The Iranian Regime Is on a Path to Ultimate Extinction

Duane Patterson 12:30 PM | July 29, 2026
AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool

At least three times in 1858, during speeches or in Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Abraham Lincoln brought up slavery as being on a path to ultimate extinction. Whether it was in Chicago on July 10th or Jonesboro on September 15th, crediting the nation's founding fathers as crafting the Constitution as the vehicle creating the dead-end path for that evil institution, or from the phrase's most famous citation, the House Divided Speech on June 15th in Springfield, Lincoln's meaning was quite clear. 

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Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.

President Donald Trump did not and has not made regime change in Iran one of his four stated objectives when military and economic operations commenced on February 28th. It's one of the few areas of separation between United States and Israeli objectives. Nevertheless, Trump's weaving of air strikes, blockades, and sanctions has put the regime that has waged war on us for 47 years on that same path to ultimate extinction. 

As the conflict enters its sixth month this week, the combination of pressures on the regime applied by American, Israeli, and Gulf Cooperation Council states in the Middle East is causing it to fracture internally while flailing externally. But with each instance of lashing out by the regime in the form of a drone strike on a ship in the Strait, or a barrage of missiles desperately seeking U.S.-based targets in the region, you can see the life beginning to leave the regime. It's just a matter of time. 

Just 13 months ago, U.S. naval and air assets, with great coordination and cooperation from Israeli fighters, pulled off Operation Midnight Hammer. Iran responded by launching two waves of missiles back at the Jewish state. In total, between 35 and 40 rockets were launched along with another 30-plus drones. That was Iran's full capacity of waging war before President Trump set back their nuclear program. 

Of course, Iran began to reconstitute their nuclear program as quickly as possible, yet was unable to rebuild their air defenses or block both Israel's and the U.S.'s abilities to see what they were up to. It led to kinetic action resuming once again in February. But the point is Iran's latest attack, yesterday's attempt to hit a U.S. base in Jordan, consisted of five rockets, all of which were intercepted. Iran has gone from a regional threat on the verge of becoming a global nuclear threat to a regional nuisance that can be managed and neutered. 

We'll get back to what happened last night in a bit, but let's take a peek at what life is like today in Iran after withering, crippling sanctions continue to suck the life out of Iran's economy. 

As of two weeks ago, their electrical grid was already collapsing to the point that rationing was taking place. 

Keep in mind that's without Donald Trump taking any direct action to either pull down one power plant at a time or take them all down at once. He's practiced strategic ambiguity by threatening both courses of action. 

For decades, Iran has subsidized gasoline, even though the country does not have the refining capacity to meet demand. That practice is now out the window. 

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The result? Gas lines. 

The reason for the blackouts in Iran's electrical grid is because of a lack of fuel to run the plants and oppressive summer heat. Most days of late have topped out at 122 degrees. The cars are in line to get gas because their tank is empty. If their air conditioner works at all, they don't have the fuel to use it while idling in line for an hour, do they? 

An additional complication for Iran in the gasoline department has developed recently, in large part thanks to Ukraine methodically getting the upper hand in its war with Russia - mastering drone strikes on critical infrastructure like refineries. Russia, which has devolved into a mafia-run gas station with nukes, can no longer meet its own fuel demands, so it's become a new bidder on the world stage for gasoline. And even though their economy is also in shambles, Russia has much more buying power on the open market than Iran does just due to their size, and so Iran is getting squeezed out of position at the trough. And that's even if they could import gas by tanker, which they no longer can do thanks to the Navy's blockade. 

In Shiraz, protesters aren't demanding death to Israel and death to the United States. They are setting propaganda banners of regime leadership on fire. 

After 13 consecutive days of punishing air strikes by the United States, the carnage was stunning. In addition to drone ports and fast boat launches all along Iran's southern coast being systematically destroyed, other dual-use infrastructure locations were wiped out. In Bushehr, a little west of the Strait of Hormuz and home to Iran's only nuclear power plant, the airport's arrival and departure board, or the remaining pieces of it, show all flights as permanently cancelled. 

