What is often missed in discussions about Iran’s stalled revolution is that mass protests alone do not translate into regime collapse without a functioning underground and auxiliary that can set operational conditions for the guerrilla force to mobilize. From a UW perspective, popular resistance is only the surface layer; without robust clandestine networks capable of access, placement, and influence inside key infrastructure—energy, transportation, communications, internal security, and logistics—momentum inevitably plateaus. Protests can signal legitimacy erosion, but they do not deny the regime control. An effective auxiliary and underground enables freedom of movement, sustainment, intelligence collection, and selective disruption, creating the conditions for a guerrilla force to operate beyond symbolic action. Thus far, the regime’s success at penetrating, compartmentalizing, and preemptively dismantling these networks has prevented protest movements from transitioning into organized resistance. That’s why we haven’t seen significant progress despite the presence of widespread unrest. Without protected nodes inside the system to fracture regime control at decisive points, demonstrations exhaust themselves, security forces remain coherent, and the threshold required for a viable insurgent phase to move to a successful revolution is never crossed. We talked about how important these aspects of an insurgency are in the space last night and how the intricacies involved with overthrowing an entrenched regime are vast and misunderstood by most people, but it seems like something that should be discussed in far more detail. Working on an article to break it down.