The central fact of Iran’s current moment is brutally simple: the war has returned to the Islamic Republic what it had been losing for years - not on the front lines, not in government offices, and not in diplomatic corridors, but in the streets, squares, cafes, parks, university districts, and urban courtyards. The war has returned public space to the regime. The very space that ordinary Iranians had been reclaiming not through party slogans, not through underground manifestos, not by storming government buildings, but through everyday, almost silent presence.
A woman without the mandatory hijab. A young couple in a cafe. A dog on a leash. A group of students in a park. A nighttime walk. A conversation out loud. Laughter without permission. All of this was politics, even if those taking part did not call it politics.
That is exactly why the current reversal matters so much. The Islamic Republic has not merely intensified repression. It has not merely sent the Basij, the police, loyalists, IRGC networks, and ideological support groups into the streets. It has tried to reclaim the right to be visible. And in an authoritarian system, visibility is power. Whoever stands in the square appears to own the city. Whoever controls the intersection controls daily life. Whoever checks phones is no longer checking a device, but the boundaries of permissible thought.
After the joint military operation by the United States and Israel against Iran on February 28, 2026, the country entered a qualitatively new phase of internal mobilization, in which external war became a tool of domestic discipline. Brookings directly noted that the February 28 strike marked the beginning of a new war and sharply changed both the international and domestic political dynamics surrounding Iran.
But the main drama today is unfolding not only in the sky, not only near the Strait of Hormuz, and not only around the nuclear program. It is unfolding on the asphalt of Tehran. There, war is turning the city into a testing ground for loyalty.
The IRGC Returns to the Street: Not as an Army, but as the Master of the Courtyard
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was never created simply as a military structure. It was a parallel center of power designed to protect the revolutionary system itself from the army, society, elite fractures, and any attempts to dismantle the regime. The Council on Foreign Relations describes the IRGC as one of Iran’s most powerful organizations, subordinate to the supreme leader and playing a central role in internal security, the economy, the missile program, and regional networks of influence.
In peacetime, such a structure can remain partly hidden behind the facade of the state. In wartime, it comes to the surface. It becomes not only the regime’s army, but also its street-level face. That is why the appearance of the Basij in the streets is not a secondary detail. These are not “local activists.” This is a grassroots mechanism of ideological control embedded in the architecture of the IRGC.
Reuters reported that Israeli forces had struck Basij checkpoints in Tehran, noting that the Basij is a paramilitary force under IRGC control and is often used to suppress protests inside Iran. Al Jazeera, for its part, documented the expansion of armed checkpoints, patrols, and roadblocks in Tehran and across the country after the January protests and the start of the war.
This is essential. The regime is not merely defending itself against an external enemy. It is reorganizing internal space so that every neighborhood, every intersection, every nighttime route reminds the citizen: the state is here again. Not the abstract state, not a ministry, not a court, not a parliament. But an armed man, a slogan, a loudspeaker, a checkpoint, a prayer next to a missile, a suspicious glance at a phone.
This is how the city becomes a political theater. But it is a theater not of persuasion, but of coercion.
The Quiet Advance of Ordinary People: Why the Regime Feared Cafes, the Hijab, and Walks
To understand the scale of the rollback, one must see exactly what society has lost. After the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic sought to subordinate not only institutions, but the very fabric of everyday life. Clothing, behavior, gender relations, music, leisure, the female body, urban aesthetics - all of it became an object of ideological supervision.
But the state, even with prisons, courts, morality police, and religious doctrine at its disposal, could not fully keep society in revolutionary formation. For decades, Iranians carried out what Asef Bayat described as “the quiet encroachment of the ordinary” - a prolonged, dispersed, everyday expansion of living space within the rigid boundaries of power. His chapter “The Quiet Encroachment of the Ordinary” in Life as Politics became one of the key theoretical frameworks for understanding how ordinary people change the Middle East not only through uprisings, but through everyday practices.
In Iran, this advance was especially visible in the women’s question. Women gradually loosened the imposed code of the mandatory hijab. First, the headscarf became slightly freer. Then more hair appeared. Then came open appearances without the hijab, especially after the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests that began after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022. UN Human Rights noted that two and a half years after the start of those protests, women and girls in Iran continued to face persecution and discrimination, while the authorities intensified restrictions and digital surveillance.
It was precisely this everyday disobedience that was dangerous for the regime. Because it did not always look like revolution. It looked like life. And life that stops asking permission is more dangerous for an ideological state than many manifestos.
New norms were emerging in urban Iran. Men and women communicated more often in public places. Young people occupied cafes. Parks saw more free behavior. Pets, especially dogs, became part of urban culture despite pressure from conservative ideology. People did not necessarily say, “We are overthrowing the regime.” But they behaved as if the regime no longer had the right to regulate every detail of their existence.
