Iran will probably decline as an empire and survive as a veto power. That is the base case for 2031.<\/p>\n
Begin with the record. The United States and Israel struck Iran on February 28, 2026. Iran answered with missiles and drones against Israel, American bases, and Arab states, closed the Strait of Hormuz, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait struck back at Iran and its allies. Mojtaba Khamenei took the leadership on March 8, 2026, after the death of his father. A June memorandum of understanding gave way to renewed bombing. The United States has now run thirteen consecutive nights of strikes, Donald Trump has said he is not ready to negotiate a ceasefire, and he has promised to destroy a bridge or a power plant for every ship Iran attacks in Hormuz. Oil has passed a hundred dollars a barrel. <\/p>\n
The succession is the fact most forecasts underweight. Israeli intelligence assesses that the Assembly of Experts elevated Mojtaba Khamenei under pressure from IRGC commanders, that he was seriously wounded, that he now approves rather than formulates military decisions, and that authority sits with a hardline group working through the Supreme National Security Council and the Guards, which has slowed Iranian decision-making to the point where answers to American proposals take days. Iran has already had its revolution. A clerical arbiter has given way to a military committee. That change cuts in two directions and neither is obvious. A committee survives decapitation better than a single man, which lowers the odds of collapse. A committee also cannot seize a diplomatic opening, which lowers the odds of a settlement. Both adjustments push probability toward the same middle outcome.
\nInstitute for Science and International Security<\/p>\n
Call that outcome the militarized rump state, and put it at roughly 45 percent. Iran reaches an armistice without a comprehensive agreement. It rebuilds missiles, drones, coastal defenses, and clandestine nuclear work. It holds Hormuz as its main instrument of coercion and its main bargaining chip. The economy stays broken. The IMF projected in April that Iran’s economy shrinks 6.1 percent in 2026 with inflation at 68.9 percent, and the rial has fallen past 1.3 million per dollar. It hit 1.81 million on April 29, down about fifteen percent in a week. The World Bank puts food price inflation at 99 percent year over year in February 2026, and the government has answered with an electronic voucher worth about seven dollars per person for eighty million citizens. Anyone who quotes Iranian economic probabilities to two significant figures should read the footnotes first. Iran has published no GDP data since 2024, and internet blackouts degrade the domestic statistics that remain. <\/p>\n
Next, the opaque nuclear threshold, at roughly 20 percent. Most estimates run higher, and the buried infrastructure argues for restraint. The IAEA reports near-total loss of monitoring, an unaccounted-for enriched uranium stockpile, and long-standing compliance failures, and Iran backfilled all three tunnel entrances at its buried enrichment site before the 2026 fighting resumed, sealing them shut. Sealed works against inspectors and against Iranian engineers. American and Iranian officials both say Iran has not resumed enriching uranium, and Iran says it has no plan to recover the buried material. That material, 440.9 kilograms of sixty percent uranium on the eve of the June 2025 attacks, holds enough for perhaps nine weapons if Iran can reach it and process it. Ambiguity remains Tehran’s best available play. Ambiguity costs less than capability and delivers less. <\/p>\n
Negotiated rehabilitation deserves about 15 percent, and the reason it stays low goes past Iranian stubbornness. Iran no longer commands the assets it needs to trade. Houthi fighters sank two commercial bulk carriers in the Red Sea in early July 2026. The Houthis have announced a blockade of Saudi Arabia. Both serve Houthi aims. Tehran cannot credibly promise Washington to switch off men who fight for their own reasons. The standard account says Iran lost its proxies. The sharper claim is that Iran lost command and kept alignment. That arrangement raises Iranian disruption per dollar spent and destroys the merchandise Iran needs at a table. Cheap influence and sellable influence are different goods, and Iran now holds the first. <\/p>\n
Fragmentation and strategic collapse take the remaining 15 percent or so, and the evidence runs both ways. The protests of December 2025 and January 2026 were suppressed without any sign of defection from the government or its security forces. That is the strongest single argument against collapse. Set against it: the Guards and Basij have stayed deployed in the streets for months, the parliament remains suspended to keep factional conflict out of public view, and the judiciary is fast-tracking death sentences for protesters. A state that suspends its own legislature and executes young people is buying time and paying for it. <\/p>\n
The comparative question changes once you notice that the coalition facing Iran is splitting. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi had diverged sharply by 2026 and now find themselves more in competition than agreement, with the UAE resenting Saudi efforts to attract capital away from it and Saudi warmth toward Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and Pakistan. A new grouping of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey has formed outside the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the UAE is absent from it. Iran in 2031 faces two Arab poles rather than one. That fragmentation offsets some of the rearmament aimed at Tehran. <\/p>\n
Pakistan deserves more weight than it gets. Islamabad sent 13,000 troops and fighter jets to Saudi Arabia after the ceasefire. The September 2025 Saudi-Pakistani mutual defense agreement proved largely symbolic when Iran hit Saudi civilian infrastructure, and Riyadh’s answer to its threat environment is multidirectional hedging, including Turkish co-production and technology transfer on the Kaan fighter program. If the Saudi response to a threshold Iran runs through Pakistan and Turkey rather than through a Saudi weapon, the Iranian nuclear option buys less coercive return than the standard model assumes. <\/p>\n
Iraq is the prize few price correctly. Iraqi militia attacks on Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states drew a joint Gulf statement demanding Baghdad stop them, and Gulf messaging has made clear that continued attacks damage the effort to realign Iraq with the Arab world. Forecasts that treat Iraq as an Iranian buffer zone have the pressure running the wrong way.
\nThe Century Foundation<\/p>\n
My ranking for 2031 puts Israel and Turkey at the top on aggregate capability, Saudi Arabia and Iran below them with Riyadh stronger in money and coalition-building and Tehran stronger in coercion, and the UAE and Egypt influential without deciding much alone. Iran might rank fourth in constructive power, meaning the capacity to finance development, attract allies, and build institutions. It might rank first in destructive leverage, meaning the capacity to raise oil prices, close shipping lanes, strike infrastructure, and force other states to change their behavior. Iranian hegemony is very unlikely. Iranian disappearance as a major power is also unlikely.<\/p>\n
The variable that moves this forecast most is American. Trump went from a June memorandum to a naval blockade to threats against bridges inside five months. Iranian commanders issue warnings daily, and the strikes have run seven nights, then thirteen. The base rate for the United States sustaining this intensity across five years is low. Most published scenarios hold American commitment constant and vary Iran. Reverse the two and the weights move further than anything Tehran chooses to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran will probably decline as an empire and survive as a veto power. That is the base case for 2031. Begin with the record. The United States and Israel struck Iran on February 28, 2026. Iran answered with missiles and … Continue reading