(JNS) For the past 16 years, the world has continued to ask the same question with respect to the Islamist regime in Iran: Is it finally time for the despotic rule of the ayatollahs to end? Yet hopes that Iran might finally free itself have continually been disappointed. That’s why even amid the heightened expectations that the breaking point has been reached, optimism about its imminent fall should remain tempered.

The theocracy imposed on the country in 1979—when the government of Shah Reza Pahlavi collapsed and was replaced by the rule of religious extremists, led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—has survived every previous challenge. Despite its manifest unpopularity, it has repeatedly been able to mobilize both the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the nation’s army to suppress protests with the sort of deadly force that intimidated a restive population into sullen acceptance of their fate. Nevertheless, the Islamist government’s inability to effectively run a country rich in natural resources but now facing shortages of energy and clean water, as well as having wasted massive sums of money on building a...

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