Raleigh Report - March 2026

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre.” — WB Yeats, The Second Coming

After the first week of this war, it is worth asking: “Is this going the way anyone thought it would?” Surely, the death of the Ayatollah on the first day was a surprise, and could have allowed the United States to claim sufficient damage to the regime. But it emboldened the Iranian response, and we are seeing how the regime’s existential crisis is being actively countered. 

This is happening in three ways: The Iranians clearly want to exert great pressure on shipping lanes and energy supplies, even if they cannot halt access to the Strait of Hormuz or make it so dangerous as to prevent movement. The US is considering escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. There are also attacks on Fujairah’s (UAE) oil export hub. This is a critical area that facilitates Gulf oil shipments to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. Gas facilities engaged by QatarEnergy have been hit, as well as nuclear power plants (in Natanz). 

Further, the scope is widening and unrelenting: On Wednesday, Iranian attacks launched on Turkey; on Tuesday, Cyprus. There are drone strikes against Kurdish positions in northern Iraq; attacks on US targets in Kuwait, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia; US diplomatic and intelligence facilities; and US radar and surveillance infrastructure in Gulf states, including incidents in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. Yet, Israeli and US forces have significant capabilities to maneuver in Iranian airspace and continue to do so.  

Another regional problem is Iranian proxies operating in their own countries: Hezbollah has continued and expanded operations; Israel responded with strikes targeted against Beirut and southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is also believed to have attacked the United Kingdom's Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) is a network of Iranian-backed militias. One of their number — Saraya Awliya al-Dam — claimed a drone attack on US troops in Baghdad, and another against a US airbase in Erbil, as reported by the Associated Press. The network announced several times in early March that it was responsible for dozens of strikes. The Houthis have threatened to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait and resume attacks against Saudi Arabia if Riyadh joins the war directly.

But I wished to concentrate here on what I think will be the most destabilizing component to future security — what is happening inside Iran. My sense at the moment is that the Israeli military wants a systematic destruction of the regime and its elements, regardless of the costs. The US wants to disable the regime’s nuclear development, to cease the stockpiling of ballistic missiles and neutralize Iran as a regional threat, and to limit any support proxy groups receive from the regime. But the Israeli version is winning out, mainly because of its long-standing policy of assassinating people who hold internal structures together. 

How do I think the internal dissolution will happen? In the following ways:

The first will be community-level pushback on Basij and police. The Basij are either volunteer, active, or special members of a policing and paramilitary organization, with branches across the country in small villages and large cities, which they break into “resistance areas” (Alfoneh, 2015). These are the forces who took on “moral policing,” patrolling during political events, and countering threats to the regime. Communities and families who have suffered tremendously from repression during and after the recent protests will react to the weakening of authority at the local level. In other contexts, we now see a lot of jailbreaks; attacks on police forces; or police abandoning their stations (such has been reported in the notorious “politicals” prison Evin). There is no reason to suspect it will not occur across Iran, as strong support for the regime is reportedly approximately 10% of the population, which is not sufficient to hold the ground across the country. Indeed, the chief justice in Iran recently issued a warning that any type of anti-regime actions will be treated as treasonous. 

The disorder within the forces will occur at all levels, largely due to what is happening at the very top. As we discussed in this newsletter last year, the Iranian system is designed for coup-proofing. That means that there are extensive domestic security forces, and roles often overlap and are led by different units and commanders. This makes it very difficult to harness sufficient defections or cooperation against the leaders, as “coup plotters” will be detected early and eliminated. It also prevents any single commander from getting too powerful, as there are many others who have similar, if not overlapping, influence and authority. 

However, this system also creates tremendous competition within, and many similar positions are not aligned or cooperative. In such contexts of command and control, it matters who is in charge to keep the competition in check and to move people around the system so that they do not amass power outside of their specific role.  

There is a well-known four-layer succession policy on senior elite positions, but the top layer was removed during June 2025’s conflict. Many of their replacements were killed in late February (largely by Israeli targeting) on the first full day of the conflict in the same events that also killed Ayatollah Khamenei. Their replacements were debated by the council in the first days of March, and there is an understandable hesitancy to announce them because of the heightened risk of their assassination; although, it looks like the late Ayatollah’s son, Mojtaba, will be announced as his father’s replacement. Yet, if the council does not announce the positions and stabilize the system through replacement leaders, those at every other level of the system do not know who has authority, who is giving orders, who is responsible for following them, who are defecting, and who are loyal (and to what?). This is going to lead to great chaos, fragmentation, debilitating competition for roles, and likely, many looking to capitalize on this moment by organizing decentralized armed entities. And the council itself may be assassinated, preventing further official succession. 

