This essay treats the Islamic regime in Iran not as an aberration to be morally condemned or reformed away, but as an ideological dictatorship reaching the end of its natural political life cycle. Drawing on comparative history and political realism, it argues that Iran has already entered a post-ideological phase in which legitimacy has collapsed, coercion has replaced belief, and collapse is more likely than reform. The central question, therefore, is no longer how Iran can achieve democracy, but how much violence, fragmentation, and state failure will accompany the regime’s end—and who, if anyone, will shape that outcome.
Ideological Dictatorships vs Normal Dictatorships
There are two types of dictatorships in the world: Ideological and non-ideological. The Islamic regime is an ideological dictatorship and in order to seek a way to free Iran from it, it helps to dig a little deeper into history and other ideological dictatorships.
Ideological dictatorships have a few unique characteristics:
- They govern through ideology (religion, nationalism, communism, racial theory) while normal dictatorships do not have a core belief beyond “order” or “stability”.
- They seek to transform society, not just control it.
- They rely on mass mobilization tools like education, propaganda, youth groups, rituals.
- They justify repression through moral means that are “necessary for revolution, faith or future”.
- They often place loyalty to the ideology above loyalty to the ruler.
In this regard, regimes like the Nazi Germany, Soviet Union (under Stalin), North Korea and Iran are ideological dictatorships, while Chile during Pinochet, Philippines during Ferdinand Marcos, Egypt or even Iraq under Saddam Husain or Syria under the Assad regime - while brutal and violent - were normal dictatorships.
The Islamic regime is an ideological dictatorship unlike normal dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.
Transformation of an Ideological Dictatorship
Ideological dictatorships usually evolve in 4 stages to become a normal dictatorship:
Stage 1: Revolution Legitimacy
In early days of the revolution ideology is sincere and mobilizing. The leaders believe they are making history and mass participation and sacrifice is common. This stage can be summarized as “We suffer now so humanity can flourish later.”
Stage 2: Institutionalization
In this stage, ideology becomes state doctrine and bureaucracy emerges. Loyalty tests replace belief and believers are replaced by charlatans.
Stage 3: Ideological Exhaustion
During this stage the population sees promises fail and stops believing in the revolution. Elite grow cynical and ideology becomes symbolic and not motivating. In short, slogans remain but faith does not.
Stage 4: Re-centering of Power and Post-ideological Authoritarianism
In this stage the regime shifts from transforming society to preventing collapse and repression is justified by “stability,” not destiny. This is where we see ideology being selectively enforced and corruption tolerated if it helps with preserving the system.
In this final stage of transformation, ideology is hollow branding and the rulers rely on security forces, patronage networks or controlled chaos to keep the society in check. This is when the state exists to preserve itself.
As the early revolution fervor and mass sacrifices of the Iran/Iraq war gave way to the collision of ideology, economy and demographics of the country during the 1990s, we are now seeing selective enforcement of the revolutions ideals (like the mandatory hijab), combined with elite corruption and shift in the way the regime behaves towards survival and not salvation.
In this context, the Islamic regime is now in the 4th stage of its evolution where is still ideological in language but post-ideological in behavior.
With rare, highly contingent exceptions, all ideological dictatorships evolve into non-ideological dictatorships and the Islamic regime is now starting the final stages of this evolution.
Democratization and Longevity of Post-ideological Dictatorships
With very few exceptions (for example China), post-ideological regimes almost always collapse and without a managed transition anchored in coercive continuity they fall into chaos and violence, while never-ideological regimes can last for a very long time. This is not a claim of inevitability in the short term, but a structural tendency observable over decades rather than years.
Ex-ideological regimes suffer from cynical elites, a population that remembers belief and betrayal, high repression cost and no positive future narrative. That is why their survival is based on inertia and oppression not legitimacy. On the other hand, never-ideological regimes rule on order, tradition or transactional legitimacy from day one. This means they have flexible policy and their power is understood as pragmatic not moral. For these regimes, repression is normal not hypocritical.
These traits make ex-ideological regimes like the Islamic regime much more brittle than never-ideological ones, like Saudi Arabia. Without pragmatic flexibility, the most likely outcome for an ex-ideological system like the Islamic regime is collapse and often chaos. It is important to note that this collapse and the ensuing chaos is the natural function of such regimes regardless of the ways and paths that leads to their collapse.
Collapse and the ensuing chaos is a function of post-ideological regimes and not the way their collapse comes about.
Avoiding such chaos, civil war and unnecessary suffering rests on two main pillars: a strong and steady transitional leadership (King Juan Carlos I in Spain during transition from Franco’s regime to democracy); and a clear off-ramp for the main entities in the regime such as military (Chilean generals after Pinochet) or the elite (Taiwan during transition from single party rule).
