Iran's military and economic setbacks have deepened this year after it was worsted in a US-Israeli war and hit by mounting sanctions, two prominent experts told an Iran International panel, drawing parallels with the waning days of the Soviet Union.
"I do think there are people inside of Tehran who say in their quiet moments, we're a fading regime," said Norman Roule, a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency for over 30 years who once oversaw its Iran desk.
"We're not so far off from the Soviet Union in our final days, our leadership is not going to crawl into the grave when the Supreme Leader dies with him, and we need to survive," he added. "How do we modulate these dials, and how do we play this?"
"It's not to say that the Islamic Republic is the Soviet Union or 2025 is 1989," said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the hawkish Washington-based think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
"History doesn't repeat, it echoes, as they say, but I think it's important to remember that we grew up in an era where the Soviet Union looked invincible."
Dubowitz likened Tehran's change in tack on some social issues to the attempts by the Soviet Union's last premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, to implement partial reforms to save the Soviet system only to bring about its downfall.
A surprise Israeli military campaign in June killed hundreds of military personnel along with civilians, knocking out much of Iran's air defenses. The US joined the conflict by attacking three Iranian nuclear sites before clinching a ceasefire.
Iranian counterattacks killed 32 Israeli civilians and an off-duty military officer.
In the intervening months, the standoff over Iran's disputed nuclear program has festered as Washington under President Donald Trump has stepped up sanctions and European powers triggered the resumption of UN sanctions.
As the moves have deepened economic pain, Iran's clerical rulers have eased enforcement of Islamic veiling laws, paused a draconian new hijab law and looked the other way as once-banned outdoor concerts proliferate.
But crackdowns on dissidents and political speech have sharply mounted since the conflict, according to rights groups.
"There's a bit of a Soviet Union of the late 1980s. Who believed in the great Soviet revolution in 1988?" Roule told the panel moderated by Iran International's Fardad Farahzad. "This government is facing rot. It's just inevitable rot."
'Regime change'
At the height of the conflict, the leaders of both Israel and the United States suggested a desire to topple Iran's ruling system but a ceasefire implemented by President Trump made the prospect more distant.
Israel, Dubowitz asserted, remains dedicated to uprooting its arch-enemy in the region.
"After many, many years, that bringing down the regime in Iran is now a central pillar of Israeli strategy. I think October 7 ... changed everything. I think this is 'we can no longer live with the Islamic Republic. We know that Khamenei is committed to our destruction.'"
Roule expressed doubt that any outside power could carry out transformational change in Iran.
"I'm not sure that any external country can change that entire edifice, but certainly an external country such as the United States can and should be providing whatever support that can be provided so that the Iranian people can change that structure from within to what they need to give themselves that better future," he said.
Tehran has accused Israel and the West of trying and failing to topple the system which it attributes to popular support and resistance against foreign aggression.
Authorities this month erected a billboard in Tehran's Revolution Square with Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi shown imprisoned in the Statue of Liberty's crown - victims, according to state ideology, of US regime change misadventures.
"They didn't survive an attack by the United States or Israel," Roule said. "They survived a surgical strike by the United States on select nuclear facilities."
Dubowitz acknowledged the term regime change was deeply unpopular in Washington.
"I think in our system, we don't like the word regime change because of our experience with Iraq and Afghanistan, though no one's talking about 500,000 mechanized US troops invading Iran," Dubowitz added.
"What we're actually talking about is the Reagan strategy, right, which Ronald Reagan successfully implemented in the 1980s which is maximum support for anti regime dissidents while putting maximum pressure on the regime."
