Alaa al-Khatib

Originally published in Arabic, 13 March 2026

 

“Can the war bring down the Iranian regime?” sounds like a simple question. In practice, it may be one of the hardest questions in the region to answer honestly. This paper does not linger on the question in its naive form. The sharper version is this: can external bombardment, however intense, topple a regime that was built from the outset to survive under siege, to operate inside permanent crisis, and to reproduce itself even after major blows?

Leaked US intelligence assessments suggest the Iranian regime is not on the verge of collapse, and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the interim leadership retain their grip on the state. At the same time, other facts cannot be ignored. Iran entered 2026 already deeply exhausted internally: widespread protests in late 2025 and early 2026, a sharp economic deterioration, and visible erosion of social and political legitimacy. Several assessments describe this protest wave as the broadest since the 2022 Mahsa Amini uprising — yet it has not produced the conditions for a full systemic transformation.

We are left with a paradox. The regime is weak, but not fallen. It has been struck hard, but not broken. It is despised by large sectors of society, but still commands the coercive machinery of the state.

1. What Do the Studies Actually Say?

Pulling together the most recent published analysis, one trend stands out clearly: serious studies are not predicting an imminent, inevitable collapse. If anything, they suggest the opposite — a rapid fall is unlikely, while gradual transformation, internal conflict, or partial chaos remain live possibilities.

Brookings analysts have focused on the idea that the war may ultimately reach a political “off-ramp,” since the US administration itself has sent contradictory signals — at times speaking as though regime change were the goal, at other times effectively denying it. Brookings also warns that the regime’s survival, even in a “less terrifying” form, remains a serious possibility. A related Brookings piece is blunter still: even if the current leadership collapses, there is no guarantee the outcome would be better. The regime could persist in a more repressive form, or collapse into prolonged chaos, or give way to a harder-line leadership even less willing to make concessions.

Carnegie, for its part, emphasizes a critical comparative point: protests against hard authoritarian regimes rarely topple them, particularly when the repressive apparatus remains functional. Inside Iran itself, the brutal suppression of the December 2025–January 2026 protests likely killed or imprisoned a significant share of those most willing to confront the state directly.

The Washington Institute puts it in the most direct terms: bombs may weaken the Iranian regime, but they cannot build an alternative in its place, because the opposition is fragmented, repression has accumulated for years, and an air campaign alone does not produce an organized political transition.

2. Why Isn’t War Enough to Bring the Regime Down?

The Iranian regime is not simply a figure at the top. It is not Saddam Hussein or Bashar al-Assad, where removing the head might be imagined to automatically collapse the structure. Iran is closer to a multi-layered system: a supreme leader, a clerical establishment, the Revolutionary Guard, intelligence and security services, a politicized judiciary, a military-religious economy, and interlocking networks of interest. This is precisely why, even after Khamenei’s assassination, US intelligence assessments held that the leadership remained relatively cohesive and that the IRGC and interim leadership retained control of the state.

Beyond that, ideological-security regimes that have lived for decades under sanctions and external pressure tend to develop what might be called a “survival instinct under fire.” They do not collapse easily, because their institutional and mental architecture was built to function under permanent siege. This helps explain why some analyses describe Iran as capable of operating even on institutional “autopilot,” especially with the Revolutionary Guard controlling sensitive nodes of the state, the economy, and security.

External war can also produce a counter-effect: rather than immediately pushing people into the streets against the regime, it can push part of the population toward defensive rallying around the state, or at least defer the internal conflict in the face of an external threat. This is not an iron law, but it is a well-documented possibility in comparative politics, and more than one recent reading points to it.

So if the actual goal is to bring the regime down, what is the mechanism?

• Air power alone? Not sufficient.
• An internal armed uprising? No clearly capable force currently exists.
• A broad Kurdish uprising? Reuters, citing US intelligence reports, noted that Iranian Kurdish groups still lack the numbers and weapons for a sustained campaign against the state.

3. What About the Iranian Street?

One might ask: isn’t Iran boiling from within? The answer is yes — but boiling and collapsing are not the same thing.

The protests that erupted in late 2025 and early 2026 were large, fed by economic collapse, currency depreciation, and a spreading sense that the regime could no longer secure even a minimal standard of living. The Elcano Royal Institute described them as extensive and significant, but also noted that their intensity, organizational cohesion, and political structure remained uneven — and that they have not yet produced the conditions for systemic transformation.

International human rights reporting describes significant violence in the crackdown — deaths, injuries, and mass arrests — indicating the regime retains both the will and the tools to use maximum force to survive. Human Rights Watch documented the use of live ammunition and violent repression during the late-2025 protests, while the UN Human Rights Office pointed to a severe deterioration, including a near-total communications blackout in January 2026.

This is the Iranian paradox: social discontent runs deep, but the structure capable of converting it into a political alternative remains weak. This is exactly why so many studies describe the crisis as structural, while the moment of reckoning has not yet matured.

4. What Does Khamenei’s Death and Mojtaba Khamenei’s Rise Mean?

Simple logic suggests that assassinating the Supreme Leader should shake the regime to its core. What actually happened, according to available coverage and analysis, is that the regime moved quickly to manage succession and project continuity, with the Assembly of Experts naming Mojtaba Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader.

