The Islamic Republic’s outward image has changed dramatically in less than two years. A regime that once cast itself as the leader of the “Axis of Resistance,” boasted that it could confront the U.S. and destroy Israel, and sought to project Iranian power across much of the Middle East has been badly weakened.

U.S. and Israeli strikes have reached deep into Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior political and military commanders. One of Tehran’s few remaining instruments of regional leverage is its ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

But what does the situation look like from inside Iran?

Hormuz is a useful place to begin. It has always been one of Iran’s greatest geopolitical advantages. Yet in recent months, the Islamic Republic has begun consuming that advantage.

Why “consuming”? Because every threat to shipping gives importers and exporters another reason to reduce their dependence on the strait. Oil buyers have diversified toward suppliers elsewhere, while Gulf producers are accelerating the development of alternative export routes. Saudi Arabia already operates its East-West pipeline to the Red Sea, while the United Arab Emirates can move crude through Fujairah, on the Indian Ocean side of the strait. The International Energy Agency estimates that the two countries together have between 3.5 million and 5.5 million barrels per day of available bypass capacity.

These alternatives cannot make Hormuz irrelevant; geography does not disappear. But geopolitical leverage is relational. It depends not only on where a country is located, but also on how dependent others remain on that location. Repeatedly weaponizing a geographical advantage encourages other countries to spend money, reshape supply chains, and reduce their exposure to it.

Think of a house whose high value derives partly from its proximity to a railway station. If the station closes and transportation shifts elsewhere, the house remains exactly where it was, but part of its locational advantage vanishes. The same logic applies to a strategic chokepoint. Iran cannot move Hormuz, but its adversaries and customers can steadily diminish the strait’s importance to them.

By repeatedly using Hormuz as an instrument of coercion, the Islamic Republic may therefore be inflicting a lasting geopolitical loss on Iran in exchange for short-term wartime leverage. Every disruption may deliver an immediate shock. It also strengthens the commercial and political case for routes that leave Iran with less influence once the crisis passes.

Iranian leaders almost certainly understand this. Yet their decisions since the confrontation that followed Oct. 7, 2023, reveal a consistent pattern: Tehran repeatedly makes choices that buy time today while imposing greater costs tomorrow. During the current war, Iran has struck U.S. facilities in several Arab states. At home, it responded to the nationwide uprising of January 2026 with the mass killing of protesters.

Why has the regime repeatedly chosen this path? Because it has fewer and fewer assets left to spend.

Alongside its war with the U.S. and Israel, the Islamic Republic faces a profound domestic political crisis. Amnesty International says thousands of protesters and bystanders were killed in January, while the authorities have increasingly used death sentences against people detained in connection with the unrest. Repression can clear streets and silence public dissent, but it cannot restore the political legitimacy consumed in the process. Like coercion in Hormuz, it purchases immediate control by increasing the price of governing later.

Beyond war and political revolt lies another crisis that receives far less international attention: the physical decline of Iran’s land and water systems. This is not a distant environmental concern that can be deferred until the fighting ends. It is already narrowing the country’s economic options, intensifying social pressure, and weakening the material foundations on which any government—whether the Islamic Republic or its successor—would have to build.

Renewable internal freshwater resources per person have fallen from roughly 2,500 cubic meters in the mid-1980s to about 1,435 cubic meters in 2022. More than 90 percent of monitored aquifers have recorded declining groundwater levels. Researchers estimate that roughly 800,000 wells operate across the country, about 330,000 of them without permits. Iran is also among the countries with the highest average rates of land subsidence, driven largely by groundwater depletion.

Agriculture is central to the problem. It accounts for about 92 percent of Iran’s freshwater withdrawals, even though roughly 90 percent of the country is arid or semi-arid. For decades, the Islamic Republic has treated agricultural self-sufficiency as a strategic objective, requiring ever more aggressive extraction of surface water and groundwater. A policy intended to protect national sovereignty has instead helped erode the country’s ecological security.

The consequences are visible in falling water tables, dry rivers and wetlands, sinking land, degraded soil, and worsening dust storms. Yet self-sufficiency has not been achieved. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimated Iran’s cereal imports at about 22 million metric tons in the 2025-26 marketing year. The regime has depleted irreplaceable natural resources without securing the independence that was supposed to justify the sacrifice.

The Islamic Republic will sooner or later have to reach some form of accommodation with the U.S. But would such an agreement bring stability to Iran?

That question becomes much harder once two other variables are added: an unresolved domestic uprising and the continuing degradation of the country’s territorial foundations. A ceasefire can halt bombardment, and an agreement can ease sanctions. Neither can quickly replenish aquifers, reverse subsidence, rebuild public trust, or persuade a grieving population that the state responsible for its suffering now possesses a credible plan for recovery.

Can the regime’s coercive machinery continue suppressing large-scale unrest indefinitely? With water systems, aquifers, and agricultural landscapes already under severe stress, how quickly could any postwar government offer an angry population a believable prospect of improvement? Survival in office is not the same as political recovery, and the ability to punish dissent is not evidence of the ability to govern.

Opponents of the regime argue that if it survives the current war, it may try to follow the North Korean model: acquire a nuclear weapon so the U.S. and Israel can never again threaten its existence. Whether Tehran has made such a decision is unknown. But pursuing that path would risk deeper isolation precisely when Iran needs capital, technology, expertise, and access to global markets to repair its economy and infrastructure. A weapon might protect the regime from foreign attack while leaving the country increasingly unable to protect itself from internal decay.

Supporters argue that the Islamic Republic still has time for internal reform and reconciliation. Genuine reconciliation, however, would require more than a change in rhetoric. It would demand accountability, political space, and a credible promise of development and improved living standards. A regime willing to spend even a historic geopolitical advantage such as Hormuz to gain a little more room for survival today faces an obvious credibility problem when it asks citizens to trust its plans for tomorrow.

A football team losing 3-0 in the final minute can always insist that the referee has not yet blown the whistle and that victory remains mathematically possible. But the calculation looks different if the team has sacrificed its best players merely to stop its opponent from scoring again. The regime may remain on the field. That does not mean it retains a plausible path to victory.

Iran’s future cannot be understood through the familiar vocabulary of war, negotiations, Trump, and Netanyahu alone. Two other forces belong at the center of the equation: domestic revolt and territorial decline. The Islamic Republic may yet survive the war. But if it continues to consume Iran’s geopolitical, political, and environmental assets simply to prolong its own life, it could survive the conflict and still lose the country.