The Decibel - Death toll climbs as Iranians protest against regime

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Protests in Iran ramped up over the weekend after the Islamic Republic regime – ruled by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – instituted an internet and phone blackout. But despite this, reports started to come out about a crackdown. On Tuesday, an Iranian official said the death toll, composed of both protesters and security personnel, was over 2,000 people.The protests have garnered some global supporters, including U.S. President Donald Trump, who has issued threats to the Iranian regime over its treatment of the protesters.Today’s guest is Thomas Juneau. He is a professor with the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. His research focuses on the Middle East, in particular Iran and Yemen, and on the role of intelligence in national security and foreign policy making.He puts this moment of Iranian societal upheaval in context, and explains the calculations Iran’s supreme leader and Trump are making, as they decide on their next steps.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What you're listening to is the sound of protesters in Iran's capital late last week. Demonstrators shouted, chanted, and banged on items in the streets. People in cars honked. Other cars were burned. Iranians have been taking to the streets in hundreds of locations across the country since late December, fueled by economic and political frustration. And things have only intensified as times gone on. People are calling for the fall of Iran's Islamic Republic regime, led by Ayatollah Ali Khomeini. The religious-based authoritarian government came to power in 1979,

after ushering out the country's Shah or monarch. But this regime refuses to concede. It shot back at protesters. On Thursday night, a crackdown began. And then, silence. The government imposed an inmate. internet and phone blackout across the country. But over the weekend, reports started to leak out that the death toll was climbing.

62 dead. Then 544. Now over 2,000 people. And more than 10,000 people are believed to be arrested, according to a human rights group. The blackout is still largely in effect. So at this point, we don't know the specifics of what is going on or what has gone on. over the last few days. We don't even have a clear picture of the state of the protests. What is clear is that this is yet another event

rattling the world order in early 2026. And U.S. President Donald Trump is ratcheting up geopolitical tensions by weighing in. The protesters, I just hope, you know, just God bless them, I just hope the protesters in Iran

are going to be safe because that's a very dangerous place right now. And again, I tell the Iranian leaders, you better not start shooting because we'll start shooting too. My guest today is Tamajuno. He's a professor with a graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa. His research focuses on the Middle East, in particular, Iran and Yemen,

and on the role of intelligence in national security and foreign policymaking. He's here to put this moment of Iranian societal upheaval in context and explain the calculations Iran's supreme leader and Trump are making, as they decide on their next steps. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Tomah. Thanks so much for coming back on the show. Thanks for having me again. So we're talking around 9.30 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday morning.

I just want to note that since this is a very fast-moving file. Tamar, I want to start off by getting your thoughts on the importance of these protests because this is not the first time Iran has seen large protests, but does this moment feel different to you? And if so, why? It absolutely feels different and very different. As you said, there have been waves of protests in the Islamic Republic for decades now. 1999, 2009, 2017, 18, 22 that poured into 23.

So this has to be seen to a degree in a continuity of past waves of protests. But it's different. The resentment against the regime, the opposition against the regime is much broader. There are sectors of society now that are clearly opposed to the regime that were less opposed in the past. And it's deeper. Whereas, you know, years ago, you would see more calls calling for reform of the regime. Now you are seeing very clear, very aggressive calls for an end to the regime and for a death to the dictator. So there is an overall perception of much greater vulnerability for the regime, not only domestically, but also regionally, given all the geopolitical losses that Iran has suffered in the last couple of years. So overall, yes, this is different.

And there is a significant added vulnerability to the regime. And we'll get into the geopolitical aspects of this in a bit. But let's talk about what happened and how these protests started. So the protests in Iran did start at the end of December, but have really ramped up over the last week. And especially since the weekend, we know or what we're hearing about reports here is that the death toll has surpassed 2,000 people, including security personnel. This is according to an Iranian official. What exactly sparked this uprising? So that's a good question.

and it's always important to make a distinction between the trigger, the catalyst, to the immediate cause and the deeper causes. In this case, the immediate cause was economic. In December, the Iranian currency collapsed. It had already fallen a lot over the years and decades. And that has been eating up people's purchasing power. Inflation has been causing, you know, tremendous damage to people. So immediately what brought people to the street is economic. In 2022, when Mahsa Amini was beaten up and killed.

