For the past two weeks, Iran has been shaken by a surge of protests against the repressive rule of the ayatollahs. Could these protests topple the country’s 47-year-old theocracy, or are they far more likely to end in a bloodbath? Is there anything the United States or other democracies can or should do? And, at a time when millions of Iranians clamor for freedom, who has the moral authority to speak in its name?

Iran has experienced massive protests several times before — most recently in September 2022, after a young woman arrested for wearing her mandatory headscarf too loosely was apparently beaten to death in custody. Every time, the protests have been brutally suppressed while the world looked on.

This time, the protests have been unprecedented in scale. What’s more, they started with shopkeepers or “bazaaris,” a group traditionally loyal to the Islamic Republic but increasingly dissatisfied with spiking prices (partly related to the government’s banking policies) and shortages of basic goods. The economic protests........

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