After Khamenei

Five Scenarios for Iran and How Washington Can Shape Iran's Post-Conflict Future

Mar 01, 2026

Fault Lines | March 1, 2026

On the morning of February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury — the most consequential joint military campaign against Iran since the Islamic Revolution. Within hours, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was dead, killed by an Israeli strike on his Tehran compound during a meeting with senior advisers. The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the defense minister, the army chief of staff, and the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council were killed alongside him. Iran’s response was immediate and indiscriminate: missiles and drones targeted Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan. The Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly a fifth of global oil transits daily — was effectively closed to commercial traffic. As this article goes to publication, the strikes continue.

The killing of Khamenei represents the single most consequential blow to the Islamic Republic since its founding in 1979. For nearly four decades, Khamenei served as the apex of a political system deliberately designed to concentrate ultimate authority in one person — the Supreme Leader, who held final say over the armed forces, the judiciary, the intelligence services, the state broadcasting apparatus, and the strategic direction of the nation. No successor was publicly designated. The constitutional mechanism for succession — selection by the 88-member Assembly of Experts — has never been tested under conditions of active war, decapitated military leadership, and a mobilized population that was already in the streets before the first bombs fell.

The crisis did not begin on February 28. It began on December 28, 2025, when protests erupted in Tehran over Iran’s economic freefall — a currency in collapse, inflation spiraling beyond government control, energy shortages, and a budget that increased security spending by nearly 150 percent while offering wage increases amounting to barely two-fifths of the inflation rate. The protests spread to all 31 provinces, becoming the most geographically extensive since the Mahsa Amini movement of 2022. By mid-January 2026, security forces had killed tens of thousands and detained many more. Protest slogans shifted from economic grievances to calls for regime change, with monarchist chants audible in the streets of Tehran for the first time in decades. Exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi intensified his public appeals for democratic transition. The regime survived the protests through the blunt application of coercive force, but the social contract between state and society — already fraying — had ruptured.

Simultaneously, Iran’s regional position deteriorated to its weakest point since the Iran-Iraq War. The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 severed the logistical backbone of the “Axis of Resistance,” eliminating the corridor through which Iranian weapons and advisers reached Hezbollah. The Twelve-Day War with Israel in June 2025 devastated Iran’s air defenses, missile production capacity, and nuclear infrastructure. Hezbollah, once Iran’s crown jewel, emerged from its own war with Israel gutted of senior leadership and stripped of much of its strategic arsenal. Hamas was isolated and under pressure to disarm. The Houthis — now Tehran’s most capable remaining proxy — were drifting toward operational autonomy, their relationship with Iran resembling a franchise arrangement more than a subordinate network. Iran attempted indirect nuclear negotiations with Washington through Omani mediation in February 2026, but American demands — permanent cessation of enrichment, strict limits on ballistic missiles, and a complete halt to proxy support — were non-starters for a regime that viewed its nuclear program and regional network as existential guarantees.

The question now confronting policymakers in Washington, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Beijing, Moscow, and Ankara is not whether Iran will change, but how. The Islamic Republic has entered a period of radical uncertainty with no historical parallel in the post-revolutionary era. What follows are five scenarios for Iran’s trajectory over the coming six to twelve months, each with distinct implications for the United States and other key actors. These are not predictions; they are structured assessments of plausible futures designed to identify the drivers, indicators, and opportunities that will shape outcomes.

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Scenario One: The Iron Fist — IRGC Consolidation Behind a Clerical Façade

The most likely near-term outcome is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fills the power vacuum left by Khamenei’s assassination and installs a compliant cleric as Supreme Leader, transforming Iran into a military-security state draped in religious legitimacy. This scenario reflects the institutional logic of the IRGC, which has spent three decades consolidating economic, political, and military power to the point where no successor can govern without its acquiescence.

