The Endgame of the Conflict with Iran: How It Will Conclude
Summary
Three weeks into a joint American-Israeli military operation against Iran in 2026, analysts are focused not on the strikes themselves but on what comes after — whether the outcome will be a negotiated peace, prolonged conflict, or an internal collapse of the Islamic Republic. The article argues that the regime is already unraveling from within due to a combination of failed succession politics, repeated popular uprisings, a decimated military command structure, and a population that has largely welcomed rather than mourned the regime's weakening. A critical breaking point came when Iran's Assembly of Experts, under IRGC pressure, named Mojtaba Khamenei — the assassinated supreme leader's son — as his successor, a move that fundamentally contradicts the regime's founding revolutionary ideology and its own theological traditions around earned spiritual authority. The military campaign has strategically targeted the regime's coercive apparatus, including IRGC commanders and missile infrastructure, while Iran's desperate closure of the Strait of Hormuz — effectively strangling its own oil exports — signals a regime playing its final cards. The author concludes that Iran's downfall traces back to the catastrophic miscalculation of October 7, 2023, when proxy forces triggered a fundamentally transformed Israel, setting in motion a chain of events the regime could neither control nor survive.
Key Takeaways
- 1. The Islamic Republic appears to be collapsing primarily due to internal contradictions rather than foreign military intervention alone
- 2. Installing Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader through hereditary succession directly violates the regime's founding revolutionary and theological principles, severely undermining its legitimacy
- 3. Successive rounds of brutal crackdowns on popular uprisings (2009, 2019, 2022, 2026) have progressively eroded the regime's capacity to maintain loyalty among its own security forces
- 4. Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz represents a self-destructive last resort, as 90% of its own crude exports depend on the same waterway it is blocking
- 5. The root cause of Iran's current crisis can be traced to the catastrophic strategic miscalculation of enabling the October 7, 2023 attacks, which transformed Israel's security posture and triggered an overwhelming response