Iran’s clerical establishment has spent nearly half a century insisting – always with that brittle certainty peculiar to ideologues – that history culminated in 1979. That the Shah is a hushed embarrassment, monarchy a quaint relic, and the very notion of a crown something to be packed away with mothballs and other discarded finery. Yet politics, like biology, evolves in defiance of official catechisms. And Iran, in these final days of 2025, looks less like a regime in command than a contraption still whirring chiefly because no one has yet found the off-switch.

Iran, in these final days of 2025, looks less like a regime in command than a contraption still whirring chiefly because no one has yet found the off-switch

The past week has brought a small parade of humiliations, each more revealing than the last. The rial has continued its grim impersonation of confetti; protests have spread beyond the usual flashpoints; and the central bank chief’s resignation has been reported as the sort of administrative manoeuvre that tries to look like competence while smelling faintly of panic. The bazaar – those old Iranian seismographs of public mood – has reportedly rumbled again, with shopkeepers closing, chanting, and clashing with police in the capital and beyond. When a regime cannot keep its currency from melting, it is not merely suffering an economic........

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