Donald Trump’s recent pronouncement that the war with Iran, which he termed “a little excursion”, would be over “pretty quickly” adds strength to the increasing consensus that the regime of the Islamic Republic will survive the latest combined American and Israeli assault.
But how long it will survive – or what might follow from the future disintegration of the regime – are significant questions which remain unanswered.
In the short to medium term it would appear that regime survival is all but guaranteed. There are a number of reasons for this. Despite the deaths of so many senior regime figures – including the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in the first day of the war – its basic leadership structure seems intact. The influential speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and the head of the supreme national security council, Ali Larijani, and many other senior figures remain in place. The swift, if somewhat surprising, selection of Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, as his successor can be read as signifying continuity in the midst of war. Nor is there any evidence to date of significant defections from the regime’s military or security apparatus. This is, at least in part, due to the extent to which the fearsome Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is embedded within the country’s economy, controlling – according to some estimates – up to 50 per cent of Iran’s wealth.
As a result, military commanders have a material stake in its survival that transcends ideological commitment. Indeed, reliance on the regime’s security apparatus is central to plans drawn up after last year’s 12-day war with the United States and Israel to deal with any threat of possible civil war. According to recent reports, sources within the IRGC have outlined preparations for any such scenario.
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After the 2025 war, both the regular army and the IRGC were given broader powers to operate independently in the event of loss of communication with central command, particularly in border regions of the country in which restive ethnic minority populations predominate. Special powers to use arms and operate independently have also been granted to the Basij, a paramilitary volunteer militia which numbers some 19 million members, one million of whom are active. Since the start of the current conflict, there have been reports of Basij forces operating in the streets of major Iranian forces in plain clothes and well armed.
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All of this tends towards the conclusion that widespread popular protest against the regime is unlikely any time soon. While hostility to the government is pervasive, lessons have been learned from previous protest episodes, each of which have been violently suppressed – the most recent in January of this year, with the deaths of tens of thousands of Iranians. Despite claims to the contrary, there is limited evidence of widespread support for the war within Iran. The organised opposition has tended to oppose external intervention, fearing the devastating consequences of this for the people of Iran. All of this bears out the results of a classified assessment carried out by the US National Intelligence Council a week before the American and Israeli attack began. Its conclusion was that the Iranian regime was unlikely to be toppled by an extensive assault and was “unlikely” to bring the country’s opposition to power.
Nonetheless, while the regime in Tehran has to date weathered every challenge to its survival from the eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1980s to last year’s 12-day onslaught, the current crisis may be different. The Islamic Republic has experienced the systematic elimination of senior political, military and religious figures, the destruction of military facilities and the neutering of its air defences, as well as serious attacks on its nuclear infrastructure. This represents a direct threat to the institutions that are designed to ensure regime survival at a time when it has never been more isolated in the region. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the defeats inflicted on Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza make for greater pressure on its domestic support bases, precisely when these are under unprecedented pressure. Unlikely as it may seem today, the combination of direct military pressure, regional isolation and threats to the country’s infrastructure could, in the future, place the regime under serious pressure.
The unruly collapse of the Islamic Republic would likely lead to an extended period of instability, a refugee crisis in neighbouring states, including Pakistan and Turkey, as well as a serious threat to the economies of the Gulf states
In the worst-case scenario, a combination of popular mobilisation, regional insurgencies and political instability could lead Iran down the path of fragmentation and violence that has been witnessed elsewhere in the region, such as Iraq, following the US-led invasion of 2003, or Syria and Libya after the 2011 uprisings in both of those countries.
Iran is a multi-ethnic country in which a large proportion of the population is not Persian. The largest minority is Azeri, comprising some 15 to 20 per cent of Iran’s population of 86 million; Iranian Kurds comprise another 5 per cent – 10 per cent; Baluchis and Arabs some 2 per cent – 3 per cent each.
The most organised opposition from among these comes from Iranian Kurdish groups. The Democratic Party of Iraqi Kurdistan has engaged in persistent armed struggle against the Islamic Republic in its pursuit of Kurdish autonomy. A small number of Azeri groups operate clandestinely within the country or from overseas seeking an end to cultural discrimination and the protection of human rights. In addition, several small Baluchi groups have fought government forces in the southeast of the country.
There is some evidence that both Israel and the US view such groups as possible armed antagonists of the regime in Tehran and have acted to facilitate their entry, at some point, into conflict. Air strikes have targeted IRGC and police headquarters in cities in the Kurdish region of Iran while there have been reports that the CIA was working on a plan to arm Kurdish fighters even if, in typically capricious fashion, Trump has been dismissive of the Iranian Kurds.
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What is clear is that any descent into chaos in Iran poses major risks for the global economy and, especially, for the region. The international impact of disruption to oil supplies from the region is already clear. The unruly collapse of the Islamic Republic would likely lead to an extended period of instability, a refugee crisis in neighbouring states, including Pakistan and Turkey, as well as a serious threat to the economies of the Gulf states.
Over the past two decades, the governments of the Gulf have sought to project an image of stability and modernity in order to move away from dependence on oil. The United Arab Emirates has been the flag-bearer of this transformational project, as Dubai and Abu Dhabi were developed as gateways for technology, finance and tourism. By 2025, non-oil sectors contributed 78 per cent of emirati GDP, the highest proportion of any Gulf state. Qatar has also sought to diversify its economy, acting as home to branches of leading western universities, turning Qatar Airways into a major international player, hosting the 2022 World Cup as well as the largest US military base in the region. All of this, already under threat as a result of Iranian attacks in the past week, would be near impossible to sustain in the event of prolonged instability in neighbouring Iran.
These scenarios are some distance away for now. The strong likelihood in the short term is of regime consolidation in Iran and a shift to even greater levels of authoritarian control. However, the bleak, if currently hypothetical, possibility of a fragmented, unstable and violent Iran, illustrates once more the dangerous inanity of Trump’s “little excursion” into the country
