After decades of managing tensions through careful balancing, Turkey and Iran now find themselves increasingly at odds following recent shifts in the regional balance of power. With Ankara emboldened and Tehran on its back foot after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the struggle for influence between the two neighbors and long-time rivals is escalating in both Syria and Iraq and could spread well beyond their borders.

The most recent flare-up was sparked by Iranian criticism of Turkey’s Syria policy following the call by jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan for his fighters to disarm. In response, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan warned Iran against meddling in others’ internal affairs, suggesting such actions could backfire. “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” said Fidan, in a rare, veiled threat directed against a country that has long feared Turkey could fan separatist tendencies among its large Turkic minority, which makes up more than 20% of the population.

Turkey has viewed Iran’s regional policies as destabilizing for years. When King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2015, the two leaders agreed to form a united Sunni front to counter what they saw as Tehran’s sectarian policies. But for Ankara, the agreement remained merely rhetoric, with no follow-through. Turkey’s dependence on Iran for its energy needs, Tehran’s outsized influence in the post-uprising Syria, and Riyadh and Abu Dhabi’s growing skepticism of Turkey’s regional policies made Ankara unwilling to commit to the Saudi-led Sunni front. Today, things are radically different.

Israel’s military campaign following the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, significantly weakened Iran and its proxies. The toppling of the Assad regime by a group friendly to Ankara dealt a further blow to Tehran’s regional influence. It also comes at a time when Turkey is growing less energy dependent on its eastern neighbor. Since Washington ramped up sanctions against Tehran following President Donald Trump’s decision to exit the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Ankara has taken steps to diversify its energy suppliers.

In this new regional context, Turkey thinks it has the upper hand in relations, a shift it aims to exploit to achieve its foreign policy goals. In Syria, Ankara wants to see a stable country that will allow it to cultivate closer economic, political, and defense ties. Syria also occupies a unique place in Erdoğan’s efforts to disarm the PKK, and Turkish officials hope post-Assad dynamics will enable them to turn the page in ties with Washington. Turkey wants to capitalize on a weakened Iran to further its energy, trade, and connectivity goals in Iraq. Ankara has already taken steps to cultivate closer ties with Baghdad, and it hopes the coming US troop withdrawal from Iraq will further strengthen its hand there.

Iran’s response

Turkey’s perception of a weakened Iran is exactly what Tehran is determined to dispel. In a show of frustration, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s top foreign policy advisor, Ali Akbar Velayati, publicly rebuked Fidan. Velayati’s intervention was more than just rhetoric — it signaled Tehran’s readiness to confront Ankara and was soon reinforced by a coordinated media campaign outlining potential ways Iran could pressure Turkey.

One of those ways is to stir up trouble inside Turkey. Iranian state-affiliated media have issued explicit warnings that any Turkish attempt to destabilize Iran by supporting anti-Tehran elements among the country’s large Turkic minority will be met with in-kind retaliation. Such a move could significantly raise the stakes for Ankara given its own internal vulnerabilities to unrest among minority groups.

For months, even before the fall of Assad, a growing number of analysts in Tehran have been warning about Ankara’s nostalgia for its imperial Ottoman past. Now, Iranians officials are openly echoing such fears and are on the offensive, accusing Turkey of having a history of meddling in Iran’s ethnic affairs. This includes alleged backing for separatist cells in Iran’s Azerbaijani-populated provinces as well as funding for a new Persian-language media operation.

Tehran regards this as an attempt by Ankara to expand its soft-power reach inside Iran as Turkey has ramped up such efforts across the broader Middle East. Iranian sources close to the Revolutionary Guards have even claimed that Turkish intelligence is plotting to deploy anti-Iran Sunni extremist militants to target Iranian interests, although there have been no signs of any significant moves on this front as yet.

Elsewhere, Iranian perspectives on Turkey’s strategy suggest that while Ankara may not seek direct conflict with Tehran, it would readily benefit from Iran’s weakening at the hands of Israel or the United States. Such a scenario, in their view, would clear the path for Turkey to assert greater regional influence at Iran’s expense.

