This market will resolve to “Yes” if, by December 31, 2026 at 11:59 PM Pacific Time (PT), the Islamic Republic of Iran is no longer the governing regime of Iran.
This includes scenarios in which the regime is overthrown, collapses, or otherwise ceases to govern, and a fundamentally different system replaces it. Qualifying scenarios may include:
Revolution
Civil war
Military coup
Voluntary abdication of power
Establishment of a new constitutional order, provisional government, or revolutionary authority
To qualify, there must be a broad consensus among credible international media (e.g. Reuters, AP, BBC, NYT) that the core institutions of the Islamic Republic—such as the Supreme Leader, Guardian Council, or IRGC under clerical control—have been dissolved, incapacitated, or replaced, and that the regime has lost sovereign authority over the majority of the population within Iran.
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Will this resolvs NO if Khamenei is gone but at the end of 2026 the incumbent system is still recognized as Islamic Republic?
@PoliticalEconomyPK To qualify, there must be a broad consensus among credible international media (e.g. Reuters, AP, BBC, NYT) that the core institutions of the Islamic Republic—such as the Supreme Leader, Guardian Council, or IRGC under clerical control—have been dissolved, incapacitated, or replaced, and that the regime has lost sovereign authority over the majority of the population within Iran.
To me, this seems unlikely, so I really don't understand the Polymarket price at all, although I am hopeful I am wrong and such a change could happen relatively bloodlessly. Here are my reasons:
A true war with an occupation is the most surefire way for this to happen, however Iran is a country of 90 million people, double the population of Ukraine for comparison, and almost 3 times the size geographically. It would take literally millions of soldiers from the US to guarantee success. However, it seems extremely implausible that this would actually come to pass given that Iran hasn't attacked us, and the only country that would seriously help us, Israel, is far too small to do this on their own, and is probably wanting to resume killing Palestinians soon anyways.
A large-scale bombing campaign could kill a lot of top-level officials, but could also end the protests if done indiscriminately. It probably could not truly dislodge the regime, which has bone-deep support among maybe 15-20% of the population, unless you have a very loose sense of what the word "regime" means. I don't think Trump or Netanyahu really care about protestor or Iranian lives in any genuine sense, and that pretext for a war would fade rapidly in any bombing campaign that caused casualties higher than the protests already have. Historically speaking, large-scale bombing campaigns have almost never worked as a method for regime change (unless you start using nukes, which would hopefully never happen). Gaza is far, far smaller and much easier to bomb and it didn't really work there, so I don't know what people think is going to happen with Iran. See also: Cambodia, Vietnam, pre-nuke Imperial Japan.
The most plausible way this could come about is that there is some wide-scale rebellion that grows out of the protests, maybe emboldened by well-targeted attacks on particularly odious individuals in the Iranian regime. But I just don't think this is all that likely for a regime that is extreme enough to kill its own citizens, and has put down many similar protests in the past. I also think that Trump and Netanyahu are inherently psychopaths who simply lack the nuanced understanding the situation manage threading the needle on this. Even in the scenario where this did happen, I think it would take far more than a year and would end up looking a lot like the Syrian Civil War, which was objectively terrible for the Syrians.
Separately, I think Western ambitions are motivated by the complete and total fantasy that a democratic Persian state would be much less antagonistic towards the US and Israel. Just because a lot of people hate the regime doesn't really mean that they support the regime's enemies.
Would love to appreciate why YES holders think this analysis is incorrect. What sequence of events do they think that would actually arrive at a regime-change outcome?
@Balasar I guess one counterargument is that you could've written a very similar analysis on Venezuela just a few weeks ago
What sequence of events do they think that would actually arrive at a regime-change outcome?
1) Trump applies maximum pressure like never before
2) The whole house of cards comes crashing down fast and beautiful
@Balasar The regime effectively changed to an American-led government. Maybe in legal terms it is the same government, but can you really say it's a sovereign country right now?
@spiderduckpig It's the same government that is now acting under duress, which is not the same as being American-led. If the giant armada we've assembled just off its coast went away, I assume it would revert pretty quickly. Regime change implies some permanency.