by the police, the trigger was more on the social side. So the social restrictions, especially on women. So if the trigger was different in 2022 and in very late 2025, the deeper cause themselves are similar. And the deeper cause is this widespread growing dissatisfaction with the regime. It's repression, it's authoritarianism, it's corruption, it's mismanagement of the country as a whole. So what you're saying with these two different protests movements that the spark is different,

but the wanting of the regime change is the same. It is with the caveat, as per your previous question, that dissatisfaction, that resentment against the regime has been intensifying from 2022 until today. Right, okay. And just in context, you talked about how, you know, in this round that, you know, the economics was really the trigger here. And there's some interesting facts here that the real currency, which trades at over $1.4 million to $1.1 U.S., which I just found outstanding. It's absolutely crazy when you think about that. And just to give you an idea, I mean, we had a few years ago in Canada inflation in the high single digits for a couple years. And it caused a lot of instability.

In Iran, inflation has been in the high double digits for years. So if you think about the impact that that has on everyday living, on purchasing power, on the cost of living for the vast majority of Iranians, in a context where Iranians see the small number of elites, regime-affiliated individuals, their families, leaders, who are enriching themselves, who have family in Toronto or in California or in Europe or in Dubai living the high life. So that feeds that discontent even more. Over the last year, we've been hearing about how weakened the Iranian regime is since a number of its allies like Hezbollah and Hamas are weak themselves. How does that context play into this moment? It does play into the moment. So just to explain that very briefly, in the last two, two and a half years,

Hamas in Gaza has been significantly weakened by Israel, Hezbollah and Lebanon. significantly weakened by Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah being two of the most important non-state partners of the Islamic Republic. The only state ally that the Islamic Republic has had in the Middle East over the past decades, Syria, the Assad regime collapsed just over a year ago. It's gone. So all that to say, what we often call the axis of resistance, which is the network led by Iran that includes groups throughout the region, has been significantly weakened. It's not dead, but it's significantly weakened. And that does matter in many ways. A, it feeds into the perception of vulnerability of the Islamic Republic.

B, and this is difficult to quantify, but this has caused a degree of paralysis in the regime because what Iran has suffered at the geopolitical level in the past two years has been catastrophic. It has been deeply humiliating for the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khomeini, who has made it his life's work of building this system of region-wide resistance, as he likes to call it, it failed. So there has been a huge debate going on in the last one to two years inside the top levels of the regime as to, okay, well, what do we do now about this? And as far as I can see from the outside, no clear decision has been made because people disagree, because senior

officials don't agree on what to do about the reality that I think they're deeply aware of that they have failed at such an important level. So that paralysis, I think, does feed into what is going on right now in terms of debates as to the future of the regime. I don't think there's a paralysis within the regime on the repression dimension. I think everybody inside the regime agrees that we are going to have to fight our way out of this. But beyond that, there remains extensive disagreement. So the protesters are calling for regime change at this point. But before we talk about whether you think it's likely to happen tomorrow,

can you tell me how exactly the current regime works in Iran? Well, the current regime in Iran is a complicated and very unique beast. It is called the Islamic Republic. It has officially two heads, an Islamic head and a Republican head. The Islamic head is the Supreme Leader, who is a cleric. The Republican head is an elected president,

with obviously the major caveat that these elections are not fully free and fair at all. In theory, there was initially a view that there would be two heads to the system. In practice, these two heads are very unequal. The presidential Republican head is clearly subordinate to the Supreme Leader, to the clerical head of the regime,

which dominates through a web of institutions, clerical institutions, but also military institutions which report to the Supreme Leader, not to the President. So in the past couple days, we've heard the President say fairly conciliatory things about the protesters. We hear you. We are going to try to do something about this. That doesn't really matter because he's not the one who has the authority to do something about this. At the same time, we've heard the Supreme Leader use the usual, not surprising, very rough, harsh, harsh language against the protesters.

