Iran: A Fragile State Under Pressure

For nearly five decades, the Islamic Republic has governed Iran through repression at home and ideological expansion abroad. Iran is a fragmented society, home to multiple national and ethno-religious groups, and the Islamic Republic has exploited these divisions to survive, ruling through a divide-and-rule strategy while privileging the state’s particular interpretation of Shiism and Iranian nationalism. Regionally, it has built influence not primarily through durable alliances with governments, but through armed non-state organisations whose dependence on Tehran makes them easier to finance, direct and control.

This strategy gave Iran extraordinary reach. Hezbollah and its allies became a central force in Lebanon. The Assad government served for decades as Tehran’s principal state partner in the Arab world. After 2003, Iran developed extensive influence over Iraqi political parties and armed groups. It supported the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza and transnational formations such as the Fatemiyoun and Zainebiyoun brigades.

Yet Iran has rarely succeeded in building stable alliances with the Middle East’s established states. Syria under Bashar al-Assad was the major exception. Tehran understood that, as the region’s largest Shia power operating among rival Sunni-majority states, it could not rely on conventional state diplomacy alone. It therefore constructed an alternative alliance system: a network of ideological movements, political parties and armed groups commonly described as the Axis of Resistance.

Ideology became both the instrument and the justification of Iranian power. At the centre of this ideology stood the promise of confronting Israel and forcing the United States out of the Middle East. The Islamic Republic’s leaders repeatedly presented these ambitions not merely as foreign-policy objectives, but as historical and religious missions. During the Iran–Iraq War, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared that “the road to Jerusalem passes through Karbala,” suggesting that defeating Iraq was one stage in a much larger revolutionary struggle. Iran never captured Karbala. Decades later, its direct confrontation with Israel has also failed to produce the revolutionary outcome long promised by the regime.

Israel, despite its small territory, possesses a powerful military, sophisticated intelligence capabilities and an undeclared nuclear arsenal. It has carried out hundreds of strikes against Iranian forces, infrastructure and allies while absorbing Iranian missile and drone attacks on its own cities. Iran can impose costs on Israel, yet it cannot eliminate a nuclear-armed state protected by the United States.

Nor has Iran succeeded in driving Washington from the region. American bases have suffered serious damage from Iranian attacks, while US forces have imposed a naval blockade affecting Iranian shipping and access to Gulf ports. Rather than withdrawing, Washington has deployed additional warships, aircraft and military personnel.

The conflict may still move between escalation and negotiation. Neither Iran nor the United States appears eager to enter an unlimited war, yet wars are not always produced by deliberate choices. Miscalculation, political pressure or a single military incident can transform a contained confrontation into a much broader struggle.

Iran’s grandest ambitions should therefore be understood partly as political rhetoric. The promise of eliminating Israel or expelling the United States has helped legitimise the Islamic Republic and unite the members of its regional alliance. It has been more effective as an ideological adhesive than as a realistic military programme.

The 40-day war involving Iran, the United States and Israel nevertheless demonstrated that the Islamic Republic can withstand an intense short-term conflict. Iran retained the ability to launch missiles and drones, absorb strikes and preserve the core of its governing system. Resilience, however, should not be confused with long-term strength.

Iran’s regional partners have been weakened and increasingly preoccupied with their own domestic crises. Its missile and drone reserves are declining. It can no longer maintain the tempo of attacks it achieved during the first weeks of the war against Israel, Gulf states and American assets.

At home, the economic situation is deteriorating. Inflation continues to erode incomes. The cost of food, housing and basic goods has made everyday life increasingly difficult. Political repression, meanwhile, has intensified. The execution of activists and people detained during and after the January 2026 protests has deepened public anger rather than restoring legitimacy.

The Strait of Hormuz has given Tehran another instrument of pressure, but it cannot remain effective indefinitely. Regional governments are accelerating efforts to develop alternative trade and energy routes that reduce their dependence on the strait. Iraq is exploring routes through Syria, while the Kurdistan Region remains connected to Turkey. Gulf states have also spent years expanding pipelines and port infrastructure designed to bypass vulnerable maritime chokepoints.

The Hormuz card is most effective during active conflict, when threats to shipping can create immediate global disruption. During a ceasefire, its strategic value declines. Iran itself suffered heavily from the American blockade of its Gulf ports, which contributed to Tehran’s decision to enter negotiations mediated by Pakistan.

War, however, has also strengthened a form of Iranian nationalism that the Islamic Republic can exploit. Many Iranians who oppose the regime have become deeply concerned about the country’s fate under US and Israeli attack. They fear that the collapse of the central government could produce chaos across Iran’s ethnically diverse regions.

