Iran’s biggest fear now: A Syria or Libya style collapse, warns West Asia expert Vali Nasr

As the war between Iran, Israel, and the United States enters a new phase, many Iranians are beginning to worry less about regime change and more about the possibility that their country could descend into chaos resembling Syria or Libya, according to Iranian-American scholar Vali Nasr.

Also read: ‘Iran bragged about 60% enriched fuel, enough for 11 bombs’: Trump envoy reveals what happened in first talks

Nasr said the war has already pushed Iran into what many citizens see as an existential moment – not only for the Islamic Republic but for the state itself.

US-Israel Attacks Iran LIVE Updates

Asked whether Iran is now fighting an existential war for survival, Nasr said the threat extends beyond the ruling regime to the country itself. “Yes, it is. And not just the regime, but also the country is fighting an existential war,” Nasr, a professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at the Johns Hopkins School, said in an interview with India Today TV.

“One may think that sounds like an exaggeration, but Iranians are worried about a scenario like Syria. In other words, a complete chaos, disorder, state failure,” he said, while referring to President Trump’s remarks that he’s going to arm Kurdish forces to fight separatist battles in Iran.   

The conflict began with the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the war and has since expanded into a sustained bombing campaign targeting military facilities, infrastructure, and leadership networks across the country.

Despite the scale of the attacks and the deaths of senior figures, Nasr said the Islamic Republic itself has not collapsed – and may not do so easily. “What is very clear now is that the regime is not falling, and even if you degrade it and kill a lot of its leadership, still, what remains that is in terms of governing Iran, providing government services, as well as instruments of security and even oppression, are all still the Islamic Republic.”

Wars, he said, tend to empower hardline factions rather than produce political moderation. “Without a doubt, the country being at war like this, which is struggling for its survival, usually the more military-oriented the harder line views take over because they’re the ones who are at the front of the fight. Moderation does not emerge in the middle of the war,” he said.

Moderation, he added, can only appear once the war ends, and only if conditions allow for it. He also warned that if the bombing campaign intensifies and begins to destroy the basic systems that allow the country to function, Iran could slide toward state failure rather than political transformation.

“So, Israel and the United States (will) have to do a lot more bombing before you actually break the state. But then at that point it becomes a complete failed state, much like what happened in Libya or in Syria,” the professor said, adding that such a breakdown would unfold gradually, beginning with the collapse of basic services.

“If people in a month’s time cannot get medical care because there’s no hospital, they cannot get medicine, supply chains of fuel, electricity, food, etc. break down. There’s no telecommunications. There’s no internet. And gradually the parts of the country can no longer be governed effectively from the center then that’s a scenario that we’ve seen play out in the Arab world,” he added. 

According to Nasr, the current campaign appears to target not only Iran’s nuclear or missile capabilities but broader state infrastructure. He said Israel has now adopted a strategy very similar to previous air campaigns against Gaza or Beirut. “Iranians describe it as carpet bombing, hitting hospitals, schools, civilian infrastructure, pharmaceutical industry across Iran. It is essentially aimed at downgrading or destroying Iran, the Iranian state.”

The professor said the war has revived deep historical anxieties inside Iran about foreign intervention and national disintegration. “Most Iranians have memories of the 19th century when large parts of Iran were broken off under British and Russian pressure, and then Iran was occupied and almost all of its northern provinces to Stalin’s army. These ideas of the disintegration of Iran are not theoretical to Iranians.”