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.
1,000People are also trading
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
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.
I'm really curious why people think this is likely. On base rates, Wikipedia lists this as the 12th mass protest since the Islamic Revolution. Iran is probably uniquely good at putting down protests because there are multiple layers of highly loyal and ideological security forces, whose fate is tied directly to the regime. The IRGC controls a large chunk of the economy and would not maintain its power in any plausible change from an Islamic Republic, and the leadership would likely all go to jail. The loyalty of security forces is generally the best way to predict changes in government, and there's zero sign of any real defections, let alone them fully flipping sides.
It seems like the protests have lost some serious momentum since they peaked on ~Friday. The authorities have started using live ammunition, which makes it very difficult for mass demonstrations to continue as long as security forces follow orders. The best estimate I saw from Israeli intelligence had a peak of 300k protestors which is 0.3% of the population, 1/7th the proportion as the No Kings rallies in the US, which doesn't seem like nearly enough to threaten the regime when there's 125k well armed, highly ideological members of the IRGC. And there's zero reporting suggesting trump is going anywhere near regime change here even if he does end up striking Iran (which seems fairly likely to me).
I don't take any pleasure in reporting this because I'd love to see the regime fall but I'm totally baffled by this price.
@SemioticRivalry What would Trump's goal be if not regime change? Israel could help him to disrupt the IRGC quite effectively.
@SemioticRivalry I have nothing to add on the specifics but this does seem the kind of case where there would be economic/psychological reasons the price would be too high. A general ‘things happen’/yes bias, recency bias with the reporting/base rate neglect, asymmetric discounting where ‘yes’ can resolve early but not ‘no’
@SemioticRivalry On the one hand I can see your forecasting history, on the other hand I can see the Chancellor of Germany saying the Iranian government is in its "final days and weeks" and I'd expect him to not say things like that if it wasn't really quite likely to happen.
I don't have better intel or insight than either you or Friedrich Merz so I'm just interested to see which of you is right!
@Noit this is not friedrich merz reporting a german intelligence assessment, this is friedrich merz reporting on his own aspirational point of view that a regime that shoots its own people will fall soon, which is historically speaking not correct.
@SemioticRivalry I agree that the market seems high (and I sold as soon as it got into the high 30s), but I think this time is quite different from previous protests in a number of ways.
The death toll is already astronomically high, possibly above 10k. It's the largest mass protest movement since the Revolution. This kind of brutality will create lasting trauma among the security forces and among the population. It will harden the minds and resolve of revolutionaries for years to come, even if this protest movement is ultimately unsuccessful.
There appears to be broad international support for taking more active measures to undermine the regime and ensure its fall, if the crisis deepens, not just among Israeli and US intelligence. On top of this, both Israeli and US intelligence operatives are probably quite emboldened by recent successes. Iran is in zero position to retaliate against anyone, with the complete erosion of their nuclear program and military capabilities. Another failed conflict would be even more devastating to the regime as well.
Khamenei is ever more senile, and the leadership around him ever more sclerotic. He knows he needs to do a transfer of power, but probably now cannot do so with his unpopular son. A transfer of power will be a very sensitive time for the nation, and it probably has to happen within the next 24 months.
300k protesters in Iran risking something like a 1-2% chance of death is dramatically different than 300k protesters in the US making fun signs and singing with their friends. It's just not an apples to apples comparison.
@SemioticRivalry also, uhhh, I haven't done the math, but I'd estimate that the base rate of large-scale protest movements of this magnitude against weakened authoritarian regimes in Muslim countries over the last couple decades resulting in the collapse of the regime within a couple years is something like 30-40%. In Egypt and Syria, you could probably argue it happened multiple times.
Iran is at it's weakest it's been in (my) living memory. I can't speak to the 80s but they lost all their proxies, their archenemy had free reign over their skies, their economy is at it's worst it's ever been. Besides for all the obvious economic & power projection implications, this has to be felt by every regime official every day regardless of protests. They walk around with the feeling of a nation in decline.
Trump. I don't think it can be understated; if the US president wants regime change in almost any country on earth, he will get it. Past US presidents have been very soft in supporting protesters (partly because Iran seemed like a serious regional power at the time, partly because they were Obama). Trump (this time) seems to be serious now. I've already written why I think regime change in Iran is a bigger strategic priority than in the past (ballistic missiles). We are in the era of vigorous foreign policy, if it's a strategic priority, it will be implemented.
I don't think you're calculating base rates correctly. These protests are bigger than most in the past (maybe still not the biggest, but it hasn't happened 12 times) Many of them didn't have any protestors killed (unless Wikipedia is just failing to mention deaths?!) Clearly the regime is taking this more seriously.
Side note: it makes me sad that you feel like you have to add
I don't take any pleasure in reporting this
on a prediction website.
@FergusArgyll you're right for being sad about it, but unfortunately one does in fact have to add that.
@Noit but you should absolutely expect an ideological and geopolitical rival head of gov't to say that?
@Lilemont eh, not really? "I hope this is the end / we see peace soon": yes, understandable. "I assume that we are now seeing the final days and weeks of this regime": specific and measurable statement which he can be called wrong about. I'd not expect a politician to say something like that carelessly. Yes, it isn't "this is the intel I have" but also, like, it's Germany, they aren't going to be the ones bringing down the regime or taking credit for it, so why be specific instead of platitudinous?