With the prospects for diplomacy between the United States and Iran uncertain, it may seem premature to contemplate the postwar future. After all, following the June 17 memorandum of understanding, the war between the two sides escalated again, leaving the document in tatters. Both sides began launching major strikes, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Iran was once again in a “full-scale war.” On July 27, after a two-week bombing campaign, the Trump administration announced a cease-fire and Iran responded in kind, but a resumption of military hostilities remained high.
But regardless of the course of fighting, the endgame is unlikely to change. According to a new intelligence assessment reported in The Washington Post, Iran is “unlikely to feel significant impact or soften its negotiating position as a result of new rounds of U.S. military strikes.” An unavoidable reality thus confronts the United States and its allies: that they will not topple the Islamic Republic.
Given that the regime will very likely survive the war, the urgent question is what a grand bargain to end the conflict will mean for the future of Iranian politics. A commonly held view is that reaching a new deal will simply entrench the existing hard-line leadership. But this overlooks important dynamics at play inside the country. In fact, a deal would significantly increase the prospects for democracy in Iran. These effects would not be seen immediately or felt in the short term, but under the right circumstances they are likely to appear in the near future. The crucial question, then, becomes how best to set the postwar conditions under which democratic forces have more, rather than less, potential to grow.
FLAWS OF WAR
It is clear that a diplomatic conclusion of the war with Iran, should it happen, will involve some kind of grand bargain. The broad contours of such a deal will likely approximate the terms outlined in the June memorandum. Of course, getting a deal that sticks will not be easy, and key parts of it will likely be deferred to future negotiations. Low-level hostilities may continue for some time to come. This time around, once a cease-fire is reached, it will be essential to institute a deconfliction mechanism to prevent further rounds of escalation and a return to war.
But the deal will have some provisions that take effect immediately, and so it will affect Iranian politics—and in an overall positive direction. More generally, democratization in Iran is fundamentally incompatible with crippling sanctions and war. The expansion of poverty and economic misery fueled by Western sanctions and the bombing of civilian infrastructure during the war have served to strengthen the state while weakening society. Put simply, it is impossible to mobilize for political change while people are starving and bombs are falling. The idea that impoverishing Iran economically and punishing it militarily will produce a popular uprising was always a fanciful notion. The war has proved that point.
The Islamic Republic faces a crisis of legitimacy. Although the war has produced a surge of nationalism and temporarily reaffirmed the leadership’s legitimacy, the core grievances that produced deep discontent and massive public protests in January remain. This is especially true of Iran’s very large urban youth population. A future Iran that no longer faces war or the threat of war and for which economic misery can no longer be blamed on foreign sanctions will inevitably bring into focus the regime’s accountability for the country’s ills, its extreme disconnect from the will of the people, and its pervasive corruption.
It is impossible to mobilize for political change while people are starving and bombs are falling.
This analysis may come as a surprise for U.S. policymakers, who have long argued that economic strangulation backed by military pressure will create a democratic opening. Much of this misunderstanding reflects the official war rationales offered by Israel and the United States. Both governments have paid lip service to the idea that military intervention can produce regime change. During the 12-day war in June 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Iranian people that Israel was “clearing the path for you to achieve your freedom.” In January, when the country was engulfed in protests, Trump encouraged Iranians to “keep protesting, take over your institutions” and assured them that “help is on the way.” After the 2026 war began, Netanyahu wrote, “We are waging a historic war for liberty,” and Trump told Iranians as the bombs began to fall that “the hour of your freedom is at hand.”
But the ferocious bombing campaign has had the opposite effect. The regime has survived the assassination of its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many other senior political and military officials. It has also consolidated power internally, weathered an expanding economic crisis, and, by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, fought Israel and the United States to a draw. Iranians have not taken to the streets, as Trump called on them to do. The attack on schools, mostly notably the girls’ school in Minab on the first day of the war, plus attacks on universities, hospitals, and on cultural heritage sites, quickly drove an outpouring of Iranian patriotism.
This response could be seen in the six-day funeral ceremony for Khamenei, in early July. No doubt the regime drew on its core supporters, but given the size of the crowds reported by foreign journalists on the ground, it seems likely that the public turnout was much higher than anticipated. Many Iranians who were on the fence seem to have sided with the political status quo as a result of the war, confirming the political scientist Robert Pape’s thesis that regime change operations conducted via external bombings rarely succeed.
RECIPE FOR REVOLUTION
If external bombardment has failed to bring about political change in Iran, the country’s internal conditions present a very different picture. Although there is no single magic formula, there is broad agreement among scholars about the political factors that enhance the prospects for democratization. What is often overlooked about Iran is that many of these conditions already exist.
