Referenews

In Israel, which is engaged in a long-running conflict with Iran, security officials have closely watched their archenemy struggle with the demonstrations. Israeli officials said they believe the unrest is likely to continue because protesters are focused fully on human rights and freedoms, rather than on economic anxieties.

It is notable, the Israeli officials said, that the protesters have called for the end of the rule of Supreme Leader

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,

and not just for changes to the system. They said the dissenting voices of women, especially those from Mr. Khamenei’s family, including his sister, have had an outsize impact.

“The regime has been shaken to its core,” one of the Israeli officials said. “Voices inside the regime understand things need to be done.”

The durability of the protest movement, and Iranian authorities’ violent response, has altered Washington and Europe’s policies toward Iran, quieting calls for diplomatic engagement with Tehran. Hopes have dimmed that the U.S. and Iran can revive the 2015 nuclear deal, while the European Union has imposed more sanctions on Iran over the protests.

While the U.S. and oil-rich Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf have long opposed Iran’s rulers, the protests temporarily sparked concerns in those countries that Tehran’s government would fall violently, some of the officials said. It would be a precedent that authoritarian governments, including those friendly with the U.S., don’t want to see, the officials said.

Still, the security officials said they had concluded that any risk to the Iranian government was no longer imminent.

The Biden administration has publicly hailed the Iranian protesters as heroes, but U.S. and Israeli officials said a lack of unifying leadership was diluting the impact of the movement. That sentiment is also shared by some European officials based in Tehran, who have told diplomats that the Iranian government isn’t at risk of being toppled soon by the protests.

Avril Haines,

the U.S. director of national intelligence, said this month that the risk of instability is likely to grow due to Iran’s high inflation and other economic problems.

“It is not something that we see right now as being an imminent threat to the regime,” she said in a Dec. 3 interview on MSNBC. “We see the regime continuing to crack down on this quite violently.”

“I think we are seeing what is going to be the cause of the end of the Islamic Republic,” said Heather Williams, a senior policy researcher at Rand Corp. and the former deputy national intelligence officer for Iran during the Obama administration. “They have been diagnosed with cancer. So then the question becomes do you have six months or six years. It’s not clear.”

Mr. Khamenei has blamed the protests on enemies including the U.S. and Israel and regional rivals such as Saudi Arabia, all of which deny any role in organizing the demonstrations.

President

Ebrahim Raisi

vowed in a Dec. 7 speech at Tehran University to “deal decisively with those who oppose the country’s security and tranquility,” according to Iran’s state media. He added that protesters and rioters were different, saying one sought “improvement,” while the other aimed for “destruction and insecurity.”

The Iranian government has embarked on a more discernible strategy for containing the protests in recent weeks, after struggling in the first two months. The government has executed two protesters who had been rounded up along with thousands of others, including one man who was hanged publicly by a crane in the eastern city of Mashhad.

The government has also used more military-style force against sources of unrest in Iran’s Kurdish regions, where the protests began following the funeral of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman whose death in September fueled the movement.

Human-rights groups say at least 400 protesters have been killed. The government puts the figure at around 200.

At the same time, Iranian officials have spoken about making changes to appease the protesters. Among them is the government statement that it has disbanded the morality police, which had long enforced Iran’s dress code that calls for modest clothing and a headscarf, or hijab for women. Ms. Amini died in morality-police custody.

Iranian protesters and their supporters have dismissed the changes as not going far enough. Some say enforcement of the mandatory hijab continues.

Israeli officials said they believe Iran will increase its militant activities in the Middle East as a way to divert attention from what is happening inside the country and to increase the morale of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the military force entrusted with protecting the country’s Islamic system of rule.

The government has publicized Russia’s use of Iranian drones to buoy spirits within the IRGC, the Israeli officials said.

Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com, David S. Cloud at david.cloud@wsj.com, Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com and Dion Nissenbaum at Dion.Nissenbaum@wsj.com