Iran Strike Scenarios: Retaliation, Transition, and the Path Forward

The United States and Israel launched a joint military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran on the morning of February 28, 2026. Operation Sha’agat HaAri, Roar of the Lion, is the most significant American combat operation in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the most consequential Israeli military action since the state’s founding. This is not a punitive strike. It is a regime disruption campaign.

Events have overtaken this paper, which I originally drafted on February 19 as a forward-looking scenario analysis. An updated assessment follows, incorporating the first day’s developments: the strikes themselves, Iran’s retaliatory operations across multiple theaters, the Gulf states’ responses, and the Iranian population’s reaction, alongside the transition and opposition analysis that remains urgently relevant. The core scenarios I outlined nine days ago are no longer theoretical. They are unfolding in real time.

The central finding stands, as evidence now reinforces it: the campaign is operationally feasible and strategically defensible, but it has triggered cascading consequences that demand planning far beyond what current posture suggests. Iran’s retaliation playbook activated within hours: ballistic missiles struck at U.S. bases across the Gulf and at Israeli territory, Hezbollah opened fire from Lebanon, intelligence detected Houthi preparations from Yemen, and Iranian cyber forces degraded their own population’s internet access. The Strait of Hormuz remains the critical variable that forces have not yet fully tested.

Yet the first day also revealed dynamics that no pre-war assessment fully anticipated. Three sovereign Arab states, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE, condemned Iran by name within hours of Iranian missiles striking them, with zero condemnations of the U.S.-Israel operation. Iranian citizens celebrated the strikes from their rooftops. The regime’s own news agency admitted catastrophic IRGC command losses. Air defenses over Tehran were nonexistent. The “axis of resistance” proved unable to defend its hub or generate the regional solidarity Tehran had always assumed it could count on.

The transition challenge is no longer a planning exercise, but an operational countdown. Planners will measure the window between regime collapse and state failure in hours. Every recommendation in this paper, including humanitarian pre-positioning, National Reconciliation Council assembly, broadcasting seizure, homeland hardening, energy stabilization, ethnic liaison, amnesty frameworks, and inclusive leadership must become operational now.

When I first drafted this paper on February 19, 2026, the indicators were unmistakable. Two carrier strike groups were converging on the Persian Gulf. CENTCOM had shifted from punitive strike planning to regime disruption planning. A senior Trump adviser placed the probability of kinetic action at 90 percent within weeks. Secretary of State Rubio scheduled a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel on February 28 to discuss Iran.

The meeting never happened; the operation happened instead.

The diplomatic track that ran on fumes on February 19 expired entirely. Indirect talks in Muscat on February 6 and Geneva on February 18 produced what Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi characterized as “good progress” on “guiding principles.” But the core demands remained irreconcilable, as Washington demanded Iran forgo enrichment on its soil and Tehran categorically refused, and the military preparations overtook whatever remained of the negotiating window.

The June 2025 strikes, Operation Midnight Hammer, which dropped 14 GBU-57 bunker busters on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, bought approximately two years according to a July 2025 Pentagon review, placing Iran’s potential nuclear reconstitution at mid-2027. But satellite imagery from February 2026 told a more urgent story. Iran was already rebuilding, as engineers sealed underground facility entrances at Isfahan with concrete and soil, buried tunnel entrances at nuclear sites, and repaired missile bases. Iran engineered the reconstruction deeper underground specifically to defeat the same bunker busters that hit them eight months earlier. The window of military advantage shrank with every pour of Iranian concrete. The coalition made the decision to strike accordingly before that window closed.

Inside Iran, the regime confronted the most severe legitimacy crisis in its 47-year history before Operation Roar of the Lion began. The December 2025 to January 2026 protests were the largest since the 1979 revolution. Starting December 28 with bazaari shopkeepers shuttering over the rial’s collapse, the uprising spread to all 31 provinces within days. On January 8, Reza Pahlavi called for unified nationwide demonstrations. What followed was the deadliest crackdown in modern Iranian history: security forces killed an estimated 16,500 to 36,500 in a 48-hour massacre between January 8 and 9, arrested over 41,800, and injured 330,000. The regime imposed a total internet blackout and deployed the IRGC, Basij, and reportedly foreign mercenaries.