Tehran’s calculated messaging campaign aims to suggest that it has leverage over Ankara, highlighting Turkey’s own fragile minority dynamics and Iran’s potential to stir up unrest among them — particularly Turkish Alevis, who make up 10-20% of the population, and Kurds, who make up 15-20%. Regardless of Tehran’s actual capacity to incite minorities inside Turkey, this rhetoric underscores Iran’s intent to demonstrate that it can strike back if Ankara presses further.

At loggerheads in Syria and Iraq

Another card at Iran’s disposal is Syria, where Tehran can still take actions that could spoil Ankara’s plans, such as by fomenting opposition to the new interim government or supporting Syrian Kurds, complicating negotiations with Damascus. Iran’s position in post-Assad Syria has significantly eroded and its next steps remain uncertain. Iranian officials send mixed signals about whether Tehran intends to reassert itself in Syria.

While some senior Revolutionary Guards commanders have denounced the former Assadist regime as corrupt and unworthy of Iranian backing, Khamenei has taken the opposite stance, justifying Tehran’s past support. He has even suggested that Syria’s transitional government is merely temporary, urging Syrian youth to “reclaim” their country — perhaps hinting at Iran’s long-term ambitions to regain its foothold. For Ankara, such Iranian signaling is a direct challenge to Turkish ambitions for post-Assad Syria.

Ankara seems to be aware of the things Tehran can do to hinder its aims. Turkish officials have not directly blamed Tehran but hinted that the recent clashes that killed scores of Alawites in Syria were a “sectarian attack” against Turkey’s policies, a veiled suggestion that Tehran was behind the chaos. Tehran’s potential cooperation with Syrian Kurds risks complicating the talks the Turkish government has launched with the PKK’s Öcalan. In Ankara’s view, were Syria to descend into chaos, the US might decide to keep its troops in the country and maintain its partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Turkey views the SDF as a terrorist group due to its links to the PKK, and it has long been a major point of contention in relations between Washington and Ankara. Were the US to remain in Syria, it would likely complicate Erdoğan’s plans to cultivate close ties with President Trump.

Iran can make life difficult for Ankara in Iraq as well. Turkey wants to cultivate closer trade and energy links and hopes that the Development Road project, a highway and railway corridor stretching from Basra to the Turkish port of Mersin, will bring Iraq further into its orbit. For this to work, Iraq needs to get its political house in order first. Turkish-Iranian tensions, however, pose a big risk to those efforts.

Iran still wields strong political influence in Baghdad, while Turkey has become Iraq’s dominant economic partner. Turkey and the United States are pushing Baghdad to take steps to roll back Iranian influence, but giving up on Iraq at a time when its regional influence is at its weakest is not easy for Tehran. All these dynamics leave Iraq vulnerable to the increasing rivalry between Ankara and Tehran.

War or something else?

Iranian officials think there is still an opportunity to de-escalate with Turkey and prevent a full-blown rupture in relations. They largely see Turkey’s recent posture as an effort to dissuade Tehran from supporting Syrian Kurds, a group that Ankara views as a direct threat to its regional ambitions.

Given the recent shifts in regional dynamics and the return of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, Tehran has no option but to engage in a careful balancing act. While Tehran feels compelled to push back against Ankara, it really has no option but to prioritize its conflict with the US and Israel while pursuing what it claims is a genuine effort to de-escalate across the region with neighboring states.

Still, Turkish officials’ more vocal criticism of Iranian actions points to the new mood in Ankara: Turkey is in a stronger place regionally and globally. Ankara does not want conflict with Tehran but seems not to mind one if Tehran pushes for it. The reality is, however, despite Iran’s weakened hand, Tehran still has cards to play against Ankara. Given the high stakes, it is best for Turkey to take steps to cool down tensions.

