Following the launch of air strikes on Iran on February 28, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli military operation. Several other key political and military figures were also eliminated. Despite these significant losses, however, the regime remains in power. Moreover, Iran has retaliated by striking Israel as well as military and civilian targets in neighboring countries. The war now appears likely to drag on for at least several more weeks, and without large-scale ground operations, the allies—especially Israel and the United States—will not be able to achieve their primary objective: regime change.
This raises a critical question: what comes next? What consequences will this war have for the participants, for countries in the region, and how might it affect Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s interests, and international security more broadly?
Drawing on open-source information and discussions with sources from countries in the region, this analysis seeks to address these questions by outlining possible development scenarios for the ongoing war between Iran and the U.S.-Israel alliance.
The Current State of the Islamic Regime and the Prospects for Regime Change
After more than ten days of conflict, the war in Iran shows no signs of ending quickly. It has not been the short, decisive operation seen recently in Venezuela. Although Khamenei and several other members of the ruling elite have been killed, the Islamic regime has not collapsed. While authoritarian, the Iranian system is not the same as many other Middle Eastern regimes. It is not fully personalized like a monarchy or classic dictatorship; instead, its high-level decision-making resembles the Soviet Union’s Politburo model. It is also relatively decentralized. Moreover, the regime appears to have prepared for the post-Khamenei era. So far, there are no clear signs of open divisions within the top elite.
It should not be forgotten that since its founding in 1979, the regime has relied on fighting «enemies of the Islamic Republic» as one of its core ideological pillars, alongside religious narratives. By declaring the export of the Islamic revolution as official state policy from the outset, the regime has accumulated decades of experience in asymmetric warfare strategies and tactics to confront stronger adversaries. Iran’s economic and technological limitations have further pushed it toward asymmetric approaches since the 1980s.
In the current conflict, Iran is behaving like the weaker party in an asymmetric war: it is targeting the economies and societies of neighboring countries to maximize the broader impact of the fighting. Tehran also appears to believe that a prolonged war will wear down public opinion in the United States and Israel, amplifying domestic anti-war sentiment and opposition to the military campaign. If large-scale ground operations are launched but fail to achieve rapid success, Washington and Tel Aviv could face serious domestic political challenges—especially with upcoming elections to the U.S. Congress and Israel’s Knesset. Official statements from U.S. and Israeli leaders suggest there is still no clear plan for what comes next, how the war ends, or what the future of Iran should look like.
Although most of Iran’s air defense systems and naval fleet have been nearly destroyed, its land forces—particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s most important pillar for survival—retain significant capacity to suppress internal protests, as they have done repeatedly since the 1980s. It is increasingly doubtful that local protests alone, without substantial external military intervention, could topple the regime in the short term. While Iran’s long-range air and missile capabilities have been severely degraded since February 28, it still possesses short-range missiles and drones capable of striking neighboring countries. Notably, Iran’s air defenses were already relatively weak even before last year’s initial U.S.-Israeli strikes. To deter a possible ground invasion, Iran is now targeting any accessible assets, including civilian airports in neighboring countries that do not even host American military bases.
Possible Development Scenarios
A Successful Internal Revolution
Many Iranians opposed to the regime may now be waiting for a «magic bullet,» similar to what happened with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq in the early 2000s. For an internal regime change in a country like Iran, however, a critical mass of people would need to be willing not only to die but also to actively fight the IRGC. Achieving this would likely require large-scale military operations by the United States and its allies—and those operations would need to be swift and decisive.
Supporting Proxy Military Groups with Allied Air Cover
At present, Israel—and possibly the United States—appears to be considering support for ethnic groups inside Iran to further weaken the regime. Plans to back Iranian Kurds in seizing border areas, for example, carry significant risks. While Iran’s ethnic map is diverse, decades of brutal retaliation by both the Islamic regime and the previous Shah’s government have taught Iranians to avoid direct confrontations with state forces. For now, most groups seem to be waiting to see whether the regime holds or collapses. Moreover, neither Türkiye nor Iraq is eager to encourage separatism among ethnic groups that straddle their own borders (as well as those of Syria and Iran), and both have voiced reservations about any insurgency. Supporting such uprisings could easily backfire, fueling Persian nationalism and rallying support around the Islamic regime—or other anti-American forces. Kurdish leaders, meanwhile, remain wary of being «betrayed» again, as they feel happened in northern Syria after years of serving as the U.S.’s main partner there. A widespread belief in Iranian society, rooted in historical experience, holds that foreign powers ultimately seek to control Iranian oil. Efforts to use ethnic militias, such as Kurdish movements, to force regime change could therefore produce the opposite effect: consolidating the Persian majority behind the regime.
A New Syria? Chaos or a Negotiated «New-Old» Regime?
