Subject: 3 Scenarios for Iran:
https://www.hudson.org/foreign...

The complete overthrow of the Islamic Republic is only one of three plausible outcomes.

The first scenario is regime collapse. Sustained unrest fractures the elite, leading to defections within the security services and the breakdown of centralized control.

The second is partial transformation. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, now 86 years old and visibly frail, may die—or be removed—clearing the way for a strongman from the Revolutionary Guard to take power. Such a figure would adjust policy at home and abroad to buy time. The state might endure, but the regime as we now recognize it would not: Ideological authority would erode, and institutional cohesion would weaken.

The third scenario is muddling through. The leadership represses the protests until they dissipate. The system survives without formal change. But it emerges even weaker than before: more paralyzed, more isolated, and more reliant on force to function at all.