That is why the war became a gift to the Islamic Republic. It gave the regime a pretext to tell society: now is not the time for freedom, now is the time for mobilization. Now is not the time for walks, now is the time for suspicion. Now is not the time for voice, now is the time for slogans. Now is not the time for the city, now the city must become a fortress.
The Checkpoint as the New Pulpit of Ideology
A checkpoint is not merely a security measure. In an authoritarian system, a checkpoint is a political language. It tells the citizen: your route is conditional, your body can be inspected, your phone does not belong only to you, your evening may end in interrogation, your street is no longer yours.
That is why reports of car checks, phone inspections, scrutiny of posts, and searches through correspondence are so significant. This is not only a police practice. It is an attempt to introduce military logic into civilian life. Under such an order, every passerby becomes a potential suspect, every phone an archive of crime, every post evidence of disloyalty.
Iran International reported the expansion of checkpoints, intensified security deployments, and signs of military activity in several Iranian cities. In such an atmosphere, the ordinary person begins to restrict his own behavior. He goes out less at night. He speaks less. He argues less. He takes fewer photographs. He lingers less in public space. He retreats home.
And when ordinary people go home, the street empties. When the street empties, loyalists enter it. When loyalists enter it, the regime gets the picture it wants: flags, prayers, slogans, anti-American chants, missiles as sacred objects, crowds around symbols of force. That is how the illusion of popular mobilization is born. Although in reality, this may not be the mobilization of the majority, but the occupation of emptiness by an active minority.
This is the political alchemy of war: the fear of the majority is transformed into the appearance of support for the regime.
A Missile in the Square: When a Weapon Becomes an Icon
Displaying missiles at rallies and near mass gatherings is not merely propaganda. It is ritual. The missile is turned into a sacred object around which the loyal public gathers. It is shown as proof of strength, as a substitute for the social contract, as a metallic argument in place of legitimacy.
When a state can no longer persuade society with economic growth, justice, rights, quality of life, or an open future, it begins to persuade with steel. The missile becomes a symbol of national pride, even when a family cannot afford a normal grocery basket. A military slogan replaces civic politics. A loudspeaker replaces debate. A loyalty rally replaces society.
And all this is happening against the backdrop of severe economic pressure. The World Bank noted that Iran’s economy had come under mounting strain because of structural problems, conflict in the Middle East, sanctions, water and energy shortages, and that GDP in the 2025 and 2026 Iranian year was estimated to have contracted by 2.7 percent. It also noted that high inflation, falling real incomes, import disruptions, and conflict shocks would deepen poverty.
Against this backdrop, a missile in the square is not a sign of state strength. It is an admission of weakness. A strong state shows its citizens the future. A weak state shows them a missile.
The Hijab Has Not Disappeared: Control Has Simply Become Smarter and More Vicious
One of the main misconceptions of recent years was the belief that the easing of visible pressure over the hijab meant a real retreat by the regime. No. The regime often does not retreat. It changes the technology of control. If yesterday it grabbed a woman in the street with the hand of the morality police, today it can use cameras, fines, raids on businesses, digital surveillance, social pressure, threats to shut down establishments, and systems of denunciation.
In October 2025, the Center for Human Rights in Iran wrote directly that the struggle over compulsory hijab was far from over: the appearance of women without hijab in the streets does not mean freedom, but rather reflects continued and costly resistance to state domination. The organization emphasized that hijab enforcement had taken on new forms, including raids on businesses and surveillance.
UN Human Rights also noted that digital surveillance of women had been described by the UN mission as a form of state-backed “vigilantism,” in which businesses and private individuals are forced to participate in enforcing compulsory hijab.
War makes this system even harsher. In a wartime atmosphere, any act of disobedience can more easily be declared a security threat. A woman without hijab becomes not simply a violator of the moral code, but a symbol of internal decay at a moment of external danger. A cafe becomes not simply a place of leisure, but a suspicious zone. A group of young people becomes a potential cell of disloyalty. A phone becomes a battlefield.
This is how the morality police returns in a new form - not necessarily as the old patrol, but as a distributed network of control.
Execution as the Background Noise of War
The street, the checkpoint, and the missile are the visible side of the process. The invisible side is made of courts, prisons, torture, death sentences, and the fear of families who are forbidden even to mourn out loud.
According to a joint report by Iran Human Rights and ECPM, at least 1,639 people were executed in Iran in 2025 - 68 percent more than the 975 executions recorded in 2024. It was the highest figure since 1989. In May 2026, The Guardian reported near-daily secret executions, at least 24 people executed since March, pressure on families, and fears for hundreds detained after the January protests, while an internet blackout made it harder to obtain information from inside the country.
This is the logic of wartime authoritarianism: while the outside world watches missiles, straits, oil, and airstrikes, the machinery of intimidation is switched on inside the country. Execution becomes not only punishment, but also a political announcement: the state is still capable of killing, hiding bodies, pressuring families, and breaking memory.
In such a situation, public space shrinks not only physically, but psychologically. People leave the streets not because they have come to believe in the regime. They leave because the regime has once again made the street dangerous.