Three Plausible Endgames
The increasing brutality and savagery of the Islamic regime in cracking down any peaceful protest has made offering any off-ramps nearly impossible to accept by the opposition. As the Islamic regime is still relatively young (47 years old, compared to 69 years of USSR and 81 years of North Korean regime) and many of the revolutionaries are still alive and in power, elite cohesion and continuity is also a nearly impossible task without a clear path for redemption and reconciliation for those who can help with the preservation of the society during this transition.
Also while many of the opponents of the regime are coalescing around Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah’s son, as the leader of the transitional opposition, this is still not universally accepted among all Iranians for various reasons beyond the scope of this essay.
These facts make peaceful transfer of power after the collapse of the regime much less likely. Without such non-violent transition, the most likely outcomes for Iran are one of the three following options:
Given the facts on the ground, a non-violent transition from the Islamic regime is very unlikely.
Pakistani Model
While Pakistan is not a post-ideological dictatorship, its current political system serves as a potential template for what a post-ideological regime can look like.
Eventually the Islamic regime will complete its slow evolution into a non-ideological dictatorship after the last generation of revolutionary believers are replaced with run-off-the-mill autocrats, most likely the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) generals.
This scenario might be accelerated by US intervention through “regime modification” (Venezuela) as opposed to “regime change” (Iraq). In essence, the US can force an internal change in the regime through military threat or force that will replace the ideological body of the regime with IRGC autocrats, with a goal of gradually moving Iran from the Russia/China camp to the West/US camp politically. People of Iran will end up with a non-ideological dictatorship that is most likely to last for a long time but is more integrated into the international community and therefore better off economically. While this is not a desirable outcome, it is the least catastrophic among structurally plausible ones.
North Korean Model
The regime will continue on with its ideological traits, not as beliefs but as utility to extract concessions from the West. These include perpetual animosity against Israel, continuing to play a destabilizing role in the region and pursuing and procuring nuclear weapons. A key point in the potential outcome of this scenario is the regime’s success in obtaining nuclear weapons. Even a dirty bomb in the regime’s arsenal will make them almost untouchable from outside. It will also increase foreign powers' incentives to contain and preserve the regime as an alternative to any potential chaos that could leave the nukes unchecked and unsupervised. As a result the regime will be further isolated and will depend heavily on patronage of a few countries like China or Russia for its survival in exchange for further exploitation of its resources by those powers. People of Iran will continue on their downward economical, environmental and political trajectory with no plausible end that does not involve extreme violence and chaos.
Syrian Model
The regime will collapse through external forces from Israel and/or US, perhaps combined with internal uprisings by armed factions. Without operational leadership for a managed transition, cohesive and functional civil society and enormous pent up resentment and anger towards the elements of the collapsed regime, violence and chaos will ensue. Iran will effectively be a failed state like Somalia for a long time.
The Illusion of Choice: What Can and Cannot Shape Iran’s Transition
To understand why outcomes are so constrained, we must separate moral agency from operational power.
Without foreign acceleration towards a Pakistani model, it is possible that any of the inevitable future internal uprisings during the regime’s slow evolution mentioned above, will result in uncontrollable violence and chaos that can shift the overall outcome towards one of the other models: too much force by the regime could pave the way for a North Korean model while a ephemeral “victory” by the protestors can be the start of a Syrian model.
Perhaps with the exception of the Pakistani model, at this stage of a post-ideological dictatorship, the question is no longer how to achieve democracy, but how to limit the scale of collapse and violence. Iran’s future will not be chosen freely; it will be constrained by power centers, fear, and timing.
Popular Uprisings and Stable Transitions
Time and again, brave protestors in Iran have succeeded in exposing the illegitimacy of the regime but have failed in institutional substitution within the society.
Courage delegitimizes power, but it cannot run a country. Chanting does not replace chain of command.
As Lenin observed - analytically rather than normatively - revolutions fail without two distinct functions: inspirational/mobilizing leadership and operational/organizing leadership. The current opposition in Iran is starting to follow Reza Pahlavi as its inspirational and mobilizing leader but is lacking an operational and organizing leadership.
Without both functions of leadership, uprisings are doomed to fail while the military (IRGC) is intact and no transitional authority controls coercion (ie the guns, the prisons and the people who are paid to use them).