They are terrorists. They are enemies of God. They are Israeli stooges, et cetera. And that's the rhetoric that matters because that is the rhetoric that reflects the thinking of the regime right now. And if anything, when the Supreme Leader started talking really tough last week, that was an indication that the crackdown was on its way, which it was. Generally, when we have protest movements like these, there is some sort of like opposition that people are rallying behind. Is there a leader to the protest or an opposition figure they are rallying behind to replace the Ayatollah? No. People in the streets are angry. They are fed up with the regime and want its overthrow,

but there is no organization right now. And there's a very good reason for that because over the past 40, almost seven years now, the Islamic Republic has systematically jailed, kicked out of the country, sent into exile, imprisoned, tortured, in many cases executed, anybody who could emerge as an eventual leader of the opposition. That is one of the key reasons why for now the prospects for the fall of the regime are actually probably not imminent because the opposition remains very much disorganized. There are names, to be sure. There is Narjas Mohamedi, who is in jail now,

who is a very prominent human rights campaigner, very well respected, but she's in jail. The other name that comes up a lot is Razavie, who is the son of the Shah who was deposed in the revolution in 1979 that brought the Islamic Republic to power. There's a lot that we can say about Pahlavi. Yes, his name recognition has significantly increased in the past couple weeks. Yes, people in the streets in Iran are chanting his name in some numbers.

Why, there is a certain nostalgia for the Shah's regime. There's also a bit of a default thing here in the sense that he's one of the only recognizable names, but there's severe challenges here. A, among ethnic minorities who are almost half of the population in Iran, let's not forget that, he's very unpopular. Among the left in Iran, he's very unpopular. Despite the very clear increase in his influence in the past couple weeks, he does remain controversial. especially inside Iran, where his father's regime, let's not forget, was overthrown because it was deeply unpopular, authoritarian, and corrupt. So he probably needs to play a role if there is to be the organization of an opposition, but it could very well be an extraordinarily divisive role,

given the fact that he has a base of support, but he also has tremendous opposition to him. Iranian officials have said that the protests are being fueled by U.S. and Israeli-backed, quote-unquote, terrorists. How do you understand that? I mean, it's complete nonsense. And that has to be said without any kind of ambiguity. That's the standard line of the Islamic Republic, that any opposition to its rule is by U.S. and Israeli great Satan and lesser Satan lackeys or whatever you want to call them. And it is absolute nonsense. I mean, the people are in the street because they are fed up with the Islamic Republic, period. Does the U.S. support the protesters? Of course it does. Does Israel support the protesters? Well, of course it does because it is an enemy of the Islamic Republic.

Republic. But to say as not only Iran does, but a number of pro-Islamic Republic influencers outside the country say that Israel is driving these protests or that the U.S. is driving these protests is just completely disconnected from the very clear facts. We'll be right back. I want to talk about the geopolitical implications of these protests because there are many, especially with the U.S. being involved on some level. U.S. President Donald Trump has been commenting on the protests. He even made a number of threats against the Iranian regime since the protest started. Damot, why is the U.S. getting involved here? Well, the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran have been enemies, right? Since the early days of the revolution, if you remember, the hostage crisis in

1979 to 81, and then if you go over the past almost 47 years of history, they have fought each other indirectly in Iraq and throughout the region and even had in June of 2025 for the first time the U.S. actually bombed Iran directly. So they're enemies. So of course, the U.S. will look favorably upon the possibility of the Islamic Republic falling. But it's complicated. Right now, if you look at media reports in the U.S., there's a number of options that are being discussed. There is some reporting that on Tuesday of this week, the 13th President Trump is to be briefed by the Pentagon and by officials on options. Some options being discussed include cyber attacks that try to to weaken the regime in especially its repressive capacity.

There is talk of very surgical targeted military attacks against, for example, police stations or law enforcement infrastructure, again, to hamper the regime's repressive capacity. There's also talk of broader strikes against, for example, military sites of the Islamic Republic, which wouldn't necessarily mean the weakening of its repressive capacity in the short term, but would imply over the longer term a weakening of the Islamic Republic as a whole. this raises a whole bunch of questions. A, there's the issue of the legality of these strikes, clearly not something that President Trump is concerned with, but it's still a question to ask. There's the issue of the effect and the outcome. Is this going to help? I'm not sure how much

