Donald Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities is a once-in-a-generation event that could transform the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, the effort to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and potentially the global order. While its full impact will take decades to understand, it raises a more immediate question today: Will this extraordinary act of war strengthen Tehran’s authoritarians or hasten their demise?
The direct origins of the U.S.-Iran conflict date back to the 1979 revolution that replaced Iran’s U.S.-allied monarchy with an anti-American theocracy. Since then the Islamic Republic of Iran has vowed to end U.S. imperialism and eradicate Israel. Now, the United States and Israel are waging a military campaign inside Iran with a stated goal of destroying its nuclear capability — though the regime’s collapse, while not the declared objective, would be a welcome outcome for both nations. But while military strikes may expose an authoritarian regime’s weaknesses, they rarely create the conditions necessary for lasting democratic change.
Long before Israel’s invasion and Mr. Trump’s strikes, the Islamic Republic resembled a zombie regime, ideologically dead but still repressive, much like the late-stage Soviet Union. Despite the country’s vast human capital and resources, Tehran’s theocrats preside over an economically isolated, socially repressive police state — elbow-deep in corruption and repression, yet ruling from the moral pedestal of an Islamist theocracy. The regime’s enduring slogans, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” — never “long live Iran” — have long made clear that its priority has always been opposing others, not uplifting its own people.
Given its refusal to countenance meaningful political reform, the chasm between Iran’s static regime and its dynamic population has arguably become among the widest of any society in the world. The regime’s ideological rigidity and nuclear ambitions resemble those of North Korea; the aspirations of its people for modernity and prosperity align it more with South Korea. The only way the government has been able to remain in power has been through relentless physical and digital repression.
Today, the regime most likely has the support of less than 20 percent of society, but up until now it has maintained a highly armed, organized repressive apparatus willing to kill en masse. By contrast, the regime’s far more numerous opponents are unarmed, unorganized and unwilling to die en masse. The state venerates martyrdom; the larger society aspires to separate mosque and state. This disparity has enabled the regime to brutally quash nationwide uprisings, including the Woman, Life, Freedom protests of 2022 and 2023.
When Iranians awoke last Friday to news that at least a dozen senior Revolutionary Guards commanders and nuclear scientists had been assassinated by Israel — killed in their bunkers and bedrooms with minimal collateral damage — many privately rejoiced. But as Israeli bombs began falling on Tehran, that initial wave of satisfaction gave way to fear, confusion and anger. The capital’s 10 million residents were warned — including by the U.S. president — to flee, even as some were urged by calls from outside Iran to rise against the regime. Independent human rights groups estimate over 300 civilians have been killed in the Israeli strikes.
Popular anxiety or outrage over war shouldn’t be mistaken for the Islamic Republic’s political revival. Rather than shift public opinion, Israel’s invasion and the U.S. strikes are in time more likely to amplify existing divides: Loyalists will have more ammunition with which to loathe America and Israel, while critics will see these events as yet another example of how the regime’s ideological obsessions bring disaster to ordinary Iranians.
History shows that military entanglements can either entrench or unravel authoritarian regimes. The Korean War (1950–53) strengthened Kim Il-sung’s grip over North Korea, laying the foundation for a dynastic totalitarian state. The failed C.I.A.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 helped Fidel Castro consolidate his nascent dictatorship. Saddam Hussein’s 1980 invasion of Iran rallied Iranians around Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fledgling theocracy.
But the opposite has also been true. While wars can offer a short-term sugar high for some regimes, rallying nationalistic fervor and deflecting domestic troubles, the effects can be fleeting. The Soviet Union’s disastrous invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 ultimately helped accelerate its decline, Argentina’s junta collapsed after its 1982 defeat in the Falklands War and Slobodan Milosevic was ousted following NATO’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. In Iran’s case, the four horsemen of the economy — inflation, corruption, mismanagement and brain drain — are chronic. Any nationalist unity is likely to evaporate, giving way once more to daily frustrations with clerical misrule.
If there’s a pattern, it’s this: Wars tend to strengthen revolutionary regimes in their early years, but military humiliations expose the brittleness of aging ones. Populations are more likely to rally behind existential wars than elective ones. Since its inception, the Islamic Republic has waged a war of choice against Israel — not one of necessity.
So just how brittle is the Islamic Republic, as it ponders how to respond to the United States? Jack Goldstone, a leading scholar of revolution, identifies five key prerequisites for revolutionary change: severe national economic strain; alienation and division among political and economic elites; widespread anger and injustice that fuel popular mobilization; a unifying narrative of resistance that bridges societal divides; and favorable international relations, including foreign support for the opposition and the withdrawal of foreign backing for the regime.
By this measure, the Islamic Republic appears deeply vulnerable, but not at risk of imminent collapse. As of now, there are no visible signs of meaningful splinters among the regime’s elites. No opposition leader or organization has managed to harness the mass societal discontent under a big tent, or to craft a unifying narrative broad enough to transcend Iran’s societal divides. While popular mobilization and elite divisions are intertwined and can happen fast, America’s recent misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq serve as a cautionary tale: No foreign power can fabricate the kind of national consensus Iran’s opposition will ultimately need to succeed.
Revolutionary movements become viable when they attract a critical mass of people, but a critical mass of people will not join them until they believe it is viable. While a critical mass of Iranians today may believe the Islamic Republic does not have a future, no opposition figure or movement has succeeded in channeling Iranians’ mass discontent toward a political alternative.
The five million Iranians living outside their country have yet to translate their passion and resources into meaningful support for the cause of freedom at home. There is no credible outlet to channel their energy: Much of the professional opposition remains trapped in the past, dominated by personality cults, online infighting and unresolved ideological grudges, rather than focused on building a unifying movement. Few in the diaspora are inclined to rally behind such dated factions, and those inside the country are unlikely to risk their lives to trade one personality cult for another.
And yet the twilight of 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s leadership — and the question of what follows — is fast approaching. Despite most Iranians’ desires to live under a tolerant, representative government that works for their prosperity, authoritarian transitions tend to be brutality contests, not popularity contests, often won by those with the greatest coercive powers. In Iran, it is military men, aspiring Iranian Putins and Sisis and not civilian reformers, who are the best positioned to seize control. According to one study, since World War II fewer than a quarter of authoritarian collapses have led to democracy — and those brought about by foreign intervention or violence have been even less likely to do so.
There is nothing that says Iran cannot be the exception to this rule. It has all the makings of a Group of 20 nation: an educated, globally connected population, vast natural resources and a proud civilizational identity. The United States, and much of the world, stands to benefit greatly from a post-Islamic Republic of Iran that is governed by national interest rather than revolutionary dogma. As Henry Kissinger once observed, “There are few nations in the world with which the United States has less reason to quarrel or more compatible interests than Iran.”
And indeed, many Iranians may have come to yearn for rapprochement with the United States. Mr. Trump’s decision to drop 30,000-pound bombs on Iran may leave a deep scar on a political culture shaped by historical grievances and a collective memory of foreign intervention — most notably the 1953 C.I.A.-led coup against Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, whose mythology has often eclipsed historical fact. Yet America’s postwar relationships with Japan and Vietnam — nations it once devastated — show that even the deepest wounds can heal.
But the most consequential battle for Iran’s future will be fought not between Iran and the outside world, but among Iranians themselves. That struggle is only beginning. Iran’s dynamic, modern population shows there is a light at the end of the tunnel. While outside forces may attempt to blast open the entrance, only Iranian leadership, unity and sacrifice can pave the way through it.
Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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