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The regime’s own officials sounded the alarm. Four current Iranian officials told Reuters that high-level figures informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that public anger over the January massacres had reached a point where fear no longer deterred the masses. A 14 percent desertion rate in regular army western border units, medical student sit-ins at universities in Tabriz, Mashhad, and Shiraz, and the February 14 Global Day of Action confirmed the diagnosis: the regime lost the psychological war with its own population before the coalition launched its first missile.

The economic baseline was catastrophic. Inflation hit 48.6 percent. Food inflation reached 64 percent. The rial plummeted 56 percent in six months. Seven million Iranians went hungry. Meat became a luxury item. The worst drought in 40 years dried up 80 percent of wetlands. Daily three-to-four-hour blackouts shut down half of industrial production. The president publicly warned that Tehran, a megacity of 15 million, might need to evacuate over water shortages.
This was the country the Islamic Republic tried to hold together when the bombs started falling.

Tehran was not idle in the days before the strike. The IRGC launched live-fire naval drills in the Strait of Hormuz on February 16 and 17. Joint naval exercises with Russia were underway in the Sea of Oman. Khamenei publicly warned that Iran could sink a U.S. warship. Satellite imagery showed Iran building concrete shields over sensitive military sites and burying critical infrastructure deeper. The regime hardened its defenses for a strike it believed was imminent.
The hardening proved insufficient.

At 8:14 a.m. Israel time, 9:44 a.m. in Tehran, red alert sirens sounded across Israel. The Home Front Command directed citizens to stay near protected spaces. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz signed an emergency order under the Civil Defense Law imposing a nationwide state of emergency. Israel and the United States launched a preemptive military campaign against the Islamic Republic.

Israeli fighter jets, operating in cooperation with U.S. military assets, struck dozens of targets across Iran in rapid succession. The first wave hit Tehran’s political and security nerve center: the office compound of Supreme Leader Khamenei, the Ministry of Intelligence, the Ministry of Defense, the Atomic Energy Organization headquarters, and the presidential institution near Pasteur Square. Seven missiles struck the district housing Khamenei’s residence, the presidential palace, and the National Security Council. At least 30 explosions hit the capital. Fars News Agency, the regime’s own outlet, confirmed strikes across downtown Tehran with smoke columns rising over multiple districts.

Seaman Germain Vasquez/USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71)

Beyond Tehran, the campaign struck targets across Iran’s geographic depth. Explosions hit Isfahan, Kermanshah, Tabriz, Qom, Karaj, Khorramabad, Bandar Kangan, Bushehr, and the Konarak area near the Pakistani border. The Jam missile city, the Amind missile center near Tabriz, the Seyyed al-Shohada military base in Minab, the IRGC Amad and Support Base, nuclear-related sites in Qom, the Parchin military complex, and the strategic oil terminal at Kharg Island all took hits.

American aircraft launched strikes from bases across the Middle East and from at least one aircraft carrier. Vessels fired Tomahawk cruise missiles from the Sea of Oman. The IDF Spokesperson confirmed “extensive sorties” striking military targets across western Iran, including the General Staff headquarters in east Tehran. An Israeli defense official told Reuters that planners had prepared the operation for months and set the start date weeks ago.

The target list revealed intent that went far beyond counterproliferation. Al Jazeera’s Washington sources reported U.S. involvement aimed at “decapitating” the Iranian regime, with strikes concentrated on areas where Khamenei might shelter. Reuters reported that security forces had moved Khamenei to a secure location and he was not in Tehran at the time. Yedioth Ahronoth reported that every missile carried a specific address and personally targeted a large number of military commanders and government officials.