President Trump is bothered by that question, but there is an issue of trying to find the options that best help the protesters and galvanizes them to go to the streets and best constrains the ability of the regime to respond. There's also the issue of the end goal here. And what does President Trump actually want here. A number of Iranians, including inside the country, I would say vast majority of them, a lot of Iranians in exile want President Trump to support the fall of the Islamic Republic and its replacement by a democracy. I mean, I wish that happened, but my skepticism of President Trump's desire for democratization

brings me to be very cautious here. In Venezuela, which is obviously very different, but he was more than happy to decapitate the regime. and then keep the rest of it in place. And I see no agenda for democratization in Venezuela right now. So I think a fear that we should all have here is that President Trump could be willing to weaken the regime and then make a deal with the regime that would lead it to stay in power,

but in a much more constrained way in terms of its nuclear program, it's terms of its support for terrorism, its missile program, and so on. That's a very difficult scenario. It's very difficult to get there. But there's more and more talk coming out of the U.S. and also Tehran, where that does seem to be a scenario that could be emerging. I'm glad you brought up Venezuela there because I think that that's kind of top of mind for a lot of people, including myself, with the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities in June by the U.S.

And then, of course, what happened in Venezuela just last week, do his threats hit differently? Yes, in the sense that the fact that he actually did something about Venezuela gives a degree of added credibility. I do think that Trump remains extremely unpredictable, and that's how he has to be viewed. He could do something about Iran. He could do a lot of different things and he could do not much. Initially, a couple weeks ago,

the threat was the red line, as expressed, was killing protesters. We're in the thousands of dead protesters by now. So that ship has long sailed. Will he do something possible? But remember that Trump, there is an element of him and a lot of the coalition behind him

that remains skeptical and opposed to military entanglements in the region. So one way that Venezuela was acceptable to a lot of the more isolationist wing of the MAGA coalition, including Vice President Vance, was we went in for three hours and we were right back out. Right now, I think President Trump has to balance what remains a delicate domestic coalition where there is opposition. So I'm not saying nothing is going to happen. I'm saying that with Trump we just don't know, but this is a hard calculus for him to make. On the calculus, you talked about the options that Trump could pursue here.

And we should also note that on Monday evening, Trump did impose a new tariff on any country that does business with Iran. But beyond tariffs, what's the geopolitical calculation that the U.S. ought to make in terms of weighing their different options? The thing here is that the geopolitical calculus is extremely complex and has multiple layers. If you look at this from the perspective of the U.S.'s relations with Gulf countries, which is one aspect that I look at a lot, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, these countries do not like the Islamic Republic, right? That's very clear. They've been having somewhat better relations with Iran for the past three, four years, but it's been about better managing tensions.

It's not about reconciliation or any kind of friendship. They still fundamentally dislike the Islamic Republic. But they fear what could come next here. You know, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others in the Gulf, they're increasingly concerned that if the Islamic Republic falls, what follows is chaos and instability. and civil war, which is a plausible scenario. And of course, they're also extremely concerned with the possibility, however remote,

of the Islamic Republic falling and being replaced by a democracy, right? Because from their perspective, anything that smacks of, you know, popular protests and then democratization is an absolute nightmare. So absolutely they dislike that possible scenario. They're also concerned with scenarios of the Islamic Republic being replaced by a new regime that is not democratic, but more pro-American and possibly more assertive, relatively to their interest. So from the regional perspective, Saudi Arabia and others, there's a lot of different scenarios here that can easily fall into the worrying side of the equation,

even if they fundamentally dislike the Islamic Republic. Okay. So very complex. In the region, obviously, countries are concerned. But what about the U.S.? Like, what would the U.S. gain from intervening? From the U.S. perspective, anything that weakens the Islamic Republic can become, there's a degree of risk, so that's why I'm only saying can, but can easily become a net gain. Should the Islamic Republic fall, President Trump, who is always very much concerned with this historical legacy, that allows him to position himself as the one American president who will have vanquished the much-hated Islamic Republic. The risk, of course, is what comes next. Democatization is the

scenario that is ideal for a lot of people inside Iran, but also for the U.S., but that's a hard scenario to come through because there's a risk of serious chaos. There's also the question of whether President Trump and the Trump administration would have the attention span, would have the willingness, the bandwidth to really expend the significant time in political capital and resources that would be necessary to support a democratic transition. Trump has said that Iran is open to talks with U.S. to see if there is a negotiated solution to avoid any sort of action by the U.S. What does that signal to you? I think it signals in the short term that the Islamic Republic wants to pretend that it's willing to negotiate to try to push back the prospect of American strikes. The Islamic Republic does not want to be hit militarily by the U.S.

