Iran is once again engulfed in mass protests. The regime is cracking down violently. And intelligence agencies around the world are asking the same question they asked in 1978: Is this it?
The track record of predicting revolution isn’t encouraging.
The Infamous 1978 Assessment
On The Rest Is Classified, former CIA analyst David McCloskey and intelligence correspondent Gordon Carrera examined one of the most embarrassing predictions in intelligence history:
“Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation.”
The CIA’s analytic division wrote that in August 1978. Five months later, the Shah fled the country. The regime collapsed shortly after.
“An Island of Stability”
The failure wasn’t limited to Langley. On The Rest Is History, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook set the scene with President Jimmy Carter’s infamous toast to the Shah on New Year’s Eve 1977:
“An island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” Carter was celebrating America’s closest regional ally—just days before the revolution that would consume his presidency began.
What They Missed
One crucial piece of intelligence was simply absent: the Shah was dying.
The Shah had lymphatic cancer. Nobody in the U.S. intelligence community knew. He was an American ally—and they missed that he was terminally ill. That single missing fact shaped everything that followed.
The Anchoring Bias
But the deeper problem wasn’t missing data. It was psychology. Intelligence analysts were anchored to a mental model that no longer matched reality:
“The Shah is strong and the opposition is weak and divided.” Analysts held onto that framework even as events contradicted it—until well past the point of no return.
The parallel to today is uncomfortable: Iran’s security forces appear coherent and loyal. The opposition appears fragmented. But as McCloskey notes: “You could make the same case about Iran today.”
Why This Time Might Be Different
On Verdict with Ted Cruz, Senator Cruz argued that the current moment represents something unprecedented—a potential cascade across three hostile regimes:
Iran, Venezuela, Cuba—Cruz believes all three could fall within six months. He compared the potential impact to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Is that overly optimistic? Perhaps. But there’s one undeniable difference from 1979: this time, the American president is explicitly calling for regime change.
Trump had never gone that far before—not in his first term, not until now. The explicit statement that “it is time for a new government in Iran” represents a significant escalation.
The Obama Contrast
Cruz drew a sharp contrast with how the Obama administration handled the 2009 Green Movement protests:
Iranians in the streets were literally chanting “Obama, be with us”—and the administration stayed silent, prioritizing its diplomatic opening to Iran.
Whether you view that as prudent restraint or a missed opportunity depends on your politics. But the contrast with Trump’s approach couldn’t be starker.
Can You Predict Revolution?
The honest answer, according to the intelligence professionals: probably not.
Revolutionary situations are inherently chaotic. The information that matters most—like a leader’s secret illness, or the moment when security forces decide not to fire—often can’t be known in advance.
What intelligence agencies can do is identify the preconditions: economic stress, elite fragmentation, loss of legitimacy, security force cohesion. Iran checks several of those boxes today.
But whether the regime survives or falls? That may only be obvious in retrospect—just like 1979.
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