Over the last year, the Islamic Republic of Iran has experienced a stunning collapse of power. The setbacks began with Israel’s evisceration of Hamas in Gaza and its decapitation of Hezbollah in Lebanon – battlefield losses that were multiplied exponentially by the implosion of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024. In sum, Iran not only lost its ability to threaten Israel through frontline proxies in the Levant – a strategy it had honed over decades in its conflict with Israel – it lost access to the geography that enabled it to keep those proxies supplied. Without proxies acting as a threat or deterrent, Israel brought the conflict to Iran’s front door.

Through a stunning series of operations, and 12 days of air strikes, Israel assassinated the top echelon of Iran’s military command and its leading nuclear scientists, and heavily damaged much the regime’s military-industrial and nuclear infrastructure. When the United States entered the conflict to deliver paralysing strikes to Iran’s remaining underground nuclear facilities, Iran had already lost the war.

Iran’s ruling regime is now at a crossroads. It has forfeited its regional position and its military has suffered serious damage. Israel destroyed much of the country’s air defences, degraded much of the industrial capacity involved in the production of missiles and drones, and, along with the United States, Israel took much of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme offline.

Whether the regime wants to regain what it has lost, or pivot in some other direction, there is no clear path ahead. Without a layered deterrence matrix, or the leverage with Western governments that nuclear enrichment provided, Tehran is facing a future from an exposed and vulnerable position. The regime has not been this weak since Iraqi forces invaded Iran in 1980, and without the zeal of a revolutionary populace propelling it through crisis, it faces an uncertain future with precious little support from Iranians at home.

Although seismic change in Iran is possible, such as reformists gaining full control and steering Iran toward a less militarised, more pragmatic future; or the military establishment’s younger, more hawkish, but less religious generation seizing power, and leading the country in a more nationalistic and aggressive direction. Yet, should the regime remain largely intact and retain its core ideological principles, the change that is to come is likely to be focused on preserving the current order from threats abroad and at home.

To that end, the regime has options. Perhaps the riskiest gambit, but the one with the greatest potential to re-establish deterrence, would be for the regime to push for a nuclear weapons breakout. Assuming Iran continues to possess its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and either maintains potential secret enrichment facilities or can bring sufficient centrifuges online in its underground Fordow facility, and still has the scientific expertise, it could develop a testable nuclear device in a relatively short amount of time, perhaps within two years. A nuclear test would be a bold enunciation of the regime’s resistance ethos, and a dramatic retort to its adversaries.

Should Iran succeed, it could produce several nuclear weapons with its known stockpile of highly-enriched uranium (HEU), and join the vaunted club of nuclear-armed states. In the best case, a declared and proven nuclear status would be sufficient to keep war away from Iran’s territory and return to the regime the credible deterrent it had lost. Iran might not thrive under whatever political blowback might come its way, such as potentially strained relations with China and Russia and a return of UN-backed economic sanctions. Nonetheless, a poorer regime could still carry forward with relative security and re-emerge as a stable authoritarian state akin to North Korea.

Such a scenario is unlikely to play out that cleanly, however. Even though Iranian officials have openly discussed rethinking Iran’s official ban on nuclear weaponisation, there is no sense that the regime is ready to take the leap. Loyalist commentators in Iranian media have also taken up the issue but have been open-eyed about the risks.

First and foremost, without an ability to defend its skies, and with its security establishment thoroughly penetrated by Israeli intelligence, Iran cannot ensure that the steps required for a nuclear breakout could happen in secret or proceed unimpeded.

Further, should Iran withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty or be seen as moving toward weaponisation, it could trigger additional strikes by both Israel and the United States, and those strikes could be wider and more damaging than before.

Finally, given its inability to defend its nuclear enrichment programme, Iran’s nuclear arsenal would also be vulnerable to foreign military action. A strike taking out a nascent nuclear weapons stockpile would be devastating to Iran and lead to enduring societal and environmental consequences.

For those reasons, Iran is unlikely to aim for a nuclear breakout in the short term. At the very least, Iran needs to reestablish defence of its skies before it can risk re-engaging in escalatory nuclear development. To that end, Iran’s options are limited.

Russia, long Iran’s main defence partner, and one of the few states that could provide it with advanced air defence systems, is facing military shortages of its own, and has a poor track record of delivering on weapons sales. Iran purchased a fleet of fourth generation Su-35 multirole attack fighters from Russia in 2023, and is yet to take possession of those aircraft. The combination of Russia’s defence industrial constraints, which will continue alongside its war with Ukraine, and its complicated relationship with Israel, suggest that Moscow will remain an unreliable partner for Tehran.

China, however, is much better positioned to assist Iran in a rebuild of its conventional forces. China possesses the systems, aircraft, and industrial base to assist Iran in strengthening its shattered air defences. More importantly, China holds few of Russia’s sensitivities when it comes to Israel, and is aligned with Iran against the US-led global order. Although China has balanced its relationship in the Middle East between Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbours in the past, which has limited its defence ties with Iran, the changing circumstances in the region and Iran’s weakness could incentivise China to back Tehran more firmly than before.

Should Iran succeed in gaining deeper procurement from China to bolster its defences, the regime could emerge from its low ebb with a stronger conventional military. That alone could satisfy the regime’s need for security; or it could be used as a foundation on which the regime could begin reconstituting its regional partnerships and nuclear enrichment programme. Either way, rebuilding conventional capabilities would take time and money, and that endeavour could put Iran on another path entirely, one that leads it toward a more constrained position in the region, perhaps reminiscent of pre-revolutionary Iran.

Yet given the potential disinterest of China or Russia in helping Tehran to rebuild its capacities on the one hand, or continued, if intermittent air strikes by Israel on the other, the regime might not find a way out of its current dilemma. In such a context, a poorer, weaker, and ideologically rigid regime might turn inward and prioritise self-preservation over more ambitious aims. That could lead the regime to focus less on outward strength than on strength at home, leading it to adopt even more repressive and suffocating forms of social control. The regime’s fear of domestic revolt has always been heightened, especially since the last wave of social unrest during the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ protests that erupted in 2022. Its current weakness has already triggered a reactionary flood of arrests and other forms of suppressive behaviour.

Given the regime’s predicament, its sense of insecurity is unlikely to dissipate. That could drive the regime in a more regressive and totalitarian direction, one in which the regime abandons external goals and instead redoubles its hold over Iranian society. This is something that would position Iran closer to its neighbour Turkmenistan in governing style, and far from anything the Islamic Republic once aspired to.

Whatever Iran’s leaders decide, the outcome is unlikely to follow the neat outlines of the scenarios above. More likely is that Iran’s recovery will happen in fits and starts, determined as much by the regime’s own desires as by the conditions imposed on it by external actors, especially the United States. A mix of all three scenarios is also possible, leading to a future Iran that is equal parts repressive, militaristic, and ambitious for nuclear weapons.

However it plays out, Iran’s next steps could prove definitive for both the country and its ruling establishment. Iran’s troubles are not over – further conflict and instability are very much possible. As the regime debates how to proceed, the one constituency that matters most – the Iranian people – have no say. Yet it is they who will continue to suffer the consequences of their leader’s self-interested, outmoded politics.