Iran’s Crises Raise the Question of the Regime’s Fate

The year 2025 was Syria’s year, as the country lived for the first time in half a century without Hafez al-Assad or Bashar al-Assad, that is, without a minority regime, sponsored by Israel, which had controlled the fate of Syrians first through its repressive apparatus and later by relying on external powers to prevail over its own people.

For the first time as well, Iran’s “Islamic Republic” withdrew from Syria, a development that carries major implications for the regional balance, especially since Syria under the Assads had come to resemble an Iranian colony implanted at the heart of the Arab world.

Yet focusing on Syria, and on whether it will pass through 2026 without major upheaval, should not obscure another reality: the chain of events triggered since the “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack launched by Hamas against Israeli settlements around Gaza on October 7, 2023, has created conditions ripe for questioning the fate of the Iranian regime itself and whether it can reach the end of 2026.

This question is legitimate in light of several factors that place the destiny of the regime established in 1979 squarely on the table. One must first consider the state of Iran’s economy, while recalling that the Soviet Union collapsed primarily for economic reasons, after lasting from 1917 until the end of 1991.

The exchange rate of the Iranian rial offers a stark illustration of the depth of the economic crisis afflicting the “Islamic Republic.” In the final days of the Shah in 1979, it took roughly 70 rials to buy one U.S. dollar. Today, the dollar trades at around 1.4 million rials. The contrast is striking and reflects the economic failure of a regime that has persisted, from its very inception, in an open confrontation with the United States and the West at large, beginning with the November 1979 hostage crisis, engineered to eliminate any reformist or liberal influence within the new power structure. “Students” affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards held U.S. embassy diplomats in Tehran hostage for 444 days.

Several points deserve close attention at this stage. They help clarify the current condition of the Iranian regime and the crises it is enduring, crises that could lead to its demise, much as the Soviet Union collapsed rapidly once the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989.

One must first address the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in May 2024 in a helicopter crash whose circumstances remain unclear. The official narrative attributes the accident to poor weather conditions during the takeoff of an aging American-made helicopter from a border area near Azerbaijan. Yet these explanations have not dispelled suspicions that Raisi was deliberately eliminated because of his pivotal role in maintaining regime cohesion. He maintained strong ties with the forces upon which the system rests and from which it derived its protection. Raisi was the only figure capable of coordinating these forces, whose mission was to suppress any popular uprising, even through violence.

Since Raisi’s disappearance, and before him that of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, the regime has lacked a central figure with sufficient influence to manage a transition phase in the event of the disappearance of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, weakened by age and illness.

Soleimani, assassinated by the United States in early 2020, was the supreme commander of all Iran’s regional instruments, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen, and the sectarian militias affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards in Iraq. Ebrahim Raisi had filled part of the vacuum left by Soleimani, to the extent that today there is no one in Tehran capable of playing an effective role in organizing an anticipated transition, whether after or even before Khamenei’s departure.

More importantly still, the “Islamic Republic” cannot avoid paying the price for the wars it waged in the aftermath of the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” having wagered that these conflicts would ultimately serve its interests. Iran lost the Lebanon war triggered by Hezbollah the moment it opened the southern front against Israel. It lost Syria as well, following a series of mistakes by Bashar al-Assad, including allowing Iran to transfer precision missiles to Hezbollah for use from Lebanese territory.

Iran has lost every war it believed it could exploit to position itself as the regional actor holding the key to either expanding or containing the Gaza war. By mid-2025, the conflict had moved inside Iran itself, particularly as the United States, Israel, and Europe reopened the nuclear file, alongside mounting concerns over Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities.

In short, the “Islamic Republic” is no longer able to adapt to the transformations the region has undergone. It has neither grasped their meaning nor understood their implications, having relied since its inception on a policy of exporting its internal crises beyond its borders.

By the end of 2025, the “Islamic Republic” had lost its ability to escape its own crises, most vividly expressed by the collapse of the national currency. Do Iran’s allies and followers, particularly in Lebanon, grasp this reality, which Iranian officials themselves, foremost among them President Massoud Pezeshkian, still seem unable to acknowledge?

In conclusion, Iran’s current crises are multiple and unprecedented. Above all, they are crises of regime. They stem from the system’s inability, as 2026 approaches, to reconcile with itself, with the logic of numbers, and with regional and international realities, after losing several wars, from Gaza to Lebanon to Syria, wars whose cost it continues to refuse to bear.