As airstrikes rain down on the Iranian regime, can a fractured opposition unite to lead if it falls?
As U.S. and Israeli air forces continue to attack Iran’s leadership and facilities with devastating military strikes, there are intense discussions unfolding about who will rule the country if the regime falls.
One of the biggest questions being asked by Iran experts is whether the fragmented opposition groups can come together and unite in defeating the regime.
Lawdan Bazargan, an Iranian political and human rights activist who was imprisoned by the regime for her dissident activities in the 1980s, told Fox News Digital there is a dangerous precedent for a total unified opposition.
“Unity cannot mean everyone stands under my flag,” she said.
“That model failed Iran once before. In 1979, one figure [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] absorbed moral authority while claiming he wasn’t seeking office and ended up consolidating absolute power. It’s also not fair to automatically position someone who has not lived in Iran for decades as the interim authority of over 90 million people. That fuels more mistrust, not less.”
She also warned about the need to avoid a Venezuela situation in which Nicolás Maduro was replaced by his devotee, Delcy Rodríguez.
Mariam Memarsadeghi, a senior fellow at The Macdonald-Laurier Institute and founder and director of the Cyrus Forum for Iran’s Future, told Fox News Digital, “When it comes to helping unite opposition forces, the crown prince [Reza Pahlavi] has the most responsibility because he is leading. It is to everyone’s advantage for him to build true alliances and real cooperation.
“He can start through reconciliation with prominent figures who once were in collaboration with him before spoilers in his own ranks were propelled by regime manipulation and infiltration to turn on others. It will be tempting to think that, because he is popular, he does not need others. But there is much hard work ahead.”
IRAN’S SENIOR CLERICS ‘EXPOSED’ AFTER BUILDING STRIKE IN QOM, SUCCESSION CHOICE LOOMS
Reza Farnood, a researcher, writer and activist, told Fox News Digital, “In 48 years of activism and struggle, I have never experienced such broad unity and alignment. Even those who for years held firmly leftist views and were staunch opponents of the Shah and the Pahlavi family are now openly supporting the prince. Inside Iran, people are openly and courageously chanting his name.”
Yet others remain skeptical of Pahlavi.
“Unfortunately, the Iranian opposition is more divided than ever,” Alireza Nader, an Iran expert, said. “And I blame much of it on Reza Pahlavi and his team. Take the announcement of the formation of the new Kurdish Iranian coalition. Pahlavi attacked the coalition as soon as it was formed, labeling them as ‘separatists.’
“But then Pahlavi had to walk back his statement after he found out that President Trump had called Kurdish leaders, an important development.”
Nader added, “The Kurds are very organized and capable. And they are armed. Anyone who wants to free Iran has to work with them. The regime is a deeply entrenched system in Iran. It’s an ideology and belief system that will not be uprooted with air strikes. And the regime has been preparing for this moment for decades. The individual leaders may not matter as much as the system.”
FIREBRAND ANTI-AMERICAN CLERIC ALIREZA ARAFI SEEN AS CONTENDER TO REPLACE IRAN’S KHAMENEI
Yet while many voices claim Pahlavi should be the rightful successor to bring democracy to Iran, others point to the influential Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), the Iranian exile organization that has attracted supporters like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The group was reportedly the first to highlight Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions and regularly posts videos on its social media showing its active units operating against the regime. A post on X dated March 3 shows attacks against regime targets.
“Resistance Units step up anti-regime activities nationwide,” it said, adding that there have been 30 operations in 15 cities, including Tehran, in recent days.
IRANIAN JOURNALIST URGES TRUMP TO ‘FINISH THE JOB,’ SAYS IRANIANS FEAR ‘WOUNDED REGIME’
Its Paris-based leader, Maryam Rajavi, says she supports a secular provisional government. Ali Safavi, an official with the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told Fox News Digital, the organization “has consistently argued that unity must be built on principles — republicanism, popular sovereignty, human rights and the separation of religion and state — rather than on personalities or nostalgia for past systems.”
The NCRI is the umbrella organization for groups that fall under MEK.