ISNA, Iran’s own semi-official news agency, published a remarkable admission: the intensity and scope of the attacks killed and destroyed a “significant number of personnel of the Revolutionary Guards Corps,” many of whom held “important operational and specialized posts.” For a regime news agency to acknowledge such losses in real time proves the command damage was catastrophic.

Simultaneously, cyber operations crippled Iranian communications. Hackers compromised IRNA. Landlines went down across Tehran. Internet connectivity collapsed into a near-total blackout, and cyber forces attacked state broadcasting. The operation systematically degraded the regime’s ability to coordinate a national defense in the opening hours, and it never recovered.
Russian and Chinese air-defense systems acquired by Iran produced no observable effect over the capital. The billions Tehran invested in imported air defense purchased nothing.

Iran’s retaliation materialized approximately two hours after initial sirens. The IRGC announced “Operation True Promise 4,” launching ballistic missiles and drones at Israeli territory and US positions across the Gulf.

Sirens activated across virtually every Israeli population center. Israel’s layered defenses, Arrow, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome, intercepted the majority of incoming threats. Fragments fell in several areas, with a confirmed impact in Tirat HaCarmel and damage in the Haifa area, including attempts to strike Haifa Bay refineries. Authorities confirmed no large-scale Israeli casualties.

Iranian missiles simultaneously struck American and Gulf assets. The IRGC claimed hits on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al Salem in Kuwait, Al Dhafra in the UAE, and the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. A missile reached a US facility in Bahrain. Explosions rocked Abu Dhabi, Doha, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait. Qatar intercepted incoming fire with Patriot systems. Iranian state television declared its forces actively attacked American bases across the region.

The volume of fire was real. The strategic effect remained marginal.

The original assessment identified four simultaneous retaliation theaters. The first day tested each of them. What follows is a comparison of the scenarios I outlined on February 19 against the events of February 28.

What I predicted: The IRGC would not fold but fracture. Mid-level commanders controlling local fiefdoms with independent weapons caches would become warlords rather than surrender. Regime remnants would sabotage national infrastructure, including dams, power plants, and refineries, rather than allow it to fall to opposition forces. Ethnic flashpoints would ignite across Kurdistan, Baluchistan, Khuzestan, and Azerbaijani regions.

What has materialized so far: The command structure absorbed catastrophic losses in the first hours. ISNA’s admission of significant IRGC casualties in “important operational and specialized posts” confirms the decapitation intent achieved meaningful results. Communications collapse, including landlines going down, the internet blacking out, and coalition forces attacking state broadcasting, severed the regime’s ability to coordinate nationally. The ethnic fragmentation scenario has not yet materialized but analysts always measured the timeline in days, not hours. Kurdistan’s 10 million people and armed parties controlling a 112,000-square-kilometer border zone, Baluchistan’s sustained armed resistance, oil-rich Khuzestan, and Azerbaijani regions all remain potential flashpoints as central authority degrades.

What remains ahead: The critical question asks whether mid-level IRGC commanders with surviving units fight, fragment, or negotiate. The 14 percent desertion rate in regular army western border units during the January protests previews the pattern: some units hold, most do not. The infrastructure sabotage scenario, Iran’s version of Saddam Hussein’s oil well fires, has not yet occurred but becomes more likely as regime elements assess the campaign’s trajectory. A 72-hour window dictates ethnic fragmentation from the effective loss of central authority.

What I predicted: The Strait of Hormuz would become a war zone on day one. Houthis would resume Red Sea operations. Iraqi Shiite militias would attack US personnel. Gulf states hosting US forces would face retaliatory strikes.

What has materialized: Iranian missiles struck Gulf states, the scenario that materialized most dramatically and with the most consequential political fallout. Iranian missiles hit or targeted facilities in Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Falling debris from an intercepted missile killed one civilian in the UAE.

But the political response was the exact opposite of what Tehran expected. Saudi Arabia condemned “the blatant Iranian aggression” by name, offered “all its capabilities” to the targeted states, and demanded international enforcement. Bahrain confirmed attacks on installations and asserted “its full right to respond” in coordination with “allies and partners,” language that signals potential expanded use of U.S. Fifth Fleet facilities. The UAE confirmed Iranian ballistic missile attacks, a civilian death, and reserved “its full right to respond.”

