While veteran hardliners are returning to key positions overseeing forces responsible for domestic repression, cobblestones are being ripped out of historic pedestrian areas and replaced with asphalt.
Municipal officials have described the work as traffic management, but Iran International reporter Mehdi Sepahvand’s reporting suggests it could make the areas easier for security forces to penetrate and control during unrest.
Analysts say the developments, against a backdrop of uncertainty over the country’s new leadership, suggest the state is thinking beyond the current war to the possibility of another confrontation at home.
The return of Hossein Taeb, one of the Islamic Republic’s most feared security figures, to command the Basij is perhaps the clearest signal.
Omid Memarian, a senior Iran analyst at the think tank DAWN, said Taeb’s return shows the state is prioritizing control of the population.
Photo of Hossein Taeb
‘An undeclared coup’
“They are very much nervous, concerned about people and their demands,” Memarian told Eye for Iran, adding that the leadership understands “the domestic situation can explode at any moment.”
Taeb, Memarian said, was brought back not to reconcile with Iranians, but to consolidate loyalists and signal that authorities are prepared to “crush any dissent.”
For Kamran Bokhari, a senior resident fellow at the Middle East Policy Council and strategic forecaster, the reshuffle raises a more fundamental question: who is making these decisions?
With Iran’s new Supreme Leader remaining unseen and unheard publicly, Bokhari questioned the extent of his authority and argued that a small group within the security establishment may effectively be running the system.
“The point is who is making these appointments?” he said.
Bokhari went further, describing the emerging arrangement as an “undeclared coup” by the Revolutionary Guards, in which he believes the IRGC is consolidating authority while preserving the appearance of a functioning constitutional system.
Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, offered a different reading, seeing a diffusion of power in the absence of a visible Supreme Leader capable of imposing decisions across the system.
Survival is not stability
Former CIA Iran specialist Mark Fowler said the Islamic Republic has absorbed severe military damage without collapsing.
“Surviving is winning for the Iranian regime right now,” Fowler told Iran International’s Eye for Iran.
But survival does not mean stability. With Washington seeking to intensify economic pressure, Fowler said there was no single inflation rate or economic threshold at which unrest became inevitable.
“It’s just a question of who cries uncle first,” he said.
Authoritarian governments can tolerate considerable hardship among their populations because their leadership is insulated from much of it, Fowler said.
“They’re more than happy to allow people to suffer,” he added.
Economic hardship does not automatically produce revolt. But the longer it persists, the more consequential the state’s ability to contain discontent becomes.
Beneath people’s feet
Perhaps the most striking sign cited by those who see preparations for future unrest can be found not in the leadership compound, but beneath people’s feet.
In central Tehran, cobblestones are being removed from historic pedestrian areas and replaced with asphalt.
The changes affect parts of central Tehran around District 12 and the Grand Bazaar, historically an important center of political mobilization, as well as areas near universities where students have repeatedly participated in protests.
Cobblestones can be dislodged and used as projectiles. Pedestrian streets also contain bollards, benches, trees and restaurant tables that can impede motorcycles and security vehicles while giving protesters places to congregate or seek cover.
Turning them into vehicle-accessible thoroughfares could change that equation.
“By changing these pedestrian zones into thoroughfares for cars, they are actually paving the way for swift action during protests,” Sepahvand said.
The changes, he added, create “plain sight and direct shooting range” for security forces.
Sepahvand said authorities have also put pressure on restaurants and gathering places where Iranians, including women appearing without mandatory hijab, have carved out small spaces of social freedom.
Those spaces allow communities to form, he said, something authorities understand can eventually translate into collective action.
“The government is sure that they are going to be facing more and more protests,” Sepahvand said.
The Islamic Republic is bringing veterans of repression back into senior positions, positioning the Basij for a greater domestic role and, according to Sepahvand’s reporting, altering public spaces in ways that could make future protests easier to suppress.
The Islamic Republic has survived the war so far. Its next test may come not from across its borders, but from the streets at home.