Abu DhabiCNN — 

The latest wave of protests in Iran is perhaps one of the longest-running challenges the Islamic Republic has faced in recent years.

Over the past two months, the government has cracked down hard on demonstrators, leading to the death of at least 326, according to Iran Human Rights, an NGO based in Norway. More than 1,000 have been charged in connection with the protests. On Sunday, an Iranian court issued the first death sentence to a protester convicted of “enmity against God” and “spreading corruption on Earth” for allegedly setting a government building on fire.

So far, the regime remains intact with no signs of cracks in its foundations.

But the Iranian security apparatus hasn’t always been so sophisticated in quashing uprisings, analysts say. The Islamic Republic itself was the product of a revolution, lessons from which it appears to be applying today.

During that revolution, in 1979, the security apparatus was “largely cohesive but extremely overstretched,” says Trita Parsi, vice-president of the Quincy Institute in Washington, DC.

Iran’s previous regime, ruled by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, relied primarily on its powerful military to contain the uprising that eventually led to its downfall, analysts say. The military ultimately failed to contain the protests.

One of the main factors that led to the 1979 revolution’s success was the military’s declaration of neutrality, said Afshon Ostovar, associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. That was the ultimate blow to the Shah’s prime minister.

On February 11, 1979, the Shah’s last Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar resigned after the Iranian army refused to quash the protests, and called its troops back “to prevent further bloodshed and anarchy,” the New York Times reported at the time. It was a revolutionary win for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Shiite cleric who went on to lead the new regime.

Analysts say it was that over-reliance on a single security force that contributed to the Shah’s ouster, and the rulers in Tehran are wary of making the same mistake

The creation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a parallel security institution to the national army was meant primarily to protect the revolutionary regime and its leaders, thus preventing the army from accumulating too much power. Today, it is seen as a deep state that is a more powerful force than the army and has a vast business empire that plays a vital role in the country’s economy.

“The [current Iranian] regime knows that it was the military’s declaration of neutrality in 1979 that allowed the revolution to succeed,” said Ostovar. “They also know that acts of lethality fueled the fire of the protests.”The violence in Iran today is reminiscent of the months preceding the 1979 revolution. Parsi says that uprising wasn’t a peaceful one either .