Iran and Turkey won’t go to war, but their regional competition — most intense during the Syrian civil war — could rapidly escalate and spread to new fronts. There are already signs that their contest for influence in the South Caucasus is spilling over into Central Asia and even Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The same could happen in the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, and among the Gulf states, where Arab leaders are carefully managing their interests against both Tehran and Ankara.

In short, for now, the worst-case scenario is an escalation of Iran-Turkey proxy competition on a larger scale. That would represent a dangerous return to the zero-sum rivalry that gripped the region after the Arab Spring — a chapter most regional powers had hoped they had put behind them.

Gönül Tol is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute and author of Erdoğan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria.

Alex Vatanka is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute. His most recent book is The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran: The United States, Foreign Policy, and Political Rivalry Since 1979.

Photo by ADEM ALTAN/AFP via Getty Images

As Israel presses its aerial attacks on Tehran, concern is growing over the fate of foreign nationals and Iranians seen by rights groups as political prisoners imprisoned in the capital who have no chance of fleeing to safety.

Iran is believed to hold around 20 European nationals, many of whose cases have never been published, in what some Western governments describe as a strategy of hostage-taking aimed at extracting concessions from the West.

Rights groups also accuse Iran of holding dozens of political prisoners whose sole offence has been to criticise the Islamic republic’s clerical leadership.

Most are held in Evin prison, a large, heavily fortified complex notorious among activists for rights abuses that is located in a northern district of the Iranian capital. The prisoners have no means to respond to US President Donald Trump’s warning that “everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”

For Noemie Kohler, the sister of French national Cecile Kohler, who has been held along with her partner Jacques Paris since May 2022 on espionage charges their families reject, the wait is agonising.

“Since May 30, we’ve had no news, no sign of life from Jacques and Cecile, and the French authorities haven’t been able to obtain any information either,” Noemie Kohler told AFP, referring to the date of their last consular visit.

“We saw that at least two strikes took place about two kilometres from where they are being held (in Evin prison), so it’s extremely close. We suspect they must have heard the explosions, but we have no idea how they are doing, we have no idea what level of information they have access to.”

Their last phone contact was on May 28, when Cecile Kohler’s parents spoke to her, she said, describing the mood even then as “desperate”, as they “no longer believe that they are going to be released”.

“We don’t know if conditions in the prison have deteriorated in connection with the situation. We’re completely in the dark, and we’re truly terrified,” she said.

She called for the couple’s “humanitarian exfiltration”, warning that “they are in imminent danger of death”.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in May that 20 Europeans — a higher number than the total of publicised cases — are held in similar circumstances in Iran, including “teachers, academics, journalists, tourists”.

He told parliament on Wednesday that France sent messages to the Iranian and Israeli authorities “alerting them to the presence of our two compatriots in Evin prison and to the need, as far as the Iranian authorities are concerned, to release them without delay to ensure their safety”.

Among other Europeans known to be held in Iran is Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmadreza Djalali, who was arrested during a visit in April 2016 and sentenced to death in 2017 on charges of spying for Israel, which his family says are false.

The current conflict, which has already seen one man, Esmail Fekri, executed on Monday on charges of spying for Israel, has made Djalali’s situation especially precarious.

Norway-based group Iran Human Rights has warned the lives of Djalali and eight other men convicted on similar charges are at risk.

“The risk of execution of these individuals is serious,” said its director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding they had all been sentenced after “an unfair, non-transparent process, and based on the orders of security institutions”.

Tehran residents have fled the city en masse.

The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, who was serving a prison sentence but was released from Evin last year on medical leave, said she had left Tehran.

But Mohammadi’s fellow rights activist Reza Khandan, the husband of prize-winning rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, is still jailed in Evin.

Khandan, who long campaigned for his wife while she was in jail, was himself arrested in December 2024.

“My dad is in prison. Can you tell me, how can my father evacuate Tehran?” their daughter Mehraveh Khandan said in a tearful message on Instagram.

The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran urged “all parties to fully comply with international humanitarian law and take immediate steps to safeguard civilians, including those in custody”.

