Tehran falters while Riyadh rewrites regional stability |
The Middle East is once again speaking in the language of pressure, grief and unfinished power. Iran’s streets, its nuclear sites and its diplomacy have all fractured at the same time, producing a moment that feels less like a crisis than a reckoning. What is unfolding is not only about Tehran’s survival or Saudi Arabia’s ambition; it is about whether the region can still generate its own gravity, or whether it will continue to drift at the mercy of external shocks.
Iran’s domestic unrest since late 2025 is unprecedented in both scale and symbolism. Protests cutting across all 31 provinces, chants directly targeting the supreme leader, and an officially acknowledged death toll approaching the 2,500 mark, a rupture deeper than previous waves of dissent. Inflation running above 50 per cent, a collapsing rial and chronic youth unemployment have stripped away the regime’s last economic defences. Internet blackouts and mass arrests have slowed mobilisation but have not restored legitimacy. This is not episodic anger; it is structural exhaustion. For a system built on resistance narratives, the most dangerous development is not Western pressure but internal disbelief.
At the same time, Iran’s nuclear posture has been dramatically weakened. The coordinated Israeli–US strikes of mid-2025 did more than damage centrifuges and enriched uranium stockpiles; they punctured the long-cultivated image of strategic invulnerability. It estimates that years of enrichment progress were set back in less than two weeks. Tehran’s subsequent agreement to allow limited IAEA inspections was less a diplomatic breakthrough than a defensive crouch, driven by the looming........