Originally published March 13, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
By Michael A. Cessna, Military Affairs Correspondent
“One has to look at the fundamental nature of the clerical regime in order to understand its true and ultimate intentions. Since its advent in 1979, the regime’s leaders – starting with Khomeini himself – set out to export their radical ideology to the region and beyond. The primary mission (raison d’être) of the regime is to convert other regimes to its own mold with the goal of establish a modern-day Islamic Shi’ite Caliphate. It is so stated and defined in its Constitution as well as that of the Pasdaran’s” – Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi
INTRODUCTION
This report analyzes the critical risks the world faces through the Iran War and the problems of succession should the regime finally collapse. While missile and drone strikes continue to come out of Iran, it seems only a matter of time before the regime runs out of willing soldiers and munitions. Along the way, the world’s economy is at risk, and a victory over the regime is just the beginning of the struggles for the Iranian people.
THE DEATH OF THE SUPREME LEADER
On the morning of March 1, Iranian state media confirmed what U.S., and Israeli officials had already announced: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was dead, killed in joint airstrikes on his Tehran compound on February 28. According to TIME Magazine and Al Jazeera, Trump administration officials stated that 48 senior Iranian leaders were killed in the strikes, which also killed members of Khamenei’s immediate family, including his daughter, son-in-law, three grandchildren, and daughter-in-law.
His wife died of her injuries on March 2. The operation, designated Operation Epic Fury, was the largest decapitation strike against a sitting head of state since the fall of Baghdad in 2003 — and far more successful in terms of immediate targeting. The Economist, as reported via the assassination summary, noted that a comparable effort to eliminate Saddam Hussein during the 2003 Iraq invasion had taken nine months.
The first question any business or investor had to answer after February 28 was not who would lead Iran next. It was whether the Strait of Hormuz would remain open. The answer, as of this writing, is functionally, no.
FROM SHAH TO AYATOLLAH TO EPIC FURY
Before we address the Strait crisis, let us answer this question: How did we get here?
It was the collapse of the Iranian Rial (IRR) which led to the massive protests. The Rial went from roughly IRR 48,000 to $1 USD in the first week of December to IRR 1.4 million to $1 USD on December 28th, 2025. This triggered purely economic protests, which erupted throughout Iran.
Decades of incompetence, corruption and incoherent policies having wrecked the Iranian economy to the point of utter disaster, opened the door for a swift transition to purely political protests openly calling for the complete overthrow of the regime.
Let’s go back further to see how we got to THIS point:
Iran (ancient “Persia”, from the Greek) appears in multiple places in the Bible — Isaiah 44:28, Isaiah 45:1, Ezra 1, and 2 Chronicles 36 — relating how the Persian king (or “Shah”) Cyrus the Great had liberated the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity, gave them their country back, rebuilt Jerusalem, then went on to help them construct the Second Temple.
However, Sassanid Persia was later consumed when Muhammad’s Jihad erupted out of the Arabian Peninsula in 632 A.D. This came at the end of a bloody 26-year long war between the Persians and the Eastern Roman Empire (a.k.a., “Byzantium”) following the assassination of the Emperor Maurice.
While neither empire should have fallen to what was effectively a glorified horde of bandits, both states had been so badly weakened by a quarter-century of warfare, they were unable to respond. As a consequence, they both fell apart internally when faced with the Muslim onslaught.
Throughout the next 1500 years, Iranian culture maintained itself underground, maintaining a clear and distinct non-Arabian psychology. But, with a combination of highly corrupt and destructive Arabian and Turkic rulers, by the turn of the 19th — 20th Centuries, the country was stagnating.
The end of World War One, and the upheavals of the collapse and division of the Ottoman Empire, led to a military officer — Reza Khan — being first named Minister of War by Parliament, then the same Parliament asking him to unseat the Qajar-dynasty Shah, and assume the mantle himself.
Leaving internal political maneuvering aside, Reza Khan assumed the throne as Reza I, taking the royal name of Pahlavi, after the language of his birth region. Although removed from power by Britain and the Soviet Union in 1941 (the two powers thought that Reza I was too friendly towards Hitler’s Germany), he was replaced on the throne by his young son, Muhammad Reza.
Muhammad Reza, although young, played his cards well, and led to the beginning of what he called the “White Revolution”: a massive modernization program of Iran that liberated women, enforced land reform in favor of a peasantry that had been little more than serfs, and brought in Western industrial expertise to build up a capable industrial base. Ultimately, the Shah began building a true military capability by the end of the 1960’s. All of this was funded by revenue from Iranian oil sales.
