In parallel, there are the regime-loyal Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which includes the public security militia known as the Basij. These were originally formed by students protesting against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who also acted as a kind of morality police.
Since the revolution, the Revolutionary Guards have grown to a force that has surpassed the original one, and now operate with naval, air and space forces, as well as elite undercover Quds units. These have been described by retired US general Stanley McChrystal as a combination of Special Forces Command and the CIA - it is the Quds that coordinates the militant movements in the struggle against Israel (Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis).
However, as an anonymous Iranian official admitted to the Telegraph, Tehran has lost control of Yemen's Shiite Ansar Allah movement. "The Houthis have been breaking away for some time and are now the real rebels," the senior official said, adding that "they are not obeying Tehran as they used to."
To this day, the conventional Artesh army is seen by Shi'ite rulers as a historical relic with dubious loyalty to the rule of the Ayatollahs [the title of a prominent scholar in Shi'ite Islam, ed.] This suspicion has proved to be well-founded, as since July of this year several leading army officers have appeared to symbolically swear on the "flag with the lion and the sun".
Calls for refusal of obedience
At the start of the Iran-Israel shootings, which US President Donald Trump has christened the Twelve-Day War, the pro-monarchist New Iran party issued a warning to residents not to stay near Revolutionary Guards bases, which were to be the target of the first Israeli attack.
On 13 June, Pahlavi responded in the same way, calling on the soldiers to denounce their obedience to the regime and launch a revolt, and on the citizens to unleash a series of strikes and protests. "This regime and its corrupt and incompetent leaders do not value your lives or our Iran. Separate yourselves from them and join the people," he urged on the X network.
Similar statements came from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but a section of the army reacted to Pahlavi's words.
As early as 17 June, according to previously unconfirmed information, Pahlavi met with military top brass in the United Arab Emirates to jointly plan a "day after" scenario following the potential overthrow of the Islamist regime. The crown prince confirmed this two days later, adding that the structures of the Shiite regime were "collapsing at a dizzying pace".
At the end of the month, Pahlavi and his personal office launched a campaign in which the heir to the throne can be approached and denounce obedience to the rule of Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshqiyan. Just a week before, the numbers of soldiers leaving had begun to skyrocket, with deserters becoming the target of open harassment by the guerrillas.
By 5 July, at least 20 thousand members of the Artesh, the security apparatus or ordinary officials, Pahlavi and the New Iran Party later reported, had used this channel of communication. By comparison, the Artesh has about 340 thousand active personnel, the Revolutionary Guards about 125 thousand.
The aforementioned flag with the lion and the sun, which is used as a symbol of Shah's Iran and resistance to the Islamic regime, has recently been used by the more courageous members of the Artesh, whose aim is to overthrow the Ayatollahs. On 12 November, two soldiers unfurled a monarchist flag at a Tehran metro station named after 'Imam Khomeini' [Ruhollah Khomeini led the 1979 revolution, ed.]
On the same day, Air Force Colonel Ebrahim Aghaie Komazani called for a "million-strong" march of opponents of the Islamist regime to also bring Shah's flags. The colonel planted the same flag next to the speaker's platform.
"I call on the Iranian people to start a million-man march for transition from the Islamic Republic regime on Sunday, November 16, with the flag of the lion and the sun," Komazani declared.
That was also the day protests broke out and turned violent in the city of Karaj. Demonstrators set fire to cars or garbage bins and prevented the militias from "cleaning" the square.
The last defector so far was Colonel Sajjad Azadeh, a member of the ground forces, who on 13 November declared his disobedience to the theocracy and swore allegiance to the flag of the lion and the sun. He added that "great things are coming" and "this regime of lies, deceit and occupation will soon come to an end".
Living standards are crucial, falling waters are making the situation worse
As seen in the images from Tuesday, most of the demonstrators were not outspoken monarchists. They were generally health workers, nurses or elderly Iranians relegated to living in homes, all citing "delayed salaries", "declining living standards" or "16 years of unfulfilled promises" on housing affordability as the reason for the protests.
While Western media attributed the decline in water levels mainly to climate change, some also acknowledged a share of human responsibility. Indeed, for nearly 50 years, the theocratic government has failed to secure groundwater from leakage, contamination by seawater, and has built no water containment mechanisms in a country that is subjected to the "disappearance" of 80 percent of its drinking water annually.
On 20 November, Peseshqiyan admitted that the proposal to move the capital from Tehran to Makran - announced by government spokeswoman Fatema Mohajerani as recently as January this year - was becoming an inevitability. "We no longer have a choice," the president said.
As Scientific American recalled, Iran has been exploiting its groundwater resources in a crude way since 2008, mainly for current consumption and for agriculture. However, the process of pumping water to the surface was too brutal and instead of replenishing the reserves during rains, the emptied soil profile began to sink. This also prevented new reserves from being built up.
This has left Tehran's nearly ten million inhabitants at a point where the government is unable to provide them with a supply of the most basic chemical for life. The weakened soil has essentially deflated like a deflated balloon and is sinking at a rate of 35 centimeters per year, according to a recent study in the journal Science.
If it does not start raining again by early December, water will be rationed for Tehranis, Pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television quoted Peseshqiyan as saying. It also recalled that in a country of 90 million people, 19 water reservoirs were threatened by drought on November 12 - up from nine that Tehran reported just three weeks earlier.
With rainfall in Iran down 89 per cent compared to the 50-year average, the Pesekhian government has resorted to what is known as cloud-seeding, the process of releasing chemicals into the atmosphere that bind moisture from the air and turn it into raindrops. This process is mainly used by the Emirates and, to a lesser extent, China.
Farshid Wahedifard, a professor of civil engineering at the private Tufts University in Massachusetts, explained to Al Jazeera that without rainfall, the situation "will get worse", which will also have an effect on the "social" sphere.
"Water shortages are already causing tensions and protests that could escalate into wider social conflicts, especially as major economic hardships [rising inflation, unemployment, housing problems and the high cost of living, according to Al Jazeera] further weaken people's ability to cope," he added.
If the conflict between Artesh and the Revolutionary Guards also flares up against this backdrop, it is only a matter of time before the theocratic regime collapses. So perhaps Trump's words "Make Iran Great Again" will soon come to pass.