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How important was it to take BIA offline? 

And the destruction for the last couple of weeks has not been relegated to the southern provinces. Tehran has seen lots of sensitive sites go up in smoke. 

Economically, Trump's sanctions on Iran, enforced lethally by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, are making the country look like a 50-year-old actress strung out on Ozempic. 

Two million to one. That's so absurdly valueless as to be incomprehensible. But for context, right before Operation Midnight Hammer, the exchange rate was around 870,000 rials to one dollar. It was still ridiculously worthless then, but in 13 months, the rial has lost an additional 125 percent of its value. And you can add into the mix, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Iran expert Miad Maleki, a June year-over-year inflation index of 88.6 percent. No one working for the IRGC or the Basij forces is getting paid. What commanders remain are mostly out-of-retirement generals living off of the grift they squirreled away from the good years while Barack Obama was president. 

And because Iran has no cash, Hezbollah and the other Iran terror proxies have no cash. In Hezbollah's case, they're discovering it's a lot harder to fight Israel, an overwhelming enemy force, with hostility also coming from the Lebanese government and armed forces as well, and no ability to pay their foot soldiers to stay in the fight. 

The economic hardship on the Iranian population, combined with infrastructure failures and excessive heat, is beginning to leave them with no choice but to take to the streets again. 

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Donald Trump scares the regime remnants, but not nearly as much as Scott Bessent's economic stranglehold driving angry protesters into the streets without the same capacity to quash the rebellion. The regime is stepping up public executions in order to frighten people back into their houses and off the streets, but you can just sense that the regime is nearing a breaking point and can no longer sustain the status quo. The American squeeze most likely forced the regime to do something yesterday it had not done yet this year - launch a preemptive strike intentionally targeting U.S. troops. 

It was a surprise attack in that until now, any assault on U.S. bases, personnel, or allies was waged in response to American or Israeli air strikes. Even the attacks on commercial ships in the Strait were not attacks on U.S. naval vessels directly. When three U.S. service members were killed at the same Jordan air base 10 days ago, it was in response to another wave of American strikes. Yesterday's attack came just two days after Iran had begged Trump for a pause, and the request was granted. 

The attack was effectively countered. All five missiles were intercepted, but voices of concern about the quantities of munitions still available to the United States and our allies are growing louder. The fear is that Iran may be playing a game of attrition, believing that if they have more missiles left to launch than we have to knock them down at the end of the day, they'll eventually get the upper hand. 

I spoke with former Missouri Senator Jim Talent on my Duane's World podcast last night in the Hughniverse, and he said he's looked into this exact problem. And it is a problem, but not one that affects the outcome with Iran. We have all we need to manage what the regime can throw at us for the indefinite future. What has begun is restarting the engines of our defense industrial base and spinning up weapons production again. That has to continue well into the future, past this administration and successive ones in order to maintain deterrence against potential Chinese conflict in the Indo-Pacific region. That is the macro problem, but the benefit of how the last five months have played out in the Middle East, however, is that Chinese technology and weaponry have proven to be rather underwhelming. We've seen that, and Xi Jinping has seen that. He's almost certainly recalculating his strategy of whether or not to take on Taiwan anytime soon. That buys our defense industry time to ramp up production. 

On the Chinese front, there was an odd report yesterday of Chinese-made reinforcements headed to Iran. 

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I'm not at all convinced this is accurate. But if true, the odds that this shipment ends up getting to its intended destination would seem to be rather low. If it's public knowledge that it's happening, almost certainly we have eyes on it, and we will destroy it before it gets into the wrong hands. President Trump, upon returning from his recent trip to see President Xi in Beijing, was reassured personally that the CCP would take no part in smuggling in weapons. One, they do not wish to have a direct confrontation with us right now, and two, they do not wish to have sanctions ratchet up against them, especially with China having to use the United States as an oil source now, all for a losing cause. A move like this would be an illogical provocation and totally out of character from what Xi has demonstrated since the conflict started in the Middle East. 