Under this scenario, the Provisional Leadership Council — comprising President Masoud Pezeshkian, Supreme Court Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, and Guardian Council cleric Alireza Arafi, with the backing of National Security Council secretary Ali Larijani — serves as a transitional mechanism while the IRGC orchestrates selection of a permanent leader through the Assembly of Experts. The likeliest candidate is someone who will subordinate clerical authority to the Guards’ institutional interests: Mojtaba Khamenei, the late Supreme Leader’s son, who maintains deep ties to the IRGC and the Basij; or a consensus figure like Mohseni-Ejei, a hardline jurist closely aligned with the regime’s ideological core. Ahmad Vahidi, appointed as IRGC deputy chief two months before the strikes, emerges as the key military powerbroker.

The new leadership would pursue what Tehran-based analysts have described as a “scorched earth” doctrine — the abandonment of Khamenei’s “strategic patience” in favor of aggressive retaliation and the explicit coupling of regime survival with escalation dominance. Iran’s remaining missile arsenal would be deployed to maximize costs on the United States and its regional partners, with the Strait of Hormuz serving as the regime’s most potent lever. Domestically, the IRGC would intensify repression, framing the strikes as justification for emergency governance and the suppression of dissent as treason during wartime. The January protests would be retroactively cast as a foreign-directed fifth column operation, and the security apparatus would move to eliminate remaining pockets of organized resistance.

This scenario carries significant implications. For the United States, it means that Operation Epic Fury’s strategic objective — regime change through the combination of external military pressure and internal popular mobilization — would fail in its maximalist form. Washington would confront an Iran that is more dangerous in the near term, not less: a militarized state stripped of its most stabilizing institutional actor (the Supreme Leader’s role as factional arbiter), operating under siege mentality, and willing to escalate regionally to demonstrate that decapitation strikes carry unacceptable costs. For Israel, this means a protracted campaign with diminishing returns as the IRGC disperses its remaining capabilities and delegates authority to field commanders operating with less political restraint. For the Gulf states — already absorbing Iranian missile strikes on airports, ports, and population centers — this scenario implies sustained vulnerability and a security environment fundamentally different from the managed deterrence of the Khamenei era.

Key indicators to watch: rapid appointment of a new Supreme Leader within days rather than weeks; IRGC consolidation of command over all military operations without visible internal friction; continued missile and drone operations against Gulf targets at a tempo designed to demonstrate residual capability; and the absence of significant elite defections from the security apparatus.

Scenario Two: The Fracture — Institutional Fragmentation and Competing Power Centers

A second possibility is that Khamenei’s assassination — compounded by the simultaneous elimination of multiple layers of senior military and security leadership — triggers institutional fragmentation rather than consolidation. Under this scenario, the constitutional succession process stalls or produces a leader too weak to unify the regime’s competing factions, and Iran devolves into a period of contested authority among rival power centers.

The structural conditions for fragmentation are present. The IRGC is not a monolith; it comprises ground, naval, air, and intelligence branches, each with semi-autonomous commanders, distinct regional responsibilities, and enormous economic interests. The Guards’ economic empire — estimated at $100 billion or more — creates powerful incentives for local commanders to prioritize the preservation of their commercial networks over central directives. The killing of the IRGC commander-in-chief, alongside the defense minister and army chief of staff, removed the figures who would ordinarily impose unity. Deputy chief Ahmad Vahidi and National Security Council secretary Ali Larijani — both positioning for influence — represent different institutional cultures and strategic orientations. Larijani is a pragmatic conservative with experience in diplomacy; Vahidi is an IRGC hardliner with a history of involvement in external operations.

The fragmentation could manifest along multiple axes: between the clerical establishment and the military; between IRGC commanders in Tehran and those controlling provincial garrisons and economic assets; between those who favor negotiation with Washington to preserve the state and those who view any accommodation as capitulation; and between Iran’s ethnic communities — Kurds in the northwest, Baloch in the southeast, Azeris in the north — and the Persian-dominated security apparatus. The merger of Sunni-Balochi militant groups into the “People’s Fighters Front” in December 2025 foreshadowed the potential for ethnic mobilization under conditions of central state weakness.

