The Khamenei regime will not be able to maintain control over Iranian society after the violent suppression of the latest wave of protests, one of the country’s leading film-makers has predicted.

“It is impossible for this government to sustain itself in this situation,” the director Jafar Panahi told the Guardian. “They know it too. They know that it will be impossible to rule over people. Perhaps their only goal right now is to bring the country to the verge of complete collapse and try to destroy it.”

Protests caused by an ailing economy have swept through Iran since late December and were met with deadly crackdowns by the security forces over the weekend, with reports of more than 2,500 people killed.

A internet blackout imposed last Friday, which blocked 95-99% of the country’s communication network, was a “sign that there would be a very big massacre on the way”, Panahi said. “But we never predicted that the crackdown would have such dimensions and numbers.”

Panahi, 65, spoke to the Guardian from the US, where he is promoting his latest film, It Was Just an Accident. The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival last year and is a leading contender for the 2026 Oscars in the international feature category.

Part revenge thriller, part black comedy, the French entry for the Academy award follows a group of Iranian former political prisoners who try to decide on whether to exact revenge on a man they believe to have tortured them in prison.

“What I have been depicting in this film is when the cycle of violence continues, then it becomes very difficult to stop it,” Panahi said. “Unfortunately, because of the savagery that is being carried out by the state, the fear is that this cycle of violence will continue.”

In December the director was handed a one-year prison sentence in absentia on charges of creating propaganda against the political system, but he has stated his intention to return to the country.

He has been jailed twice, for protesting against the detention of two fellow film-makers who had been critical of the authorities in 2022, and for supporting anti-government protests in 2010.

Panahi said while the collapse of the government led by the clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was inevitable after the latest bloody suppressions, its timing was impossible to predict.

“The regime will collapse, 100%,” Panahi said. “It is what has happened to dictatorship governments throughout history. When it will collapse, no one knows. We want it to be as soon as possible, in the next few minutes, but there are many factors that have to come together for it to happen.”

He warned western governments about engaging with the clerical regime as rational actors. “In other dictatorships around the world, you will see that there will be at least a few people who will act based on rationality and who will not let it get to this point,” he said, speaking via his interpreter Sheida Dayani. “But unfortunately in this system there is no rationality. All they can think of is crackdown and how they can stay in power even just one more day. The last thing they’re thinking about is the people.”

Some anti-regime protests, in Iran and among the Iranian diaspora in Europe and the US, have called for the return of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah. The Washington-based Pahlavi, whose late father ruled Iran as an autocratic monarch from 1941 to 1979, has called for people to take to the streets.

Panahi recognised that calls for the son of the shah’s return were “the voice that is coming out [of the protests] indeed”. However, he added: “As Reza Pahlavi as said himself, after the transition there must be a referendum in Iran, and that is when people will decide what type of government they want and whom they want to rule over them. During this period of transition, we should all be united.”

Asked whether Pahlavi could be trusted to oversee a post-regime transition, he said this would be for the people of Iran to conclude. “Whether we agree with Pahlavi or not, we know that the overwhelming majority of the population of Iran want the current regime to go.”