On February 28, 2026, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the second supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, for nearly four decades, was assassinated in a wave of US-Israeli strikes around Tehran targeting senior Iranian officials. His death marks not simply the removal of a political leader but a rupture in the institutional architecture of a state built around centralised clerical authority for nearly half a century. The immediate question is not whether the regime has been shaken. It has. 

The more consequential question is what comes next. What is the future of Iran?

US President Trump framed the attack as a decisive mission: dismantle Iran’s military capacity, eliminate its nuclear ambitions and open the door to freedom for the Iranian people. Yet political history offers a sobering reminder. The fall of a leader is not the same as the fall of a system and the fall of a system does not automatically produce democracy. Stable governance rests on three pillars: coercive control, administrative capacity, and political legitimacy. Military decapitation can disrupt the first. It does not automatically generate the latter two.

If the current government survives in weakened form, reform is unlikely to follow automatically. Studies of regimes under siege show that external pressure often strengthens coercive institutions rather than weakening them.

Leaders frame foreign intervention as an existential threat. Nationalist sentiment is mobilised. Emergency powers expand. Dissent is criminalised. Political pluralism contracts. Iran’s historical pattern aligns with this logic. During the 1980s, internal dissent triggered sweeping repression. More recently, nationwide protests were met with lethal crackdowns and mass arrests. In moments of vulnerability, the system consolidated rather than liberalised.

If the IRGC and intelligence apparatus remain intact, survival may mean centralisation. Authority could shift further toward security institutions. Civil society could shrink further. The regime might emerge smaller but more rigid. There is a paradox at work: external intervention can unintentionally reinforce the coercive core of an authoritarian state.

If the regime collapses outright, the danger does not disappear — it transforms. The immediate threat would shift from authoritarian resilience to state fragility. Modern states are not sustained by leadership alone. They rely on functioning bureaucracies capable of collecting revenue, delivering public services, maintaining infrastructure and coordinating security. When central authority vanishes without a credible institutional replacement, fragmentation becomes likely.

Iran’s military structure makes this risk especially acute. The IRGC is not merely an armed force; it is a vast economic and political network embedded across strategic sectors of the country. It controls major industries, infrastructure projects and patronage channels. If top leadership is eliminated, mid-level commanders may compete to control territory, assets and revenue streams. Rival centres of coercive power can emerge quickly, each seeking to secure its position in an uncertain landscape.

Political scientists describe this pattern as an internal security dilemma: when central authority weakens, armed actors expand their control to protect themselves, inadvertently escalating instability. Iraq after 2003 offers a stark warning. Once centralised coercive power dissolved, militias proliferated and fragmentation became self-reinforcing.

Iran’s strategic location further heightens the stakes. Regional powers may support preferred factions, turning domestic instability into proxy competition. In such environments, legitimacy becomes contested. Political actors emerging after foreign intervention often struggle to claim authentic authority. Democracy requires internal ownership; transitions perceived as externally engineered rarely generate durable stability. Post-conflict research underscores a crucial point: successful reconstruction depends on institutional continuity. Germany and Japan rebuilt not simply because their regimes fell, but because administrative capacity survived and was redirected. Where institutions collapse entirely, as in Libya, governance vacuums emerge.

Iran’s institutional landscape is dense and layered. Political systems are path dependent; long-standing institutional patterns constrain how change unfolds. States built on centralised ideological authority do not transform overnight into pluralistic democracies. Air power can remove a leader. It cannot construct institutional legitimacy.

Three Possible Futures

Iran now stands at a structural crossroads. The trajectory it follows will depend less on the initial strike and more on how institutions, elites and society respond in the weeks and months that follow. Three broad futures appear plausible.

Scenario One: Survival and Hardening 

In this outcome, the core security institutions, particularly the IRGC and intelligence services consolidate authority and reassert control. Leadership may be reshuffled, but the coercive apparatus remains intact. Faced with external attack, the regime frames the crisis as a struggle for national survival. Nationalist rhetoric intensifies, dissent is portrayed as treachery, and emergency powers become normalised. Stability may gradually return, but at the cost of shrinking political space. Civil society contracts, surveillance expands, and opposition is criminalised. Authoritarian resilience prevails not through reform, but through adaptation and centralization.

Scenario Two: Fragmented Collapse 

If the system implodes without coordinated succession, fragmentation becomes the defining feature. Security forces splinter along factional lines. Militias multiply, each seeking territory and resources. Economic breakdown accelerates as revenue collection falters and infrastructure deteriorates. Regional actors may intervene indirectly, backing preferred factions and deepening instability. Governance capacity erodes and local authorities struggle to maintain order. In this scenario, the absence of coherent authority produces chronic uncertainty, humanitarian strain and prolonged instability.

Scenario Three: Managed Transition 

The most hopeful and most difficult path involves negotiated reform supported by surviving institutions. Bureaucratic continuity prevents total collapse of services. Civic leaders, professional associations and diaspora networks contribute to stabilisation and reconstruction. International coordination focuses on rebuilding rather than militarising competition. This path requires restraint from security elites and preservation of core institutions. Comparative experience suggests such outcomes depend on two rare ingredients: elite willingness to compromise and institutional survival sufficient to sustain orderly transition. Comparative experience suggests that the third path requires two rare ingredients: elite restraint and institutional preservation.

With all such possibilities, Iran’s future now hinges on forces no single leader can fully command. It will depend on the cohesion of security elites, the capacity of citizens to organise and mobilise, the resilience of the economy under shock, the degree of regional intervention and the strength or absence of international diplomatic coordination. Political outcomes are rarely shaped by intention alone. They emerge from the interaction of institutions, interests and pressures unfolding over time.

The most important distinction, however, is conceptual. Regime change is an event. State-building is a process. The first can occur through force; the second requires legitimacy, institutional capacity and patience. Durable democratic transitions tend to emerge from negotiated internal transformation, not abrupt external decapitation. Missiles may alter the leadership structure. They do not guarantee institutional durability. The bombs may fall for days, but the political consequences will unfold for decades.

So, what is the future of Iran? It is uncertain — profoundly, structurally uncertain. Not because we lack predictions, but because the forces now in motion exceed the control of any single actor. The future of Iran will not be determined simply by the removal of a supreme leader or the collapse of a regime. It will be determined by what survives the shock.

History makes one lesson clear: destroying power is easier than rebuilding order. Regime change can happen in a night. State-building takes years — sometimes generations. Missiles can eliminate individuals. They cannot manufacture legitimacy. Iran’s future will depend not only on who is removed from power, but on whether enough institutional capacity, social cohesion, and political will remain to build something sustainable in the aftermath. 

The end of a leader is an event but the birth of a stable state is a test.

Sanjida Bary is a doctoral fellow at the University of Illinois Chicago. She can be reached by [email protected].

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