Interesting. The Israelis are pushing the chips all in against both Iran and their proxies in Lebanon.

The strategic problem with authoritarian states like Russia and Iran is their dependence upon large domestic police and paramilitary organiztions to contain the population. This is made worse when the mullahs are in charge since they are the equivalent of neighborhood activists. And unlike bureaucrats we have in most developed countries, who will merely lose their jobs (at least for a while), The regular police, then, the mullahs (political agents), the morality police (Gasht-e Ershad or Guidance Patrols), The Law Enforcement Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran (FARAJA), Basij paramilitary force, and the IRGC with the IRGC functioning as the ideological army.

Local mullahs help maintain oppression by providing ideological cover, local compliance, and mobilization support—especially in conservative communities—but they are not the primary enforcers. The oppressive apparatus relies far more on the IRGC/Basij for coercion and the Supreme Leader’s centralized clerical oversight for structure. High-level clerics (not local ones) hold veto powers via constitutional bodies.

What does this mean? It means you have to ‘off’ a lot of people, and in most cases that takes a military on one end or a population that can gain access to arms on the other.

The Israelis have no problem doing the ‘offing’ as we have seen. But there is a lot of it to be done.

The regime’s structure is deliberately layered, resilient, and decentralized in key ways to survive leadership decapitation, internal crises, or external pressure.

Why “Offing” Senior Positions Isn’t Enough

The Islamic Republic was engineered post-1979 to avoid the vulnerabilities of a single-point-of-failure system (like the Shah’s monarchy). Power is distributed across interlocking institutions, with ideological loyalty baked in at multiple levels:

Supreme Leader → Symbolic and doctrinal head (velayat-e faqih). Killing or removing him triggers constitutional succession (e.g., Assembly of Experts or interim councils), but the system has mechanisms to replace him quickly—often with someone from the same hardline clerical-IRGC ecosystem.

Clerical establishment → Bodies like the Assembly of Experts, Guardian Council, and Expediency Council vet leaders and policy. These are networks of thousands of mid- and lower-level clerics who provide religious legitimacy and local ideological control. Many are regime-dependent (salaries, perks), so they resist collapse.

IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) → The real backbone. ~150,000–200,000 elite forces, plus control of the Basij paramilitary (hundreds of thousands of volunteers/mobilizable members embedded in neighborhoods, workplaces, schools). The IRGC isn’t just military—it’s an economic empire (controlling oil, construction, telecoms) and intelligence apparatus. It exists explicitly to protect the revolutionary system, not just one leader.

Basij and security layers → Neighborhood-level surveillance, morality enforcement, and rapid-response repression. They form a “dense web” for grassroots control and crackdowns (as seen in 2022 and January 2026 protests).

Other pillars → Judiciary (hardline-aligned), intelligence (VEVAK/MOIS), regular police (FARAJA), and even parts of the conventional army (Artesh) that can be co-opted in crises.

Recent events (Khamenei’s death in late February 2026 airstrikes, followed by an interim council and rapid succession moves) illustrate this: The regime didn’t collapse. Instead, power shifted toward IRGC-aligned figures, with warnings of a potential “garrison state” or hardened militarized rule emerging from the vacuum.

What Full Regime Change Would Actually Require

Analysts and recent assessments agree that meaningful change (ending velayat-e faqih, dismantling theocratic-IRGC dominance, allowing secular/democratic transition) demands disrupting or dismantling multiple layers simultaneously:

Massive internal uprising — Sustained, nationwide protests that overwhelm security forces (as attempted in January 2026 but brutally suppressed with 30,000+ deaths reported in some estimates).

Significant defections or fracturing — Within the IRGC, Basij, or Artesh. Without this, loyalists regroup and repress (no major defections occurred post-Khamenei).

Neutralizing the coercive apparatus — Targeting IRGC command structures, Basij networks, intelligence, and economic assets to break their ability to hold neighborhoods and crush dissent. Air/missile strikes alone degrade capabilities but don’t eliminate the embedded, ideological forces.

Often external pressure — U.S./Israeli actions can weaken the regime (e.g., destroying nuclear/missile sites, killing leaders), but historical cases show air campaigns rarely achieve regime change without ground/internal follow-through (Libya, Iraq parallels cited).

Some scenarios predict:

IRGC takeover → A more openly militarized “garrison state” if clerics weaken.
Survival/hardening → Regime consolidates under new hardliners.
True collapse → Only if protests + defections + sustained external weakening create a tipping point (possible but not yet realized in 2026).