Andrew Ghalili, the policy director for the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), defended Pahlavi’s standing, saying, “There is no figure within the Islamic Republic who has legitimacy with the Iranian people or who would be a credible partner for the U.S.
TRUMP SAYS IRAN’S SUCCESSION BENCH WIPED OUT AS ISRAELI STRIKE HITS LEADERSHIP DELIBERATIONS
“As for opposition unity, the pro-democracy opposition is more united than it gets credit for. At the Munich Security Conference in 2025, a broad coalition came together around Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi and four core principles for democratic transition. That includes monarchists, republicans, human rights advocates, ethnic minority representatives — all committed to a democratic, territorially intact Iran.”
Ghalili claimed, “When people say the opposition is ‘fractured,’ they’re usually lumping in groups like the MEK, which is universally reviled inside Iran and has no democratic credentials or aspirations, or separatist movements that don’t reflect what Iranians, including ethnic minorities, actually want. The real pro-democracy opposition is already uniting. The world, and international media, should recognize it.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
“If the West truly wants stability and not a Venezuela-style managed authoritarian transition, it should not anoint personalities,” Bazargan warned. “It should push for a structured transition that guarantees free and fair elections within 12 months, with distributed authority and real safeguards against concentration of power.
“Iran does not need another supreme figure, even a secular one. It needs an accountable transitional framework, so every Iranian feels they have a stake in their future. Without that, fragmentation will continue, and fragmentation only helps the regime survive.”
Her warning was echoed by Memarsadeghi, who said, “The Iranian people will not trust in any process that leaves in power any vestige of the regime that massacred them.”
$4.2M US torpedo detonates under Iranian warship in historic ‘No Mercy’ strike
A multi-million-dollar U.S. Navy torpedo detonated underneath an Iranian warship in a nighttime submarine strike off Sri Lanka’s southern coast — an attack, War Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday in a Pentagon update, was the first of its kind since World War II.
The weapon, identified as a Mark 48 Advanced Capability (ADCAP) torpedo, underscored the scale of force used, and signaled to Tehran that “the gloves really are off,” according to a former U.S. submarine commander.
“The Mark 48 is one of the most lethal anti-ship weapons in the U.S. inventory,” Thomas Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Fox News Digital.
The torpedo carries a 650-pound warhead and is designed not to strike a ship directly, Shugart said, but to detonate beneath it, creating a massive vapor bubble that breaks the vessel’s back and splits it in half.
“This torpedo detonated underneath the stern of the Iranian ship and lifted it up out of the water, and so it sank in a matter of minutes,” he added.
The torpedo costs approximately $4.2 million per unit, according to recent data, with Shugart likening the strike to rare submarine attacks in modern naval history.
In addition to World War II, he pointed to the 1982 Falklands War as one example of a submarine-launched torpedo sinking a major surface combatant.
“This was the second time ever that a nuclear-powered submarine has fired a torpedo and sunk a ship,” Shugart said.
“The only other time that happened was a British submarine called HMS Conqueror, which similarly sank an Argentine cruiser, the General Belgrano, during the Falklands War in 1982,” he added.
TRUMP SAYS US MISSION IN IRAN IS ‘AHEAD OF SCHEDULE,’ VOWS TO ‘EASILY PREVAIL’ OVER REGIME
The naval submarine operation, he said, would have involved increased surveillance, forward naval deployments and targeted actions designed to demonstrate U.S. maritime dominance.
“It definitely seems to me like a message that the gloves really are off,” Shugart added.
“An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” Hegseth told reporters at the Wednesday briefing.
FORMER TOPGUN PILOT DECLARES IRAN MILITARY ‘OVER WITH’ AMID US AIR SUPERIORITY, BUT WARNS OF ANOTHER DANGER
Hesgeth described the strike as “a quiet death,” adding that it marked the first sinking of an enemy ship by torpedo since World War II.
“The U.S. Navy submarines are very highly mobile, very, very quiet, and our crews are extremely well-trained,” Shugart explained. “This was not a challenge for a U.S. Navy submarine to fire a torpedo.”
