Iran Conflict: “Civil War Will Be Inevitable”

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by Karlos Zurutuza (manchester, united kingdom)
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Inter Press Service

MANCHESTER, United Kingdom, March 17 (IPS) - Iranian and Israeli flags fill the centre of Manchester, in northern England. There are also portraits of a king overthrown almost half a century ago and of his son, now a claimant to the throne from exile. It is yet another march of Iranians calling for Reza Pahlavi as an alternative to the regime of the ayatollahs.

“The regime will not last much longer and Reza Pahlavi is the only one who can steer a transition and keep the country united,” Nazanin, a young woman who prefers not to give her full name or be photographed for fear of reprisals against her family in Iran, tells IPS.

In fact, she does not know them either. Born in England, she has never visited the country her parents fled in 1982. It was three years after a revolution hijacked by clerics brought an end to almost four decades of an autocracy backed by the West.

Since then, Iran has been ruled by a Shiite Islamic theocracy that harshly punishes dissent. At the beginning of January, a wave of repression left a death toll that varies widely: about 3,000 according to government sources, but tens of thousands according to internal reports cited by doctors and journalists.

From the centre of Manchester, Nazanin says she has placed all her hopes in the bombing campaign launched by Israel and the United States against Iran on February 28.

So far, the bombs have claimed the lives of more than a thousand Iranians, including the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. The fact that his son is taking over the role reflects the regime’s determination to resist. Military targets and key infrastructure on which a population of more than 90 million people depends have also been struck.

“The clerics have always responded to peaceful protests and legitimate demands with violence. It is sad, but there is probably no other way to end the regime,” the young woman says.

Fragmentation

In a report published on February 24 titled “Tsunami of arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances,” Human Rights Watch denounced tens of thousands of arrests following what it described as massacres across the country on January 8 and 9.

Opposition to the clerical regime has in fact been growing for almost a decade. In 2017 and 2019, massive protests erupted over the country’s precarious economic situation, eventually turning into calls for the government’s downfall.

Between 2022 and 2023, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement shook the country for months after the killing of a young Kurdish woman by security forces for not wearing the Islamic veil.

Although portraits of Reza Pahlavi have become a recurring feature of protests both inside and outside Iran, fragmentation remains the word that best describes the Iranian opposition.

Monarchists, republicans, federalists and reformists all share a common enemy, yet they have been unable to coordinate among themselves.

“There are several self-proclaimed leaders in exile, but they have no real roots in the country. Pahlavi is Israel’s preferred option, and it is true that he has attracted some well-known reformists who have abandoned the regime, but it is not enough,” Mehrab Sarjov, an analyst originally from Iran’s Baluch southeast, tells IPS from his residence in London.

Sarjov also points to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), an organization founded in 1965 that helped bring down Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979.

“They are highly organized inside the country, run intelligence networks and have the capacity to carry out sabotage operations, but Washington and Tel Aviv appear to have ruled them out,” the analyst says.

The situation is far more complex. Although the Persian majority makes up roughly half the population, Iran is a mosaic of peoples that includes Azerbaijani Turks, Kurds, Baloch and Arabs, among other ethnic groups.

Sarjov points to what he calls the “diversity of the periphery versus the Persian centre,” noting that many advocate decentralization toward a kind of federal model. Neither the ayatollahs, nor Pahlavi, nor the MEK, nor most of the Persian political core are willing to consider such an option.

How would the borders of those new federal entities be drawn? Along ethnic lines, historical ones or geographic ones? The lack of consensus leads the analyst to outline a scenario in which violence drags on over time.

“The regime will die killing; then we will face a Libyan-style scenario in which everyone tries to extend as much control as possible over the territory. Civil war will be inevitable.”

Uncertainty

At the moment, Washington and Tel Aviv seem focused on the short term, with their strategy revolving around toppling the regime through a bombing campaign. Analysts worldwide have noted that this approach has never succeeded in achieving such a goal.

The US-Israeli offensive is now concentrating on clearing the Strait of Hormuz to restore the flow of oil from the Arabian Peninsula. Washington is keen to mitigate the impact on energy prices caused by the conflict in this crucial oil transit route.

American outlets such as CNN and The New York Times have reported that the CIA may be working to arm Kurdish guerrillas with a view to taking part in a possible ground offensive.

Recently formed amid growing instability in the country, the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan brings together five clandestine political parties with military capabilities.

So far, they have not explicitly endorsed Washington’s alleged plan. However, they have reiterated their goal of overthrowing the regime and fighting for democratic rights that include the right to self-determination.

They have also expressed willingness to cooperate with other actors inside the country, including Azerbaijani Turks, with whom they maintain historical territorial disputes in places such as Urmia and Tabriz, in the northwest of Iran.

Dünya Başol is a researcher who holds a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from Bar-Ilan University in Israel with a dissertation on Iran’s Kurds. He admits he finds it difficult to feel optimistic.

“Turkish nationalism in Iran feeds not only on the aggression of Persian nationalism but also on ethnic ties with neighbouring Azerbaijan and Turkey, as well as on the complex Kurdish-Turkish dynamics in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region,” the Turkish analyst tells IPS by phone from Ankara.

“Both Azerbaijani Turks and Kurds are beginning to draw their internal borders in maximalist terms, so all those calls for dialogue and coexistence will not prevent conflict from erupting between them,” he adds.

Başol warns that ethnic conflict could spread across the rest of the country and recalls that it already flared up after the revolution that brought the clerics to power in 1979. That episode, he says, was only contained by the war with Iraq between 1980 and 1988.

“There will be ethnic borders within the country, but what will happen in the large cities where the population is mixed?” the expert asks.

He points to an “unpredictable scenario.”

“If the regime collapses, only a strong government in Tehran will be able to avoid chaos. For now, nothing suggests that either Pahlavi or any of the other options will be capable of achieving that.”

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