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communications Specialist Petty Officer 3rd Class Nathaly

Three sovereign Arab states condemned Iran. Zero condemned the U.S-Israel strikes. Zero called for a ceasefire. Zero invoked Muslim solidarity with Tehran. Zero recalled ambassadors from Washington or Jerusalem.

Iran’s strategic assumption that attacking U.S. bases in the Gulf would generate enough sympathy across the Sunni Arab world to constrain the coalition failed catastrophically. Iranian missiles did not deter the Gulf states. They united them.

Hezbollah opened fire from Lebanon, triggering alerts across the Golan, confrontation-line communities, and upper Galilee, but the fire remained calibrated and secondary. Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam warned he would “not allow anyone to drag Lebanon into adventures.” This tracks with the June 2025 pattern, when the proxy network largely stood down.
Israeli forces crossed a threshold by striking Jurf al-Sakhar in Iraq, hitting Kataib Hezbollah and PMF positions and inflicting casualties. The message rings clearly: proxy sanctuaries are no longer off-limits.

Intelligence detected Houthi preparations from Yemen, alongside vows to resume attacks on Israel and Red Sea shipping.

What remains ahead: Forces have not yet tested the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint. Thirteen million barrels per day transit through it, 31 percent of global seaborne crude. Iran pre-positioned mines, fast attack boats, shore-based cruise missiles, and submarines. The February 16 and 17 live-fire drills rehearsed the tactic. Clearing mines alone could take weeks. If combined with Houthi resumption of Red Sea attacks through the Bab al-Mandeb, both major Middle Eastern shipping arteries could close simultaneously, triggering an unprecedented global supply chain crisis. The energy market disruption remains the single most dangerous economic consequence of the campaign.

What I predicted: Iranian sleeper cells across Europe would activate. Assassination campaigns against diaspora opposition figures would intensify. The shift from Iranian nationals to hired European criminals for operational tasks would make counter-intelligence exponentially harder.

What has materialized: Authorities confirmed no European-theater operations in the first 24 hours. Analysts expected this: European activation requires days to weeks as cells receive orders, acquire materials, and select targets.

What remains ahead: The threat remains unchanged and arguably elevated. A regime in its death throes loses the deterrent calculus that previously restrained sleeper cell activation; it has nothing left to preserve by holding cells in reserve. European authorities disrupted Iranian plots in Sweden and Germany during the June 2025 war, but Tehran’s shift to hiring local European criminals makes detection harder. Every name on a prospective National Reconciliation Council now becomes a target. Europol and national services lack the staff to handle this threat at scale.

What I predicted: Hezbollah Unit 910 operatives pre-positioned themselves, cyber operations targeted critical infrastructure, and sleeper cells activated once the deterrent function evaporated.

What has materialized: Authorities confirmed no homeland operations in the first 24 hours. Iran passed a message to President Trump before the June 2025 strikes warning it could activate cells embedded within the United States. DHS bulletins consistently reference an “elevated threat environment” with sleeper cells serving as a credible retaliation component. Iranian cyber forces integrated AI tools into their capabilities. Cyber forces directed the February 28 operations inward, blacking out Iranian internet, but the capability exists for outward-directed attacks on US power grids, water systems, financial networks, and communications.

What remains ahead: Experts measure the homeland threat timeline in days to weeks, not hours. Ali Kourani surveilled New York military facilities. Alexei Saab scouted airports and critical infrastructure. The FBI consistently warns that known cases represent only a fraction of the actual Hezbollah footprint in the United States. A regime-change scenario removes the incentive for restraint; cells activate because there is nothing left to preserve.

The Gulf states’ response to Iranian retaliation deserves separate treatment because it represents the single most significant strategic development of the first day, and the one we least anticipated in pre-war analysis.