For the United States, a fragmented Iran presents both opportunities and dangers. The opportunity lies in the possibility that competing factions might independently seek accommodation with Washington — offering concessions on nuclear or proxy issues in exchange for sanctions relief or security guarantees that strengthen their position against domestic rivals. The danger is that fragmentation could produce a failed state in a country of 88 million people sitting atop the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves, possessing near-threshold nuclear capabilities, and sharing borders with Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and multiple Central Asian states. An Iranian Yugoslavia — with competing warlords, ethnic secession movements, and uncontrolled weapons proliferation — would represent a catastrophic outcome for regional stability.

Key indicators: prolonged delay in selecting a new Supreme Leader beyond the initial weeks; visible disagreements between the Provisional Leadership Council and military commanders; regional IRGC formations acting independently of Tehran’s directives; Kurdish or Baloch armed groups escalating operations in peripheral provinces; and competing factional claims to represent the legitimate government in communications with foreign capitals.

Scenario Three: The Deal — Pragmatic Retrenchment and Negotiated Accommodation

A third scenario envisions pragmatic elements within the Iranian establishment — recognizing that the regime faces existential military, economic, and social pressure simultaneously — moving to negotiate a comprehensive accommodation with the United States in exchange for the regime’s survival in modified form. This would represent the most significant strategic recalibration in the Islamic Republic’s history, comparable in ambition to Deng Xiaoping’s transformation of post-Mao China: abandoning revolutionary ideology while preserving the party-state.

The conditions for this scenario are more favorable than at any previous moment. The protests of December-January demonstrated that the Iranian public has exhausted its tolerance for economic deprivation in service of ideological objectives. The destruction of Iran’s air defenses and nuclear infrastructure has eliminated the military capabilities that hardliners relied upon as guarantees of regime security. The loss of the Axis of Resistance — Assad’s fall, Hezbollah’s degradation, Hamas’s isolation — has stripped away the regional buffer that allowed Tehran to project power without directly confronting its adversaries. And Khamenei himself — the figure most committed to the revolutionary order and most resistant to fundamental compromise — is gone.

Under this scenario, the Provisional Leadership Council, with Larijani playing a central coordinating role, signals willingness to address Washington’s core demands: complete dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program verified by international inspectors, meaningful limitations on ballistic missile development, and a demonstrable severing of support for regional proxies. In exchange, Iran would seek comprehensive sanctions relief, security guarantees against further military action, international recognition of the current government’s legitimacy, and economic assistance sufficient to address the immediate humanitarian crisis. President Pezeshkian — elected in 2024 on a platform of rapprochement with the West — would serve as the public face of this pivot, while Larijani and pragmatic IRGC figures would manage the internal politics.

The obstacles to this scenario are formidable. The IRGC’s hardline wing would view any such accommodation as surrender, and commanders who built careers on confrontation with America are unlikely to accept marginalization quietly. The clerical establishment’s most conservative elements would resist the implicit secularization of the state’s guiding ideology. And the Trump administration’s stated objective — regime change, not regime modification — may leave insufficient diplomatic space for a deal that preserves any version of the Islamic Republic.

For the United States, this scenario would represent the most favorable near-term outcome: the neutralization of Iran’s nuclear threat, the dismantling of its proxy network, and the redirection of Iran’s trajectory toward integration with the international order — all achieved without the costs and risks of prolonged military occupation or state collapse. For Russia and China, it would represent the loss of a strategic partner whose antagonism toward Washington served their interests. For the Gulf states, it would offer the prospect of a transformed regional security environment, though the reliability of any Iranian commitment would be viewed with justified skepticism.

Key indicators: back-channel communications between Iranian officials and Western interlocutors through Omani or Qatari intermediaries; public statements from Pezeshkian or Larijani emphasizing Iran’s desire for “stability and reconstruction”; IRGC units standing down from offensive operations without visible internal resistance; and Tehran’s acceptance of IAEA inspectors returning to nuclear facilities.