While much has been made about Muhammad Reza’s “brutality”, the actual record says otherwise.
Of course, the White Revolution outraged the traditional Shi’a Islamic clerical establishment — the sort who preach the virtues of living in grinding poverty, while living their private lives in the lap of high-tech luxury. This reactionary group was subsequently leveraged by support from the Soviet KGB, ultimately leading to the events of 1978-1979…which brings us to today.
THE LOOMING DANGERS OF THE WAR
The first week of Operation Epic Fury demonstrated what most analysts have long known: that the regime has built a military force thoroughly capable of killing civilians and scaring armed forces, but they pay little attention to actual warfighting.
The regime’s “strategy“ of barrage-firing drones and ballistic missiles at every nation in reach, including those states that have been “carrying water” for the regime for decades, has driven this point home decisively.
There is no path open for a regime victory in 2026, as long as Trump and Netanyahu hold their ground, and grind the radical — if not insane — regime’s forces into the ground. “Boots on the ground” are not only NOT REQUIRED, doing so in any context beyond tiny teams of special forces units would be catastrophically counterproductive.
While the idea of a massive ground commitment leading to a “forever war”, as happened in 2001 and 2003, is a legitimate fear based on national emotional trauma, it assumes that the Trump Pentagon cannot see past its own nose.
However, the people now running the Pentagon “cut their teeth” as mid-level officers during the “Global War on Terror”, and none of them want another 20-year quagmire. Operation Epic Fury aims to decapitate and dismember the regime’s military strength to the point where the unarmed Iranian populace can effectively rise up and eliminate the regime’s remnants on their own, opening the path for a transitional government, almost certainly lead by Muhammad Reza’s son, Reza II.
That’s all a nice rosy-looking picture, but underneath, lays some very grim dangers, including the Strait of Hormuz crisis, which is leading to the Sulfur Crisis, which has also exposed the British Navy crisis.
- THE HORMUZ SYSTEM SHOCK – The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s single most critical energy chokepoint. Kpler’s conflict analysis report documented from the opening days of the conflict that any meaningful closure, or even a sustained de facto closure driven by insurance withdrawal, triggers supply shocks across multiple commodity classes simultaneously.
That scenario materialized within 72 hours of the strikes. An IRGC commander confirmed on March 2 that the strait was “closed,” threatening to set ablaze any vessel that attempted to pass. At least five tankers were damaged, two personnel killed, and approximately 150 ships were left stranded.
The financial consequences were immediate and severe. Kuwait announced oil production cuts, and Iraq cut 1.5 million barrels per day as onshore storage filled. Brent crude logged its largest weekly gain in the history of the futures contract, surging by 28%. By March 8, Brent had crossed $103 per barrel — the first time it had exceeded $100 in four years. U.S. retail gasoline prices jumped to a national average of $3.45 per gallon by March 9, up more than 51 cents in a single week.
J.P. Morgan’s commodities research team warned that production cuts could exceed 4 million barrels per day by the end of the following week if the strait remained closed, and that prices could exceed $150 per barrel if Gulf infrastructure continued to be targeted — an outcome that Qatar’s Energy Minister described as capable of triggering “the collapse of world economies.”
While seeming hyperbolic on the surface, the IEA convened an emergency meeting of its 30+ member states, which collectively hold 1.2 billion barrels in strategic reserve, to discuss a coordinated release.
The disruption is not solely a crude oil story. Qatar’s state-owned Qatar Energy halted LNG production at its Ras Laffan and Mesaieed facilities after Iranian drone strikes. European natural gas futures jumped roughly 30% in a single session. Daily freight rates for LNG tankers surged more than 40%. Europe sources 12–14 percent of its LNG from Qatar through the strait. Japan, which imports roughly 70 percent of its Middle Eastern crude via Hormuz, activated emergency stockpile release procedures.
- THE SULFUR CRISIS – Lost in the crude oil headlines is a quieter but significant industrial exposure: sulfur. The Persian Gulf — and Qatar and the UAE in particular — accounts for a substantial share of global sulfur exports, most of it recovered as a byproduct of natural gas processing and refinery operations. Qatar alone is among the world’s top five sulfur exporters. That material moves through Hormuz.