The Islamic Republic spent four decades building an “axis of resistance” narrative positioning itself as the champion of the Muslim world. In a single morning, Iranian ballistic missiles destroyed that narrative more completely than any American or Israeli bomb could.

The combined weight of Saudi Arabia’s condemnation and offer of military support, Bahrain’s assertion of the right to respond in coordination with allies, and the UAE’s confirmation of a civilian death and reservation of the right to escalate produces a new regional alignment. Saudi Arabia positioned itself not as a neutral mediator but as an active participant in a regional coalition against Iran, a dramatic shift from the cautious posture it maintained during previous Iran-Israel confrontations. Iranian missiles killed the 2023 Chinese-brokered rapprochement with Tehran; it is functionally dead.

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Three factors explain the unified response. First, Iran struck sovereign Arab territory, giving every government both the political cover and the domestic imperative to respond forcefully. Second, the Gulf states prepared for this moment: the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement always operated transactionally, not transformationally. Third, Tehran offered nothing worth protecting: its value proposition to the Arab world always appeared thin, and by 2026, with its economy in collapse, population in revolt, and military exposed as hollow, the Gulf states lacked any incentive to shield a failing regime attacking their territory.

What emerged on February 28 is an axis of isolation around the Islamic Republic, the inverse of the “axis of resistance.” The states Iran attacked actively condemn it. The states Iran did not attack actively evacuate from it: Kazakhstan ordered all citizens to leave, and the Palestinian Authority called for evacuation. The population Iran claims to lead celebrates the strikes against it. Tehran achieved something remarkable: it united the Gulf Arab states, the United States, and Israel in common cause. Not through diplomacy. Through its own missiles.

The most important development of the first day may not be military. It is the Iranian population’s reaction.

Videos flooding Telegram and Iran International showed citizens reacting to the strikes with open celebration. Women shouted “Death to Khamenei” from apartment windows. Female students in a girls’ school chanted “Long live the Shah.” Citizens filmed smoke rising from the Khamenei compound area and declared the strikes had hit “the house.” These are not isolated incidents. They build on nearly two months of the largest protests since 1979, which the regime met with mass slaughter it never expected to face consequences for.

Trump addressed the Iranian people directly: “The hour for your freedom is at hand ... take over your government.” He warned IRGC forces to lay down weapons or face “certain death,” promising immunity to those who surrender. Netanyahu called on Persians, Kurds, Azeris, Balochs, and Ahwazis to “cast off the yoke of tyranny.” Pahlavi described the operation as a humanitarian intervention and urged Iranians to prepare to return to the streets: “The final victory will still be determined by us.”

Washington, Jerusalem, and the diaspora opposition synchronize their messaging, making it explicit, and aiming it at the one force that can finish what airstrikes start. During the 12-day war in June 2025, the Iranian population did not rise. This time, the scale of destruction to regime infrastructure, the explicit calls for uprising, and the depth of popular anger after the January massacres create fundamentally different conditions.

The question the coming days will answer: does appetite translate to action?

The transition challenge I outlined on February 19 is no longer a planning exercise. It is an operational countdown.

Iran already sat in infrastructure collapse before the campaign began. The military strikes destroyed whatever still functioned. U.S. and Israeli precision strikes targeted military and government sites, but Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including the power grid, water treatment, telecommunications, and transportation, was already fragile and deeply interconnected with military systems. Collateral damage to an already-failing power grid forces hospitals to go dark, water pumping stations to fail, and food distribution chains to break.

Agencies measure the humanitarian timeline in hours. Tehran, a megacity of 15 million, already faced the risk of running out of water under normal conditions. With military disruption to pumping infrastructure, a megacity water crisis materializes within 72 hours. Southern Tehran, which already bore 32 percent of the blackout burden while wealthy northern neighborhoods bore 1 percent, will feel the hit first and hardest, creating class-based rage that does not sort neatly into pro-regime or anti-regime categories.

The United States will work to prevent mass starvation and epidemic disease rather than merely rebuild.