One possible outcome is a weakened, fragmented Iran engulfed in prolonged clashes among various political-military groups, largely divided along ethnic lines. What might begin as ideas of federalism could devolve into a brutal civil war in a country with no clear territorial boundaries between ethnic groups and a strong tradition of Persian nationalism. In such a scenario, external actors—including the United States, China, Russia, Türkiye, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel—would likely back different factions to advance their own regional interests. The countries most severely affected would be smaller neighbors, particularly in the South Caucasus and Central Asia.
A more realistic scenario might involve negotiations with a coalition of reformists and conservatives from the current regime. Regional countries and major powers (the U.S., China, Russia) could then deal with a more predictable and negotiable government in Tehran. For now, however, starting such talks appears difficult.
Continued «Salami» Air Strikes
Another possibility is a prolonged campaign of periodic air strikes aimed at steadily weakening the regime in the hope that, eventually, it and its supporters will become too feeble to suppress protests—leading ultimately to a protester-led victory.
How Might the War Affect International Security?
Russia
Although Russia maintains a strategic partnership with Iran—and the two countries have officially upgraded it to a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement—Moscow cannot and does not want to provide direct military support to Iran in the war. There are reports that Moscow supplies some targeting information to the Iranian military, but Russia has not crossed U.S. red lines on Russia-Iran military cooperation. In particular, Moscow has not provided Tehran with sophisticated air-defense systems following the Israel-U.S. airstrikes in 2025. Russia has not delivered major strategic air-defense systems (such as the S-400 or additional S-300 batteries) to Iran after the U.S.-Israel strikes, though it has reportedly provided limited air-defense assistance (Verba MANPADS) and other support (such as Krasukha electronic-warfare systems).
Nevertheless, Moscow remains concerned about the possibility of regime change in Iran, despite the fact that relations between Russia and Iran are not always smooth. Moscow’s primary worry regarding regime change is the opportunity it would create for the United States to strengthen its position in Iran and the risk of losing a regime that already has established close ties with the Kremlin.
At the same time, if the war becomes prolonged, it could play into Moscow’s hands. First, Russia could use that time to gain tactical advantages in Ukraine while the United States focuses primarily on Iran. Moreover, now that Russia has established its own UAV production—after previously importing those systems from Iran—it no longer depends on Iran for the war to the same extent as it did a few years ago.
However, if U.S.-Israel operations succeed and lead to a new regime, Moscow could lose significant elements of its involvement in key Iranian strategic economic projects. Most importantly, Russia’s strategic goals tied to the International North-South Transport Corridor would come under the control of a Washington-friendly government in Iran. On the positive side for Russia, the war has driven up crude oil prices, which benefits the Russian economy.
China
Iran holds some of the world’s largest proven oil and natural gas reserves—ranking third in oil and second in natural gas in 2023. It was the fourth-largest crude oil producer in OPEC in 2023 and the third-largest dry natural gas producer globally in 2022. In recent years, Iran has significantly increased crude oil exports, primarily to China. Between 2020 and 2023, Iran raised output by about 1 million barrels per day (b/d), with exports to China growing by nearly 870,000 b/d. According to Kpler data, China has purchased more than 80% of Iran’s shipped oil in 2025, averaging 1.38 million b/d last year—about 13.4% of its total 10.27 million b/d seaborne imports.
While losing influence over Iranian oil would not immediately cripple China (especially given its imports from Venezuela and Russia), it could have long-term implications for Beijing’s position in its economic rivalry with Washington. The situation echoes Cold War concerns: as U.S. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger warned in 1982 about potential Soviet control of Middle Eastern oil, it «would mean the end of the world as we have known it since 1945».
India
For India, Iran is important both as a source of affordable oil and as a geographic link for land routes to Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Russia, and Europe via the International North-South Transport Corridor. Nearly half of India’s crude oil imports, along with substantial liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) shipments, normally pass through the Strait of Hormuz—now effectively closed by the conflict. The Middle East accounts for 17% of India’s exports, supplies 55% of its crude oil, and generates 38% of its remittances. A widening war in the Gulf could therefore disrupt energy supplies, remittance flows, and India’s delicate diplomatic balancing act between Washington, Tehran, and the Arab Gulf states.
A prolonged war would also affect the global economy. While the closure of the Strait would harm Iran’s own trade, sustained disruption could drive international oil prices sharply higher as early as April, with ripple effects on world economies—including the European Union.
A better resolution would be the start of new negotiations—though dealing with Iran has never been easy, even before the Islamic Revolution. In the 1950s, when U.S. representatives Ambassador Averell Harriman and oil affairs director Walter Levy negotiated with Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, other officials, and religious leaders, the sense of shifting between reality and fantasy was so strong that Levy ordered a copy of Alice in Wonderland from Washington as an unofficial guidebook for what might lie ahead (Yergin 1991, p. 442).
Hopefully, Alice in Wonderland will not be required reading again—this time for navigating the aftermath of the current war.
Please note that the views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of the College of Europe.