The Strait of Hormuz and the Tehran Sidewalk: The Same Logic of Control
At first glance, the Strait of Hormuz and a Tehran sidewalk belong to different scales. One is a global energy artery. The other is urban everyday life. But the logic is the same: control over space as an instrument of power.
Before the war, roughly one-fifth of the world’s traded oil flows passed through the Strait of Hormuz, along with significant volumes of gas, fertilizers, and petroleum products. In May 2026, AP reported that hundreds of merchant vessels remained trapped in the Persian Gulf, while Iran’s control over the strait had triggered a jump in fuel prices and consequences far beyond the Middle East. The EIA had previously recorded that in 2024 around 20 million barrels of oil per day passed through the strait, equivalent to roughly 20 percent of global liquid petroleum consumption.
To the outside world, Iran says: I can squeeze the energy artery. To its own society, the regime says: I can squeeze the urban artery. There, tankers. Here, people. There, fear in the markets. Here, fear among citizens. There, the strait as a lever of geopolitical blackmail. Here, the street as a lever of social discipline.
That is why the war in Iran cannot be reduced to the question of how many missiles the IRGC has left or how many aircraft the United States and Israel have deployed. The question is deeper: who controls the space through which life flows? External trade flows through Hormuz. Internal political energy flows through the street.
Why This Does Not Prove the Regime’s Strength
Can one conclude from the current picture that the Islamic Republic has restored its legitimacy? No. That would be a grave mistake. The appearance of control is not the same as social consent. A square filled with loyalists does not mean a loyal country. A checkpoint does not prove love for the state. It proves fear of the state.
Freedom House characterizes Iran’s political system as one in which the powers of the elected president and parliament are limited by the supreme leader and unelected institutions, including the Guardian Council, which approves laws and filters political competition. It also notes that the IRGC and religious foundations effectively stand beyond full public oversight.
Such a system can endure for a long time. But it endures not because society believes in it, but because the state knows how to distribute fear, resources, punishment, and privilege. War temporarily strengthens this mechanism. It allows the regime to plaster over the cracks with patriotic rhetoric, accuse dissenters of working for the enemy, expand the powers of the security forces, militarize the city, and turn a loyal minority into a noisy majority on screen.
But this does not solve the Islamic Republic’s central problem. Society has changed. It is no longer the society of the 1980s. It is younger, more urbanized, more cynical, more digital, less ideological, and far more exhausted by revolutionary rhetoric. It can be driven home temporarily. But it is much harder to make it believe again in a language that has long since stopped describing its reality.
Regime Change? Not So Fast
In the West and across the region, people often love simple scenarios: strike the regime and it will collapse; the people come out and the regime falls; the elites panic and the system disintegrates. The Iranian reality is more complicated. The social base of the Islamic Republic is shrinking, but it has not disappeared. The loyalist core remains. It is disciplined, organized, tied to security and economic structures, embedded in the distribution of privileges, and capable of taking to the streets on command.
That is precisely what makes the current moment dangerous. We are not simply looking at a weakened regime. We are looking at a regime that may become less legitimate but more brutal; less mass-based but more concentrated; less ideologically persuasive but more effective as a police machine.
This is the typical trajectory of late authoritarianism. When faith disappears, the apparatus remains. When ideology fades, coercion replaces it. When society no longer wants to march, those who depend on the regime are marched out instead. When the street no longer belongs to the revolution, checkpoints occupy it.
The Main Conclusion: War Gave the Regime Back the Street, but Not Its Future
Today, the Islamic Republic has indeed achieved an important tactical result. It has become visible again in public space. It has pushed part of ordinary Iranian society out of the urban environment. It has brought loyalists back into the street. It has turned war into an internal mechanism of discipline. It has shown that the IRGC is not only missiles, front lines, and regional proxies, but also the courtyard, the intersection, the cafe, the phone, women’s clothing, and the nighttime walk.
But strategically, this is not victory. It is a symptom of fear. A regime confident in itself does not need to constantly demonstrate control over the sidewalk. A state that possesses legitimacy does not turn every phone into a suspicious object. A political system with a future does not display missiles as a substitute for civic trust.
War gave the regime back the street. But it did not give it back society.
And this is the core of the Iranian drama. The Islamic Republic is once again standing in the squares, but it stands there as a force that must prove its own existence through loudspeakers, checkpoints, executions, patrols, and missiles. Ordinary Iranians have gone home not because they surrendered, but because the city has temporarily become dangerous. But home is not capitulation. Sometimes home is a pause before a new return.
While the regime marches through the streets, society remembers. While loyalists chant slogans, the silent majority compares those slogans with its own life. While the IRGC displays missiles, people count prices, losses, arrests, executions, vanished freedoms, and stolen years.
That is why the main question is not who is shouting louder today in the streets of Tehran. The main question is different: what happens when fear begins to recede again, and ordinary people decide to take back their city?