Sulfur is not an abstraction. It is the feedstock for sulfuric acid, which is in turn essential to phosphate fertilizer production. A Hormuz closure extending beyond 30 days begins to bite into agricultural input supply chains that are already price-stressed in the post-2022 environment.
The Fertilizer Institute has previously flagged Gulf sulfur supply as a systemic vulnerability in global food security modeling. Phosphate producers in Morocco, the United States, and China all carry exposure to Gulf sulfur pricing.
A sustained closure would not produce immediate fertilizer shortages, but it would drive spot sulfur prices sharply upward, add cost pressure to the 2026 planting season inputs, and extend inflationary effects well beyond the energy sector into global food commodity markets.
As of March 10, the picture has shifted modestly. U.S. crude fell sharply on Tuesday after Energy Secretary Chris Wright incorrectly posted that the Navy had successfully escorted a tanker through the strait — a claim the White House immediately walked back.
Markets appear to be pricing in an eventual restoration of transit rather than a permanent closure. But the underlying supply disruption remains real. S&P Global’s head of crude oil research assessed that if reduced tanker traffic continues for another week, it would be “historic.” Beyond that, it would be “epochal.”
- THE ROYAL NAVY PROBLEM – One of the more disturbing subplots of Epic Fury’s opening weeks is what it has revealed about allied force posture — and nowhere more starkly than in Britain. Though it might not directly affect the outcome of the war, long-term it reveals the UK is a weak ally not just for the U.S, but for anyone relying on it.
It changes the geopolitical reality of the world in significant ways, ways that are most assuredly affecting the execution of the war and the booty carve-ups that are sure to follow, carve-ups that might leave the UK on the outside looking in.
It also reveals the U.S. as being the only legitimate naval power in the West, with the UK holding the second most powerful Navy in the West. This means the fundamental work of securing the Strait of Hormuz can only be accomplished through the U.S. The allied navies can only offer support,
On March 7, the UK Ministry of Defence announced that the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales had been placed on five days’ notice to sail, a reduction from a prior notice period of ten to fourteen days. The announcement prompted immediate scrutiny of the Royal Navy’s actual capacity to act on that readiness posture.
The answer was uncomfortable. Navy Lookout put it plainly: the “immediate problem would be finding escorts.” Of the six Type 45 air defence destroyers, HMS Duncan required a maintenance period before any deployment. There was, in Navy Lookout’s assessment, “probably a single frigate… available to deploy.” The conclusion was direct: “If the UK can’t find or borrow escorts from somewhere, the Prince of Wales shouldn’t come.”
As of February 2026, only three of the six Type 45 destroyers were available for service, and just six of the eight Type 23 Duke-class frigates were assessed as capable of high-seas warfare. Only one of five Astute-class submarines was operational. Of a total fleet of 63 ships, roughly half were available for duty.
Former First Sea Lord Admiral Lord West described the situation as a “national disgrace.” HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Prince of Wales’ sister ship, remains in Rosyth undergoing a docking and certification period that is now several months behind schedule.
Britain has not been absent from the conflict, however. U.S. B-1 Lancer bombers have operated from RAF Fairford. British Typhoons and F-35s are conducting air defense operations over Jordan, Qatar, and Cyprus. HMS Dragon, a Type 45 destroyer, has been loaded and is preparing to deploy to protect RAF Akrotiri after drone strikes on the base.
However, her deployment was so delayed, and the ship was in such a visibly shabby condition, the image of the United Kingdom’s government — especially that of its Prime Minister — has taken a humiliating beating.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has explicitly declined participation in offensive operations. But the carrier question crystallizes a broader structural reality: Britain retains the institutional architecture of a blue-water navy while operating closer to the practical capabilities of a regional one.
When allies look for an escort package to protect a 65,000-ton carrier in a hot theater, the answer — absent European partners providing the gap — is that the Royal Navy simply can no longer do it alone. That is a data point worth tracking carefully. The Hormuz crisis has a resolution pathway. The IRGC’s threat calculus, Mojtaba Khamenei’s institutional footing, and the structural readiness of NATO’s second-largest navy do not.
THE SUCESSION PROBLEM
ED. NOTE: Reports of Mojtaba Khamenei’s injuries suggest he might not be a factor for long in this war, but as of right now, these reports are unconfirmed. The nature of the process of picking the new leader, though, has revealed critical failures within the regime’s structures that suggest systemic collapse is inevitable at this point, whether the new supreme leader lives or dies.
