The US-Israel war on Iran is now in its fourth week, and already the heady rhetoric of regime change has sobered down to US President Donald Trump’s claims of backchannel negotiations (denied by Tehran). In popular discourse, this shift has been attributed to Iran’s ability to maintain escalation dominance and contingency planning to bolster state survival. While these factors are undoubtedly important, the key to understanding the state’s resilience also lies in its political economy and the configuration of social forces within the country.AdvertisementIn Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci once compared the modern state to a system of fortifications where the coercive arm of the state was only the “outermost ditch”, while the civil society (which produces consent and legitimacy for the state) was a system of earthworks inside that protected it when the outer ditch was attacked. Simply put, the civil society makes the people “believe in the system”, or at the very least, invested enough for the system to stay resilient even during a crisis. Thus, a direct attack on such a state (or “a war of manoeuvre”) is likely to be ineffective.In Iran, this logic of the state as a fortification has been developed to the extreme and can be best imagined as a loose patchwork of interlocking institutions, which allows for flexibility and resilience. This is also the result of historical experience; the country is not a stranger to “decapitation”. The assassination of the Qajar monarch Naser al-Din in 1896, the forced exile of Reza Shah under the Allied Occupation of 1941, and the removal of Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in a CIA-MI6-engineered coup (1953) contributed to the creation of a system built to survive the loss of leadership. Post-1979, this was all the more important in the context of regional isolation and mounting friction between Iran and the United States. The political structure of the newly formed Islamic Republic was, therefore, an amalgam of institutions, often with overlapping functions and poised to substitute one another in case of incapacitation.Also Read | C Raja Mohan writes: The Gulf’s geopolitical predicament cannot be solved. It can only be managedFor instance, at the executive level, the institution of a democratically elected president worked together with the rehbar (leader), thus linking the secular with the spiritual. Similarly, the parliament (Majlis), constituted through direct election, is supplemented by a Guardian Council tasked with ensuring its legislation does not contravene Islamic principles. Further, the Expediency Discernment Council was established in 1988 to settle disputes between the Majlis and the Guardian Council and prevent elite factionalism from paralysing the state.AdvertisementThis dual institutionalism also underpins Iran’s security establishment. The regular military, Artesh, was complemented by the establishment of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite force, to guard the Islamic revolution both domestically and abroad. The IRGC’s Quds Force led the asymmetric deterrence strategy in the regional arena, and the Basij militia, first mobilised as a volunteer force during the Iran-Iraq War, and later incorporated into the IRGC, functions both as a domestic law enforcement arm and an instrument to quell internal unrest. The reliance on a decentralised command and control structure allows Iran the flexibility to absorb the loss of senior command and maintain operational continuity without straying from broad strategic goals.While these interlocking structures provide a formal and coercive stability to the system, the post-1979 state’s emphasis on Islamic republicanism and social distribution gave it much-needed legitimacy. This led to the inauguration of an extensive welfare project, managed not just by traditional state ministries but through a network of revolutionary foundations and committees (komiteh) outside the state apparatus. This produced competition between welfare-providing actors while allowing a more generalised coverage and deeper penetration of welfare initiatives, resulting in the cultivation of strong social constituencies for the revolutionary state, such as the martyr families, war veterans, and the rural poor. By the 1990s, the project witnessed sharp developmental gains, as life expectancy, infant mortality, and adult literacy rates outperformed the WANA region (West Asia and North Africa) and comparable middle-income states. More recent estimates reinforce this tendency, with female literacy for those aged 15-24 reaching 99 per cent in 2025.Thus, the hegemony of the Iranian state relies on interlocking structures within the state and the interweaving of political-economic incentives with ideology. Here, it is worthwhile to remember that before 1979, the discontent against the Shah was also spread through smuggled audio recordings of Ruhollah Khomeini that were particularly popular in rural and semi-urban areas. Further, while a lot of this discontent acquired a reactionary form and targeted the visible symbols of modernity (such as women’s dresses), it stemmed equally from the economic inequities of the Shah’s rule. The revolutionary opposition also relied on framing the struggle against the Shah by utilising the traditional Shi’i theological metaphor of mostazafin (oppressed) vs the mustakbirin (oppressor). Islam was also presented as an alternative to both capitalism and communism: Its commitment to social justice would redress the penury produced under capitalism, and its respect for legitimate wealth and property rights and rejection of atheism stood in sharp contrast with the Marxist left. This allowed the state’s ideology to resonate with the masses, especially the bazaar merchants and the peasantry.you may likeFinally, the opposition forces linger at the edges of the fortress state but struggle to assemble a counter-hegemonic bloc to breach it. The diaspora has failed to articulate a coherent political programme; rather, their legitimacy is undercut by their hawkish attitudes and limited appeal to the state’s social base. Within Iran, the left remains largely subdued, and the domestic reformist opposition largely operates within the framework of the Islamic Republic and has struggled to create an alliance with the street. From the Zan Zendegi Azadi movement and the recent upheaval around economic malaise, the street has demonstrated its potential to create a broad coalition, even pulling in the Tehran Bazaar, long seen as an important state constituency. However, without an organised platform and visible leadership, this spontaneous momentum risks dissipating without resulting in durable political outcomes.However, regardless of which side of Iran’s political spectrum one stands on, the writing on the wall is clear. Conventional military superiority cannot affect political change if the balance of social forces is not in favour of a new political outcome. Empires spending billions of dollars on shiny new toys that are too precious to lose should take heed.Julka is assistant professor, Department of International Relations, Ashoka University, and Kour is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University