Scenario Four: The Uprising — Popular Revolution and Regime Collapse

The scenario most explicitly envisioned by Presidents Trump and Netanyahu — and most actively feared by Iran’s security establishment — is that Operation Epic Fury catalyzes a popular revolution that topples the Islamic Republic. Under this outcome, the combination of military decapitation, economic asphyxiation, and the demonstrated vulnerability of the regime emboldens the Iranian population to resume and escalate the protests that security forces suppressed in January, this time overwhelming a demoralized and fragmented coercive apparatus.

The revolutionary scenario draws on genuine structural conditions. Iran’s population is young, urbanized, and increasingly secular: over sixty percent is under thirty, and successive protest cycles since 2009 have demonstrated a generational rejection of theocratic governance. The January 2026 protests were notable for their unprecedented geographic scope, their ideological radicalization — including open monarchist sentiment — and the willingness of some participants to take up armed resistance, a departure from the nonviolent character of previous movements. Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who called for democratic transition and offered himself as interim leader during the June 2025 war, represents one potential focal point for opposition mobilization, though his actual influence inside Iran remains unclear and contested.

Trump’s explicit call for Iranians to “take over your government” and Netanyahu’s urging that the “brave Iranian people take their destiny into their own hands” represent an unusual degree of foreign encouragement for revolution. The killing of Khamenei — whose death some Tehran residents greeted with rooftop celebrations, dancing, and the toppling of revolutionary statues — has created a psychological opening that previous protest cycles lacked: the system’s ultimate authority figure is gone, and the aura of invincibility that the security state cultivated has been shattered.

Yet the barriers to successful revolution remain substantial. The IRGC, the Basij militia, and the broader security apparatus comprise a layered system of coercive control specifically designed to survive both external attack and internal rebellion. Hundreds of thousands of personnel are embedded across neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and rural communities. Many are not merely ideological loyalists but economic stakeholders whose livelihoods depend on the existing order. Iran’s near-total internet shutdown — connectivity fell to four percent of normal levels during the strikes — severed the communication networks that protesters rely upon for coordination. And the opposition lacks the organized leadership, institutional infrastructure, and command-and-control capacity necessary to translate popular rage into sustained revolutionary action. As one SAIS expert observed, regime collapse requires either fractures within the elite or alternative nodes of power ready to fill the vacuum — neither of which is yet visible.

For the United States, a successful revolution would represent the most transformative outcome: the elimination of the Islamic Republic as a source of regional instability, the removal of the nuclear threat, and the potential emergence of a democratic Iran aligned with Western interests. It would also represent the most dangerous transition period, as the country would face potential ethnic fragmentation, IRGC insurgency, weapons proliferation, and humanitarian catastrophe. Trump’s stated opposition to “boots on the ground” would be tested by the reality that keeping opposition leaders alive — whether Pahlavi or members of the Iran Freedom Congress — may require external security support against IRGC remnants operating from dispersed weapons depots across the country.

Key indicators: mass demonstrations in Tehran and provincial capitals resuming despite ongoing military operations; security force units refusing to fire on crowds or actively defecting; IRGC garrisons negotiating local truces with protest movements; exile opposition figures receiving credible invitations from domestic political and military actors; and the emergence of parallel governance structures — revolutionary committees, neighborhood councils — operating outside state control.

Scenario Five: The Quagmire — Protracted Conflict and State Erosion

The final scenario — and perhaps the most historically probable given the region’s track record — is that no clean outcome materializes. Instead, Iran enters a prolonged period of low-intensity conflict, institutional decay, and economic collapse that produces neither consolidation nor revolution but a gradual erosion of state capacity. Under this outcome, the Islamic Republic survives in name but ceases to function as a coherent state, becoming a zone of contested authority analogous to post-invasion Iraq or post-Qaddafi Libya.

