Iran is not Syria. Iran is not Libya. And treating it as either is a category error. Those countries collapsed because the state was the regime. Remove the ruler, and the country dissolved with him. Iran is the opposite. Iran is a nation first. Its national identity does not depend on the Islamic Republic. If anything, the Islamic Republic depends on suppressing that identity. That is the core difference. Iran has a deep, shared sense of who it is. A common language, as old as time itself. A continuous history spanning over thousands of years. An ancient civilizational self-awareness that long predates any ideologies. People of Iran don’t ask what future Iran should be. They know what it is. This matters when regimes fall. Syria fractured along sectarian lines because sect was the organizing principle. Libya fragmented along tribal lines because the state never outgrew tribal rule. Iran, by contrast, is unified against sectarianism imposed from above. The Islamic Republic rules despite the nation, not through it. That’s why protests in Iran recur with such consistency. Same slogans. Same demands....