It published a letter by legal activist Mahvash Seydal, seen as a political prisoner by rights groups, calling on authorities to grant detainees such as herself temporary release “to protect the lives and dignity of political prisoners”.

There is particular concern over the fate of Ahmadreza Djalali (Credit: AFP)

At the G7 in Canada, differences within Europe about the wisdom of regime change in Iran could not have been more stark.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, warned against toppling a government “when you have no idea what comes next”. Insisting that he had no time for the Iranian government, Macron argued that it was for the people of Iran to choose their rulers.

“The biggest mistake today is to seek, through military means, to bring about regime change in Iran, because that will lead to chaos. Does anyone think that what was done in 2003 in Iraq [against Saddam Hussein] was a good idea? Does anyone think that what was done in Libya the following decade [the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011] was a good idea?”

View image in fullscreen Tehran has faced five days of Israeli bombardment. Photograph: Social Media/Reuters

Regime change with no plan is a strategic mistake, Macron said.

By contrast, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said: “We are dealing with a terrorist regime both internally and externally. It would be good if this regime came to an end.”

He admitted: “Regime changes have not always led to the outcomes we desired, but we have positive examples. In Syria, the Assad regime was overthrown and since then there has been a new government trying to bring peace to the country.”

He omitted to mention the change of government in Damascus was preceded by nine years of bitter civil war – hardly a model of smooth democratic transition.

As Tony Blair was warned by Iraq experts in 2002 – but decided to ignore – the removal of a longstanding authoritarian government unleashes unpredictable suppressed forces.

At least in the run-up to the Iraq war, there were “day after” planning cells in both the US state department and the Foreign Office – only for the planning to be wrenched from the diplomats and handed to the Pentagon.

View image in fullscreen The Women Life Freedom movement was a recent example of internal discontent in Iran. Photograph: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

In the case of Iran – a country of vastly diverse ethnicities, religions, politics and incomes – no western planning for the aftermath of the regime’s possible collapse has been made. Balkanisation is a real possibility. Iran is not an artificial state drawn up by foreign office planners, but the fear of separatism stalks the leadership of a country in which Persians make up only 50% of the country. About a quarter are Azeri or Turkic people (including the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei), and there are Balochs, Kurds, Arabs, and smaller groups of Jews, Assyrians, and Armenians.

If implosion happened, the Baku regime in Azerbaijan and the many Kurdish militant movements might see a chance to carve out ethnic enclaves from Iranian territories. Indeed, the Jerusalem Post has urged Benjamin Netanyahu to make a federalised Iran a policy objective, on the basis Iran cannot be reformed.

Nor is there any internal organised government in waiting. Political parties are effectively banned, many of the best voices are either in jail, ageing, exiled, under house arrest or working in the margins as lawyers, artists or trade unionists. Revolts have been mercilessly repressed.

The 2022 Women Life Freedom movement was famed for its lack of leadership and left a cultural rather than institutional or leadership legacy. The subsequent implosion of the movement’s support network showed how quickly divisions can overtake a common cause.

Identifying a successor regime in Iran’s case would also depend on whether a revolution or a transition occurred. That will depend on who might take the blame for a military defeat – and how complete any defeat would be. At present there is a rallying round the flag effect, on which the government rides by emphasising the defence of Iran and not the Islamic Republic.

View image in fullscreen Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s toppled shah, has put himself forwards as a candidate, should the current regime topple. Photograph: Jacques Brinon/AP

A revolution would probably see the collapse of Iran’s unique religious governing structure topped by the supreme leader, a clerical figure. If it was clear that the 86-year-old supreme leader was refusing all concessions on its nuclear program, and was seen to have lost touch with reality, he could be removed either from the streets or in a more orderly way by factions in the army.

