What Will Iran Look Like in One Year?

My best guess of what Iran will look like in a year -- for NOTUS Perspective

NOTUS — for News of the United States — regular asks experts to answer a question in about 150 words. This week, their question was: What will Iran look like in one year?

Here’s my best guess:

“It’s tough to make predictions,” Yogi Berra famously declared. “Especially about the future.” With that admonition in mind, here’s one take on what Iran might look like a year from now:

The Iranian government has been transformed from a clerical regime to one led by security officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Raw power and control have replaced religious fervor. A brief civil conflict with Kurds and other ethnic minorities — which occurred after the U.S.-Israeli bombing stopped in May 2026 — ended with the slaughter of many and with the IRGC firmly in control. Repression rules in the name of national security — internal and external. The country remains deeply impoverished. The best and the brightest, including many young people, have left to find opportunities elsewhere.

But because Iran is exhausted and depleted, it has also sought accommodation with its neighbors, many of whom distanced themselves from the U.S. after its support for internal civil revolt. Having shed its religious fanaticism, Iran has become far less objectionable to its Arab neighbors. China is playing a major role in helping to rebuild the country — its ports, airfields and energy infrastructure — and gained access for its military in Iran’s Arabian Sea ports.

The regime itself is focused on one thing only: survival. It’s slowly but secretly rearming and rapidly seeking to become a nuclear power in order never again to have to face the kind of bombing campaign the U.S. and Israel were able to unleash a year earlier.