Generally, high levels of socioeconomic development and a sizable middle class are crucial. There needs to be a coherent administrative state. Civil society needs to support independent civic organizations that can make demands on the state and help foster accountability. There needs to be a political culture that includes adherence to basic norms and rules. National unity is required; countries that have secessionist movements or deeply unresolved territorial issues are less likely to make a successful shift to democracy. Finally, a diversified economy is also significant, since reliance on a few national resources allow authoritarian regimes to wield far-reaching control over the economy and sustain patronage networks.
Over the past 25 years, Iran has met five of these six preconditions. On socioeconomic development, Iranian society scores high, with adult literacy at around 90 percent and urbanization at 78 percent. And although the share of the population that is middle class has fallen from its 2012 peak of two-thirds, there is no reason that this number cannot rise again. Iran has a functional administrative state, and in the past, during reformist presidencies, it has seen civil society expand.
Moreover, Iranian political culture has historically been infused by democratic sentiment. There is a tradition of democratic struggle going back to the 1905 Constitutional Revolution, and fighting for political accountability has been a key part of modern Iranian history. In addition, unlike some of its neighbors, Iran does not face ethnic cleavages or sectarian fragmentation that could break the country apart. The country does have deep minority grievances, but it is ultimately united by a strong sense of national identity that dates back well over a century.
Many of the conditions for democratization already exist in Iran.
Historically, the one major precondition that Iran does not meet is having a diversified economy. The country’s long dependence on oil has led to a patronage system that reinforces authoritarianism by allowing the state to dominate the economy. This situation, however, is not static. Because of sanctions, Iran has begun to export industrial metals, petrochemicals, and agricultural products, and is no longer a pure oil rentier state. Nonetheless, large parts of its economy are controlled by regime-loyalist networks that are deeply embedded in and benefit the ruling elite. This more complicated economic model does have the potential of creating new political openings, particularly in the aftermath of a diplomatic settlement, when sanctions are lifted and Iran’s economy is incorporated into the global economy.
In addition to these internal factors, scholars of democratization note that a country’s international context matters. A stable global and regional environment enhances the possibility of political change; war or the threat of war severely undermines it. The latter, by shifting the center of gravity of politics away from internal accountability and toward external threats, allows an autocratic leadership to leverage national security concerns as a pretext for maintaining state control. On top of this, the regime can instrumentalize patriotism to crush dissent.
For much of the last quarter century, democratization in Iran has been hobbled by an inhospitable international environment. In 2015, however, the nuclear deal between Iran and the United States under President Barack Obama provided a rare moment of hope. Formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the agreement was embraced not only by many world leaders but also by Iranian civil society and democracy activists. For them, the JCPOA held the promise of creating better internal and external conditions to fight for democracy. The threat of external war had finally been removed, and certain sanctions were lifted. The possibility of Iran’s deeper integration into the global community loomed on the horizon, and a profound chasm emerged among Iran’s ruling elites about the future of the Islamic Republic.
But this picture radically changed when Donald Trump tore up the JCPOA in 2018 and reimposed devastating sanctions, despite Iran’s adherence to the terms of the deal. The result was that Iranian democrats were demoralized while hard-liners reveled in an “I told you so” moment. The United States, they claimed, could never be trusted. The consequences for a political opening in Iran were catastrophic. Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA also created a direct pathway to the recent war with Iran. During his first term, the United States and Iran nearly went to war on three separate occasions. Since the beginning of his second term, 18 months ago, the president has taken the United States to war against Iran twice.
THE WAR AT HOME
Because of the war, Iranian reformers will have to overcome very significant obstacles to democratization. The cohesion of the ruling elite has been strengthened and hard-liners have asserted control, including through a smooth leadership succession to Mojtaba Khamenei, Ali Khamenei’s son and the preferred candidate of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The war has also narrowed the space for more pragmatic leaders who might have emerged in peacetime. Moreover, Iran’s armed forces have stayed loyal to the regime. Despite the assassination of several layers of the senior IRGC leadership, the regime has managed to survive and effectively fight back via the use of drone and missile technology. Domestically, the regime has rallied its core supporters, who have occupied public spaces in major Iranian cities, deterring any opposition to the regime from expressing itself.