It is true much of the key Revolutionary Guards leadership has been killed. But there may be junior officers, critical of regime corruption and Mossad penetration, who could lead an internal coup in part to forestall a full revolution. They might offer a more secular, non-ideological, insular – but no more liberal – regime. Such a regime would accept that Iran’s security strategy no longer relies on proxy armies across the Middle East. In other words, Iran would become a country, not a crusade.

It may also be true that inside the army – where the greatest knowledge about the true military balance of forces exists – some officers know that prolonging the war will cause avoidable destruction. During its war with Iraq, Iran sustained unfathomable losses among its ground troops, but this is an air war that it has already lost.

If implosion occurs, the person who would most like to return in triumph is Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown during the 1979 revolution. The crown prince has name recognition and some older monarchists recall the Shah’s rule through rose-tinted glasses. He has been touring the US TV studios saying the regime is on the brink of collapse and offering himself as the figurehead of a democratic transition.

He sounded confident this week, saying that elements of the regime were already talking about defection: “We see a leader who is hiding in a bunker like a rat whilst many high elements are taking flight from Iran. I have stepped in to lead this campaign at the behest of my compatriots. I have a plan for Iran’s future and recovery.”

But there are doubts about his understanding of contemporary Iran, a country he left aged four. His close association with the Israeli government, and his near-celebratory messages at a time when innocent civilians were being killed and maimed by Israel has led to vitriolic criticism. The jailed human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh said: “We must defend Iran’s soil – not its rulers’ mistakes.”

Rumours have spread of an emergency government, with talk that two of Iran’s most sophisticated leaders, former president Hassan Rouhani and former foreign minister Javad Zarif could form a tandem – possibly alongside the former speaker of the parliament Ali Larijani.

Another signal of change would be the release from house arrest of former president Mir Hossein Mousavi and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, who have been under house arrest since 2011.

Rahnavard has attacked “the criminal hand and aggressive nature of Netanyahu, through blatant violation of all international norms”, but also said as “a patriotic woman, I warn the rulers not to allow the war to become protracted and consume the land and the people in flames”.

In the case of a full political collapse, Iran’s new leadership might emerge from among the political prisoners in Evin jail. In statements from the prison, Mostafa Tajzadeh, the political deputy for the interior ministry in the 1997-2005 Khatami administration, has frequently attacked the supreme leader for “closing his eyes to the disastrous [situation]”.

In the past few days he wrote: “I know that some segments of the people are happy with the [Israeli] attacks, because they see it as the only way to change the failed clerical government.”

He added: “But even assuming that the war leads to such an outcome, Iran will be left in ruins, where, most likely, statelessness and chaos will prevail – if the country is not torn apart.”

Tajzadeh added: “I believe that for a peaceful transition to democracy, we can insist on the formation of a Constituent Assembly to amend/change the constitution and force the government to establish it.”

The Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations – another potential source of alternative authority – said: “We disavow any warmongering policy, whether by the Iranian government or by other regional governments, and declare that war is neither a blessing nor an opportunity, but rather a calamity.”

View image in fullscreen The notorious Evin prison in Iran. Photograph: Roger Parkes/Alamy

The anti-war message is also coming from women in Evin.

Anisha Asadollahi, Nahid Khodajoo, and Nasrin Khazrajavadi, in a joint letter this week said: “Neither the Iranian people nor other nations want war. Devastating and destructive wars imposed on government dragging the existence of thousands of defenceless people into decline by fuelling violence and conflict.”

Narges Mohammadi, the 2022 Nobel peace prize winner, has suffered for her opposition to the regime, but mocked Trump’s call for 10 million people to evacuate Tehran. She told the BBC: “I deeply believe that democracy, human rights, and freedom cannot come through violence and war.”

Ultimately if the structures of repression fray it will depend on the Iranians themselves. Many Iranians detest the regime – for a variety of reasons – but they equally detest what Israel is doing.

Iranians say they feel caught in a war that is not theirs, waiting for the deaths of those who brought them nothing but silence, torture, and poverty.

But Iranians also say they have seen what Israel has done to Gaza, and they do not want Tehran to become another Gaza.

