Events in the Iranian city of Abdanan, where police officers applauded demonstrators chanting “Death to the dictator,” may appear to be an isolated episode torn from the broader context of street protests. In reality, such scenes are almost always symptoms of much deeper processes — the erosion of regime legitimacy and the loss of loyalty within the security forces.
History shows that when state representatives tasked with maintaining order publicly express solidarity with protesters, this signals not merely a crisis of governance but the beginning of a breakdown in political consensus. In Iran, this process is unfolding against the backdrop of the tenth day of mass protests that have spread across bazaars, universities, and residential neighborhoods. Despite repression, fatalities, and thousands of arrests, the protest movement has not weakened. On the contrary, it demonstrates a resilience typical of societies in which fear ceases to function as an effective instrument of power.
External intervention only reinforces this dynamic. The appeal by the United States to Iranian society, delivered in Persian, matters less for its substance than for its symbolism: Washington is publicly framing the conflict in moral terms, appealing to notions of justice and freedom. Such signals are rarely neutral; they are embedded in a broader strategy of pressure on regimes whose legitimacy has already been undermined from within.
Harsh statements by American politicians, including personal threats directed at Iran’s supreme leader, merely underscore the intensity of the moment. More important, however, is something else: the world has entered a phase of deep turbulence in which not just individual regimes but entire alliance architectures are collapsing. We are witnessing the gradual weakening of states whose foreign policies for decades were built on power projection and reliance on partners bound less by institutional interests than by ideological proximity and shared value frameworks.
For Russia, this means the loss of key pillars beyond its immediate region. After the erosion of the Syrian track, the Latin American vector has also come under question. Venezuela, which for many years served Moscow as a symbol of geopolitical presence in the Western Hemisphere, proved vulnerable precisely at the moment when real rather than declarative support was required. Once again, the Kremlin confined itself to rhetoric, unable or unwilling to translate allied statements into effective guarantees.
Notably, signs of this erosion are visible not only overseas but also within Russia’s immediate sphere of influence. Armenia, long regarded by the Kremlin as a core ally in the South Caucasus, is entering a phase of internal restructuring in which traditional channels of external influence are being dismantled. The conflict surrounding the Armenian Apostolic Church and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s steps to dismantle the old elite foundations point to an effort to reduce dependence on Moscow. In this sense, this is not a one-off episode but a symptom of a broader process — Russia’s loss of its ability to retain allies even in regions it once considered zones of guaranteed influence.
A similar logic applies to Cuba, which in Washington is increasingly described as the next potential pressure point. In effect, the United States is demonstratively returning to a classical understanding of spheres of influence, openly asserting its dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The illusion of the end of American hegemony, embraced by many — including segments of the Russian elite — is rapidly dissipating.
Against this backdrop, a central question naturally arises: who will be the next link in the chain of collapsing alliances? Iran and Cuba are the most obvious candidates. What is unfolding points to a more fundamental shift: the day when Moscow finds itself in profound isolation is rapidly approaching. Russia risks losing all of the allies into which it invested billions over many years — not for development, but for the preservation of influence and the pursuit of destabilization.
Magsud Salimov
