Following US and Israeli attacks on the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leadership followed through with a long-standing threat: expanding the conflict beyond its borders and drawing neighboring states into the confrontation.
One notable example came on February 1, roughly a month before Khamenei was killed in a joint US–Israeli missile strike on February 28, when he said that if the United States attacked Iran militarily, the conflict would become “regional.”
Today, the armed forces of the Islamic Republic—led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—appear to be implementing that doctrine by expanding hostilities beyond Iran’s borders.
The logic is to link the fate of the Islamic Republic to the stability of the wider region: as the state faces mounting internal and external pressures, it seeks to entangle neighboring countries in the crisis, raising the costs of continued confrontation.
This approach resembles elements of Nixon’s “madman theory” and Israel’s “Samson option,” reflecting a strategic logic akin to mutually assured destruction. Whether such a strategy can deter adversaries—or instead isolate Tehran further—remains uncertain.
Several neighboring countries have now been drawn into the conflict. States along the Persian Gulf have been targeted, and missile and drone strikes have also been directed toward Azerbaijan and Turkey.
In some cases, countries that previously maintained relatively cooperative relations with Tehran, including Qatar, have found themselves on the receiving end of these attacks.
The responses of neighboring governments suggest that widening the conflict could ultimately produce stronger regional opposition rather than easing pressure on Tehran. From their perspective, the concern is precedent: if such attacks occur once, what guarantees exist that they will not happen again?
This concern increases the likelihood of coordinated responses designed to prevent further escalation.
The strategy also reflects long-running domestic pressures on the system. Over the course of its existence, the Islamic Republic occasionally managed to regain some degree of public support at critical moments—including the elections of Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and 2001, the high participation in the 2009 election, and the victories of Hassan Rouhani in 2013 and 2017.
But the broader trajectory has been one of declining engagement and growing disillusionment. By the time of the 2024 presidential election—officially won by Masoud Pezeshkian—turnout had fallen sharply, reflecting wider frustration shaped by years of repression and repeated cycles of protest.
Demonstrations in 1999, 2009, 2019 and 2022 were met with force, while the downing of the Ukrainian passenger plane and the large-scale crackdown in January 2026 further deepened mistrust between the state and society.
At the same time, nearly five decades of governance have left Iran confronting multiple structural crises, including environmental degradation, water scarcity, energy shortages, mounting economic pressure on households, systemic corruption and widening inequality.
Together, these pressures have steadily eroded confidence in the system and narrowed expectations for reform from within.
Against this backdrop, widening the conflict may appear to the leadership less a choice than a calculation: that survival at home increasingly depends on raising the stakes abroad. Yet this logic carries obvious risks.
Attempts to regionalize the confrontation could deepen Iran’s isolation and accelerate pressures already bearing down on the system.
Taking into account both long-term domestic trends and the current military situation—including damage to Iran’s military capabilities and the widening of hostilities—the future of the Islamic Republic remains uncertain.
International politics rarely unfolds along a single predictable path, and multiple outcomes remain conceivable. Still, history suggests that political systems under sustained internal strain and external pressure often appear stable until they do not.
As Iran confronts war with the United States and Israel abroad while continuing to face mistrust and periodic unrest at home, the strategy of widening the conflict may prove less a path to survival than a reflection of the system’s mounting vulnerability.