The IRGC controls an estimated 20 to 40 percent of Iran’s economy: construction, telecommunications, energy, and import-export sectors. Tens of thousands of IRGC-connected families depend on this patronage network. The command decapitation the coalition achieved on February 28 removes top leadership but leaves hundreds of mid-level commanders, each controlling local fiefdoms. These commanders face a choice the coalition must shape immediately: surrender with amnesty, or fight as warlords against a coalition that has already demonstrated it can strike any target in Iran at will.

The Basij, one to five million members depending on how analysts count active and reserve members, include both true believers and economic dependents. During the January protests, some units refused orders. Enough complied to slaughter tens of thousands. In a regime-change scenario, loyalists have nothing left to lose. The January massacres, in which security forces shot wounded protesters in hospitals and deployed foreign mercenaries, previewed the brutality of a cornered security apparatus.

A general amnesty framework remains essential for preventing state collapse, but it confronts the raw reality of January 2026. Security forces shot protesters in hospitals, killed an estimated 30,000 or more in 48 hours, and arrested over 50,000. The families of those victims will never accept blanket amnesty for the individuals who murdered their children.

The coalition must pursue the only viable approach: simultaneous amnesty and accountability. Rank-and-file soldiers who lay down arms face no prosecution. Commanders who ordered the massacres face justice. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission provides the template, which planners must adapt for Iranian conditions and compress into a timeline the collapsing state does not have the luxury to extend.

Any credible transition framework requires planners to honestly assess the forces available to lead it.

Reza Pahlavi claimed he had thousands signed up on his National Cooperation Platform ready to support a transition after the June 2025 strikes. The December 2025 to January 2026 protests marked the most consequential moment in Iranian opposition history since 1979. Events answered the fundamental question: the organized Pahlavi network was not operational when the regime massacred people in the streets.

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The protests operated largely leaderless until Pahlavi’s January 8 video call to action, 11 days after the uprising began. His call to chant at 8:00 p.m. succeeded as a symbolic act: neighborhoods across Tehran erupted. But it served as a social media moment, not an organized operational network activating. The Platform’s thousands of “regime insiders” produced no defections, seized no buildings, and established no parallel authority. Real revolutionary infrastructure requires safe houses, communications that function without internet, weapons caches, and command-and-control that can survive a blackout. None existed.

On February 28, Pahlavi issued another video message, this time calling the strikes a “humanitarian intervention” and urging Iranians to prepare to return to the streets. The test now underway will determine whether this translates into operational action on the ground, or remains another symbolic moment from the diaspora.

Iraq’s Ahmed Chalabi provides the cautionary tale. Chalabi had CIA backing, money, and a compelling narrative, but lacked organic support inside Iraq. Pahlavi has diaspora backing, media access, and monarchist nostalgia that polls as high as 31 percent. But he has lived outside Iran since childhood, and his support base proves strongest in Los Angeles and London, not in the bazaars of Tehran.

Monarchist nostalgia does not equal a political mandate. People chanted “Pahlavi will return!” during the January protests, but they also chanted “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to the Islamic Republic!” The protests expressed rejection of the current system, not endorsement of any particular alternative. The February 14 Global Day of Action demonstrated reach but not depth: mobilization capacity for symbolic actions, but not the organizational capacity to fill a power vacuum, staff a transition government, secure weapons depots, maintain food distribution, or prevent ethnic fragmentation.

The gap between “people chant when you ask” and “people follow governance directives when everything is collapsing” determines whether Iran achieves a democratic transition or becomes a failed state.

All of the above problems pose real threats, and a successful transition remains possible. But only if the planning honestly assesses the obstacles instead of pretending they do not exist. The campaign is underway. What follows is no longer a pre-strike checklist. It is an immediate operational agenda.

The National Reconciliation Council must function visibly to Iranians when the regime’s command authority collapses, which may occur hours or days away. Planners must immediately convene an inclusive council bringing together representatives from the Green Movement, monarchists, reformists, ethnic groups, civil movements, religious minorities, and cultural figures: 25 or more individuals representing the full spectrum of Iranian society must meet, negotiate, and establish legitimacy now. If the NRC is not already operational when the vacuum forms, local commanders, ethnic militias, and IRGC remnants will fill it instead.