Kurdish parties have added to these fears by suggesting that their armed wings could re-enter Iran if the state weakened sufficiently. For some Iranian nationalists, preserving the territorial unity of the country has therefore become more urgent than confronting the Islamic Republic. They may despise the regime, yet they regard a weakened central state, federal restructuring or possible Kurdish secession as even greater dangers.

This does not mean that the regime has regained genuine legitimacy. It means that external war has temporarily blurred the distinction between defending Iran and defending the Islamic Republic. The government benefits from this confusion, presenting itself as the only institution capable of preventing national fragmentation.

At the same time, Iran’s ruling elite appears divided over whether to resume full-scale war or accept an agreement with Washington to prevent further destruction. The disagreement has created uncertainty over who possesses ultimate decision-making authority, particularly after the deaths of senior military commanders and the Supreme Leader.

This fragmentation has also confused the US administration. Washington has struggled to interpret Tehran’s position during negotiations and since the collapse of the two-month ceasefire declared by President Donald Trump. Iran’s subsequent attack on two commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz triggered a renewed phase of confrontation.

The internal division is real, but it must be placed within a wider understanding of the Iranian state. Iran can be imagined as possessing a modern body and an imperial soul. Its institutional body resembles a modern nation-state whose basic territorial and administrative structure emerged under Reza Shah Pahlavi in the early 20th century. Its political imagination, however, remains deeply shaped by memories of empire.

Turkey offers a useful comparison. It operates as a modern republic, yet the memory of the Ottoman Empire continues to influence its regional ambitions. Iran’s political imagination draws on both Persian imperial history and revolutionary Shiism. These traditions have encouraged successive Iranian governments to view the country’s natural sphere of influence as extending far beyond its internationally recognised borders.

Under the Islamic Republic, this ambition has been packaged as the Axis of Resistance. Even as that axis weakens, the deeper impulse behind it will not necessarily disappear. Iran’s regional ambitions are not only the product of one leader or one military institution. They arise from a political culture that regards Iran as a civilisational power rather than an ordinary state confined within fixed borders.

The imperial soul does not fit comfortably within the modern body. It may retreat when Iran is constrained by war, sanctions or internal crisis. Yet when circumstances permit, it is likely to re-emerge.

A second metaphor helps explain the regime’s current predicament. Iran resembles a rubber band stretched by accumulated pressures: sanctions, inflation, an exhausted economy, a contested nuclear programme, weakened allies, shrinking weapons stockpiles, American blockades, Israeli strikes, factional divisions, public anger and a growing crisis of command.

The regime understands that the band cannot be stretched indefinitely. Beyond a certain point, pressure no longer produces resilience; it produces rupture.

Iranian leaders have recognised this danger before. After the Iran–Iraq War, Tehran pursued economic reconstruction and greater international trade. Under President Mohammad Khatami, reformists promoted a “dialogue among civilisations.” Under President Hassan Rouhani, the government negotiated the nuclear agreement to ease sanctions and prevent economic isolation from becoming politically unbearable.

Each opening represented a tactical retreat designed to preserve the system rather than transform it. The same pattern has appeared domestically. During the 2009 Green Movement, the 2019–2020 protests, the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising and the January 2026 revolt, the regime concluded that conceding to popular demands could threaten its survival. It therefore relied on violence, arrests and executions to prevent the political band from snapping.

Today, internal and external pressures are converging. Iran remains an ideological state, but it is not incapable of strategic realism. Its leaders understand the destructive consequences of prolonged war. Renewed escalation would further weaken the economy, deplete military resources and increase the risk of rebellion, elite fragmentation or institutional collapse.

This is why Iran may accept de-escalation, reopen negotiations and make limited concessions to the United States. Such a decision would not represent ideological conversion or permanent surrender. It would be another tactical pause intended to relieve pressure and give the regime time to recover.

Tehran will resist appearing to capitulate too easily. Its legitimacy depends partly on the claim that it alone can withstand American and Israeli power. Yet beneath the language of defiance lies an awareness that Iran has rarely faced such an intense combination of domestic weakness and foreign pressure.

The Islamic Republic has survived crises that many believed would destroy it. That history should caution against confident predictions of imminent collapse. Yet survival does not make the system invulnerable. The rubber band is now stretched further than at almost any previous moment.

Iran’s rulers must decide whether to loosen it through negotiation or pull it tighter through war. The first option may preserve the regime. The second could finally test where its breaking point lies.