US Intelligence Community Assessed That Massive US Attack ‘Unlikely’ To Oust Iranian Regime: WaPo

Even a massive military assault on Iran is unlikely to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran and its state system, according to a classified assessment produced by the US intelligence community shortly before the US and Israel launched their current ‘shock and awe-style’ military campaign on Tehran. The Washington Post first reported it, perhaps based on some kind of leak or briefing by an anonymous intelligence official, and calls it—

a sobering assessment as the Trump administration raises the specter of an extended military campaign that officials say has “only just begun.”

The report, compiled by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) roughly a week before the war began, concluded that Iran’s political system is structured to survive even major leadership losses, The Washington Post reports. However, this should really come as no surprise to anyone awake and observant throughout the past two plus decades of America’s ‘nation building’ efforts in the Middle East, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya. 

Already, Israel and the US have touted that ‘all’ of Iran’s top leadership has been decimated, and yet clearly the governing system and its military – led specially by the elite IRGC – is not only in control but is still fighting back.

According to the assessment, Tehran has long prepared for such contingencies – and likely there’s an emergency plan now in place in the wake of Ayatollah’s Khamenei’s death.

Intelligence officials say Iran long ago established clear succession protocols designed to maintain continuity of power even if senior leaders are killed. In other words, the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would likely trigger an internal transition process rather than cause the system to collapse – again, something which should be the obvious scenario. 

The intelligence report also poured cold water on the idea that Iran’s opposition could quickly fill any power vacuum. US intelligence analysts assessed that the country’s fragmented opposition movements remain too divided to seize control, regardless of whether Washington pursued limited strikes against leadership targets or a broader assault on state institutions.

Equally unlikely, according to current and former US officials familiar with the analysis, is the prospect of a spontaneous nationwide uprising. We could speculate that this possibility may have had a chance of some degree of success within the opening one or two days of the mass US-Israel bombing campaign, but it clearly didn’t materialize.

Welcome to U.S. elite foreign policy discourse, where you have to stroke your chin and muse thoughtfully about whether it’s a good thing to trigger state collapse and civil war in a nation of 90 million that didn’t pose an imminent threat. https://t.co/EWCLpZrIwF

— Marcus Stanley (@MarcusMStanley) March 7, 2026

On this prospect WaPo quotes Brookings:

“There’s no other force within Iran that can confront the remaining power that the regime has,” Suzanne Maloney, an Iran scholar and vice president of the Brookings Institution, told The Post. “Even if they’re not able to project that power very effectively against their neighbors, they can certainly dominate inside the country.”

The National Intelligence Council synthesizes the analytical work of all 18 US intelligence agencies, and produces classified estimates meant to guide policymakers on major geopolitical risks.

Much of the American public, raised on Hollywood movies, tends to have an overblown and inaccurate understanding of US intelligence agencies like the CIA. While the CIA certainly has a very powerful and secretive covert, operations side (and an even tinier Ground Branch)  – the bulk of its personnel and overseers/top officials are analysts. So there is an overt side and a covert side, with the analyst side tasked with providing the IC and White House with a ‘realistic’ picture of the world, ideally devoid of policy or ideology. Their job is also often to ‘game out’ all worst possible scenarios, given a certain course of action.

The report says the prospect of Iran’s fragmented opposition taking control of the country is “unlikely,” raising doubts about Trump’s declared plan to “clean out” Iran’s leadership structure and install a ruler of his choosing pic.twitter.com/YaHwgoWB9d

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) March 7, 2026

Meanwhile, the White House has not said whether Trump was briefed on the assessment before approving the operation. But likely such an assessment would have made it into the CIA’s daily briefing for the president, also given reports from last week that the Pentagon also tried to inject some realism in terms of the ‘unknowns’ once Tehran is attacked.