Iran’s rulers appear to be preparing for an outcome they increasingly fear is inevitable: another nationwide uprising.
Reports from inside Iran point to an intensified effort to recruit, train, and equip the Basij — the paramilitary force long serving as the regime’s principal instrument of domestic repression. At the same time, authorities are struggling to mobilize even their own base for state-organized demonstrations.
The contrast is revealing. Tehran is finding it harder to put loyalists on the streets even as it expands the security forces intended to confront future protesters. Meanwhile, organized opponents of the regime are demonstrating an increasingly audacious ability to operate publicly.
On Sept. 3, Resistance Units affiliated with the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) staged an organized march through Karaj, a major city west of Tehran, using vehicles and motorcycles displaying MEK symbols. The action, marking the MEK’s 61st anniversary, was striking not merely because it occurred in broad daylight in a heavily monitored urban center, but because footage of it was subsequently published by Saberiyoun News, an outlet aligned with the regime’s so-called “Axis of Resistance.”
Saberiyoun described the event as a “parade of Resistance Units in Karaj.” Predictably denouncing the MEK, the outlet nevertheless effectively acknowledged that the organized action had occurred. In a system characterized by pervasive censorship and relentless efforts to suppress evidence of organized opposition, that acknowledgment is significant.
The significance becomes even clearer when viewed against the recent history of the city where the march took place. Karaj was a major center of unrest during the January 2026 uprising.
The ability of Resistance Units to operate visibly there, despite continuing efforts to identify and suppress their members, illustrates precisely why the regime is increasingly preoccupied with the MEK and organized resistance. Nor is that concern rooted merely in memories of January. The underlying conditions that produced the uprising have not disappeared; if anything, they have grown more acute.
Following the appointment of cleric Hossein Taeb, a veteran intelligence figure closely tied to the hardline establishment, to head the Basij Organization, the regime has accelerated efforts to fortify the force’s operational capabilities.
Reports indicate that Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) unit has instructed local districts to inventory equipment shortages at Basij bases and request immediate matériel. In Islamshahr, newly formed Basij battalions are undergoing accelerated tactical and firearms training, including live-fire exercises. Elsewhere across Tehran Province, the Basij has sought recruits at pro-government nighttime gatherings to form new security units.
The purpose is unmistakable: preparation for renewed domestic unrest. Why would a government confident in its stability urgently expand, train, and re-arm forces designed primarily to suppress its own populace?
Part of the answer lies in the regime’s escalating difficulty in manufacturing credible displays of support. In Gohardasht, Karaj, once a dependable staging ground for pro-government gatherings, participation has essentially collapsed. Organizers have resorted to bringing Afghani, Iraqi, and Pakistani nationals to centralized gatherings, offering catered meals and stipends of up to 10 million rials per participant.
The juxtaposition in Karaj could hardly be more revealing: while the authorities struggle to manufacture pro-government crowds, Resistance Units are taking to the streets in organized formation.
Meanwhile, genuine expressions of public discontent require no subsidies.
From late August into early September, Iran witnessed strikes and protests across multiple provinces. On August 31 alone, job-seeking youth in Gachsaran and Ahvaz faced live ammunition and beatings after protesting discriminatory hiring and corruption. Oil-sector day laborers in Ahvaz protested unpaid wages, steelworkers in Qazvin rallied against production shutdowns caused by power shortages, Baluch women protested land-grabbing in Jazmourian, truck drivers at the Mehran border terminal struck over fuel shortages, and retirees demonstrated across major cities against inflation and deteriorating living conditions.
Their significance lies in their breadth. Workers, youth, retirees, ethnic minorities, farmers, and middle-class professionals reflect a cross-cutting discontent transcending geographic and social lines. Coupled with the expanding operational footprint of MEK Resistance Units, these are telltale signs of mounting structural instability.
The regime knows it. Iranian authorities routinely warn about the expansion of the MEK and its Resistance Units while preparing security forces for impending unrest.
Their anxiety stems from an unyielding structural crisis. Inflation, unemployment, collapsing purchasing power, depreciation of the rial, systemic corruption, and widening inequality continue to push Iranians to the brink. Moreover, the regime emerged from the conflict that erupted on Feb. 28 weaker and more vulnerable, not stronger.
Authoritarian regimes reveal their assessment of vulnerability through how they allocate resources. When Tehran pays people to attend rallies while simultaneously raising security units, conducting live-fire drills, and re-arming Basij bases, its priorities are unmistakable: its leaders are preparing not to address public grievances, but to crush them.
This reality should reframe Western policy toward Iran. For decades, international debate has been trapped in a false binary between diplomatic accommodation and military confrontation. Neither accounts for the decisive force shaping Iran’s future: the Iranian people and their organized resistance.
That message will also be carried to the international community on Sept. 22 and 23, when thousands of Iranians will rally outside the United Nations during the U.N. General Assembly, calling on member states to condemn the regime’s mass killings and executions and to stand with the Iranian people.
Tehran is not fortifying the Basij because it fears another diplomatic initiative or sanctions package. It is fortifying it because it fears the Iranian street.
A state can purchase crowds, distribute weapons, imprison dissidents, and carry out executions. What it cannot indefinitely do is eradicate the conditions that repeatedly drive citizens into resistance.
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The central question is therefore no longer whether conditions for another major uprising persist. They plainly do. The question is when these compounding grievances, coupled with an increasingly organized resistance, will once again coalesce into a nationwide challenge to the regime’s survival.
Judging by Tehran’s frantic security preparations, Iran’s rulers are asking themselves the same question.
Ali Safavi, a sociologist by career, is an official with the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). He is on X @amsafavi.