This scenario unfolds through several reinforcing dynamics. The military campaign inflicts devastating damage on Iran’s infrastructure, economy, and leadership — but does not produce regime collapse. The IRGC, battered but intact at the provincial level, wages an attritional campaign against US and Israeli operations while simultaneously suppressing domestic unrest. International sanctions, compounded by the disruption of oil exports and the destruction of key economic infrastructure, push Iran’s GDP into severe contraction. Humanitarian conditions deteriorate as food, medicine, and energy become scarce. Refugee flows begin — initially to Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, and the Gulf states — creating a secondary crisis that complicates regional diplomacy.

The Strait of Hormuz becomes a persistent flashpoint. Even if Iran lacks the capacity to maintain a full blockade, sporadic attacks on commercial shipping, mine-laying, and harassment by IRGC naval forces create a “gray zone” of maritime insecurity that keeps insurance premiums elevated, diverts tanker traffic, and sustains an oil price premium of significant magnitude. Analysts have estimated that a prolonged Hormuz disruption could push prices above $100 per barrel and trigger recession in import-dependent Asian economies. The economic shock would reverberate through global markets at a moment when the United States is already contending with domestic inflation concerns.

Iran’s proxy network, meanwhile, fragments along lines already visible before the strikes. The Houthis — whose relationship with Tehran had already drifted toward independence — continue operations in the Red Sea and against Saudi Arabia with or without Iranian direction. Iraqi Shia militias, their leadership swearing loyalty to a dead Supreme Leader, face an identity crisis that some resolve through escalation against American targets and others through accommodation with Baghdad. Hezbollah, already weakened, fractures between those who accept disarmament under the Lebanese Armed Forces framework and those who retreat to insurgency.

For the United States, the quagmire scenario represents the outcome most reminiscent of Iraq after 2003: a military success that evolves into an open-ended strategic commitment with escalating costs and diminishing public support. The administration’s pledge of “no boots on the ground” would face continuous pressure from events requiring sustained military engagement — Strait of Hormuz escort operations, counterterrorism strikes against proxy remnants, humanitarian assistance requirements, and the management of refugee flows. For China — which receives half its crude imports through the Strait of Hormuz — this scenario represents a direct threat to energy security and economic stability. For Russia, it represents both a loss (of Iran as a partner) and an opportunity (to exploit American overextension and global energy disruption).

Key indicators: military operations extending beyond the initial “days” timeline into weeks and months; sustained IRGC resistance in provincial areas despite destruction of central command; oil prices remaining elevated above pre-conflict levels with no sign of normalization; refugee flows increasing toward Turkey and Pakistan; and growing domestic political opposition in the United States to continued military engagement.

Opportunity Analysis: Shaping Events to American Advantage

Intelligence tradecraft distinguishes between analysis that describes what is likely to happen and analysis that identifies how a government might act to shape what happens. The following assesses how US actions — or inactions — could influence the trajectory of events in Iran across the scenarios described above. This is not policy prescription; it is an assessment of how key actors and conditions would respond to hypothetical American choices.

Calibrating Military Operations to Avoid the Quagmire

The tempo, targeting, and duration of Operation Epic Fury will significantly influence which scenario materializes. If the United States limits the campaign to a defined period — destroying Iran’s remaining military-industrial capacity, neutralizing its retaliatory threat, and degrading the IRGC’s command infrastructure — while clearly communicating that further military action depends on Iranian behavior, it preserves space for the Deal scenario or a managed version of IRGC Consolidation. If, conversely, operations become open-ended and targeting expands to include economic infrastructure beyond military utility, the likelihood of the Quagmire increases as Iranian nationalism — which transcends regime loyalty — hardens resistance. Iran’s dual military architecture was designed to resist precisely this kind of external assault; the Artesh, the IRGC, the Basij, and paramilitary networks embedded across society would activate insurgent capacities that have historical depth. The lesson of Iraq applies: destroying a regime is operationally straightforward; managing what follows is strategically exhausting.