@Balasar The entire country is permanently in America's backyard and covered by the strategic depth of its military. Poor Venezuela, so far from God and so close to the United States
@Balasar good analysis apart from the last bit. A democratic Persian Republic would be likely to focus relatively more (than currently) on internal growth, institution building, improving the lives of its citizens, etc., and less on orchestrating + supplying external networks of terrorism against Israel, the US, and the West generally.
It’s not that they would cease to view Israel/US as an enemy, it’s just that they wouldn’t expend as much effort and resources trying to cause any damage or inconvenience they possibly can.
I read this excellent book:
The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s by Jason Burke | Goodreads
It describes how brutally the Iranian regime quelled all opposition after the arrival of Khomeini. They may do that again.
@skibidist ikr 🤣
And it's ONE whale who's holding this market at 40%. Fucked up with my quick arbitrarge plan.
But maybe this opens up a nicer profit opportunity if we buy hold. Would prefer the less risky arb trade tho
@SemioticRivalry I don't have a large position here (400 mana) and you are usually a better forecaster than me. But I switched from NO to YES on Jan 9, and my current thinking centers around the Iranian regime's lack of good options to respond to US strikes.
(posting this as a top-level comment rather than a reply for visibility)
We can break down the regime's options after a US strike into 3 categories: counterattack Israel, counterattack the US, or do something symbolic and effectively do nothing.
1. Attacking Israel is plausibly the best response here from the regime's perspective. Israel is deeply unpopular in Iran, and if Iran can provoke an Israeli response, they can potentially tie the protests to Israel. But this is playing with fire. The current Israeli government has already shown its willingness to go to war with Iran, and is hungry for wins with a parliamentary election coming up later this year. Reporting from 2025 indicated Netanyahu wanted to continue fighting but Trump convinced him to agree to a ceasefire; that is unlikely to be the case if there is a second outbreak of fighting.
Iran struggled to do any significant damage to Israel in 2025 and both its economy and offensive capabilities have degraded since then. It's hard for me to see exactly how Israel would force a regime change but I also think they would be in a position to clearly win a second war and they would probably take out a lot of IRGC leadership in the process.
Polymarket prices Israeli strikes on Iran by Jan 31 at 49%, and I think this scenario is a big part of the pricing of regime change.
2. Iran could also strike US bases in Iraq or other areas of the Middle East, killing American servicemen. This would be pretty fucking stupid imo as it potentially lures Trump into starting a full regime change war, but Iranian officials have been threatening this, so I'm including it as a possibility.
I do not think a larger conflict against the US would go well for the regime at all. Polymarket does think there's a chance of a US invasion (7%) but this market is pretty low liquidity.
3. Iran could take some sort of symbolic action that avoids provoking a further response, e.g. striking US bases in a way designed to avoid casualties. Before the 2025 war, this was the most common response to Israeli or US aggression, as it assuages hardliners within Iran without risking beginning a conflict they can't win. This could be paired with negotiations with the US to try to pacify the administration.
But IRGC morale is pretty important here, especially given that the IRGC is likely to be targeted in some form by the US strike in the first place. If the regime looks like it is afraid to fight back in any meaningful way and is being openly conciliatory towards its enemies, the risk of defections grows.
And Iran's economy is in awful shape, with essentially no hope of things getting better in the short term (they are now likely to face additional sanctions). There is extremely deep discontent among the population with the economic policies of the regime, to the point where the regime has already been forced to kill thousands of people to suppress these protests. Strikes on the IRGC could provide a source of hope to energize these further and force a protracted period of repression and further economic collapse, which risks recreating the conditions of the Iranian Revolution or Syria in 2011.
In this scenario Israel still has elections coming up and may start a conflict anyway, morphing this into a version of the first scenario where the regime is weakened even more than they are already.
@SaviorofPlant I've created a derivative grab bag Iran market with options for some of the possibilities outlined in the previous post to allow trading on those, since many of them don't have markets on Manifold right now. Standard liquidity for now, but I'll add more if the market gets enough traders to justify it.