1. THE SUCCESSION: DUEL FOR DYNASTIC CONTROL – On March 8, ten days after his father’s assassination, Iran’s Assembly of Experts named 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei as the Islamic Republic’s third Supreme Leader. The outcome was the product of institutional pressure rather than genuine deliberation.
According to Iran International, IRGC commanders applied sustained pressure on Assembly members through repeated contacts, and members described the atmosphere of the online voting session as “unnatural.” Eight members threatened to boycott a second electoral session over what they characterized as heavy IRGC interference. Objections were raised, discussion was cut short, and a vote was held.
The legitimacy questions are structural. Mojtaba holds only the mid-level clerical rank of hojjatoleslam — not ayatollah — a problem his father resolved in 1989 by having the constitutional requirement amended; a similar legal workaround is now expected.
State media responded to the announcement by effectively staging a rapid theological promotion, instantly referring to Mojtaba as “Ayatollah” — moving him from mid-ranking cleric to the summit of the religious hierarchy overnight.
What matters strategically is not his theology but his institutional base. Afshon Ostovar of the Naval Postgraduate School in California, author of a history of the regime’s Revolutionary Guards, assessed that whatever happens, “what is left of the regime is the IRGC. And the IRGC is going to be the last vestige remaining of the regime until the regime is overhauled, either within itself or by external forces.”
Mojtaba’s profile is consistent with that trajectory. He has deep ties to the IRGC dating to his service in the Iran-Iraq War, built networks within the security and intelligence apparatus, and has been widely associated with the violent suppression of the 2009 Green Movement.
The net result is an Islamic Republic that has accelerated its existing trajectory: clerical facade over a security state, with the IRGC now more dominant than at any point in the Republic’s history. The IRGC issued a statement pledging to “fully obey and sacrifice for the divine commands” of the new leader.
Its aerospace, ground, and naval forces released separate statements of support. One IRGC commander stated publicly that Iran retains the capacity to maintain “considerable attacks” for at least six months.
2. THE PAHLAVI FACTOR, REVISITED: THE DORMANT CLAIM GOES LIVE – The ruling dynasty of Iran before the 1979 revolution was the Pahlavi Dynasty, headed by Shah Muhammad Reza (1919-1980). As alluded to above, much has been written about the late Shah — that he was corrupt, brutal, a puppet of Western interests; that his SAVAK secret police were a byword for repression.
Those characterizations are, without exception, the wholesale inventions of the regime that replaced him, amplified by a Western media establishment that never examined its own credulity, or worse, actively colluded with the radical Islamic regime.
The Shah was the head of a functional Constitutional Monarchy — one that actually functioned as the concept is intended. His “White Revolution“ enacted genuine land reform, emancipated Iranian women, and drove real modernization.
He was a progressive at a level that should make modern Liberal-Progressives blush. The central irony of 1979 is that the Shah had personally commuted Ayatollah Khomeini’s death sentence — and Khomeini repaid him by engineering his overthrow. The anger that swept the Shah from power had less to do with SAVAK than with KGB-developed propaganda and the enduring truth that religion remains, as observed, the “opiate of the people”.
SUMMARY
When the end came, the Shah — dying of cancer — chose not to order his military to fire on his own people. That decision cost Iran forty-seven years of theocratic brutality. It was also, in its own way, correct. It is why his son has spent nearly five decades preparing for what is now, suddenly, no longer a distant prospect.
Reza Pahlavi II has maintained a singular and disciplined focus on the transition framework he has been developing since his father’s exile. Operation Epic Fury has not handed him a throne — but it has collapsed the institutional structure that made his return unthinkable. Khamenei is dead.
His son Mojtaba holds power on the point of IRGC bayonets, with questionable theological legitimacy and a population that was already in open revolt before the first air- and missile-strikes.
The Iranian Street, generally, and Tehran in particular, were chanting “Pahlavi Barmigardeh!” (“Long Live the Shah!”) before the direct fighting of February 28 commenced. The question now is whether the institutions of a post-IRGC Iran can be built fast enough, and with enough international backing, to give those voices something to vote for — rather than simply another security apparatus…
Because whoever wins, Iran’s water crisis is waiting in the wings.
FURTHER RESOURCES:
The Shadow Commander – Alan Eyre
Vanguard of the Imam – Marc Lynch
All the Shah’s Men – Ahsan Iqbal
Retargeting Iran – Stephen Kinzer
