The Iranian regime’s days may be numbered. Rosenberg speaks out

Tel Aviv. Long queues at petrol stations, the Iranian rial exceeding 2 million to the dollar, year-on-year inflation nearing 88 per cent, the vast majority of households no longer able to afford essential goods but, above all, the regime is finding it increasingly difficult to sustain petrol subsidies. This last point is particularly sensitive because, in 2019, fuel price rises and rationing sparked massive protests, which were violently suppressed by the security forces, resulting in around 1,500 deaths. “This time, US economic pressure could genuinely jeopardise the survival of the Islamic Republic, not so much because it will automatically trigger a popular uprising, but because it risks depriving the Pasdaran of the resources needed to maintain their repressive apparatus.” David Rosenberg, a columnist with over thirty years’ experience in Middle Eastern economics, politics and society, and a contributor to the Israeli daily Haaretz, shares this view with Il Foglio.

Rosenberg discusses with us the new sanctions announced by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, described as an ‘economic D-Day’. However, he is sceptical about the rhetoric: ‘Washington has threatened many times to strangle Tehran economically, but Iran has developed a remarkable ability to circumvent sanctions, largely thanks to China, Russia, Iraq and Turkey.’

The current situation, however, is said to be different. According to the analyst, Iranian oil exports have plummeted to almost zero following the new embargo imposed by the United States. Some of the oil is likely still being smuggled out overland or mixed with Iraqi crude, but in much smaller quantities and at heavily discounted prices. And this is where the regime’s real weakness lies: “Before the war, the Pasdaran controlled up to 50 per cent of Iran’s oil trade and reaped enormous profits. In 2024, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the army are said to have received around 51 per cent of the oil profits allocated to the state. Oil, therefore, not only financed the Iranian economy but, above all, the apparatus that protects the regime”.

Rosenberg emphasises that authoritarian regimes do not necessarily fall because the population is poor or exasperated, but when they can no longer defend themselves – either because the leadership loses the will to fight or because the militiamen, in effect, stop obeying orders: “The Iranian protests in January were suppressed because the regime still had men willing to arrest, injure and kill the demonstrators. But to do so, they must be paid. This is why the new sanctions could have a different effect from previous ones: if oil revenues dry up, it becomes more difficult to pay the approximately 190,000 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Bessent himself has openly raised this possibility, asking Iranian soldiers whose salaries are in arrears whether their commanders are truly leading them towards triumph or towards ruin’. On the timeline, however, Rosenberg remains very cautious: “Sanctions rarely bring about regime change on their own: they have never succeeded in bringing down Cuba or Russia, and in Venezuela, change only came about after direct American intervention – ‘boots on the ground’.”

Rosenberg’s conclusion is therefore a gamble: the regime could fall not because Iranians are suddenly more ready for revolution, but because the repressive apparatus might run out of economic fuel. If oil revenues were blocked for long enough, Tehran might no longer have the money needed to buy the loyalty of those who keep the system afloat. The crucial question then becomes: how long can the regime hold out without oil revenues? Trump and the global economy, he concludes, may not have the patience required to find out. Not only that. This time, the US Administration will have to be prepared to provide concrete assistance to the protesters through material support, air cover and, above all, by maintaining access to the internet, preventing the regime from isolating the country as it did during previous uprisings. The question, therefore, is no longer so much whether and when these protests will occur, but whether Washington will be prepared to back them in such a way as to transform an economic uprising into a genuine threat to the survival of the Islamic Republic.