Regional actors’ responses to the campaign’s scope will also matter. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman were already pressing Washington before the strikes to avoid escalation, warning that spillover effects would damage their national security. Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Gulf airports and ports have vindicated those warnings while simultaneously creating pressure for those same states to support American operations as a matter of self-defense. If Gulf states perceive the United States as committed to a short, decisive campaign with clear off-ramps, they are more likely to provide basing, intelligence, and diplomatic support. If they perceive an open-ended commitment to regime change with no exit strategy, the coalition will erode — as it did in Iraq after the initial invasion succeeded but the occupation metastasized.

Exploiting the Succession Crisis

The most significant opportunity for American influence lies in the succession crisis itself. Khamenei’s assassination removed the one figure who held the Islamic Republic’s competing factions in equilibrium. The absence of a designated successor, the simultaneous killing of senior military leaders, and the wartime context create conditions of maximum institutional stress. How the United States interacts with this process could determine whether the outcome is consolidation, fragmentation, or negotiated accommodation.

If Washington signals — through credible intermediaries such as Oman or Qatar — that it would accept a reconstituted Iranian government that verifiably abandons nuclear weapons ambitions, constrains its missile program, and ceases material support for regional proxies, pragmatic elements within the establishment would have a tangible alternative to present against hardliners arguing for escalation to the death. The key variable is credibility: after launching the most devastating military assault on Iran in history, the United States would need to demonstrate that it is genuinely prepared to accept a modified Islamic Republic rather than insisting on total regime dissolution. This represents a tension at the heart of American strategy that Iran’s various factions will be watching closely.

Conversely, if Washington’s posture remains exclusively maximalist — demanding unconditional regime change with no pathway for existing institutions to survive in any form — it eliminates the incentive for pragmatists to challenge hardliners and increases the probability that the IRGC consolidates behind a fortress mentality. The historical parallel is instructive: after 2003, the dissolution of Iraq’s Ba’ath Party and military through de-Ba’athification eliminated the institutional actors who might have provided governance continuity, fueling the insurgency and civil war that followed. An all-or-nothing approach to Iran risks reproducing this dynamic on a larger and more dangerous scale.

Managing the Strait of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz represents both Iran’s most potent remaining lever and the United States’ most significant vulnerability to unintended escalation. Approximately twenty million barrels of oil transit the Strait daily — roughly a fifth of global demand. Iran possesses large stockpiles of mines, short-range anti-ship missiles, and fast-attack craft capable of rendering the waterway dangerous for commercial traffic even without a formal blockade. The IRGC’s naval forces have already broadcast warnings to vessels, and several oil companies have paused shipments.

If the United States establishes and maintains credible naval escort operations through the Strait — leveraging the fourteen guided-missile destroyers, two carrier strike groups, THAAD batteries, and Patriot systems already deployed in the region — it neutralizes Iran’s most effective economic weapon and reassures global energy markets that the disruption is manageable. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline and the UAE’s pipeline bypassing the Strait through the Gulf of Oman provide partial bypass capacity, but neither can fully compensate for a Hormuz closure. Swift restoration of commercial traffic would deprive hardliners in Tehran of their strongest argument for escalation and reduce the economic pressure on import-dependent allies — particularly China, India, Japan, and South Korea — that might otherwise complicate the diplomatic landscape.

Failure to secure the Strait, by contrast, could trigger the “mother of all bidding wars” among Asian importers, push oil prices into triple digits, and generate a global recession that would erode domestic political support for the entire operation. The economic dimensions of this conflict are inseparable from its military and political dimensions.