The NRC must declare amnesty and accountability simultaneously. Iranians who watched the January massacres need to hear two messages in the same breath: rank-and-file soldiers who lay down arms will avoid prosecution, and commanders who ordered the massacres will face justice.
The NRC must keep the bureaucracy running. Iran employs 2.5 million government workers: teachers, clerks, engineers, and health workers. The council should issue a first decree guaranteeing continued employment and salary payment for all civil servants not directly involved in repression, preventing 2.5 million suddenly unemployed people from joining an insurgency.

Agencies must deploy ethnic liaison teams to Kurdistan, Baluchistan, Khuzestan, and Azerbaijan immediately. Kurdish, Baluch, Arab, and Azeri representatives need to physically travel to their regions within 72 hours with a clear message: the new government represents you, the constitutional process will address your autonomy concerns, but secession sparks a civil war in which everyone loses.

Forces must secure the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting infrastructure as a military objective for seizure, not destruction. The regime retained control during the January protests through an internet blackout. A transition government needs the exact opposite: flooding the zone with information. Seizing IRIB and restoring internet access allows the NRC to communicate directly with 90 million Iranians. After the first 24 hours of the campaign, this objective surpasses any military target in importance.

Iran is not Iraq. It possesses a 2,500-year national identity, a 98 percent literacy rate, a large educated middle class, a functioning, if decayed, bureaucratic state, and a population that repeatedly demonstrated, in 1979, 2009, 2019, 2022, and 2026, that it can self-organize for political change. Ninety percent of Iranian Kurds identify as Iranian. The country fosters an organic civil society that Iraq never possessed. The raw material for democratic transition exists.
The January 2026 protests demonstrated the unsustainability of the regime’s coercive model. The erosion of fear, combined with army desertion, growing Basij reluctance, and economic collapse that undermines patronage loyalty, means the regime’s ability to maintain control degraded even without external intervention. The rooftop celebrations on February 28, where women cheered the strikes on the Supreme Leader’s compound, confirm the psychological break between the population and the regime remains complete.

The inclusive NRC framework provides the only approach that can prevent Iraq-style fragmentation. It operates unwieldily and slowly, but the alternative, picking a winner, has failed every time. The imperative demands getting it assembled and operational now.

I direct the following recommendations, originally aimed at policymakers preparing for operations, to policymakers actively managing operations underway. The shift from pre-strike to active-campaign status makes every item more urgent.

1. Deploy Humanitarian Infrastructure Immediately. Logistics units must move water purification equipment, emergency food supplies, mobile medical units, and communications assets from staging areas in the Gulf to operational readiness within 48 hours. Congress must budget a minimum of $2 billion for immediate humanitarian response in the first 90 days. Iraq taught a crucial lesson: winning the war and losing the peace produces strategic failure. The world watches closely after January’s massacres. American credibility depends on the civilian death toll dropping after intervention, not rising.

2. Make the National Reconciliation Council Operational Today. Leaders must convene an inclusive council of 25 or more Iranian opposition figures representing all major constituencies. This body must meet and produce governance frameworks now, rather than assembling in the rubble. Donor nations must fund a secretariat, establish secure communications, and begin the political work of building consensus among factions that historically distrust each other. Clocks will measure the post-Khamenei vacuum in hours. The NRC must stand ready to fill it.

3. Designate Broadcasting Seizure as a Priority Military Objective. Special forces must seize IRIB facilities and internet exchange points, not destroy them. Operators must bring pre-positioned Farsi-language broadcasting capability live within six hours of regime command collapse. The information battle determines the transition battle.

