Why the Regime Hasn’t Collapsed

Welcome back to a special edition of the MBN Iran Briefing.

Today a simple question: How is the Iranian regime still standing? Also make sure to scroll down to the end for links to some useful maps on the conflict. 

ICYMI: Check out the new MBN Iran Briefing podcast. Last week I was joined by Leila Bazzi and Matthew Kaminski. Listen here or watch here. We’ll be back later this week.

Share your thoughts, analysis and predictions with me at ailves@mbn-news.com. If you were forwarded the newsletter, please subscribe. Read me in Arabic here, or on the flagship Alhurra Arabic-language and English-language news sites.

Quote of the Week

“You can lead someone to water; you cannot make him drink.”

– Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when asked whether Iranians would rise up and oust the regime

TOP OF THE NEWS

It’s day 17 of the war with Iran.

On day 1, it looked as though it was going to be relatively easy. The economy was languishing, broken by decades of sanctions and mismanagement, leaving the currency in freefall. The 12-day war last June had depleted missile supplies. The regime’s proxy network lay in ruins. In January, a restive population had risen up in revolt.

On paper, the Islamic Republic had never looked more vulnerable. What has followed has proved nearly every assumption wrong.

Assassination of the Supreme Leader

The U.S.-Israeli operation assumed that removing the head would collapse the body. Killing Khamenei, along with much of his family and senior security officials, was intended to trigger exactly that crisis.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. Mojtaba Khamenei was announced on March 9 as the new supreme leader, and the IRGC and Iran’s top political figures quickly pledged their allegiance to him. But rather than fracturing the system, the assassination appears to have consolidated power among its hardest elements. Khamenei Senior was more cautious than many within the IRGC, who may now feel free to act on plans they had long imagined but never been permitted to execute.

The fact that Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared in public since his appointment may actually speak to an unexpected resilience in the system. In the model of the Islamic Republic we know, a supreme leader who cannot show his face would represent a crisis of authority. But if the IRGC engineered his succession and the IRGC is running the war, it may not need him to be visible or operational to keep the system functioning. The regime is standing despite his absence, which is itself a measure of how thoroughly the IRGC has consolidated control.

 

 

IRGC navy members participate in an exercise. Photo: Reuters

Population in Open Revolt Just Weeks Earlier

The war arrived on top of the most dangerous nationwide domestic uprising since 1979. Security forces and the IRGC had carried out the mass killing of thousands of Iranians seven weeks before the first bombs fell. The expectation was that military shock would combine with civilian rage to break the system from within. In comments addressed to the Iranian people on the first day of the war, U.S. President Donald Trump said, “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”

However, the U.S. president prefaced that call to action with a warning and an exhortation to “Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere.” As the bombs are still dropping, people appear to still be staying indoors rather than protesting.

Perhaps more importantly, the regime has been unambiguous in its threats to its own population. In a television broadcast when the war began, the IRGC directly referenced the Jan. 8-9 crackdown that saw thousands of Iranians massacred by the regime, promising “a stronger blow than on January 8.” It also warned parents that children who joined protests or “aligned with the enemy” would face consequences including death.

Basij checkpoints quickly went up across Tehran and provincial cities. Their task appeared tougher in the past few days, when Israel started targeting Basij checkpoints in Tehran, aiming to weaken the Islamic Republic’s internal security and perhaps embolden anti-regime protesters.

The same regime that killed thousands of its own citizens in January, and shut down the internet within hours of the first strikes for the second time in 2026 (meaning Iranians have now spent more than a third of this year cut off from the outside world), was never going to allow authentic dissent to surface. This is a regime with a proven willingness to massacre its own people, and a population that knows it.

 

Dogs of war. Aftermath of a missile strike on Tehran. Photo: Reuters

Economic Collapse

By the time the first bombs fell on Feb. 28, Iran’s own Statistical Center had reported that prices were 68 percent higher than a year earlier, with food costs more than doubling. IranWire described it as the highest inflation rate recorded since World War II.

And the U.S. had spent months deliberately engineering a dollar shortage inside Iran. “The central bank had to print money, the Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded, and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the Senate Banking Committee in February.

According to Iran International, viral videos circulated in Dec. 2025 of Iranian police officers describing severe financial hardship, with one officer saying his monthly salary of roughly $171 left him considering selling a kidney to survive.

But economic collapse and political collapse are not the same thing. The Islamic Republic has never governed through prosperity. It governs through fear. The IRGC officer mulling over selling a kidney still shows up to work. The Basiji still mans the checkpoint. The regime that ordered the massacre of thousands of its own citizens had already answered the question of whether it would loosen its grip. What may have been unforeseen was that a regime stripped of everything else becomes more dependent on coercion, not less.