The question here is not only whether Mojtaba holds legitimacy. It is whether legitimacy itself remains the real source of power. Many readings suggest that real weight has shifted increasingly toward the Revolutionary Guard, such that the Supreme Leader — whoever holds the title — now operates within a broader security-military-ideological structure. Change at the top, therefore, does not necessarily equal a change in the nature of the regime.

This opens three possibilities: the new succession could reunify the elite; it could generate silent conflicts within power centers; or it could lead to a more militarized, less “clerical” system than before. Are we witnessing the continuity of the Islamic Republic, or its quiet transformation into a Revolutionary Guard republic wearing a religious face?

5. What Are the Realistic Scenarios?

Ranked from most to least likely, the picture looks roughly as follows.

Scenario 1 — Survival with internal adjustments. This is the scenario most present in current analysis. The regime emerges weakened but intact; it reorganizes its leadership, tightens repression, and possibly moves toward a limited compromise, a truce, or a strategic repositioning.

Scenario 2 — Survival in a more militarized form. The Revolutionary Guard becomes more central, while some traditional political and religious fronts are marginalized. This does not mean the regime falls — it means it hardens into a rougher version of itself.

Scenario 3 — Internal fracture within the elite. Not a comprehensive popular revolution, but a split or struggle among decision centers: security services, the Guard, the clerical establishment, the presidency, and economic networks. These scenarios do not always unfold quickly, but they are often more consequential than the street moment itself. Some analyses do not rule this out, though there are not yet sufficient indicators that it has reached a breaking point.

Scenario 4 — Chaotic collapse. This is the scenario Brookings and CSIS specifically warn against: the fall of the regime does not automatically mean the birth of something better. It could mean internal war, security fragmentation, regional interventions, and reverberations extending into Iraq, the Gulf, and beyond.

Scenario 5 — Organized political transition. This is currently the weakest of the scenarios, because it requires three conditions to converge at once: a cohesive elite — or one divided constructively between a camp of soft-liners willing to negotiate concessions and a hard-line camp that rejects this; an organized, unified opposition capable of presenting a credible alternative rather than scattered networks split between the diaspora and the domestic scene; and an internal guarantor (a genuinely independent military) or an external one able to ensure both sides honor any agreement. As it stands, the Revolutionary Guard does not represent a divided camp so much as a centralized structure with a unified interest, Iran’s opposition has historically remained scattered across currents that cannot agree on a single alternative, and the regular army (Artesh) is not independent enough to play the guarantor’s role. This places Iran closer to the model of hard authoritarian regimes — where the instruments of repression and the economy are fused into a single structure — than to the negotiated-transition cases seen in Eastern Europe or Latin America.

6. What Does This Mean for the Region?

Even if the regime does not fall, the war has already reshaped Iran’s surrounding regional environment. CSIS notes that Iran may well be losing the direct military confrontation, but it is waging a different war — against the global economy, energy chains, and transport routes. We have already seen the threat to Gulf corridors and infrastructure escalate in recent days.

This means the question is not only whether the regime will fall, but also how it will try to survive: through expanded maritime attrition? Through activating what remains of its regional networks? Through exporting the crisis to its neighbors? Through forced negotiations from a position of weakness rather than strength?

For the Arab region — Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon in particular — the most dangerous element of this picture may not be the regime’s survival or fall as such, but the vacuums that could open along the path between the two. Fragile states around Iran are always the first to pay the price of any turbulent transitional phase.

7. Conclusion

In short, the Iranian regime may be defeated, weakened, or reshaped — but its rapid collapse through war alone is not, at this stage, the most likely scenario. Not because it is loved, legitimate, or morally sound, but because it is a deep security-ideological system with functioning instruments of repression, survival networks, and an opposition that has not yet succeeded in becoming an organized alternative — while the war itself may produce counterproductive effects and open the door to a chaos no less dangerous than the regime’s survival.

The sharper question, then, is not: Will the Iranian regime fall? It is: What will change within it — and who will hold the power to steer that change: the war, the street, or the struggles inside?

 

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Selected References

• Aydıntaşbaş, A., Karlin, M., & Maloney, S. “Can Iran’s regime survive the war?” Brookings, 11 March 2026.
• “After the strike: The danger of war in Iran.” Brookings, 2–3 March 2026.
• Banco, E., & Landay, J. “Exclusive: US intelligence says Iran government is not at risk of collapse.” Reuters, 11 March 2026.
• Carothers, T., & Carrier, M. “Could mass protests in Iran topple the regime?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
• Zaccara, L. “Iran’s 2025–26 protests, resilience and political containment.” Elcano Royal Institute, 9 February 2026.
• Levitt, M. “Bombs Can Weaken Iran’s Regime. They Can’t Replace It.” The Washington Institute, 9 March 2026.
• Alterman, J., Byman, D., Yacoubian, M., & Todman, W. “Would Regime Change Solve the Iran Challenge?” CSIS.
• “Iran’s Real War Is Against the Global Economy.” CSIS, 11 June 2026.
• “Iran: Authorities’ Renewed Cycle of Protest Bloodshed.” Human Rights Watch, 8 January 2026.
• “Human Rights Council Adopts Resolution… on Iran.” OHCHR, January 2026.