It is so vulnerable that that is really something it would prefer to avoid. So by dangling the possibility of talks, dangling the possibility of openness, it is trying to push that back. Beyond that, the Islamic Republic is probably trying to achieve sanctions being lifted. The sanctions by the U.S., by the international community are causing significant damage to the Iranian economy, which, as we said earlier, is one of the triggers that has brought people to the streets. So from the Islamic Republic's perspective, if it can promise to its people achieve, I'm skeptical, but promise sanctions relief, it is probably a way to try to alleviate pressure from the street at the same time. Let's take a minute to talk about the implications of possible U.S. action. Israel is of course a U.S. ally and a state enemy of Iran. What are the consequences for Israel if the U.S. attacks Iran?

Well, from Israel's perspective, it's a similar calculus to the U.S. in some ways, but in a much more intense way. So from Israel's perspective, a weakening of Iran and eventually a fall of the Islamic Republic would further cement Israel's increasingly hegemonic position in the Middle East. I mean, Israel now has clearly positioned itself, especially in the last two years, with all of the damage that it inflicted on Iran, Hamas, Ebola and others, as the dominant military power in the region. And the more the Islamic Republic is weakened, eventually to the point of collapse, the more its military position becomes even more unchallenged. Scenarios of the Islamic Republic falling and being replaced by prolonged instability from Israel's perspective centered on its own security. That's less of a concern, possibly, than it is for Saudi Arabia, certainly, and certainly other countries as well.

So from Israel's perspective, there are some fairly positive scenarios that could be emerging. On the flip side, let's talk about Iranian allies. One of Iran's supporters is Russia. How does that factor into the broader geopolitical context here? So at a more specific level, Russia has been providing Iran with a lot of support over the years, diplomatic support, weapon sales, and other things like that, but also very tactically support for Iran's repressive apparatus. There's a fair bit of cooperation at that level that is helping Iran further repress the popular protests.

At a higher geopolitical level, Iran is Russia's closest partner in the Middle East. It is a relation that under the surface can be more difficult than it appears. There are some points of tension between the two of them, but they have become much closer in recent years. We have been seeing Iran providing significant support, notably in terms of drones, to Russia's war effort in Ukraine. So it is a relation that has gotten a lot closer and should, the Islamic Republic be further weakened and eventually should it collapse from Russia's perspective that would potentially be a significant loss? Before we finish, Tamah, I just want to bring it back to the protests. What will be the signs

that the regime is losing? So the regime is losing in every way. As we said, geopolitically, it is more fragile than it has been for decades. And domestically, it is vulnerable. Opposition is broader and deeper than it has ever been. Does it mean that the regime is about to collapse, that's where I, for now, I will still keep to my assessment that the regime is not about to collapse. The collapse is not imminent. That being said, I think there's a lot of caveats here. First of all, I'm less confident in my assessment that the regime is not going to collapse, right? In 2022, in 2017, in 2009, when there were other large scale waves of protests, whatever our personal wishes would be, my analytical view was that, no, the regime was not going to collapse,

and I was very confident in that view. Now I'm far less confident. in that. The way things have been escalating, the way the regime is more vulnerable, its collapse is now a possibility, even though I still think cautiously that it's not imminent. What has to happen to get to that point of collapse? Defections not only at the high political and military levels, but also in the lower ranks of the police, the security forces, the reserves, the military, lower level troops and officers saying we're not going to shoot on our own people. As far as I can see, that has not happened on a large scale yet. If or when that happens, then it is a major game changer. Large-scale strikes are also something to watch for.

There have been a lot of rumors of that, but there is no verifiable information that it is happening on a large scale. And until that happens, the regime also keeps a pretty good chance to survive. Tamar, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. That was Tamar, you know, a professor with the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor.

Thanks so much for listening.