Erfan Fard is a Middle East researcher and counter-terrorism analyst born in Iran and based in McLean, Virginia. His latest book, Tehran’s Dictator, examines the theocratic era of Ali Khamenei (1989-2026). Twitter/X: @EQFard.
The strike of the United States and Israel against the Islamic regime is a preventive intervention that has rewire power inside Iran for a hegemonic regime change. What is emerging is not collapse, but consolidation: a Shi’ia Mullah’s Junta that can be a “Third Islamic Republic" - a system in which U.S. and Israeli strikes have eroded Iran’s conventional and nuclear capability while empowering the IRGC, intensifying repression, and turning the closure of the Strait of Hormuz into a lever that can trap the region and the global order in a crisis.
In public, the Shi’ia mullah dominates the symbolism of the state. Operational authority is concentrated within the security apparatus. The IRGC, intelligence services, and security networks function as the decisive centers of power. War has accelerated this shift. Under external pressure, the regime has not moved toward reform or negotiation; it has moved toward militarization. The decapitation of senior commanders and the targeting main hubs have weakened the system, but they have also created an opening for radical elites to move up.
Strikes on headquarters and logistical networks have degraded the regime’s ability to manage security coherently. Yet redundancy was built into this architecture long ago. Parallel chains of command span the IRGC and intelligence agencies. The result is not systemic collapse but slower coordination in decision cycles. As commanders are removed, the system declined in crisis management and repression. Vacancies are filled on the basis of loyalty rather than professional competence. The result is a state that is less sophisticated but often more brutal, offsetting inexperience with harsher and more indiscriminate coercion at home.
While this transformation unfolds in Tehran, the rhetoric emerging from Washington is redefining the strategic narrative of the war. In a televised address, President Trump framed the campaign as a decisive effort to dismantle Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities. He has insisted the war will continue until Tehran’s ability to threaten the US and its allies is neutralized, portraying the air campaign as the decisive step previous Western leaders lacked the resolve to undertake.
Concurrently, Trump tells Americans that after 33 days of bombing, Iran has been “eviscerated," its navy, missiles, radar, and air defenses destroyed, and is “no longer a threat."
President Trump has warned that the US will continue striking Iran and, absent a deal, could “bring them back to the Stone Age" by targeting power plants and key infrastructure, including facilities on Kharg Island. While he insists that diplomacy remains his preference, Trump argues that pledges to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb are meaningless if no one is willing to act. The blend of triumphal rhetoric and stark threats may energize supporters, but it has also intensified public anxiety about the risks of a wider and potentially uncontrollable escalation.
At the heart of the crisis lies the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s decision to choke off most traffic through this vital waterway has transformed a regional conflict into a global energy shock. If Washington ends the war without compelling Tehran to reopen the strait, Iran would get exactly what it wants: a ceasefire while retaining its chokehold on energy markets-turning the outcome into a pause rather than a settlement and pushing the problem onto future administrations. President Donald Trump suggests the strait will “open automatically" once U.S. forces depart, even as he promises the option of returning with precise “spot strikes."
Trump has used his platform to rebuke America’s allies. In one address, he declared that “the hard part is done" in Iran and demanded that Europe “grab and cherish" the Strait of Hormuz, which the US does not need for fuel, while deriding NATO as a “paper tiger" and threatening to pull the US out of the alliance.
The ceasefire debate exposes a question inside Iran: who controls war and peace?
Trump whispered that a “new, less radical and more intelligent" Iranian president has asked Washington for a ceasefire, but bluntly conditions any consideration of that request on a fully open and secure Strait of Hormuz and continues to threaten attacks on Iran’s infrastructure if his terms are not met. Realistically, the president does not command Iran’s coercive institutions. Real authority lies with a IRGC elite, including figures such as Ahmad Vahidi, which reflects a system built on men, not laws - overlapping security networks and power, rather than constitutional offices.
Against this backdrop, the concept of a ceasefire in Tehran may differ fundamentally from how it is understood in the West. Tehran’s signals can be read as an attempt to manage pressure. Pauses are not steps toward peace; they are phases in a cycle of violence driven by ideology and sustained by the security apparatus that is gaining ground through this war.
For Iranians, who want “regime change," not “change within the regime", the consequences are grim: economic collapse and repression. Yet these factors carry weight in the regime’s calculus. Survival, not governance, is their priority. The leadership knows it does not represent the aspirations of Iranians, but that recognition leads to coercion, not reform. The war that broke the Islamic Caliphate of Shi’ism has instead hardened its inner core, elevating the junta within while clerical authority remains as a façade.
Paradoxically, U.S. and Israeli airpower may succeed in degrading the regime’s forces and nuclear infrastructure while failing to reduce - and increasing - Tehran’s leverage. A weaker but radical, security-dominated state sitting astride the Strait of Hormuz could prove more dangerous to regional stability and the global economy than the system it replaces. Whether Washington “wins" the war may matter less than whether it can help shape a postwar order in which Iran’s ability to weaponize energy routes and militarize its politics is genuinely constrained, rather than locked into a Junta regime.
Erfan Fard is a counter-terrorism analyst and Middle East researcher based in McLean, Virginia.