Too Weak to Disrupt, Too Dangerous to Collapse: The Islamic Republic Today

Once a disruptive, assertive power whose influence stretched from Tehran to Beirut and Sanaa to Damascus, today Iran more closely resembles a relic of imperial ambition than a regional hegemon. In the wake of Israeli airstrikes that killed many of Iran’s top military leadership and nuclear scientists, as well as U.S. operations that likely set back Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s regional posture has all but collapsed.

Fears of an Iranian-dominated “Shia crescent” from the Gulf to the Mediterranean have faded from public imagination. What the region is left with today is a fragile, hollow state that must now struggle to hold itself together. In the near future, Iran will be propped up not by its strength or its revolutionary rhetoric, but by the caution of its rivals in the Middle East, who fear that if Iran’s theocracy collapses, it could give way to a far more destabilizing anarchy.

A Weak State Is Better Than No State

To put it plainly, Iran has become the “Sick Man of the Middle East.”

The analogy is not hyperbole; the Islamic Republic’s status today echoes the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, when Europe’s major powers kept the decaying regime afloat—not out of deference to Istanbul, but out of fear of what might replace the empire if it fell. The Ottomans endured economic ruin, military embarrassments, cultural decay, and political fragmentation. Yet, the empire survived, sometimes with the backing of its great power rivals—Great Britain, France, and Russia—which preferred a frail entity to the unknown chaos of collapse.

Today, the United States, the Gulf Arab states, and Türkiye are applying the same logic to Iran. The recent military campaign, which caps a calamitous 18 months for Iran and the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” has rendered the Islamic Republic incapable of projecting power abroad in any meaningful way.

However, these powers recognize that an Iran in the throes of government collapse would be far more dangerous than a debilitated one. Moreover, the toppling of the Islamic Republic would set off a series of second- and third-order events that are difficult to predict. Such consequences are uncertain, but easy to imagine: nuclear material leakage, refugee flows into Türkiye, uninhibited cross-border weapons smuggling from Tehran’s looted arsenals, and the emergence of separatist movements in Iran’s Khuzestan, Baluchestan, and Kurdistan regions. The chaos that will reign in Iran following the collapse of the Islamic Republic will likely dwarf that of Syria during its fourteen-year civil war.

Indeed, at the moment, regime change does not seem to be a gamble that the Trump administration is keen to take. President Trump’s foreign policy doctrine towards the Middle East, which he articulated during his historic trip to Riyadh, has been very straightforward: Washington will pursue commerce over chaos as it continues its pivot to Asia to counter Chinese ambitions of regional hegemony. In this light, a greatly weakened Iran is ideal for Washington: Tehran is intact enough to remain cohesive, but too weak to cause trouble for the United States and its partners.

Iran’s Frailty Aids America’s Regional Ambitions

With Iran struggling to effectively threaten its neighbors, new additions to the Abraham Accords, a key element of President Trump’s outlook for the Middle East now seem more plausible. Lebanon and Syria are both countries that the Trump administration has hinted may join the Accords; should they choose to do so, both nations will reap huge financial rewards and gain some measure of protection from Iranian interference in their internal affairs. Still, this ambitious vision for regional normalization and new expanded trade corridors will depend on Saudi Arabia’s ability to secure a commitment from the Netanyahu government for the establishment of a Palestinian state—no easy task, given the Israeli leader’s own domestic constraints.

Though the GCC states will not publicly press for regime change in Tehran, a diminished Iran is music to the ears of policymakers in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. With Tehran busy struggling to secure its home front, the Gulf states will be keen to enhance both their defensive and offensive capabilities. This will require greater security cooperation with the United States and further regional integration of their air defense systems. Moreover—and opposite to what has been the case over the past decade—Iran must now placate the Gulf monarchies. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will have done himself no favors by firing missiles at Doha by creating a perception that the Gulf states, and their millions of foreign expats, are fair game. In the new regional order, the rules of engagement will need to be reset and redrawn. The regional consensus towards the Iranian regime may develop into one of further ostracization, which will push Iran to make concessions to its wealthy—and influential—neighbors.

The Ottoman Empire Did Not Go Quietly

However, there is an obvious risk in attempting to corner Iran. History teaches that the Ottomans did not fade away peacefully. The longer the decaying empire was held together by foreign interests and internal repression, the more damaging its final inevitable collapse became.

That same danger exists today in Iran. The Islamic republic is clearly hemorrhaging legitimacy. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is fractured, with senior commanders growing more distrustful of another as the severity of their infiltration by Israeli intelligence becomes ever more evident. The public is exhausted, and the economy is unsalvageable as long as crippling U.S. sanctions remain in place. This is without even taking into account the likelihood of UN Security Council 2231 sanctions, which endorsed the JCPOA and includes a snapback mechanism allowing any participating state to unilaterally reimpose all previous UN sanctions if Iran is non-compliant, being put back into place before their October 2025 expiration date.

The Islamic Republic will likely agree to a stricter nuclear deal that will further defang it while allowing it to buy time in its attempts to reestablish deterrence and influence in the region. However, this will be a case of too little, too late. With the octogenarian Khamenei in ill health and ambiguity about his successor, it is possible that Iran’s youthful population, who are eager to see their country utilize their petrochemical wealth for domestic development, may abandon the regime altogether. At some point, Iran may stage a chaotic comeback. Or it may splinter entirely, threatening to destabilize the entire region. Propping up Iran may buy the region time, but time, unaccompanied by reform or a resolution, is not strategy. It is stalling. And stalling is how sick men become failed states.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Gulf International Forum.