There have already been enough images of fathers carrying bloodied babies through the rubble. Even now, as the regime totters, the uncertainty about what may come next may be its best chance of survival.

Despite the strikes earlier in the day, Sahar* and her family decided to take a stroll in one of Tehran’s parks on Friday night, the eve of Eid al-Ghadir, a major Shia holiday. But, instead of the usual festive fireworks, the sky was lit up by bright red anti-aircraft missiles streaking across the horizon.

“Seeing Iranian missiles over your heads worries you, you worry what’s going to come next. Will it be a war, destruction?” said Sahar over the phone. She sent a video to the Guardian that shows people in the park hurriedly packing up and looking up as the crack of anti-aircraft munitions rings out overhead.

Iranians are reeling as the country enters its second day of open war with Israel, the most intense exchange of fire in the two countries’ histories, with a level of violence not seen in Iran since its war with Iraq in the 1980s.

Fighting started when Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes across Iran on Friday morning, killing its country’s top military leadership and hitting its nuclear facilities. Iran quickly responded with a barrage of missiles and drones, sparking a cycle of retaliatory violence between the two countries.

In Iran, which has had much of its air defence systems crippled in the initial wave of Israeli airstrikes, the death toll continues to climb, with at least 138 people killed and more than 320 wounded. About 60 of the total, including 20 children, were killed in one Israeli attack on a housing complex in Tehran on Saturday, according to state media.

At least three people were killed and dozens wounded in Israel by Iranian strikes over the last two days.

The ferocity of Israel’s strikes and the apparent ease with which it has decapitated Iran’s military has left Iranians, who grew up with an image of a military and security apparatus that was supposedly impregnable, stunned.

In the first hours of Israel’s attacks on Friday, Iran’s military was caught flatfooted. Israeli jets flew across Iranian skies seemingly unchallenged, while drones reportedly planted weeks before sprung up from secret locations within the country itself.

“Israel’s attacks came as a shock, with high-profile killings and the destruction it brought, and the fact that Tehran was attacked,” said Amin*, a businessman from Sistan Baluchestan.

The sudden assault provoked confusion in the country.

View image in fullscreen A damaged building in the aftermath of Israeli strikes in Tehran. Photograph: Majid Asgaripour/Reuters

Traffic on the capital’s city’s roads was light as people sheltered in their homes and bread lines grew long as people prepared themselves for further days of war. A resident of Tehran said that goods were in short supply at the shops and markets she visited as people stocked up on supplies.

Internet coverage was intermittent, and most of the people the Guardian spoke to struggled to send voice notes and messages.

“We are panicking. Today, I had a flight for Mashhad from Sistan Baluchestan and it was cancelled. I am in a state of limbo,” Amin said.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has threatened “severe punishment” in revenge for the attacks. The country has sent repeated waves of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel since Friday, some of which hit Tel Aviv.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, in turn, warned Khamenei that “Tehran will burn” if it continues its attacks against Israel.

There was a sense of satisfaction among some Iranians as they watched footage of missiles hitting Tel Aviv, and state TV played images on a loop. People in Tehran sat together watching jumbo screens, cheering as videos showed Iranian ballistic missiles targeting Israel.

View image in fullscreen A banner with anti-Israel messages on top of a building in Tehran. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

“Many people are celebrating and happy for Iran’s retaliation to Israeli aggression and are asking that Israel be taught a lesson. People in Iran hate Israel as we know it’s a mad country ruining the region,” said Sahar.

Analysts said that Iran’s leadership had few good options in front of it as it decided what to do next in response to Israeli attacks. The network of proxies Iran had built across the Middle East to defend itself over the last four decades has been conspicuously silent since Friday, offering words of support but little more.

“Iran is alone – unlike Israel, it doesn’t have the back up of a superpower. But the problem is from Iran’s perspective they see this as an existential peril. I don’t think they see any exit ramps,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said the US will support Israel in a military confrontation with Iran, and the US has warned Iran that there would be “dire consequences” if it or any of its proxies targeted US citizens or bases in the region.

