Even if Iran's regime hangs on for a period of time, the Islamic Republic is already breathing its last breaths. The gulf is widening between the bankrupt slogans of a dying regime and the reality on the ground for ordinary Iranians. A combination of corruption, mismanagement and Western sanctions has eroded the population's living standards and made basic items like bread in short supply.
And while war does not necessarily create a legitimacy crisis, it draws back the curtain only to reveal that it was always there. When a regime has long presented itself as the guardian of security and sovereignty, military strikes of this magnitude raise a simple yet profound question inside Iran: what did all those years of building military power and regional influence achieve if they could not protect the country from war and penetration? Was the population not impoverished and repressed for decades on the pretext of building a powerful state capable of confronting the world?
The longer the war and sanctions continue, the harder it becomes for the regime to demand even greater sacrifice from a society already under severe economic and social strain.
This leads to the obvious question: if the war stopped tomorrow, would confrontation abroad give way to confrontation at home? History offers many examples of regimes that did not fall when their enemies defeated them militarily. They fell when they lost the ability to persuade society that their survival offered the only path to stability and the future.
We have seen regimes that appeared impervious to sanctions and war collapse when economic pressure converged with a loss of trust, fractures within the ruling elite and a widening chasm between those in power and the society they governed. What, then, of a system ruled by a supreme leader presented as a man in hiding?
