How To Lose Legitimacy In Ten Years

It's easy: Do everything wrong.

The Islamic Republic’s crisis of legitimacy began in 2009. By 2019, the regime was absolutely illegitimate. Iranians were not blind to the regime’s problems, but, as a part of the social contract, the regime had pledged that reform through the terribly regulated election system was possible.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in 2005. He was awful on a…