The absence of an effective, unified, and cohesive opposition has reinforced the existing structure of the Islamic Republic. Following the January massacres of protesters by security forces and the trauma of the war, regime opponents remain deeply divided and disorganized. These divisions are not insurmountable. On one level, the Iranian opposition faces many of the same challenges as democratic opposition movements in other countries, including how to create a strategy for political change and a shared vision for a democratic future that can mobilize a broad-based coalition of supporters. But Iranians are also contending with one of the most repressive regimes in the world. According to human rights groups, the Islamic Republic of Iran executes more people per capita than any other country, including 1,500 in 2025 and another 370 in the first six months of 2026. The war has further facilitated the repression.
A critical additional issue is how to reclaim the struggle for democracy from Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed shah. Although he has been the most prominent opposition figure outside Iran, the depth of his support within the country itself is unknown—and likely smaller than he claims it to be. His loyalty to his father’s repressive rule and his ties to Israel and Saudi Arabia also raise serious questions about his democratic credibility. A core challenge for democrats within Iran is how to create an alternative leadership that has organic links to society and can also inspire nonviolent resistance.
The war has produced two moral redlines for the opposition going forward: it will not compromise its democratic demands with the regime and it will be steadfastly opposed to foreign military intervention. Before the war, elements of Iran’s domestic opposition expressed sympathy for external military pressure on Iran, especially in the aftermath of January massacres. That ship has now sailed. Anyone who supports either of these approaches going forward will lack credibility among a large segment of Iranians, both domestically and abroad. Nonetheless, the United States and its Western allies can still adopt policy measures that indirectly support Iranian democrats.
FROM STABILITY TO OPPORTUNITY
There is at least one new factor in a successful postwar bargain that could significantly enhance Iran’s long-term democratic prospects: a changed international context. To begin with, this means removing the threat of war. Getting back to an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program that approximates the JCPOA will be essential in this regard. One of benefits of the June memorandum of understanding is that it opened the way to such a deal. While the current escalation has rendered this document dormant, it could still prove a useful framework for de-escalation and conflict resolution.
Thus far, most of the Western debate about a new deal has focused on containing the security threats that flow from Iranian nuclear enrichment. But a durable diplomatic agreement could also create a much better environment for Iranian democratization. Crucial here is the question of sanctions: new research suggests that the effects of existing sanctions on potential political change in Iran have been catastrophic. The World Bank and the UN Development Program estimate that Iran’s poverty rate could be as high as 40 percent; the war has doubtless pushed that figure even higher. According to a 2025 study in the European Journal of Political Economy, U.S. sanctions have had “devastating and measurable cost on the social fabric” of Iran. This sledgehammer approach, the authors argue, “constitutes a major strategic failure for the West.”
Looking ahead, any future sanctions on Iran must be guided by the goal of setting the conditions for democratization. Broad-based sanctions that hollow out the middle class should be repealed. Sanctions on Iranian leaders who have command-and-control responsibility for human rights violations, on the other hand, should be strengthened. Magnitsky-style sanctions—targeted, globally applicable punitive measures against individuals, such as travel bans and the freezing of assets—against top Iranian officials should remain in place. At the same time, promoting de-escalation between Iran and its neighbors in the Gulf can also advance democratization by creating a more stable international environment. A new Persian Gulf security architecture that includes Iran and its Arab neighbors would be a positive move in this direction. U.S. Vice President JD Vance hinted at this when he said that sticking to the diplomatic track based on the memorandum of understanding is “going to transform the entire region.”
ON BORROWED TIME
Democratization in Iran requires stability. Foreign military intervention, crippling economic sanctions, and threats of war undermine the country’s potential to change. The war has demonstrated that the Islamic Republic is not on the verge of collapse and that its leaders are not going to surrender to the demands of the Trump administration. Given the almost certain perseverance of the Islamic Republic at the end of the war, the more important question is how a postwar settlement can support the internal forces pushing for change.
Although this war has extended the shelf life of the Islamic Republic, the regime continues to live on borrowed time. The internal crisis of legitimacy is deep and the desire for structural political change is widespread, especially among young people, who constitute roughly 70 percent of the population. In the case of the June 2025 war, it took only six months before political demands resurfaced in the form of national protests over a sagging economy and political repression. When the fog of this war finally recedes, demands for accountability, transparency and representation will resurface.
Inevitably, the current war will come to an end, and when it does, Iranians will begin to heal and the struggle for democracy will again reassert itself. The road will be long and arduous, and there is no guarantee that the opposition will triumph. But it is crucial to understand that many of the internal preconditions for democratization are already in place, and that by changing the international context, an effective deal to the end of the war would significantly enhance the chances of success not immediately but eventually.
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