Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Tanya Goudsouzian
“What person or what organizations are ready to govern the day after, and is there a viable roadmap for what comes next? The answer, according to leading Iran scholars and analysts, is bleak. ‘Absolutely no one,’ says Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. ‘The monarchists and the Mojahedin are positively despised by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian population with no grassroots support,’ he adds. ‘Despite a significant opposition to the ruling regime, it is still widely and passionately popular among many others.’ The vacuum left by the regime’s collapse would not be filled by democratic forces, but likely by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the military organization dedicated to regime control and survival, or violent power struggles. And yet, external promoters of regime change — from exiled elites to Western think tanks — continue to push a fantasy of democratization-by-collapse.” (06/26/25)