“To hunt down and sink an Iranian ship like that is not — that’s not a challenging task for a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine,” he said.
The targeted vessel, identified as the IRIS Dena, was the newest frigate in Iran’s naval fleet and was equipped with surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles, torpedo launchers and other heavy weaponry.
According to Sri Lanka’s Foreign Affairs Minister Vijitha Herath, the country’s coast guard received a distress call at 5:08 a.m. local time Wednesday from the Iranian vessel reporting an explosion.
EX-CENTCOM CHIEF DETAILS ‘EXQUISITE INTELLIGENCE’ BEHIND IRAN STRIKES, SAYS NEXT STEPS HINGE ON ‘MISSILE MATH’
“I’m not sure Iran has any operational submarines anymore, but if they were operational, their biggest submarines would be at least 20 or 30 years old,” Shugart said.
“They would be ex-Russian diesel-electric submarines, so they’re not nuclear-powered like the U.S. ones, with satellite communications and unlimited mobility.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
“The U.S. submarines can operate at high speed for as long as they want with unlimited endurance, other than the food on board. They carry the most advanced weapons, the most advanced sensors.”
“This strike sent a message that if there are any Iranian warships left or any Iranian government-owned ships, they should expect no mercy,” he added.
Physicist lawmaker warns Iran could build ‘Hiroshima-style’ weapon, says US lacks uranium plan
A House Democrat with a background in physics is sounding the alarm over what he views as a lack of a plan to deal with Iran’s nuclear sites during the U.S. offensive campaign.
After a classified briefing Tuesday with top administration officials, Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., said lawmakers were not presented with a clear plan to secure or neutralize Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium.
“We have heard that they never had a plan for that nuclear stockpile of enriched uranium — to destroy that, to seize it or to put it under international inspection,” he said.
The U.S. intervention was publicly justified by the Trump administration as a necessary step to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
U.S. forces have struck more than 1,700 targets across Iran, including ballistic missile launch sites, air defenses, naval assets and command centers. Core nuclear facilities, however, have not been among the primary targets.
“Until that happens, Iran will be very, very close to making — as many observers have pointed out in a nonclassified situation — Iran can use that material to make a handful of Hiroshima-style nuclear devices,” Foster told Fox News Digital. “Not the sort you can put on a missile, but the sort you can deliver by a number of other ways and are very hard to stop.”
Foster was referring to Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, material that, if weaponized, could be used to build a nuclear explosive device.
Experts note that building a compact warhead that fits on a ballistic missile is technically complex and requires advanced engineering. But a simpler, larger nuclear device — similar in basic concept to the bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 — would not need to be miniaturized to fit on a missile. Such a device could not be delivered by long-range rocket but could theoretically be transported by other means.
Foster argued that containing Iran’s nuclear materials, most of which are buried deep underground, would likely require U.S. forces to enter Iran.
Recent satellite imagery shows damage to support buildings and access points at Iran’s Natanz enrichment site, though the deepest underground infrastructure at key nuclear facilities has not been confirmed as a primary target in the current campaign.
U.S. and international officials previously have acknowledged that while strikes can damage enrichment infrastructure, stockpiled enriched uranium stored underground may remain intact and potentially retrievable unless physically secured or removed.
“You have to go in there with boots on the ground and grab a bunch of equipment,” Foster said. “You have to go underground into those facilities and lose a lot of soldiers’ lives doing that.
“They’re unwilling to do that, or they’ve decided not to or they’ve decided it’s impossible. In any case, they did not present to us any plan that would actually get the material under control.”
Without securing the nuclear material, he argued, military operations may push Iran closer to a nuclear weapon than diplomatic negotiations would have.
“The only positive thing about the ayatollah is that he had a fatwa against building nuclear weapons,” Foster said. “Who knows what the next generation of ayatollahs are going to feel? They’re going to be under a lot of pressure from the IRGC, which was not so much against having a nuclear weapon.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the joint U.S.-Israeli operations, had previously issued a fatwa, a religious edict, opposing the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Analysts have long debated how binding or durable that ruling was.