There is some attention to the Decentralised Mosaic Defence (DMD) doctrine — “a core element of the Islamic Republic’s strategic military thinking, designed to ensure regime survival and complicate any attempt at a conventional invasion.” Is this active? I don’t think so, although it is a magnificent piece of PR, suggesting that “the IRGC is now restructured into numerous largely autonomous operational units each with full autonomy for decision-making and operations during this war.” Generally, I think that completely altering the culture and practices of an organization the size and depth of the Iranian security forces is not done on a dime and will not lead to a spread of effective and independent attacks. It will lead to internal competition, chaos, and an inability to restrain and constrain the forces when needed. 

The US has already admitted it wished to “pull a Delcy” here — striking a deal with senior elites within the system in exchange for cooperation — but many of those selected for this US support are now dead. Yet, dissolution of the regime is clearly what the Israeli military wants, which is why it has concentrated on assassinations and attacks on police intelligence facilities and IRGC bases, often in Tehran; whereas the US is focused on eliminating the stockpiles of Iranian weaponry and missile launchers, drone bases, and infrastructure. The US is also reportedly looking to support insurgent groups operating on the borders of Iran, including the Kurdish and Baloch armed groups. Attacks on Iranian security where these insurgent groups could infiltrate are panicking Iranians.

So, just short of the first week of this conflict, it is worse than even we thought it would be: massive destruction inside Iran; regional attacks on neighbors to raise the costs of the conflict may just spur cooperation with the US; domestic attacks by Iranian proxies starting to diffuse the disorder that Iran has cultivated for decades; surprise and ill-conceived attacks in Cyprus, Oman, and Turkey; limited but mounting deaths in Israel and of US servicemen; a deluded sense that this conflict will “last a few weeks”; and a global coordinated system cracking before our eyes. 

• For updates and to access our daily crisis data, take a look at our Iran Crisis Live page.

Notes and notions

This song for this moment – Bob Dylan’s “Not Dark Yet.”
“There’s not even room enough to be anywhere.
“It's not dark yet, but it's gettin’ there.”

A good reminder of what does and what does not create regime change.

A combination of some of my favorite things: camels, botox, and a low-stakes scandal.

I cannot end this newsletter without reference to the most incredible book of late. Please run out and get “The Hour of the Predator: Encounters with the Autocrats and Tech Billionaires Taking Over the World” by Giuliano da Empoli. It is short, compelling, and incredible. This same author wrote “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” which I previously suggested you listen to due to the quite creepy-sounding narrator. 

ACLED webinars

Webinar | Violence, militarization, and regional spillover: Ecuador’s organized crime challenge in 2026

Ecuador has had the highest murder rate in Latin America since 2023 and ranks among the top 10 countries with the most intense violence in the world according to the ACLED Conflict Index. Evolving criminal economies, shifting gang alliances and fragmentation, and an increasingly militarized security response have fueled the country’s conflict. Meanwhile, election-related violence may add an additional challenge ahead of the 2027 local elections. 

Join ACLED and the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) on Wednesday, 18 March at 5 p.m. (UTC-5) for a discussion on Ecuador’s security landscape as we situate the country’s crisis within the broader regional dynamics. This hybrid event will take place at FLACSO in Quito, Ecuador. Keep an eye on our website: We’ll share the link to register for the online discussion in Spanish soon. The webinar video, with English subtitles, will be posted to our YouTube channel after the event.

ACLED in the media

• Sandra Pellegrini spoke to Newsweek and the Independent about El Mencho’s killing in Mexico.
• Héni Nsaibia spoke to Nigeria’s The Guardian for an article on jihadist expansion in the tri-border region of Nigeria, Benin, and Niger, and Reuters used ACLED data for an article it ran on Islamist militant attacks in the region. Heni also spoke to Al Jazeera about the use of drones and AI in the fight against armed groups in the Sahel.
• Following Afghanistan’s attacks on Pakistan, Pearl Pandya’s insights were featured in Al Jazeera.
• Olha Polishchuk shared her thoughts on the difficulty of recording and disaggregating accurate military fatalities in Ukraine with The Kyiv Independent. They also spoke to her for an article on Russia’s casualties in Ukraine.
• Deutsche Welle used ACLED data for an article on clashes between the military and insurgents in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province.
• ACLED’s data and insights on the US-Israeli strikes in Iran have been featured widely. Some mentions include maps and charts in the Financial Times, an article by The Times, and another in The Mirror. Luca Nevola spoke to Deutsche Welle about the Houthis’ plans in all of this and to Freight Waves about Iran’s targeting of Gulf states. The Associated Press has also been making excellent use of our daily event coding to map airstrikes.