The Myth of Clean Break
Many of opponents of the Islamic regime dream of a clean break from this oppressive regime. Unfortunately this is an unrealistic dream. No ideological dictatorship collapses into democracy without a continuation of coercive institutions during the transitions and before the elite defect to the opposition. The current state of affairs in Iran today do not satisfy either of those conditions. Without those two conditions met, the theoretical ends of the outcome spectrum are from total continuity of the past regime (like Egypt) to total purge of the past regime (like Libya). As such any plausible roadmap should be brutally realistic about the main power centers and actors in the field.
Actors That Matter
Revolutions are decided by who controls guns and salaries, not slogans.
The Islamic regime celebrates February 11th as the day the revolution succeeded in toppling the Pahlavi regime. This was the day that the Iranian army laid down their arms and declared neutrality in the fight between the people and the Pahlavi regime, effectively handing the country to the revolutionaries.
As Ruhollah Khomeini took over the revolution, he made sure no other party is going to control the guns and started a systematic hollowing out of the national Iranian army and founded the IRGC, the praetorian and ideological guardians of the revolution.
As the Islamic regime is facing an existential crisis, the main actors who can change the course of the next 12 months are:
- The IRGC leadership is fragmented, self-interested and survival oriented. These are not ideological anymore but not national either. This means they will be amenable to deals that will guarantee their survival, even if it means sacrificing the 86 year old Supreme Leader. As the biggest military and economic power in Iran, no regime change will be possible without a clear political and economic off-ramp for the IRGC, something that is not likely to be offered by any viable internal opposition, but is likely to be part of a deal involving foreign powers.
- Regular army is institutionally hollowed out and politically passive but symbolically critical regarding any transition that involves a popular uprising. Lacking the political cohesion of the IRGC, they can be more of a risk than an asset for the opposition, as parallels can be drawn to the civil war fought between RSF and SAF in Sudan today.
- Opposition in exile is influential narratively but weak operationally. Over the past 47 years, the Islamic regime has systematically dismantled any organized political opposition to their rule, from communists to the National Front and from tribal and factional powers to the “reformists” within the system. This has left the opposition in exile as the only narratively influential party but without any operational leverage in the country.
- Foreign powers can act as accelerants but not architects of change. These specifically include Israel, US, China and Russia. Iranian political psyche is scarred by a long history of foreign interventions in their domestic affairs for the past 150 years. As a result, Iranian elite and public suffer from a chronic disability vis-a-vis their approach to realpolitik, or use of diplomacy and politics that is based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations. In this context, imagining an alignment between the incentives of foreign powers such as Israel with the opposition’s needs to progress their cause has become a minefield to navigate for any potential political leader in the opposition, further narrowing the available options for controlled change that could limit chaos and violence towards people.
Minimizing Damage
Framing a desired outcome of any collapse can help with looking at the available options in an honest way. Without clear, realistic and dispassionate prioritization of our desired outcomes, chances of further damage to the people increases dramatically. As the first step, any opposition should clearly use definition of success as a way to help with priorities. These should be based on ensuring the country continues to stay intact and functional while the opposition tries to coalesce around the next constitution and form of government. These mean:
- Borders are intact to prevent disintegration and balkanization of the country.
- Army is intact to ensure safety and security of people.
- Economy can be restarted so salaries can be paid and civil unrest is prevented.
- Violence is contained as much as possible to limited geographies or timelines.
The corollary to these definitions of success is that the goals of the revolution cannot be justice, revenge or ideological victory, but prevention of fragmentation, civil war and permanent state failure.
The goals of the revolution cannot be justice, revenge or ideological victory, but prevention of fragmentation, civil war and permanent state failure.
The sad and unfortunate fact is that Iran is not choosing between good and bad outcomes, but between bad and catastrophic ones.
Unlike other collapsed dictatorships Iran has multiple power centers, suffers from ideological betrayal and regional entanglements as well as active foreign adversaries. All of these are direct results of the Islamic regime’s 47 year rule by both design and mismanagement. Regardless, our choices are limited to the real circumstances we are finding ourselves in, none of which are ideal.
If collapse is likely and peaceful transition a distant possibility, then the remaining question is not whether Iran will change, but who will shape the collapse, and how violent it will be.
The tragedy of Iran’s present moment is not that better futures are unimaginable, but that the political conditions required to reach them no longer exist. Ideological belief has collapsed, legitimacy has evaporated, and coercive power has fragmented among actors with no national vision. In such circumstances, moral clarity does not translate into political capacity, and righteous anger does not substitute for institutional control. Iran is approaching a transition that will be shaped less by ideals than by force, timing, and fear. Whether the country emerges bruised or broken will depend not on what Iranians deserve, but on who is able to contain violence, preserve the state, and prevent the logic of collapse from consuming the society itself.