Tehran's 'paper tiger' regime will fall, says exiled Iranian Nobel peace laureate

‘I predict the people will succeed this time around and this regime will be gone,’ says Shirin Ebadi, arguing that after war with Israel, Iranians see how weak their leadership is

LONDON (Reuters) — Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said on Wednesday that Iran’s war with Israel had revealed the weakness of its “paper tiger” leadership, predicting that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be toppled in a peaceful revolution.

She spoke a day after a shaky ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump took hold between Iran and Israel, ending a short but intense air war in which Israeli strikes seemingly targeted Iran’s senior leadership.

“The people of Iran and the world saw that and realized what a paper tiger this administration is,” Ebadi told Reuters in an interview in London, where she has lived in self-imposed exile since 2009.

Ebadi, a lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her work defending human rights, has been a staunch critic of the Shi’ite Muslim clerical establishment that has ruled Iran since 1979.

Security officials said Khamenei, 86, went into hiding during the conflict, which wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s military leadership and killed its leading nuclear scientists.

“The people will not trust a leader who hides during times of war,” Ebadi said.

This picture shows a residential building that was hit in an Israeli strike covered with a big Iranian flag, in Tehran on June 25, 2025. (ATTA KENARE / AFP)

She said previous protests, such as those around the death of Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in 2022, had shown mass public support for change.

“I predict the people will succeed this time around and this regime will be gone.”

There have been no signs of significant street protests against the Islamic Republic, with relief dominating the first response of many Iranians to the ceasefire.

A picture obtained by AFP outside Iran on September 21, 2022, shows Iranian demonstrators taking to the streets of the capital Tehran during a protest for Mahsa Amini, days after she died in police custody. (AFP)

While Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, a relatively moderate leader, has said the atmosphere of national solidarity during Israel’s attacks would spur domestic reform, hardline security organs have also moved swiftly to demonstrate their control with mass arrests, executions and military deployments, officials and activists have said.

“The regime is trying to compensate for its defeat by arresting the people,” Ebadi said. “Because it fears that now that it has been defeated in this war, the people will find more courage and take to the streets.”