Collapse, Reform, or Continuity?
- Karim Chehadeh
- 3h
- 6 min read
The Surprising Resilience of the Iranian Regime and the Prospect of Regime Change
As a tenuous ceasefire takes hold, the aim of liberation and regime change that sat at the centre of the United States’ intervention in Iran has quietly been abandoned. Throughout the five-week conflict, defanging the deeply unpopular regime was seemingly replaced with a far narrower, although constantly shifting, set of goals. From supporting the hundreds of thousands of protesters who took to the streets in early February, official statements continuously oscillated between securing nuclear stockpiles, decimating ballistic missile capabilities, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Regardless, this has not prevented the President from maintaining that "We've had regime change if you look already, because the one regime was decimated, destroyed, they're all dead."
This assertion is fundamentally at odds with current assessments of the situation, and reflects a fundamental miscalculation that has consistently underpinned the administration's position on this regional conflict. In particular, early intelligence reports were optimistic that the opening gambit that took out Ayatollah Khamenei would push the Islamic Republic to implode. However, this quickly gave way to a growing sense of a system far more resilient than had previously been imagined. Indeed, reports from the international intelligence community cast doubt upon the ability of such strikes to disrupt the cohesion of Iran’s clerical leadership, and with it, the pillars of the regime’s stability. Hope amongst Iranians opposing the regime also began to wane as the conflict dragged on, with the civilian costs of war overshadowing hopes of a brighter future for the country. In the present climate, two questions arise: 1) Why did the Islamic Republic remain resilient to the Israeli and American onslaught? and 2) Has the prospect of regime change truly evaporated?
The “Great Man” Misconception: Iran’s Political Composition in Times of War
Too many times has the fallacy that decapitation leads to collapse compromised regional security. From Iraq to Libya, the “Great Man” theory, in which the removal of a regime’s figurehead miraculously creates the conditions for regime change, has hardly led to more than destabilization and protracted conflict. At its heart, the Trump administration’s approach to Iran has fundamentally neglected the multi-layered nature of the Islamic Republic and its immense networks of patronage, ideology, and repression that have allowed the regime to survive since 1979. Unlike Trump’s simplification of the matter, regime change occurs if, and only if, new leaders adopt a drastically different approach to governance; a possibility that is unlikely to happen at the current stage.
By design, Iran's political system is built to survive the loss of its central figurehead. The Ayatollah's immense religious and political significance undoubtedly makes him a high-value target whose elimination was calculated to shock the system into paralysis. However, it must be noted that he presides over, rather than constitutes, the architecture of the Islamic Republic. This architecture rests on three distinct pillars: Political (Parliament, Presidency, Cabinet, and their associated bureaucratic apparatuses), Military (the Armed Forces), and Ideological (the Office of the Supreme Leader, the Assembly of Experts, and the Guardian Council). These pillars do not stand in isolation. The Supreme National Security Council bridges the Political and Military layers; the Expediency Council binds the Political and Ideological; and most importantly, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fuses the Military and Ideological into a single, reinforced centre.
It is this last linkage that mattered most. Wars do not weaken the IRGC so much as elevate it, concentrating decision-making authority within an organisation that is designed to operate under wartime conditions. The IRGC's decentralised command structure, codified in its "mosaic defence” doctrine, was engineered to preserve operational and organisational coherence even in the face of significant losses. The fact that it has done so should come as little surprise. What was perhaps underestimated in Washington and Tel Aviv is that striking the head of the Islamic Republic merely shifts the centre of gravity downward. Consequently, it became apparent that the degradation necessary for power to devolve to more moderate leaders would have required a military confrontation extending far beyond the few weeks the Trump Administration repeatedly touted: a cost that ultimately proved unacceptable, as confirmed by the current ceasefire.
Pushing Back Against the Regime: The Lack of a Counterbalance
When decapitation fails, domestic social and political opposition takes centre stage. As made evident by the protests of this past February, the Iranian people’s desire for an alternative system of governance is backed by a willingness to confront the regime's security apparatus despite the risk of violent crackdown. Yet, several compounding factors limited the extent to which such confrontation could yield meaningful results as the bombs fell.
The first factor is ideological. The transfer of power to the IRGC was simultaneously accompanied by a deliberate hardening of the regime’s narrative. In their capacity as the claimed duopoly of global evil and “Great Satan”, the mounting destruction and civilian casualties of the American-Israeli campaign handed the regime the imagery it needed to frame the war as an existential battle against its longstanding enemies. In this climate, Iranian officials explicitly designated any domestic dissent during the conflict as treason, signalling a willingness for a crackdown that would make earlier episodes of repression look restrained by comparison.
The second is structural: Even with a willingness to protest, the lack of organisation and leadership is clear. Without direction, any movement against the regime will inevitably fail, especially in the face of a retrenched IRGC. Currently, Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah, remains the most visible opposition figure. However, his potential candidacy is undermined by the repressive legacy of the pre-1979 regime, his foreign residence, and his favour among the diaspora, which lacks a domestic counterpart. Without a credible figurehead from within Iran, organized opposition was, and still is, unlikely to emerge.
The third is geopolitical: Washington simply could not serve as a viable ally. Whatever support the Trump administration offered was conditional on the strategic relevance of regime change, which, as made evident by recent statements, declined substantially as the conflict progressed. For a protest movement facing the threat of violent crackdown, the withdrawal of external support, whether military or political, is quite literally a death sentence. Under these uncertain conditions, the critical mass required to upend the regime remained out of reach.
Taking Down the Regime: The Day After
From a military standpoint, the systematic elimination of Iran’s leadership must almost necessarily be accompanied by an erosion of the country’s so-called “resistance economy”. Iran’s remarkable fortitude in the face of sanctions and conflict is largely due to its ability to manufacture essential products it cannot import. Domestic production of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), pharmaceuticals, and, critically, energy has created a self-sufficient economy that insulates the regime and allows it to maintain the patronage networks and economic conditions required for its survival.
Recent strikes on Iran’s critical infrastructure demonstrate how central dismantling this system was to American and Israeli operational planning. Yet, while targeting the country’s economic backbone may have brought Iran to the negotiating table, the question of the “day after” remained conspicuously absent throughout the conflict. Specifically, if a more moderate government did somehow gain a foothold in the aftermath of the conflict, what would the Iran it inherited look like? Had attacks on infrastructure and key economic centres persisted, it would likely have been one immense economic distress. Such an environment would inevitably contain significant vacuums that may serve as spaces for surviving hard-line elements to exert their influence, compromising the stability of whatever alternative may have emerged from the wreckage.
A Once in a Generation Opportunity: Is Regime Change Still Possible?
Has the once-in-a-generation opportunity cited by Trump slipped away? Expectedly, it’s difficult to say. On one hand, the preceding analysis highlights a number of factors that made the prospect of a liberal democratic future for Iranians somewhat far-fetched. On the other hand, many of the factors discussed paradoxically operate in both directions: a demolished economy, decimated leadership, and ideological retrenchment are equally important for a society to reach the tipping point toward mass dissent and reform. The question of whether or not such an outcome materializes is reliant on a myriad of factors, including the stability of the ceasefire, the quality of remaining leadership, and the extent of the damage done to Iran’s security apparatus. As is often the case with much on the international stage today, however, the only certainty is that the status quo cannot hold forever.