Like Many Autocratic Regimes, Iran is Weak and Strong

Authoritarians last longer than you might think--even under duress

Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2023. (Creative Commons 4.0/Khamenei.ir)

In a Russian prison cell, the dissident Alexei Navalny reflected on how tough autocratic regimes are. "The U.S.S.R. lasted seventy years. The repressive regimes in North Korea and Cuba survive to this day. China, with a whole bunch of political prisoners, has lasted so long that those prisoners grow old and die in prison," he wrote in his posthumous memoir, Patriot. "The truth of the matter is that we underestimate just how resilient autocracies are in the modern world." Navalny died in a prison colony near the Arctic Circle last February under brutal conditions; Vladimir Putin remains in power in Moscow.

I have been thinking about this quote as the autocratic regime in Iran looks to be on the ropes--especially following the June 21 U.S. bombing of three of its nuclear sites. For years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been developing a nuclear enrichment program which has been the subject of international negotiations. Israeli intelligence assessed that Iran could make a nuclear bomb in 15 days, while U.S. intelligence believed that Iran was undecided about making a bomb. Earlier this month, Israel began bombing Iran in an attempt to thwart its nuclear program and possibly even topple its regime. Many of Iran's top military leaders were killed and Israeli warplanes fly over Iran unimpeded as it had destroyed its air defense systems months ago. The extent of the damage to the enrichment program from the June 21 U.S. attacks is unclear. Should Iran retaliate against some 40,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East, it could face harsher retaliation from Washington.

Iran's repressive Islamic regime led by 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is widely loathed. The regime has faced protest waves in 2009, 2017-8, and 2022 due to its lack of political freedom, economic mismanagement, and repression of women. Despite ranking in the top five worldwide in oil and gas reserves, the regime has handled the economy poorly; some 30 percent of Iranians live below the poverty line. (International sanctions imposed by Western countries have also contributed to the crippled economy.)

The reality is that authoritarian regimes--even ones under severe duress--are both weak and strong. They are weak because decades in power usually lead to political and economic staleness and popular discontent; there is an absence of new political faces, new ideas about how to run the economy, and the economic benefits often go to a few regime insiders. Yet, there is strength in being "the only game in town;" exiling, imprisoning, and killing domestic opposition leads to a lack of political alternatives.

Iran's external and internal weakness has led to hopes that the regime--in power since 1979--might finally crumble. Iran is internationally isolated (allies like China and Russia will not come to help) and it is in a lose-lose situation in responding to the U.S.; if Iran attacks U.S. troops, a larger war with the U.S. may end the regime, and if Iran does not retaliate, it will look weak. Claire Berlinski, who writes The Cosmopolitan Globalist newsletter, offered an optimistic take: "Liberal democracy has been collapsing worldwide. A brutal axis of revisionist authoritarian powers has coalesced," she wrote. "With Israel’s strike on Iran, however, I see—for the first time since roughly 2007—a narrow path toward a world on a different trajectory…Israel could succeed in toppling the regime. Or, rather, Iranians could."

Two other seasoned observers have been more doubtful that the regime would fall.