After nearly half a century of flirting with direct conflict, the United States finally went to war with Iran. Fifteen weeks later, the fighting is over. The regime has not only survived a confrontation with the world’s most powerful military but emerged believing it is stronger than before.
Despite US President Donald Trump’s declaration just days into the war that Washington had already emerged victorious, Iran retained its ability to fight back right up to the signing of an interim ceasefire agreement with the US. Its most powerful weapon proved to be causing the biggest oil supply shock in history through its effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s crude passes.
Iran is casting its survival as a strategic victory over the US and Israel. But surviving the war may prove easier than winning the peace. Assuming the ceasefire holds, the more consequential battle is whether the Islamic Republic’s leaders can translate that defiance into sanctions relief, economic revival and enough public support to secure the regime’s future.
Projecting its own victory, the Iranian regime empowered a hardline leadership, fired missiles and drones at its neighbors, rejected temporary ceasefires, and doubled down on its right to a nuclear program.
It also appointed Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to succeed his father in a deliberate display of continuity that defies the Islamic Republic’s long-standing taboo against hereditary rule. It maintains a functioning government and a cohesive military still capable of launching ballistic missiles that threaten Washington’s regional allies and the world economy.
A memorandum of understanding reached between the US and Iran over the weekend “immediately and permanently” terminates hostilities, paves the way for the removal of all sanctions against Iran, and unfreezes its assets, without having Iran end its missile program or its support for regional proxies. In return, Tehran has reiterated its longstanding pledge not to build a nuclear weapon, promised to dilute near weapons-grade uranium, and agreed to unblock the Strait of Hormuz – concessions that don’t go significantly beyond its prewar offers.
“For the Islamic Republic and its supporters, there is this strong sense of confidence that they took the biggest blows America and Israel can give them and were left standing and are getting concessions,” said Sina Toossi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy (CIP).
Experts say the regime’s sense of triumph could quickly dissipate, however, if it fails to convert its wartime success into gains at home, which could require curbing hardliners’ appetite for continued conflict.
Iran’s generals and warmongering politicians had long boasted of their power to hit back. This conflict has left them emboldened. They see its outcome as proof that it was their military strategy – not diplomacy or compromise – that forced an agreement.
The hardliners have emerged with their hands on the levers of power and battlefield command, and their supporters now flood Iran’s streets with daily rallies celebrating a newfound legitimacy forged through surviving the US-Israeli assault. The moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian, remains constrained to administrative governance and his reformist comrades have been pushed to the side – some even reportedly under house arrest.
But the Islamic Republic’s underlying problems remain unresolved, experts say. Unless it can convert its purported victory into tangible economic gain for the general population, the regime may have to continue to reckon with a domestically turbulent future and lurking foreign enemies.
“They (the regime) have more confidence and probably more support because they’ve survived the war and have a sufficiently loyal base,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at London’s Chatham House think tank. “But they still have a component of the population who would like to see the end of the Islamic Republic.”
Despite widespread hardship, daily life in Iran has largely carried on amid the greatest existential threat in the Islamic Republic’s 47-year history. A military and economic resilience strategy prepared the country for prolonged conflict, in which asymmetric tactics proved effective and a new generation of commanders has emerged.
But ordinary Iranians have borne the brunt of the US attacks, with more than 3,000 people killed in the three-plus months of war. Prices of essential goods have soared and many people have lost their jobs, with millions now at risk of falling into poverty amid widespread economic struggles.
“For the Iranian people, they need to see dividends of the war,” said Toossi, the CIP analyst. “The Islamic Republic is telling them their grand strategy paid off and there will be a new regional order, but if the people cannot see that on the dinner tables, then the regime’s problems aren’t going away.”
Just a few weeks before the war, the Islamic Republic faced one of its greatest domestic threats when tens of thousands took to the streets to demonstrate against dire economic conditions that were exacerbated by US sanctions. Thousands were killed in the government’s brutal crackdown, but the movement exposed the fragility of the regime and its leadership.
Protesters and political opposition alike now must reckon with an increasingly paranoid regime that has witnessed enemy infiltration and faces Trump’s claims of arming ethnic opposition groups. The Islamic Republic will likely enjoy a newfound boldness in confronting dissent.
Critically, Tehran must contend with hardliners firmly entrenched within the regime, including influential figures who have fiercely opposed the terms of the current agreement with Washington and have previously attempted to sabotage diplomacy to push for war.
These hardliners insist – under the belief that they are the victors in this war – that the agreement amounts to surrender to the US and abandons Iran’s core priorities. Like Trump, but for different reasons, they too opposed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal reached under the Obama administration.
To appease both protesters and hardline figures, Iranian negotiators are expected to insist to their American counterparts that any final deal must include substantial sanctions relief and the unfreezing of Iran’s assets.
The regime understands that a purely symbolic victory would not suffice to win over regime opponents who have temporarily set aside their grievances for the sake of wartime unity, or those hardliners who have reluctantly halted calls for war on the promise of major concessions from Washington.
And without significant sanctions relief that alleviates the suffering of ordinary Iranians and sets the country on a clear path to economic recovery, difficult questions could again arise about the regime’s longstanding policy of defiance against the US.
Paradoxically, any such relief and the unfreezing of assets would almost certainly be provisional on major concessions on Iran’s nuclear program – concessions that hardliners are likely to reject.
And the main untested variable will come with Mojtaba Khamenei’s leadership. He has yet to make any public appearance, and it remains unclear what form his guidance as supreme leader will take.
“In the aftermath of the war, is the government going to be more exclusionary, more inclusionary, what are the social freedoms, political freedoms?” Toossi, the analyst, asked. “All those things will be telling in the coming months.”
