Iranian Protests Resume Right on Time

I’ll link the series of posts (11th, 14th, 16th, 26th) I made in January below. But the key point is that, due to the snapback provisions of the former US sanctions on Iran, which went back into effect in October, the daily economic realities for Iranians became dire in November and December. This led to an Iranian uprising, originally in protest of untenable living conditions and prices for basic goods, in late December. This quickly morphed into a general anti-regime uprising in early January. The Iranian regime began a crackdown on the evening of 8-9 JAN and continued through the weekend. Confirmed estimates of deaths now approach ~7,000, with the high range of unconfirmed reaching 30,000. Between the 9th and 14th Trump threatened the Iranian regime with military retaliation, and even went so far as to tell protestors “help is on the way.” But because of his adventurism in the Caribbean, destroying speedboats and snatching Maduro, key US military assets were well out of position to help the protests and would take weeks to arrive.

This concerns the nature of the interlocking Offensive and Defensive OODA Loop requirements necessary to attack the Iranian regime. (Image shown below on 14 JAN link in first comment). These OODA loops involve having assets near enough, and in enough quantity, to both aid the protestors with close combat air support and defend US installations and key allies in both the Gulf and Israel against Iranian counter-attack.

The aircraft carrier group that *should’ve* been on station, providing at least some of that OODA Loop capability, was the USS Ford. Instead, it was in the Caribbean supporting President Trump’s speedboat attacks and leadership reorg in the Venezuelan dictatorship. I’ll leave the efficacy and authorization debate for other posts. But by sending our most powerful forces to areas to conduct missions that are not national security threats sufficient to justify them, we missed one of the most historic opportunities for changing the status quo in our 40-year conflict with the Iranian regime. Which is and has been a national security threat sufficient to justify, when appropriate, the very level of force we sent away. That’s why we’ve had aircraft carrier groups consistently in or near the Middle East and Gulf for the last few decades, especially during the last few years.

However, the January uprisings wouldn’t be our only window. The Shia mourning rites of “arba’in” or “chehellom” mark the end of a 40-day mourning period after a death with gatherings and attendance to the gravesites. These rites have been used in Iran even back to the revolution for timing protests after crackdowns and suppressions make normal communication difficult. Forty days after January 8-9 was Feb 17th-20th, and sure enough, the protests have returned. Not at the scale and scope of early January uprisings, but significant enough. Large groups gathering at cemeteries and mosques have been both mourning those killed by the regime while also shouting “for each person killed, thousands are behind them” and “death to the dictator.”

Additionally, students and teachers have called for a nationwide strike to mark the mourning period. Unlike the US, the Iranian demographic tilts heavily towards the young, and estimates of up to 45% of the uprising protesters were under the age of 20.

And the regime is taking notice. Holding mourning rites for security forces claimed killed during the uprising, Grand Ayatollah Khameni indicated those killed could be split into four groups: the truest martyrs (e.g. the security forces), passersby, those who ‘made mistakes’, and seditionists and coup plotters. And to make clear his opinion of those in the last group, regime forces are stationed in large numbers around the schools holding the strikes. And gunfire has scattered several gatherings of mourners at the cemeteries already.

This provides the pretext Trump needs. In order to save face after nasty narking and getting poked up with his vibe statecraft in January, Trump claimed at the time ‘high level sources’ in the Iranian regime promised him they wouldn’t execute any prisoners and the killings were stopped. And that was why he didn’t attack. (Never mind the indefinite detention and torture of thousands of protestors.) But if more Iranians are killed in numbers, it will give Trump a casus belli to intervene, especially now with two aircraft carrier groups in proximity and two months of operational planning on what exactly an intervention might look like.

There’s also existing separatist groups in Iran, including Kurds in the northwest and Balochi in the southeast that remain armed and resisting. These forces fared somewhat better against regime suppression as they were prepared, having suffered under similar repression for decades.

The Trump whiplash cycle (see second comment) might be another casus belli. I noted that he had moved through an oscillation of foreign and domestic crises, largely of his own making, in a regular pattern. And the window to switch back to a foreign crisis overlapped with the 17-20 FEB period. And given the current domestic crisis of botched Epstein files release largely taking the news cycle, Trump may once again prefer to switch back to a foreign crisis.

None of this is a foregone conclusion. Forecasts don’t just involve direction, but also timing. And while directions are trend-related, timing is tricky. The protests in Iran may fizzle out under the threat of violent response. Ongoing direct talks between the US and Iran may result in a super-deal where Iranian sanctions are eased in return for a new Trump-branded golf course and hotel project in Tehran. Just because there was a historic opportunity missed in January doesn’t mean we get a bite at the same apple in mid-February.

And this deployment, even without a military strike if it’s avoided, has consequences. Because the US Iwo Jima remains stationed in the Caribbean, the US is one aircraft carrier group short of what it needs. The US Ford is now approaching a 300-day deployment, which would be the longest US carrier deployment since the Vietnam War. This raises the possibility of degraded capabilities and increased risks of accidents or errors, as we’ve seen recently under the heavy op-tempo: at-sea collisions, shootdowns of friendly aircraft, unsecured aircraft going over the side during evasive maneuvers, etc.