Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is running out of road

Khamenei has ridden out decades of immense foreign pressure on Iran’s economy and numerous public uprisings, while insisting on Iran’s right to enrich uranium and build advanced missiles.

Now, even if his security forces manage to crush the latest wave of protests, he is running out of room for political maneuver.

Without compromise, the Iranian leader faces “a future with inevitable nationwide protests and the profound possibility of regime change, either because of popular unrest or through external action," said Norman Roule, a former senior U.S. intelligence official with expertise in Iran. “It’s like a spring that gets tighter and tighter with each igniting event."

The recent protests, which erupted in late December, have posed one of the most serious threats yet to the Islamic Republic’s nearly five-decade rule. While a brutal crackdown that killed thousands has cast a pall over Iran’s cities, analysts say the unrest inevitably will flare up again.

Iran can only fix the economic problems underpinning the public anger if it gets relief from international sanctions. That would require Khamenei to compromise, in particular, on Iran’s nuclear program. For decades, he has insisted that Iran has a right to develop it for civilian purposes. President Trump has demanded Iran give up nuclear enrichment entirely.

Roule said the regime will need to not only make concessions on nuclear enrichment but also on its missile program and end the mission for the foreign wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which runs its network of militant allies.

“The gap between the population and the state has become unbridgeable without major compromises," said Peyman Jafari, an expert on Iranian social movements at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. “I cannot see how, without major changes, the old guard can survive."

The decision Iran’s leader now faces echoes a similar one faced by his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He once described the prospect of a humiliating cease-fire with Iraq as drinking from a poisoned chalice. Still, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran had little choice but to halt fighting in 1988 after eight brutal years of war.

After Khomeini’s historic compromise and subsequent death, Iran entered the 1990s under Khamenei buoyed by economic growth, postwar reconstruction and the building of a welfare state with high levels of education and healthcare.

The first major revolt against the Islamic leadership occurred in 1999, when students protesting the closure of a reformist newspaper were violently suppressed. In 2009, up to three million people protested a contested election result in what became known as the Green Movement.

Since then, protests have flared up regularly. Each time, Iranian authorities have met them with swift, deadly violence. At least 2,600 people have been killed in the latest crackdown, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, the highest toll of any unrest during Khamenei’s tenure.

The government rarely responds to protests by making policy changes. But after nationwide protests in 2022 following the police killing of a young woman accused of improperly wearing her headscarf, Iranian authorities have frequently turned a blind eye to violations of the dress code in Tehran. The government has loosened other social restrictions too, allowing for live music and dancing in the capital.

Such steps don’t address the fundamental grievances of Iranians and mask the reality that Khamenei has fallen out of touch with the nation.

“No regime has the resources to fight the society, whose values have changed since 1979," said Ali Alfoneh, an Iran expert with the Arab Gulf States Institute, a think tank in Washington. When the Islamic Republic was founded, one in four Iranian women could read and write. Now, women are universally literate and make up a majority of university students.

“This is the tragedy of undemocratic modernizing regimes," Alfoneh said. “They change the society through education, but fail to adapt themselves to societal change."

Iran’s worsening economy is driving the protests, after being squeezed for years by international sanctions aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear activities. Cut off from foreign currency, trade and investment, the government is unable to control inflation and stop the depreciation of the currency, the rial.

Late last year, the economy went into a tailspin, putting pressure on regular Iranians in ways that eventually caused tensions to explode.

The currency tipped into a downward spiral. An attempt to clean up corruption by abolishing a heavily subsidized exchange rate, available to importers of foodstuffs and medical imports, caused an uproar among traders. A banking system propped up with printed money exacerbated inflation and started to crumble. The introduction of a $7 monthly handout drew only derision.

The capital suffers under a water crisis so dire that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in November said it might have to be evacuated. One of the most oil-rich nations on earth, Iran is no longer able to keep the lights on for its citizens 24 hours a day. In the afternoons, power suddenly grinds to a halt, even on thoroughfares in the busiest cities.

Pezeshkian appears to have given up.

“If anyone can do something, by all means go for it," the president told a gathering of students and academics in early December. “I can’t do anything. Don’t curse me."

The economic hardship has deepened at the worst possible time for Khamenei. Misfortune has piled on the supreme leader since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. In a series of wars that ensued, Israel pummeled Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran itself, striking the country directly for the first time ever. In late 2024, another key Iranian ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, fell to an Islamist rebellion.

Last summer, an emboldened Israel launched a blistering attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and missile sites, including residential areas of the capital as it attacked top military officers and nuclear scientists. Toward the end of the 12-day war, American B-2 bombers hit key Iranian nuclear facilities with massive bombs.

Even Iranians opposed to the leadership had long assumed that the militias acted as a guarantee against foreign intervention—that Iran couldn’t be attacked like Iraq or descend into civil war like Syria. The Israeli and American attacks—without losing a single plane—shattered that illusion, giving ordinary Iranians even less reason to back their leaders.

The Islamic Republic’s first leader, Khomeini, died at 86, less than a year after compromising to salvage his rule. Khamenei turns 87 in April.

Although he is aging, replacing the supreme leader isn’t simple. He isn’t a bureaucrat who can simply be swapped for another. A religious figurehead, he claims a pope-like status as the head of millions of Shiite Muslims around the world. The Islamic Republic justifies its existence through his personal authority, and Khamenei has over the decades weeded out any cleric who could rival him for the position.

Still, the establishment around Khamenei is preparing for a future after him. Despite his religious stature, Khamenei has increasingly become politically expendable, analysts say. He spent the 12-day war with Israel in a secure bunker, leaving it to politicians and military officials to speak to the nation. The Revolutionary Guard, founded to protect the Islamic Republic against enemies, is the country’s strongest political and economic force.

If Khamenei is unwilling to compromise to salvage the system, hard-line loyalists of the Islamic Republic could take action to either usurp or marginalize him, said Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

“We have to assume a majority of regime folks want to live after Khamenei is gone," he said. “The system is broken, and the alternative to big change at the top is mass violence, possible civil war and the splitting up of Iran."

Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com