Washington knows a great deal about Iran. It tracks uranium enrichment, missile capabilities, oil exports, currency movements, and military infrastructure. These are important measures of the Islamic Republic’s power. But they answer only part of the question American policymakers should be asking.
They tell us what Iran can do. They do not necessarily tell us how politically strong the regime is.
That distinction matters. A regime can become more dangerous while becoming less politically resilient. Washington has too often treated those two things as if they were the same.
Consider how precisely Iran’s measurable capabilities are assessed. Nuclear facilities are monitored down to enrichment levels and uranium stockpiles. Oil exports, inflation, and foreign currency reserves are scrutinized for signs of how much pressure Tehran can withstand. Iranian crude loadings have fallen from about 2 million barrels per day in March to roughly 220,000 to 255,000 in August, while inflation is projected to approach 70% this year.
These numbers matter. But where is the comparable dashboard for Iran’s political resilience?
There is no satellite image of declining legitimacy. There is no weapons inventory for social defiance. It is much harder to measure how much coercion a government must use to maintain control, or the ability of organized opponents to continue operating under repression.
Iran demonstrates why that matters.
The Islamic Republic retains formidable instruments of coercion, but increasingly it is deploying them against its own population. Since the war began in February, authorities have arrested more than 6,000 people, according to Amnesty International. Protesters and dissidents have faced accelerated prosecutions and executions. U.N. experts have also raised concerns about arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, and death sentences imposed without basic fair-trial guarantees.
These abuses are rightly treated as a human rights issue. They are also strategically significant.
The ability to arrest thousands demonstrates state capacity. The perceived need to arrest thousands to maintain political control tells us something else. Repression can be both an instrument of power and evidence of political vulnerability.
This does not mean the Islamic Republic is about to collapse. Authoritarian systems can survive economic deterioration, popular hostility, and international pressure for years. Assuming imminent collapse would simply substitute one analytical error for another.
The point is that Washington should distinguish between Tehran’s capacity to inflict damage and its ability to sustain political rule. Doing that requires taking Iranian society, including organized resistance within it, more seriously.
Too often, the Iran debate is reduced to choices between Washington and Tehran: negotiate or increase pressure, strike or exercise restraint, tighten sanctions or offer incentives. Iranian opposition, meanwhile, is often discussed as either spontaneous protest or a collection of prominent personalities in exile.
That misses an important distinction. Opposition is not the same as organization.
One organized force is the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, or MEK/PMOI, which has opposed the Islamic Republic for decades and is the principal organization within the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Its supporters have maintained clandestine networks inside Iran, while the NCRI has presented a political program for a post-theocratic republic. Tehran’s continuing prosecution of people accused of MEK affiliation is itself evidence that the regime treats the organization as a domestic threat.
The reach of any clandestine movement under a highly repressive state is difficult for outsiders to establish. But that is precisely the analytical problem. Difficulty of measurement should not become a reason to discount what cannot readily be counted.
A missile can be photographed. A centrifuge can be counted. An underground political network cannot.
U.S. policy should neither assume that external pressure will produce political change nor attempt to manufacture that change from abroad. Iran’s future will ultimately be determined inside Iran. Washington, therefore, needs to understand both sides of the political equation: the state’s capacity to suppress and the capacity of organized forces to challenge it.
OMAN PLAYED BOTH SIDES — UNTIL IT DIDN’T. HOW A SECRET SHIPPING DEAL IGNITED THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ
The question is not whether Iran is strong or weak. It is both, depending on what we measure.
Washington has become exceptionally good at measuring the power protecting the Islamic Republic. Understanding Iran’s future requires taking the forces challenging it just as seriously.
Dr. Sofey Saidi is a scholar-practitioner specializing in international relations, democratic transitions, and Middle East security. She holds a PhD from the Geneva School of Diplomacy, where her doctoral research focused on political transition dynamics in Iran, and advanced degrees from George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution and Duke University. She has taught global politics and international relations at the University of Baltimore. Fluent in Farsi and Spanish, she hosts the Iran Brief podcast and writes on U.S. foreign policy, democratic transitions, and regional security. Website: sofeysaidi.com.