At a White House briefing Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration believes Iran “wanted to build nuclear weapons to use against Americans and our allies,” framing the strikes as necessary to prevent Tehran from advancing its nuclear ambitions.
“The US military has more than enough munitions, ammo, and weapons stockpiles to achieve the goals of Operation Epic Fury laid out by President Trump — and beyond. Nevertheless, President Trump has always been intensely focused on strengthen our Armed Forces and he will continue to call on defense contractors to more speedily build American-made weapons, which are the best in the world,” she said in a follow up statement to Fox News Digital.
Missile suppression strategy faces ‘math problem’
Senior administration officials have emphasized that the current phase of the campaign is aimed at dismantling Iran’s ability to project force with missiles, drones and naval assets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has highlighted strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile systems, air defenses and naval capabilities, describing the effort as a push to degrade the conventional tools Tehran uses to threaten U.S. forces and regional allies.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly has said the United States is working to “systematically take apart” Iran’s missile program, so it could not “hide behind” it to develop a nuclear weapon.
While the broader justification for intervention centered on preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, the most immediate threat facing U.S. troops and partners has been Iran’s ongoing missile and drone launches. Administration officials contend Iran’s missile buildup was meant to create a deterrent buffer, shielding its broader strategic ambitions, including its nuclear program, from outside attack.
Lawmakers emerging from classified briefings said the campaign has become, in part, a question of sustainability.
US ‘WINNING DECISIVELY’ AGAINST IRAN, WILL ACHIEVE ‘COMPLETE CONTROL’ OF AIRSPACE WITHIN DAYS, HEGSETH SAYS
“We do not have an unlimited supply,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said of U.S. and allied interceptor inventories. He warned the conflict could become a “math problem,” balancing launch volumes against finite air defense munitions and the ability to replenish them without weakening readiness in other theaters.
“At some point — and we’re probably already in this — this becomes a math problem,” Kelly added.
He said he pressed defense officials on how interceptor stocks are being replenished and whether diverting munitions to the Middle East could strain U.S. readiness elsewhere.
“How can we resupply air defense munitions? Where are they going to come from? How does that affect other theaters?” he said. “The math on this currently seems to be an issue.”
Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., said he also sought clarity on interceptor inventories but did not receive detailed answers.
“I am very concerned about that,” Kim said. “I did not get any specificity today. … Something akin to ‘trust us’ is not good enough for me.”
Republicans, however, pushed back on the notion that interceptor supplies are strained.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said officials told lawmakers U.S. forces are “in great shape,” dismissing concerns about shortages.
US UNLEASHES OPERATION EPIC FURY, STRIKES 1,700 IRAN TARGETS IN 72 HOURS
Ehud Eilam, a former Israeli defense official and national security analyst, said that while a nuclear weapon remains the most serious long-term threat, missile and drone systems pose the most immediate danger if intelligence assessments conclude Iran is not on the verge of assembling a device.
“As long as it is estimated Iran cannot produce a nuclear weapon soon, then the focus moves to missiles and drones,” Eilam said, noting that ballistic missiles would ultimately be required to deliver any future nuclear warhead. Suppressing mobile launchers, crews and command networks can reduce Iran’s firing tempo, conserving interceptor supplies while degrading Tehran’s broader military capacity, he said.
The concern is not theoretical.
During the intense June 2025 Iran–Israel conflict, U.S. forces reportedly fired more than 150 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors, roughly a quarter of the global inventory, along with large numbers of ship-based Standard Missile interceptors to shield allies.
Analysts note that replenishing high-end air defense systems such as Patriot, THAAD and SM-3 interceptors could take more than a year under current production rates.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
The Pentagon also is balancing competing demands. The same missile defense systems used to protect U.S. bases and Gulf partners are being supplied to Ukraine to defend against Russian cruise missile attacks, creating what some analysts describe as a “zero-sum” competition for inventory between Europe and the Middle East.
“There is a limit to how many THAAD missiles can be used,” Eilam said. “These are not systems you can reproduce overnight.”