Ali Khamenei was killed alongside senior political and military figures. Iran’s military infrastructure was badly damaged and its chain of command was shaken. Yet the Islamic Republic did not collapse. Mojtaba Khamenei succeeded his father as Supreme Leader. Civilian administration continued, military commands reorganised and the security establishment redistributed authority among the institutions that remained.
To many Western observers, this was surprising. To those of us who have spent years studying the Islamic Republic through the Iranian political experience, it was not. The mistake was to imagine the regime as a pyramid supported by one man. It is better understood as an onion, composed of overlapping political, military, economic, clerical and ideological layers. Each layer is capable of protecting the others when the centre is attacked.
This Onion State explains why sanctions, domestic unrest, military confrontation and even the removal of senior leaders have repeatedly failed to produce the institutional collapse predicted by Iran’s adversaries. Military strength, ideology and repression all contribute to the regime’s survival, but its greatest advantage lies in the way power has been organised.
Inside the Onion State
The Islamic Republic has three principal layers. The outer layer is the visible administrative state: the presidency, parliament, ministries, provincial governments, municipalities and professional bureaucracy. These institutions provide public services, manage much of the economy and represent Iran abroad.
Beneath them lies the parallel political and security state. Its central institution is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, supported by intelligence organisations, the Basij, strategic industries, commercial enterprises, financial networks and religious foundations. Together, these structures possess military, political and economic power far beyond the responsibilities of a conventional armed force. The IRGC plays a major role in regime security, Iran’s regional activities and the economy, while its international commercial and financial networks have moved billions of dollars.
At the centre is the ideological and constitutional layer: the doctrine of Velayat e Faqih, the office of the Supreme Leader and the revolutionary narrative that presents preservation of the Islamic Republic as inseparable from preservation of Iran itself. Iran’s constitution gives the Supreme Leader extensive authority, including control over national policy, the armed forces and the appointment of senior military and security officials.
This final claim is particularly important. The Islamic Republic has spent decades trying to erase the distinction between the Iranian nation and the political regime that governs it. Loyalty to Iran is presented as loyalty to the Islamic Republic, while opposition to the regime is portrayed as opposition to the country.
As an Iranian, I reject that equation. Iran existed long before the Islamic Republic and will exist long after it. The regime is a political system, not the embodiment of the Iranian nation. Its institutional resilience should therefore not be confused with popular legitimacy or national unity.
The layers of the state are connected, but they are not controlled in every detail from one office. The presidency administers the country without independently controlling its principal instruments of force. The IRGC possesses enormous operational influence, but its constitutional legitimacy remains connected to the ideological centre. These institutions compete for money, appointments and influence, yet they share an overriding interest in protecting the political order from which their power derives.
What Changed After Khamenei
The 2026 war exposed serious weaknesses in Iran’s intelligence, military and command structures. The killing of senior leaders demonstrated that the regime could be penetrated and damaged. But damage is not the same as collapse.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s succession preserved the office of Supreme Leader, even as the balance of power surrounding it began to change. Ali Khamenei accumulated authority over decades through personal relationships, political arbitration and thousands of appointments. His successor inherited the office, but not necessarily the same influence over the organisations surrounding it.
Practical decision making now appears to depend more heavily on coordination among the IRGC, the Supreme National Security Council and other security institutions. A Reuters examination of Iran’s leadership after the strikes found that the ruling system remained operational because power was distributed across overlapping institutions, with the IRGC becoming central to wartime decision making.
The IRGC was already far more than a military force. It had become an intelligence apparatus, an economic actor and a regional strategic network, with influence extending through finance, military production, domestic security and relationships with armed organisations outside Iran.
The war made those capabilities more valuable. As the old leadership arrangements weakened, the regime increasingly relied on organisations capable of preserving command and operational continuity.
Iran has not become a straightforward military dictatorship. The presidency, parliament, judiciary and office of the Supreme Leader retain their constitutional functions. But the relationship between formal authority and practical power has shifted. The regime survived, but power within it was redistributed.
Resilience Is Not Legitimacy
The Islamic Republic’s decentralised structure gives it a clear advantage during war. Military, intelligence, economic and regional actors possess enough delegated authority to continue established operations without waiting for detailed instructions from Tehran.
Yet the same structure creates a serious problem. An institution capable of operating without constant political direction may also be difficult to restrain when the leadership wants to change course. Decentralisation improves survival, but it can weaken coherence. A British parliamentary report on the Iranian intelligence services found overlapping responsibilities, institutional competition and a degree of operational autonomy that can make Iranian activity difficult to coordinate or control centrally.
