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PaperclipPerfector  17hr ago (text post)   268 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 15, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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When do you think we should start taking the news coming out of Iran seriously? What likely leading indicators will we see when things start getting serious for the regime?

I feel like we get the "Iranian protests threaten regime" news cycle periodically, but I have trouble trying to figure out what to trust. We'll of course get biased interpretations, but what concrete facts will tell us when to start thinking big?

I'm all in. Nothing ever happens

Absent outside intervention, regimes fail when security forces defect or desert. If the US (or someone else, I guess) isn't going to intervene, the IRGC can just keep shooting protestors until the survivors get the message. The only other possibility is that the rest of the military decides to intervene on behalf of the protestors, but my (extremely uninformed) impression is that, in true police state fashion, the Iranian military is largely neutered precisely to avoid that outcome.

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