Iran’s regime is increasingly forced to defend itself at home - opinion

SEPTEMBER 6, 2026 09:03From the seething streets to the armed peripheries of the country, the signs are multiplying in Iran, and they are increasingly difficult to dismiss as isolated incidents. The Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the institution that forged much of Iran’s influence abroad, must now devote a growing share of its resources to protecting the regime on home soil.The IRGC retains an arsenal of missiles, extensive military and security networks, and the capacity to strike Iran’s adversaries. Yet this question takes on particular urgency when viewed against the full range of domestic developments.The problem for Tehran no longer comes from a single front, but from a territory to defend that is constantly expanding, from the rising cost of that defense, and from the mounting pressure on its resources and room for maneuvering.The signs are coming from the highest levels of the Iranian regime. In August, the military and security leadership underwent a sweeping reshuffle. Ahmad Vahidi took command of the IRGC, Mostafa Izadi was named his deputy, and Hossein Taeb, the former head of IRGC intelligence, returned to lead the Guard’s Basij.Iranians protest on a main street in Tehran, December 30, 2025 (credit: SOCIAL MEDIA/VIA SECTION 27A OF THE COPYRIGHT ACT)At the same time, Mohsen Rezaei was appointed secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and the supreme leader’s representative to that body. These are not simply posts handed to familiar figures: these appointments symbolize the mobilization of the IRGC’s men, the security apparatus, and unconditional loyalists at a moment when protecting the clerical regime has become inseparable from the war it wages abroad.The return of Hossein Taeb carries particular significance. The Basij, the paramilitary mobilization force tied to the Revolutionary Guard, is one of the regime’s most important levers for surveilling Iranian society, controlling the streets, and suppressing demonstrations. Taeb spent years at the heart of the IRGC’s intelligence operations. He is not merely an administrator returning to his post, but the symbol of a security apparatus that has confronted protest and dissent through repression, infiltration, and intimidation.Possibility of new protestsIn August, Iran International, a media outlet opposed to the regime, published a recording presented as coming from a closed-door meeting of the Media and Cyberspace Headquarters. According to that recording, the discussions centered on the possibility of new protests, on the shrinking social environment favorable to the Basij, and on the need to expand surveillance of opposition activity on social media.This event followed the assassination of Hamidreza Rajabzadeh, a pro-regime religious singer, in an incident that unsettled circles close to power. While the motives remain under investigation and accounts differ, the political climate revealed by this assassination is telling. A repressive security apparatus, meant to inspire fear in the streets, is beginning to show heightened sensitivity about the safety of its own men and figures within the very society it surveils and subjugates.On another front, the weapon of executions reveals the bloodiest face of this fear. According to the UN high commissioner for human rights, Iranian authorities have executed at least 56 people on national security charges since March 19, including 27 in cases tied to the protests earlier in the year, while more than 100 others await execution.These numbers reveal a shaken regime that perceives the return of the street as a direct threat to its power and that raises the cost of dissent each time popular anger moves closer to forming a political movement that endangers its survival.In August, Germany joined 31 other countries as well as the EU high representative in a statement condemning the execution of protesters and denouncing the use of the death penalty to silence dissent and intimidate society.The regime's fears do not stop at the cities. It dreads the return of uprisings and street anger. On the periphery, the danger has evolved: it no longer consists of protests alone, but has taken the form of armed resistance.In the Kurdish areas, opposition reports have cited IRGC reinforcements and military deployments near the Iraqi border, while other sources have noted troop movements and access restrictions in the border zones of Kurdistan.The significance lies not in the scale of the forces deployed, but in what they reveal. Tehran finds itself compelled to maintain intensive security and military control over its Kurdish front, even as it must divide its capabilities between simultaneous external and internal threats.Balochistan has seen a more pronounced shift. In December, the People’s Fighters Front was established as a new Baloch armed structure, following the merger of Jaish al-Adl, a Baloch armed group opposed to Tehran, with other Baloch factions, in an attempt to overcome years of division and build a more coordinated framework of struggle against the regime. This merger quickly materialized on the ground, with the front claiming attacks against security forces and the IRGC around Zahedan and other areas.This does not mean the front has become a force capable of threatening the regime on a national scale. It does mean, however, that the regime faces a better-organized armed opposition on its eastern periphery than before, which imposes continuous pressure on its security, military, and intelligence resources.The dilemma is all the more brutal for a dictatorial regime born of the 1979 revolution. After decades of preaching the export of revolution abroad, it must now devote a growing share of its apparatus and resources to preventing the emergence of conditions conducive to a new revolution against it on its own soil.The bitter irony is that the IRGC, created to protect the revolution before becoming its most important instrument beyond the borders, now finds itself on a mission it cannot delegate to a party, a militia, or a proxy: protecting the theocratic regime inside Iran itself.This is where the notion of “strategic depth,” on which Iran built much of its regional influence, takes on its full meaning. From Iraq to Syria, through Lebanon and Yemen, Tehran pushed the front lines far from its territory and resorted to proxy warfare to impose costs on its Arab adversaries and on Israel, through allies, weapons, funding, training, missiles, and drones.The greatest gain lay in that distance, which ensured that confrontations took place on other people’s territory while the heart of the Iranian regime remained as far removed from their costs as possible.But the logic that governed this strategy for decades is beginning to reverse. Instead of pushing danger away from its borders, Iran is now compelled to devote a growing share of its capabilities to dealing with the threat within its own borders.With persistent fear of popular uprisings on one side and the expansion of armed resistance in certain peripheral areas on the other, these pressures are turning into an internal source of capability depletion.The repressive apparatus is increasingly focused on Iran’s interior. Intelligence resources are being mobilized to surveil the population, track dissidents, monitor digital activity, contain armed groups, and protect regime figures. All of this reduces the Guard’s room for maneuvering outside Iran.However, this does not mean the IRGC has lost its tools of external action, nor that the regime is on the verge of collapse. It still possesses a significant missile arsenal, dense security services, a capacity for repression, and vast networks of regional influence.Yet the reality is that Tehran spent decades forcing its adversaries to spend money and resources protecting themselves from its actions. The equation taking shape today compels it, in turn, to devote more of its means to its own protection.At this point, the most important question will not be how many missiles remain in the IRGC’s warehouses, but rather how many men, how much money, how much capability, and how much flexibility it has left to continue exerting pressure on its adversaries outside Iran, when the Iranian interior and the street itself have become a growing source of anxiety and fear threatening the regime’s survival.The writer is a UAE political analyst and former Federal National Council candidate.Follow us on Google