It is now clear that the Iranian regime crushed the recent eruption of widespread protests through sheer massacres of people in the streets.
The regime’s shutdown of the Internet and curbing of phone services largely remain in place, but there is no evidence of significant demonstrations taking place since 11 January.
That was three days after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Basij auxiliary militia began unleashing heavy, indiscriminate fire on protests across the country.
The death toll is impossible to ascertain, but it is at least several thousand and could be over 15,000.
Tens of thousands of protesters may have been arrested.
Those figures are many times higher than the killings and arrests that quelled the previous large wave of anti-regime protests in 2022, which played out over several months.
The recent protests began on 28 December in central Tehran with merchants shuttering their shops and demonstrating when the national currency hit a historic low against the US dollar. Protests quickly spread across the country, with citizens from all walks of life joining in.
The Iranian economy has been reeling from steep budget deficits and drastic currency depreciation. Ordinary Iranians have struggled to put food on the table while contending with chronic electricity and water outages.
The regime initially expressed sympathy for the economic plight of protesters while taking a hard line on disorder.
As protesters increasingly called for the downfall of the regime, security forces responded with escalating bloodshed until the Internet was cut as outright massacres began.
Security forces have maintained a heavy presence on the streets ever since, with life still not back to normal.
The notoriously corrupt and incompetent regime has no answers for critical economic problems.
It was considered irredeemable by much of the public even before slaughtering citizens at a horrific scale even by its own bloody standards.
Terrorized though they may be, ordinary Iranians are desperate and may return to the streets in large numbers in coming weeks and months.
With demonstrations crushed, President Donald Trump on 14 January stepped back from his threat to bomb regime targets in support of protesters, an initiative that might have been ill-considered.
But in recent days he has suggested that he could carry out such attacks if the regime executes protesters.
The regime has threatened to respond to any US airstrikes by staging attacks against US military personnel in the region.
US bases in Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and even Jordan and Turkey conceivably could be targeted.
Iranian-orchestrated attacks on US civilians or those who could be mistaken for them are much less likely but cannot be ruled out completely.
The bottom line is that the crisis is not over, either for Iran or the region.
It should be noted that the one-off US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites and calibrated Iranian missile attack on US military assets at Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar in response last June led to commercial flight cancellations and delays across the Gulf Arab monarchies, a scenario that could be repeated.
Personnel may undertake routine travel to the Gulf Arab monarchies but should monitor regional developments constantly.
Iran should be avoided completely.