In addition to Iran flailing directly at Jordan, Iran's terror proxy in Iraq, the Popular Mobilization Force, decided to get involved and picked exactly the wrong country to target - Saudi Arabia. 

The time of their choosing? About five hours later, with direct coordination from the United States. 

The result? Bad night for the Popular Mobilization Force. 

Shortly afterward came the response from the PMF.

Yes, the dangerous escalation was the U.S. and Saudi Arabia killing them and blowing up their stuff, not the PMF launching scuds into the Kingdom in the first place. 

The bottom line? Iran's quantity and quality of attacks have objectively diminished. The U.S., Israel, and Gulf states are adapting their tactics, and any reticence for taking the fight to Tehran and finishing this regime once and for all seems to be evaporating. Mark Dubowitz from FDD:

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What little ability Iran retains to offensively threaten either American assets or their GCC neighbors has been widely attributed to their mosaic strategy of independently launching weapons whenever and/or wherever able. This was believed to be IRGC strategy going back to the decapitation strike on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his entire leadership team in the opening minutes of Operation Epic Fury. I no longer believe that holds, and all you have to do is look to last night's Iranian action as an example.

It's no secret that Israel is being used by the U.S. as a launch point for air assets to strike Iran at will, along with naval launches from carriers. Iran for months has justified retaliatory strikes on Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, U.A.E. and Qatar because of their cooperation with the United States. And yet, since the Memorandum of Understanding was breached by Iranian strikes on three vessels in the Strait, not one missile or one drone has been targeted at Israel. Zero. That's not a mosaic strategy. That's command and control. The word has been given from whoever is running the IRGC that Israel is not to be touched for now. Why? 

Circling back to where we began, Jen Psaki-style, Israel has accomplished most of its objectives against Iran and its terror proxies all around them. They've certainly reduced the existential threat they faced six months ago, relatively speaking...except one - regime change in Tehran. That's the big enchilada to them. No theocratic regime in Tehran, no proxy states. No proxy states, you have at least a shot at peace and prosperity in the Middle East for the foreseeable future. The regime in Iran knows this, too. 

For all the 12'er-Hidden Imam-radical Shia cult longing for world chaos in order to usher in their savior, and a virgin-rich paradise if they fail in their attempt, someone, presumably Ahmad Vahidi running the IRGC, still wants to survive this thing. And the first missile that breaches Israeli airspace, the Israelis will come; they will come hard, and it will be personal. The reason Iran hasn't struck Israel lately is what we like to call deterrence. 

The regime is finished. They are the proverbial headless chicken still clucking around the yard with the body not fully recognizing the end is near. Without any further kinetic action, all the signals of regime collapse are in place and blinking red. But if air strikes shift to punitive action on infrastructure and/or the current Iranian leadership directly, something I have no doubt both the U.S. and Israel are well capable of delivering, the collapse could come much sooner. 

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It would not surprise me if, after last night's attempt to take out Americans in Jordan again, President Trump responds with disproportionate force. It honestly needs to happen, because if he shrugs it off without following through on his previous threat from last week, the regime will take notice and assume they can rinse and repeat that again on another American installation somewhere.  

Aaron Cohen, former Israeli special operator and current podcaster, said it best. 

Regimes don’t collapse when buildings fall. They collapse when the people protecting the regime stop believing the regime can protect them. 

That’s why, as Netanyahu meets with President Trump over Iran, the conversation shouldn’t be about the next strike package. It should be about what Israel has spent decades building: an extraordinary intelligence picture of the regime’s inner circle, the Supreme Leader’s network, the IRGC leadership, the intelligence services, the political elite and their financial networks that keep the system alive. 

The real leverage isn’t another bombing run. It’s making everyone around the Supreme Leader ask one question: “Can this regime still protect me?” That’s how you bend the will of the mullahs.

I'm fine with the regime being on the path to ultimate extinction. I just wish we were forcing them to use a higher gear. As the late Michael Ledeen always said at the end of his columns, "Faster, please."

Tags:

DONALD TRUMP IRAN ISRAEL SAUDI ARABIA AYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI

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