Iran Under the Mullahs: Views in the Strategist

As Iranians take to the streets, the Islamic regime could be facing its greatest challenge since 1979. This selection of Strategist articles analyses the emerging calls for regime change, provides an insight into Iran’s complex history and explains the regime’s incentive to escalate conflict.

While many groups—inside and outside Iran—contest the regime, change may emerge organically through a sudden rupture, rather than a considered transition to a pre-planned alternative.

If change comes, it is more likely to resemble a rupture followed by contested consolidation rather than a neat handover to recognisable figures abroad. Institutional actors inside Iran, including security services, may manage instability—but coercive capacity is distinct from legitimacy. The ability to impose order does not confer the ability to rebuild consent among a population increasingly sceptical of imposed identities, morality and saviours.

The Iranian people are ready for change, but there’s no obvious challenger to the regime, writes Azriel Bermant.

The Iranian regime has been under increasing pressure and unable to meet the needs of its citizens, but opposition groups are fractured domestically and internationally, leaving no clear alternative.

The Islamic Revolution was a traumatic reorganisation of Iranian society and economy, writes Jenny Bloomfield.

Change has historically been slow, but Iran is now facing a critical moment. Accumulating domestic and international pressures could be the gamechangers that allow the Iranian people to realise their persistent aspirations for freedom, prosperity and peace.

Revolutionary ideology long ago lost its appeal. Iran’s expanded middle class—urban, modern, highly literate and connected to the world through technology—came to oppose the regime’s hard-line policies. People wanted the government to govern effectively and deliver prosperity, not police citizens’ private lives.

To understand what’s happening in Iran, appreciate its history, writes Saba Sinai.

Iran’s history is broader than the Islamic Revolution and contemporary regional conflict and confrontation. Political unity rests on a deep national identity that intertwines complex internal ethnic, religious and ideological factions.

If there is one take-away from Iran: A Modern History for Australian policy makers, diplomats and strategic analysts, it is Iran’s sense of itself as a nation of consequence and Iranians as custodians of a great intellectual, artistic, technological and cultural heritage that has enriched human civilisation. Yet today, many Iranians feel that the country fails to live up to this legacy, floundering as a global pariah and stifled at home.

Iran’s newly articulated doctrine of preemption suggests the regime doubts the benefits of restraint, writes Roohola Ramezani.

While Iranian officials portray the shift as a form of deterrence, the regime’s revision of its rules for the use of force in the face of converging pressures—both domestic and international—may reflect underlying vulnerabilities.

States confident in their deterrent postures rarely feel compelled to announce the conditions under which they might strike first. One reading is that Tehran is attempting to compensate for perceived vulnerabilities—most notably its exposed airspace and critical infrastructure—by elevating rhetorical and doctrinal stakes in hopes of freezing adversaries’ decision-making.

Following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in June 2025, the regime has been under pressure to project strength, writes Albert Wolf.

The Iranian leadership has often faced a dilemma between escalating conflict or accepting defeat, and as pressures mount, the regime would be keen to project an image of strength to a population that may doubt its ability to steer the country in the face of accumulating troubles.

Any perception of weakness—failing to respond to U.S. and Israeli strikes, relinquishing Iran’s right to enrich uranium or giving up the stock of enriched material already accumulated—would threaten not just Iran’s regional position but the internal stability of the regime itself. It is worth remembering that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rise to the presidency in 2005 was driven in part by his opposition to the more conciliatory 2003 nuclear deal.

This article appeared originally at The Strategist (ASPI).