Iranian missiles fly towards Israel. Photo: Reuters

Decimated Missile Arsenal and Degraded Conventional Military

Iran entered the war having already absorbed severe military attrition in the June 2025 conflict with Israel. The IDF assessed on the eve of the Feb. 28 strikes that despite efforts to rebuild, Iran’s ballistic missiles stockpile had been significantly degraded. Washington’s stated goals included destroying what remained of Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles, navy, drones, and proxy network. Within days, the results were stark. CENTCOM reported more than 40 Iranian naval vessels destroyed or damaged. Ballistic missile launch rates fell 90 percent from their opening-day peak within ten days, as launchers were hunted down faster than they could be redeployed. By March 5, Iran had fired over 500 ballistic and naval missiles and almost 2,000 drones, but the rate of launches declined from the start of the war.

Yet this trend may be somewhat deceptive. Iran’s military strategy focuses on asymmetric endurance. Iran spent years constructing what it calls “missile cities.” These are hardened underground tunnel networks dispersed across multiple provinces, designed to store and launch missiles even after strikes on surface infrastructure. Command structures were similarly dispersed, with the IRGC reorganized into thirty-one semi-autonomous provincial units capable of operating independently if central command were to be severed. Rather than trying to prevent all strikes, the system was built to survive them, with second-strike capability preserved through dispersal and concealment. The missile stockpile was smaller than before June 2025, but it is being spent carefully, not squandered.

As I noted in the last edition of this briefing, the kinetic campaign has also been accompanied by a significant cyber offensive. The IRGC declared it had targeted U.S. and Israeli banking and financial infrastructure, alongside attacks on communications networks across the region. This dimension of the war represents a front on which Iran retains meaningful offensive capability regardless of how depleted its conventional arsenal becomes.

Satellite image shows smoke rising from UAE’s Fujairah port. Photo: Reuters

Destruction of the Proxy Shield

Iran’s entire deterrence model for four decades rested not on fighting directly, but on threatening enemies through a ring of armed proxies: Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias. By Feb. 2026, that shield was largely gone. Iran had spent decades and billions building this buffer precisely to make any direct assault too costly to contemplate. With the proxies gone or degraded, that deterrent strategy collapsed, and Washington and Jerusalem calculated that they could strike without paying the regional price Iran had always threatened.

Iran has now found a new strategy, adopting a more aggressive posture focused on expanding the war across the Middle East, particularly against Gulf Arab states and critical economic infrastructure. Iran has targeted military and civilian infrastructure across Israel and the Gulf, striking energy assets, ports, pipelines and processing units. Where proxies once created costs for Iran’s enemies indirectly, Iran is now doing it directly, with the clear message: host U.S. forces and you are in this war. Just last night, an Iranian drone struck a fuel tank near Dubai International Airport, forcing a temporary suspension of flights at the world’s busiest aviation hub for the fourth time since the war began.

By effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, Iran created a cost that has no military solution. Oil prices passed $100 per barrel. Every day the war continues, the economic pressure on the West mounts. The regime cannot defeat its enemies militarily. But it may not need to. It needs only to make the war expensive enough for the West.

Finally, Hezbollah has joined the fight. Since early March it has been firing missiles and drones at northern Israel, coordinating salvos with Iran. A proxy network that was supposed to be largely neutralized has partially reconstituted itself as a second front. It does not change the overall balance, but it means Iran is not fighting alone.

So Will It Survive?

The Islamic Republic entered this war weaker than at any point in its history. It has surprised nearly everyone by still being there. Nor does it seem to be contemplating surrender. On Saturday, the U.S. president told NBC that he was open to a deal but wanted better terms. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi went on CBS on Sunday and said his country had never asked for a ceasefire and never asked for negotiation. “We are ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes,” he said. Regional mediators including Oman and Egypt have tried to open channels. Both Washington and Tehran have rebuffed them. The war continues. Will the regime? We wait and see.

Some Must-See Maps

ACLED Middle East Conflict Monitor – not just a map but a live data hub with daily updates, analysis, and downloadable conflict data. The most comprehensive open-source dataset on the war.

Critical Threats (CTP-ISW) – daily updates on the Iran war combining the Institute for the Study of War’s conflict tracking with the American Enterprise Institute’s analytical framework. Their page includes two interactive maps: a cumulative strikes map showing all confirmed and reported US, Israeli and Iranian strikes since February 28, and a day-by-day timelapse. Updated every 24 hours.

CNN Maps and Charts tracker – updated continuously, covers not just strike locations but also Strait of Hormuz shipping disruption, airspace closures across the region, and casualty figures alongside the conflict map.