Engaging the Iranian Opposition

The exiled Iranian opposition represents a potential instrument for shaping the political transition, but one that requires careful handling. Reza Pahlavi commands name recognition and monarchist sentiment visible in recent protest chants, but his actual organizational capacity inside Iran is uncertain. The Iran Freedom Congress — a broader coalition of opposition groups that have agreed on democratic principles — offers a more pluralistic framework but lacks military capability. The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which maintains organizational discipline and external support, carries toxic associations among many Iranians that would undermine any transition it leads.

If the United States provides material, communications, and intelligence support to credible opposition networks — without publicly branding them as American proxies — it could accelerate the conditions for the Uprising scenario by giving internal opposition actors the tools to organize, communicate, and sustain momentum under conditions of internet blackout and security crackdown. The restoration of internet access inside Iran, which the United States possesses technical means to facilitate through satellite-based systems, would be among the most impactful single actions available — enabling protesters to coordinate, document repression, and communicate with the outside world.

The risk is overidentification. Iranians across the political spectrum — including many who despise the regime — are acutely sensitive to foreign manipulation of their country’s internal affairs. The 1953 CIA-backed coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh remains a live political reference that the regime has exploited for decades. If opposition figures are perceived as American instruments rather than authentic representatives of Iranian aspirations, the revolution loses domestic legitimacy and the regime gains a narrative weapon. The most effective American posture would facilitate Iranian agency rather than direct it — providing capabilities while allowing Iranians to determine their own political trajectory.

Coordinating with China

Perhaps the most underappreciated opportunity for American leverage lies in engagement with Beijing. China is Iran’s largest oil customer, purchasing roughly half of Iran’s remaining exports. More significantly, China receives approximately half of its total crude imports through the Strait of Hormuz, making it acutely vulnerable to any sustained disruption. A prolonged closure of the Strait would threaten Chinese energy security, manufacturing output, and economic growth in ways that directly affect the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic legitimacy.

If Washington engages Beijing with a clear message — that the resolution of the Iran crisis can proceed in ways that protect Chinese energy interests if China cooperates in constraining Iran’s escalatory options, or in ways that do not protect those interests if China obstructs — it creates incentives for Chinese pressure on whatever Iranian government emerges. China’s leverage over Iran is considerable: it is the primary purchaser of sanctioned Iranian oil, the source of critical technology imports, and the one major power with both the interest and capacity to influence Tehran’s economic calculations. A coordinated US-China approach to post-Khamenei Iran — while ambitious given the broader adversarial dynamic — would represent the most effective pathway to ensuring that any Iranian transition does not produce a failed state whose chaos threatens global energy markets.

Russia, by contrast, offers fewer opportunities for constructive engagement. Moscow has already condemned the strikes as “a pre-planned and unprovoked act of aggression” and accused Washington of using nuclear talks as cover for military operations. Russia’s strategic interest lies in American overextension, elevated energy prices that benefit its own exports, and the preservation of Iran as a partner in arms transfers (including Shahed drones deployed against Ukraine). Efforts to enlist Russian cooperation are unlikely to yield results; managing Russian spoiler behavior is the more realistic objective.

Conclusion

The Islamic Republic of Iran has entered the most dangerous period of its forty-seven-year existence. The killing of Khamenei has removed the keystone of a political architecture that was already cracking under the weight of economic collapse, popular alienation, military degradation, and strategic isolation. What replaces that architecture will be determined by the interplay of Iranian domestic forces, the trajectory of military operations, and the choices made by external actors — chief among them the United States.

The five scenarios outlined above are not mutually exclusive; elements of several may coexist or emerge sequentially. The IRGC may consolidate initially only to fragment over time. A negotiated accommodation may follow a period of protracted conflict. A popular uprising may succeed in some regions while failing in others, producing a patchwork of competing authorities rather than a clean transition. The analytical challenge — and the policy challenge — lies in recognizing that Iran’s trajectory is not predetermined and that American actions will shape which future materializes.

What is clear is that the United States has crossed a threshold from which there is no return to the status quo ante. The question is no longer whether the Islamic Republic will be transformed, but into what — and at what cost. The answer will define the Middle East for a generation.

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