Iran’s leadership does not only fear a military defeat by Israel, but also internal unrest if its security apparatus is shaken. The Iranian government’s popularity has waned in recent years and it faced nationwide protests in 2022 after the death of a woman arrested by police for not wearing a headscarf.

On Saturday, a separatist Kurdish party – the Council of the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), which has clashed with the Iranian government, issued a statement calling for the people of Iran to mobilise against the Iranian government.

Iranian riot police were pre-emptively deployed in Tehran amid calls from some student groups for protests, three students told the Guardian.

“The regime is trying to do two things in parallel: it is trying to play on Iranian’s strong sense of nationalism … and it’s trying to crack down internally and make sure there is no space for any organised opposition,” Vaez said.

The Israeli attacks and the prospect of a wider war has had a rally-around-the-flag effect for some Iranians, even those who do not count themselves as nationalists.

“War brings destruction and that’s the last thing anyone wants. But it’s been imposed on Iran,” Amin said.

* Names have been changed

Beirut, Lebanon – Hezbollah rallied thousands of its supporters for the funeral of its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in September.

The funeral on February 23 was an opportunity for the Lebanese group to send a message: Despite the losses it has experienced in the past several months, it is still strong and should not be underestimated.

But analysts told Al Jazeera the show of strength does not make up for the impact of Israel’s war against Hezbollah, which saw much of the group’s top leadership killed and a significant portion of its military arsenal reportedly destroyed.

When a ceasefire was finally announced on November 27, Hezbollah was left battered and exhausted.

The ceasefire stated that Hezbollah would retreat north of the Litani River and away from Lebanon’s border with Israel while Israeli forces would leave southern Lebanon and a newly empowered Lebanese military would control the south.

Days later, Hezbollah lost one of its most crucial allies, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, which fell in a lightning opposition offensive.

It now finds itself at a crossroads.

Hezbollah weakened

“Hezbollah is in a difficult position,” Imad Salamey, a senior Middle East policy adviser and associate professor of political science and international affairs at Lebanese American University, told Al Jazeera, adding that the group is “facing its weakest moment in decades”.

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Before September, Hezbollah was the most influential political actor in Lebanon and reportedly one of the world’s most heavily armed nonstate actors. It was formed to repel an Israeli invasion in the 1980s, held out against a major confrontation with Israel in 2006 and built its arsenal and manpower up since then.

It has often been described as a “state within a state” and also provides key services to its predominantly Shia Muslim supporters – a community historically overlooked and underserved by the Lebanese state.

A day after Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel and Israel’s launch of a genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, Hezbollah entered the fray, engaging Israel along the border to pressure it to stop attacking Gaza. Its intervention was much anticipated, given that Hezbollah’s position has long been in support of Palestine and against Israel.

The conflict escalated in September when Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded in attacks blamed on Israel. Israel also launched a day of air strikes across Lebanon on September 23 that killed at least 558 people, mostly civilians. The air attacks continued, and four days later, Nasrallah was killed. Many of Hezbollah’s military and religious leaders have also been killed since, including Nasrallah’s successor Hashem Safieddine in early October.

Israel destroyed infrastructure and homes across Lebanon, targeting parts of the country where Shia Muslims – Hezbollah’s support base – live, such as southern and eastern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs. It invaded Lebanon in October, particularly devastating the south, where it wiped out entire villages.

Hezbollah was left militarily weakened and unable to now fight back against Israel in the same way it used to.

“[New Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim] Qassem has inherited a weaker Hezbollah from his predecessor Nasrallah, and it will be interesting to see if he’d be as smart of a navigator given that so much of Nasrallah’s success was based on the party’s ability to project power,” Elia Ayoub, a Lebanese researcher and author of the Hauntologies newsletter, told Al Jazeera.

“Whether or not they decide to adopt a completely different methodology or not is what we’ll see in the coming months.”

