Will the West fail the Iranian people once again?

For over a decade, Iran’s diverse peoples, across ethnic, class and religious lines, have been moving along a single trajectory: attempting to dismantle a closed theocratic system that hides behind religious language and relies on security agencies that understand only the logic of ‘national security’ and ‘foreign conspiracy’. From the 2009 Green Movement to the 2022 uprising following the death of Mahsa Amini, and now to the current wave of anger triggered by the collapse of the currency and soaring prices, the pattern has remained unchanged: people taking to the streets to demand dignity, with a regime responding with bullets and a West content to make statements.
These protests are not fleeting ‘economic crises.’ They are chapters in a long struggle to overthrow a governing structure that treats society as a subject of discipline and the state as an extension of presumed divine authority. As the focus of anger shifts from the middle classes to marginalised towns, universities, women and young people, it has become clear that Iranians are no longer protesting against policies-;- they are rejecting the entire model of governance.
What is striking is that Western analysis has begun to acknowledge this shift. In a recent analytical report for DW, Omid Barin wrote that the protests, which began with a bazaar strike, “have moved beyond economic grievances and reflect deep political discontent that threatens the regime’s legitimacy.” This acknowledgement by Western media is consistent with what Iranians themselves have been saying for years: the crisis is political before it is economic.
It is in this context that US President Donald Trump declared that the United States “will intervene to save the protesters if the regime opens fire on them.” The language sounds forceful, but it is hardly new. Iranians heard similar promises in 2009, 2017, 2019 and 2022, only to be left alone in the face of repression.
The West raises its voice when the streets of Iran erupt, but quickly retreats to its priorities: the nuclear file, energy security, ballistic missiles and regional balance. Human rights, political prisoners and killings in the streets remain secondary, tools of negotiation rather than moral commitments.
Even Western media, which should serve as a window into what is happening, repeats the same pattern: intense coverage at the peak of unrest, followed by withdrawal. The Associated Press could not even send reporters inside Iran during the latest protests-;- its reports were written from the UAE, relying largely on official Iranian sources. Thus, the regime’s narrative is recycled as “international coverage.”
Meanwhile, senior regime figures play their familiar roles. Ali Larijani warns that any American support for the protests will “spread chaos across the region,” framing repression as a defence of stability. President Masoud Pezeshkian admits that “the authorities are to blame,” yet reduces the crisis to mismanagement, avoiding the central question: is the problem policy,´-or-the nature of the system itself?
Protests are growing on the ground, casualties are rising and a university student tells The Guardian: “You would have to be naive to believe that Iranians trust Pezeshkian’s government´-or-Khamenei’s system.” This remark highlights the divide between the regime’s attempts to reinvent itself and the public’s belief that the entire system is corrupt.
This view is supported by Gulf News, which claims that the current protests “reflect deeper pressures on the Islamic Republic, extending beyond economics to a cumulative crisis of political legitimacy.”
A report by SpecialEurasia adds that the shift from economic to political slogans “reveals declining state legitimacy even among traditional merchant classes.”
These are analytical conclusions, not journalistic observations, pointing to an existential crisis for the regime rather than a price-shock episode.
The West’s failure can be summarised in two ways:
* The political-security lens
The West treats Iran as a ‘security puzzle’: nuclear enrichment, missiles and regional influence. Protests remain a ‘sidebar’ to negotiations.
A report by Critical Threats/ISW notes that “the state’s capacity to control unrest weakens with each new crisis, but the absence of serious international pressure gives the regime room to reorganise its repressive apparatus.”
* The media-symbolic lens
Coverage is inconsistent and often focuses on ‘chaos’, with little access to internal narratives. Even the most thoughtful essays in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy´-or-the Financial Times, which criticise Western hesitation, remain part of an elite conversation that rarely translates into policy.
The question is not just for the West, though. Western failure is mirrored regionally. Many Arab states suffer from Iran’s expansionist policies yet often reduce Iran to its regime, forgetting that people live under that regime and pay the price for its domestic repression, just as neighbouring countries pay the price for its regional adventurism.
The Woman, Life, Freedom uprising redefined the relationship between society, religion and the state. It demonstrated that change in Iran is not an illusion, but rather a movement driven by women, young people, minorities and marginalised groups. Yet regional and Western capitals continue to view Iran through the lens of ‘threat’, not ‘humanity.’
So when will rhetoric become commitment?
Iranians are not asking the West to topple the regime. At the very least, they ask that the West not be complicit in sustaining it: no normalisation with security agencies, no deals that rehabilitate the regime and no ‘concerned statements’ used as a cover for silence.
The West will fail Iranians again if it-limit-s itself to applauding from afar. It will fail them if it turns their protests into bargaining chips in the nuclear negotiations. It will fail them if it continues to say, ‘We are monitoring the situation closely.’ The real question is this: is the price of freedom in Iran higher than that of a deal with Tehran? Iranians answered that question a long time ago.
In Western capitals, however, the answer remains pending.

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