By Jamal Obeidi
Amid rapid transformations and mounting military and security pressures facing Iran and the wider Middle East, the central question is no longer whether the Iranian regime will undergo fundamental change, but what alternative might replace it.
Experiences across the region show that ousting regimes without a clear vision for the post-transition phase does not necessarily produce stability. In many cases, it has instead created political and security vacuums, opening the door to further disorder and complicating both domestic and regional dynamics.
Developments over the past two years, particularly amid escalating US-Israeli pressure on Iran, point to significant shifts among Persian opposition groups, including the People’s Mujahedin Organisation, the ultra-nationalist monarchist Pahlavi bloc and the nationalist republican movement Jomhouri-e Khahan (United Republicans of Iran). Their efforts to mobilise support among non-Persian peoples within Iran are not a passing political phenomenon. Rather, they reflect a deeper structural predicament confronting these groups. Movements that long sidelined or denied the rights of Ahwazis, Kurds, Azerbaijani Turks, Balochis, Lurs, and Turkmen now find themselves compelled to seek their backing within the current political struggle.
This shift, however, requires careful scrutiny, particularly in light of the 1979 experience, when the ruling leadership abandoned its commitments to non-Persian ethnic groups once it had consolidated power.
A central reality remains that any political transformation in Iran is unlikely to succeed without the active participation of non-Persian peoples, who collectively form a significant majority estimated at around 74 per cent of Iran’s population.
Recent protest movements further underscore this dynamic. The Green Movement of 2009, the protests of 2022, the demonstrations of last January, and other waves of unrest illustrate that as long as such movements remain concentrated in Persian areas and fail to extend meaningfully into the country’s peripheral regions, they are unlikely to produce far-reaching political change.
In this sense, Iran’s future will not be shaped solely in Tehran or in external centres such as Washington or Tel Aviv, but largely across its margins and peripheral regions, where key equations of power and influence increasingly take shape, both within the country and across its regional neighbourhood.
A deeper problem lies in the persistence of a dominant supremacist political mindset among much of the Persian elite, particularly within the Pahlavi monarchist bloc, which has not undergone substantive transformation. It remains largely bound to the idea of a rigid, centralised state historically associated with the marginalisation and exclusion of ethnic diversity.
Without confronting this structural limitation in political thinking, any future process of change risks reproducing the crisis rather than resolving it, albeit in altered forms.
Accordingly, Iran’s future in a post-Islamic Republic context can be framed through three principal trajectories, each carrying distinct characteristics and direct implications for both the domestic arena and the wider region:
First: A Return to the Centralised Persian Nation-State
This scenario, promoted by Persian nationalist and monarchist forces associated with the Pahlavi bloc, does not constitute a genuine solution but rather a continuation of the underlying crisis. The rhetoric of these forces often reflects hostility toward Arabs and Islam, drawing on historical narratives that portray the “other” as a principal source of decline and instability.
Should these forces assume power, their approach would likely resemble the current theocratic-Persian system in terms of structure, expansionist tendencies, and centralising political instincts. It could, in fact, usher in a more overtly confrontational nationalist project in both discourse and practice.
From this standpoint, such a trajectory presents a tangible risk to the Arab world, particularly the Arabian Gulf, which remains a central pillar in regional security dynamics, and may prove no less consequential than the present situation.
Second: The Rise of Non-Persian Peoples
This trajectory appears to be the most consequential. Non-Persian groups within Iran, including Azerbaijanis, Ahwazis, Kurds, and Baloch, have moved beyond the status of marginalised populations to become central actors in the dynamics of change.
If these groups succeed in consolidating their position, two broad outcomes emerge: either fragmentation into independent entities or the establishment of a federal system.
While the fragmentation of Iran would carry significant costs, it could also fundamentally reshape regional balances in ways that mitigate longstanding threats. Federalism, by contrast, offers a more moderate alternative, reducing the dominance of the central government while granting regions greater autonomy. In both scenarios, a key consequence would be the containment of the expansionist tendencies that have long characterised Iranian political behaviour.
Third: The Liberal Democratic Trajectory
This trajectory represents the most ambitious option and aligns most closely with prevailing international preferences that reject the disintegration of Iran out of concern for potential chaos. It envisages the establishment of a democratic state that guarantees the national and political rights of all its constituent groups.
Should this current secure sufficient internal and external backing, it could offer a viable opportunity to transform Iran into a conventional state that neither threatens its neighbours nor suppresses its internal diversity.
Where should the Arab states stand?
In this context, neutrality is unlikely to be a realistic option for states neighbouring Iran. Arab states, particularly those in the Gulf, have been and are still among the actors most directly affected by Iranian policies. It is therefore in their strategic interest to support trajectories that mitigate these risks, particularly the second and third paths.
By contrast, placing confidence in a return to a centralised Persian nationalist model appears, in this assessment, to be a strategic miscalculation.
In conclusion, change in Iran is no longer a purely theoretical prospect, but a process gradually taking shape under the weight of both internal and external pressures. The success of such a transformation, however, should not be measured solely by the collapse of the existing regime, but by the nature of the system that follows it.
Without a clear political vision, credible constitutional and institutional guarantees for the rights of diverse groups, and a coordinated international approach, the result may be the reproduction of crisis in new forms rather than its resolution, opening the way to another cycle of instability instead of a definitive settlement.