With the expansion of recent military operations against centers of power within the Iranian regime, the region has entered a different phase of conflict. After many years of negotiations and diplomatic messages, the real question is no longer how to manage the crisis with Tehran but whether this moment can end the theocratic government that has ruled the Islamic Republic since 1979 and led the region into four decades of tension and instability.
The months before these operations included sensitive talks between the United States and Iran to stop advances in the Iranian nuclear program and curb the development of ballistic missiles. But those efforts ran into repeated delays and recalcitrance. While Tehran negotiated in public, it worked secretly to boost its nuclear and missile abilities toward the nuclear weapon threshold.
With the continuation of this strategy, it became obvious that diplomacy had run its course; negotiating while the Iranian nuclear program moved forward meant giving the regime more time to advance military nuclear capability.
That would have dangerously changed the balance of power in the Middle East and opened the door to a wide nuclear arms race.
However, past experiences in the region show that military strikes alone do not change regime behavior if the political and military structure can regenerate power. Targeting facilities or neutralizing leaders might weaken the regime, but it does not remove the mechanism that allows it to rebuild. In this context, recent statements by Israeli officials show a change in the nature of deterrence. Defense Minister Israel Katz said, “Every leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime to continue and lead the plan to destroy Israel... will be a target for elimination.”
This message means the conflict is no longer limited to striking military capabilities alone but also includes the decision-makers driving this effort.
How to prevent Iran from threatening the region in the future
The real question today is not how to deliver the next strike but how to prevent the Iranian regime from rebuilding its capacity to threaten the region. A realistic way forward is not based on overthrowing the Iranian state or pushing it toward chaos. It focuses instead on changing the nature of the political-religious system within the state so that Iran moves from an ideological project for regional conflict into a nation-state that operates according to the interests of its people and the stability of its surroundings.
To achieve this change, military pressure alone is not enough; it requires a political and strategic plan based on several integrated tracks. The first track in this effort concerns the nuclear program. Reducing enrichment levels or freezing some activities will not be sufficient. What is required is reducing the number of operating reactors to the minimum for civilian purposes and subjecting any future nuclear development to a strict oversight regime according to the conditions of the nuclear cooperation frameworks known as the 123 Agreements (an American civil nuclear cooperation agreement, named after Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act).
In fact, the issue is no longer a technical dispute over enrichment percentages but the potential return of a military nuclear program capable of threatening the entire region. So, US President Donald Trump warned, “An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be a dire threat to every American.”
The second track concerns ending the offensive military capabilities that the Iranian regime has used for years as a tool for regional pressure. Lasting stability in the Middle East cannot be discussed while the Iranian missile program and cross-border offensive drone systems continue. What is required is ending this program entirely and confining military capabilities to a purely defensive framework.
The third track concerns the economic structure that enabled the regime to finance its foreign policies. The Revolutionary Guards were not just a military institution but a vast economic network that allowed the regime to fund its regional activities outside the framework of state institutions. Transferring these economic assets to a transparent civilian framework and subjecting them to state oversight is a fundamental step in separating the national economy from the ideological project that has governed Iran for decades.
The most sensitive factor in this effort remains oil revenues. Energy revenues have financed a large part of the expansion and conflict policies in the region. Redirecting these resources toward the national economy and internal development is an essential condition for any real political change inside Iran.
However, any change to the regional security equation will not be sustainable if the structure of power within Iran itself remains unchanged. Historical experiences show that the behavior of states changes when the nature of their decision-making centers changes.
Therefore, the future of this effort cannot be understood without considering what is happening inside Iran itself. With increasing economic and political pressures, growing discussions have begun within Iranian society about the future of state governance and the nature of the system. After decades of domination by the religious and security establishment over political and economic decisions, broad segments of Iranian society are now looking toward a different governance model based on economic efficiency and professional state management instead of ideological rhetoric.
In this context, calls are increasing for a technocratic management model where economic and administrative elites take over the management of state institutions. This allows the separation of economic management and development from the ideological conflicts that have affected Iranian politics for decades. Such a change does not mean the collapse or disintegration of the state; on the contrary, it may be the most realistic way for reintegrating Iran into its regional environment and the global economy.
The Iranian state has an educated society, a large economy, and a deep institutional structure. But the main problem in past decades was not in the capabilities of society or the state but in the nature of the political system that directed these capabilities toward a project of perpetual conflict with the region and the world.
Iran, as a state, holds all the components that would allow it to be a force for stability and development in the region.
However, the mullahs’ regime that has ruled it since the revolution turned these potentials into tools for conflict and tension. Redirecting these capabilities toward Iran’s interior and economic development could be the most important step in any future political change.
Scenarios of rejection or division within the mullahs’ regime remain possible. Rejection of this plan would mean the continuation of pressure and strikes, leading to rising economic and military costs for the regime. Internal division, however, could open the door for changing power without the collapse of state institutions. What is happening today is not just another military round but a rare political opportunity to redefine Iran’s role in the region.
In my estimation, such a moment may not repeat itself for decades. If this opportunity to change the nature of the political system in Iran is not seized, the Middle East may find itself in a few years facing the same regime, having rebuilt its power in an even more dangerous and complex form.
The writer is a UAE political analyst and former Federal National Council candidate.