Iran’s regional network illustrates this contradiction. Hezbollah, Iraqi armed factions, the Houthis and other aligned organisations extend Iranian influence and provide Tehran with additional ways to pressure its adversaries. But they also possess varying degrees of independence and pursue local interests that may not always correspond with Iran’s immediate diplomatic priorities.
Research on Iran’s regional network has found that many of these groups possess their own domestic support and varying degrees of autonomy from Tehran. During the 2026 war, Iran also granted greater operational freedom to commanders working with militias in Iraq, allowing some activity to continue without prior approval from Tehran.
The same tension exists inside the country. Economic networks that prospered under sanctions may resist normalisation. Security bodies accustomed to exceptional authority may oppose civilian oversight. Ideological organisations may regard compromise as a threat to their influence, resources and purpose. A policy supported by the presidency or foreign ministry can therefore be blocked, delayed or weakened elsewhere.
For Iranians seeking democratic change, the distinction between resilience and legitimacy is essential. Institutional survival does not mean that the regime commands the confidence of the population. Nationwide protests beginning in December 2025 and the state’s subsequent repression demonstrated that popular opposition, economic hardship and demands for political change remained unresolved.
A state can retain administrative and coercive power while losing the consent of much of its population. Indeed, the more dependent a government becomes on coercion, the more clearly it reveals the weakness of its political legitimacy.
The Islamic Republic survives not because it has resolved Iran’s political crisis, but because it has constructed institutions capable of containing it. The mechanisms that protect the regime during confrontation can also prevent it from changing when change becomes necessary.
Why Western Strategy Keeps Failing
For decades, international policy towards Iran has relied on sanctions, diplomatic isolation, military deterrence and negotiations with the formal government. These strategies often assume that sufficient pressure on the leadership will change its behaviour or cause the wider system to collapse.
But pressure does not affect every institution in the same way. Sanctions may weaken the civilian economy while strengthening organisations that control unofficial trade and financial networks. The United States Treasury has documented an extensive shadow banking system tied to the IRGC and Iran’s armed forces, which has moved money from oil sales through exchange houses, front companies and other channels outside the formal economy.
Military strikes may eliminate commanders without dismantling the organisations they led. Diplomatic isolation may constrain the formal government while increasing the influence of the security establishment. The survival of Iran’s political system after the 2026 attacks demonstrated that military degradation and political disintegration are not the same thing.
Diplomacy faces a similar problem. The foreign ministry may negotiate and the presidency may favour reducing tensions, but agreements involving missiles, nuclear activities, regional armed groups or security arrangements cannot be implemented without the cooperation of the institutions that possess operational control.
The decisive question is not whether an Iranian representative has permission to negotiate. It is whether the organisations responsible for implementation are willing and able to enforce the agreement. They may oppose concessions for ideological reasons, or because an agreement threatens their money, influence or strategic role.
There is a difference between having the authority to sign an agreement and having the power to make the system obey it.
Washington and European capitals must therefore look beyond Iran’s visible political hierarchy. They must identify which institutions control force, which networks control money and trade, and which bodies can enforce or obstruct a diplomatic settlement.
Iran Is More Than Its Regime
The Islamic Republic is neither a dictatorship entirely dependent upon one ruler nor a loose collection of organisations operating without direction. It is a distributed ideological and security system built to endure. That resilience does not guarantee permanence, just as its internal contradictions do not guarantee imminent collapse.
Any successful strategy towards Iran must identify where authority, money and coercive power actually reside. It must distinguish between the officials who negotiate, the institutions that implement policy and the networks that benefit from continued confrontation.
But Western strategy must also look beyond the regime itself. Iran is not merely a collection of security institutions, nuclear facilities and regional proxies. It is a nation with a long political memory, a powerful cultural identity and a population that has repeatedly demonstrated its desire for dignity, freedom and accountable government.
Those of us who want a democratic future for Iran must resist two illusions. The first is that removing one leader will automatically bring down the regime. The second is that the regime’s institutional survival proves its permanence.
The Islamic Republic remains powerful because its institutions are designed to protect one another. But those same institutions protect entrenched interests, reward confrontation and prevent political authority from becoming accountable to the Iranian people.
Iran’s democratic transition will therefore require more than a change at the summit. It will require the transformation of the structures that convert ideological loyalty into economic privilege, military power and political control.
Killing Ali Khamenei did not dismantle the system around him. Nor does the system’s survival represent the defeat of the Iranian people. Before there can be an effective strategy for Iran, there must be an honest understanding of how power in Iran actually works.