A new political system and leveraging anger

The other sources of Hezbollah’s strength have been the support it receives from Iran, both material through Syria and financial, manifested in the social support systems it ran and in its political representation and influence.

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However, as international attention increased on Lebanon after the ceasefire, its parliament was encouraged to select a new president and prime minister in early January, ending two years of government paralysis.

For the first time since 2008, Hezbollah and its sister Shia party, Amal, were not able to nominate every Shia granted a ministerial portfolio in the new cabinet.

“Hezbollah no longer has the financial means, open Iranian backing or clear military options to resist these changes,” Salamey said.

To make the best of the situation, Hezbollah has tried to leverage what it can, Karim Safieddine, a Lebanese political writer and doctoral student in sociology at Pittsburgh University, told Al Jazeera.

“Hezbollah’s goal today is multifold,” Safieddine said.

“[They want to] develop the resentment of the Shia community in the pursuit of consolidating control over it, find a way to navigate the fact that it’s facing extreme financial challenges – using international support to the government is one way but also while locating credit – [and] continue to justify holding arms in the name of state weakness and continued Israeli violations.”

While many displaced Lebanese started to return to the south after the ceasefire, Israel used the cessation of Hezbollah attacks to continue occupying many villages and enter others for the first time. The Lebanese government accused Israel of violating the terms of the ceasefire by not withdrawing from southern Lebanon and not stopping its attacks on people and villages.

On February 18, Israel announced it would continue occupying at least five key points in Lebanon, but now, the Lebanese army is responsible for security in the south, not Hezbollah – and some have criticised the army for failing to liberate the land and properly protect the people of the south.

Cash-strapped

Hezbollah has promised to pay for reconstruction and has already begun assessing damage and distributing funds, the residents of the southern suburbs of Beirut and villagers of southern Lebanon told Al Jazeera.

The World Bank estimated $3.4bn in damage has been done to structures and nearly 100,000 housing units across the country have been damaged or destroyed.

The damage is beyond Hezbollah’s reduced capabilities.

Adding to its feeling of being sidelined, analysts said Hezbollah now recognises it needs to allow the government to progress to attract crucial foreign funding that will help rebuild the widespread destruction caused by Israel’s attacks.

Wait-and-see game

Hezbollah supported the majority choice for president, military chief Joseph Aoun, and, although it neither supported Nawaf Salam for prime minister nor did it agree with every cabinet seat, its MPs still gave Salam’s new government a vote of confidence recently.

“Sheikh Naim Qassem stressed …the policy of extending a hand to the new era and giving the era and the government a chance to play their role in protecting the borders, liberating the occupied Lebanese territories and rebuilding,” Qassem Kassir, a Lebanese political analyst believed to be close to Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera.

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“Of course, the party’s support base has comments on the performance of President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, but that does not change the positive position of the party.”

Some Hezbollah-affiliated local media claim external pressure and support for the government have isolated Hezbollah.

Al Akhbar newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Ibrahim al-Amine, wrote in a recent editorial that through Salam, “the Americans and Saudis want Hezbollah not to be directly represented in the government” and “to break the monopoly of the Amal and Hezbollah duo over [Shia] representation in the government”.

“The party’s criticism of the government stems from its frustration,” Salamey said. “Hezbollah no longer has the financial means, open Iranian backing or clear military options to resist these changes.”

“For now, Hezbollah has little choice but to adapt to this disadvantageous situation and wait for conditions to shift in its favour,” Salamey said.

Even with Hezbollah in a somewhat weakened position vis-a-vis the state, that doesn’t mean their grassroots support is going anywhere.

“For … the core supporters, I think this is going to make them more attached to Hezbollah because they will put this into the wider dimension of conspiracy,” Al Jazeera correspondent Ali Hashem said. “This could fuel them to be even more aggressive in reflecting the point of view.”

He added that other members of the Shia community, who have historically received social and other services from Hezbollah, may take a wait-and-see approach towards the new government and see if it can fill the void created by the weakening of Hezbollah.