagement of Iran’s economy since the time of the Shah, and from the costs of the regime's wars and adventures. This may do much to explain why the protest have not been concentrated in Tehran, but have spread throughout the country—from Kermanshah and Khorramabad in the West to Tonekaban on the Caspian, to Izeh and Bandar Abbas in the South, and Mashhad in the East.

As is the case with most developing countries, estimates differ by source, and the...

There are no certainties when it comes to Iran’s current crisis or the future. The outburst of protest activity and violence in early 2018 is a possible indicator that further major and more serious protests will follow, and the Iranian government may well have a made a mistake in seeming to rely more on repression than reform. The spread of the protests throughout a wide part of the country and in less "modern" and well-educated parts of the population is also important. This same spread was a key indicator in 1978 that the Shah was in deep trouble.

These protests...