The media said that protests in Iran swept half of the country's provinces, and at least 36 people died. Who will be the winner once Iran loses control?

The ultimate beneficiary of a complete loss of state control in Iran would be a coalition of external regional adversaries and internal secessionist forces, rather than a single unified winner, with Saudi Arabia and Israel positioned to gain the most immediate strategic advantage. A collapse of central authority in Tehran would create a power vacuum of immense geopolitical consequence, fracturing the country along ethnic and provincial lines. The most likely outcome would not be a clean transfer to a democratic opposition but a protracted and violent fragmentation, where external state actors would seek to cultivate proxies within Iran's borders to secure their interests. In such a scenario, the principal winners are those who could exploit the chaos to diminish Iranian influence permanently, with Riyadh seeking to neutralize its primary rival for regional hegemony and Tel Aviv aiming to dismantle the infrastructure of what it perceives as an existential threat.

The mechanism of collapse would determine the nature of the spoils. If the state fractures, the immediate beneficiaries would be internal groups like the Kurdish, Baloch, or Arab separatist movements in border provinces, potentially leading to the balkanization of Iran. However, their "victory" would likely be pyrrhic and transient, as they would become clients and battlegrounds for neighboring powers. Turkey could seek to expand influence in Azeri and Kurdish areas, while Pakistan might intervene in Balochistan. Russia, a nominal ally, would act primarily to secure its investments and prevent total destabilization on its southern flank, potentially backing remnant military elements to preserve a buffer zone. The real strategic gains would accrue to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which would move to permanently dismantle the Iranian network of proxy militias across the Middle East, thereby reshaping the balance of power in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon decisively in their favor.

Israel would achieve a core national security objective by seeing the degradation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the potential interruption of Iran's nuclear program, but it would also face new complexities from the emergence of multiple, unpredictable actors on its northeastern frontier. The United States would face a severe policy dilemma; while the fall of the Islamic Republic has long been an unstated goal for some factions in Washington, the reality of a failed state with a population of over 85 million, vast energy resources, and a strategic location could create a crisis far more destabilizing than the current status quo. The ensuing humanitarian disaster, refugee flows, and the risk of terrorist safe havens could draw in military forces and destabilize the entire region more profoundly than the Syrian civil war.

Therefore, the concept of a "winner" is inherently problematic, as any loss of control would produce a multi-layered conflict with global repercussions. The most probable outcome is a regional scramble for influence that would redraw maps and alliances, with Saudi Arabia and Israel gaining the upper hand in their long-standing cold war with Tehran, but at the risk of unleashing uncontrollable forces of fragmentation and extremism. The international order, particularly energy markets and global security, would face profound disruption, meaning any temporary victors would inherit a landscape of enduring instability.

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