4. Elevate Homeland Defense Posture. Direct DHS to treat Iranian sleeper cell activation and coordinated cyber-attacks as imminent, not theoretical. The deterrent function that kept cells in reserve no longer exists. Law enforcement must coordinate with the FBI on the Hezbollah Unit 910 network. Agencies must harden critical infrastructure cyber defenses. Officials must brief Congressional leadership on the realistic threat timeline: days to weeks.

5. Stabilize Energy Markets Now. The administration must coordinate with the International Energy Agency, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE on strategic petroleum reserve releases to cushion potential Strait of Hormuz disruption. Negotiators must pre-negotiate tanker insurance frameworks. The economic consequences of even a temporary Strait closure could undermine domestic political support for the entire operation. Saudi Arabia’s February 28 offer of “all its capabilities” to targeted states creates an opening for accelerated energy coordination.

6. Deploy Ethnic Liaison Teams on Day One of Transition. Planners must identify, prepare, and ready Kurdish, Baluch, Arab, and Azeri interlocutors for immediate deployment. Diplomats must pre-negotiate autonomy frameworks that preserve Iranian territorial integrity while addressing legitimate grievances. The window between regime fall and ethnic fragmentation opens for 72 hours at best.

7. Announce the Amnesty-Accountability Framework Immediately. Publish clear criteria now, before forces settle the campaign’s outcome: rank-and-file amnesty for those who lay down arms, accountability for commanders who ordered the January massacres. Leaders must announce this framework within hours of regime collapse to prevent both insurgency and vengeance cycles. Trump’s February 28 promise of “fair treatment and immunity” to surrendering IRGC forces established the rhetorical framework. Operational substance must back it.

8. Avoid the Chalabi Trap. Officials must not pre-anoint any single opposition figure as the face of the transition. Reza Pahlavi provides a piece of the puzzle, as his monarchist constituency and international visibility remain assets. But a signup form does not create a revolution, and the January test exposed the gap between platform and power. The NRC framework distributes legitimacy across constituencies, providing the only approach that survives first contact with reality.

Nine days ago, this paper assessed the scenarios that would unfold if the United States struck Iran. The strike occurred. The scenarios no longer remain hypothetical.

The first day confirmed that the Islamic Republic cannot defend itself. Its air defenses proved nonexistent over its own capital. Its retaliatory strikes reached Israeli and Gulf targets but air defenses largely blunted them. Its command structure absorbed losses the regime’s own media described as catastrophic. Its proxy network, Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and the Houthis, fired from the periphery but could not protect the hub. Its population did not rally to the flag. It celebrated from the rooftops.

The first day also confirmed that Iran’s retaliation, while militarily marginal, produced a political earthquake the regime did not anticipate. By striking Gulf states, Tehran gave Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE the political cover and domestic imperative to join a regional alignment against the Islamic Republic. The “axis of resistance” narrative collapsed the moment Iranian missiles landed on Arab sovereign territory. An axis of isolation emerged.

The campaign’s military phase continues. The IDF stated it will operate as long as necessary. U.S. officials described a multiday operation, while Israel mobilized 120,000 reservists. Forces expand the target set as intelligence develops.

But the decisive phase relies on politics, not the military. It hinges on the transition that follows. Iran, a country of 90 million people already in infrastructure collapse, with an economy in freefall, ethnic fissures under pressure, millions of armed regime supporters facing an existential choice, and a diaspora opposition with media reach but no operational depth, will either achieve a democratic transition or become a failed state. Preparation hours measure the margin between those outcomes.

Iran differs from Iraq. It possesses the civilizational depth, the educated population, and the organic civil society to sustain democracy. But the window between regime collapse and state failure closes fast. Every recommendation in this paper, including humanitarian deployment, NRC assembly, broadcasting seizure, homeland hardening, energy stabilization, ethnic liaison, amnesty frameworks, and inclusive leadership, must become operational before the regime’s command authority expires.

The question no longer asks whether the United States can remove the Islamic Republic. The first day answered that. The question is whether Washington has the strategic discipline to manage what comes next. Washington is answering that question now.

Gregg Roman
Executive Director
Middle East Forum
February 28, 2026