How the contract works
A contract on this question settles at $1 if the outcome is judged to have happened and at nothing if it has not. The price in between is simply what buyers and sellers currently agree the chance is: a contract trading at 0.30, for example, means the market thinks the event happens about three times in ten. Here the settlement question is whether, by 11:59 PM ET on 31 December 2026, the Islamic Republic's core structures have been dissolved, incapacitated or replaced by a fundamentally different governing system, or have lost de facto control over most of Iran's population. If that has not happened by the deadline, the contract settles at nothing. A position does not have to be held to the deadline โ it can normally be sold back into the market beforehand at whatever the price is at that moment, which is how holders react to news rather than waiting five months for a verdict.
Yes8%
No92%
Probability
How the price has moved
The price series available for this page is unusually short: it begins on 29 July 2026 and contains 88 observations, every one of them at the same level of 91%, a figure describing the continuity side of the question rather than the current consensus that the regime falls. There is therefore no move to explain and no trigger to credit โ an honest reading is that within the recorded period the market did not change its mind at all. That flatness is itself information. With more than $23,300,000 of volume behind the question and no dispersion in the recorded series, the market is treating the survival of the Islamic Republic through 2026 as close to settled, and pricing the fall as a tail event rather than a contested call.
Analysis
Context
The Islamic Republic has governed Iran since the 1979 revolution, with a constitutional structure that places a Supreme Leader above the elected presidency, a Guardian Council that vets candidates and legislation, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as the regime's armed guarantor. Ali Khamenei has held the leadership since 1989 and is now in his late eighties. Succession is formally the job of the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body elected under Guardian Council vetting.
The last two years have been the most violent test of that structure in decades. Israel and Iran fought an open air war in June 2025, and the United States struck the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites on 22 June 2025. Iran curtailed cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency afterwards, and the European parties to the 2015 nuclear deal triggered the snapback of United Nations sanctions in the northern autumn of 2025. Sanctions pressure, a weak currency and periodic fuel, water and power shortages have produced repeated protest waves โ most visibly the nationwide unrest after Mahsa Amini's death in September 2022, and before that the November 2019 fuel protests and the 2009 Green Movement.
None of those episodes produced a change of governing system. That is the history the market is pricing against, and it is why the question here is deliberately narrow: not whether Iran is unstable, but whether the regime's core institutions stop holding sovereign power over most Iranians before 31 December 2026.
Start with what the contract actually asks. Routine elections, reforms, a leadership succession, an internal power shift, partial territorial losses and armed challenges from exile or rebel groups are all explicitly excluded. So is a change of president. What is required is a clear break in continuity โ a provisional government, a revolutionary council, a new constitution, or the regime's loss of effective sovereignty over a majority of the population. That definition rules out most of the plausible bad news of the next five months and leaves only the tail: revolution, civil war, a successful coup, or state collapse under external attack.
Against that definition, the historical record is one-sided. The Islamic Republic held together through the 1980โ88 war with Iraq, the 2009 post-election crisis, the 2017โ18 and November 2019 economic protests, the 2022โ23 unrest, the assassination of senior commanders, and direct Israeli and American strikes on its nuclear programme in June 2025. In every case the security apparatus stayed cohesive enough to enforce the state's authority. A market pricing a regime fall in the low single-digit-to-low-double-digit range is not saying Iran is stable; it is saying that the specific failure mode required here has not occurred once in forty-seven years, and that five months is a short window.
The succession question is the one most readers assume is the same as this question, and it is not. If Khamenei dies or steps aside and the Assembly of Experts installs a successor, the contract resolves No, because leadership succession that preserves the system is excluded by the rules. A messy succession matters only if it fractures the IRGC and the clerical establishment badly enough to produce competing claims to sovereign power. That is the mechanism worth watching, not the fact of a transition.
The market structure is worth noting too. This question trades on a single venue, Polymarket, with total volume above $23,300,000 โ a large figure for a geopolitical contract with a fixed year-end deadline. Because there is only one venue, there is no cross-venue spread to read as disagreement about the rules or the settlement source. What the volume does tell you is that the low probability is not a thin quote nobody has tested; it is a level that a substantial amount of capital has been willing to take both sides of.
The recorded price history for this page is short and does not support any story about a trend. Observations begin on 29 July 2026, and all 88 of them sit at a single level of 91%, with a range of 91% to 91% โ a figure that corresponds to the survival side of the question rather than to the current consensus that the regime falls. In practical terms there is no movement in the series to explain, and no publicly reported trigger to attach to one. The useful reading is the flatness itself: within the period captured, the market's view of continuity did not shift at all.
What moves the probability
A deliberately high settlement bar
The rules require dissolution, incapacitation or replacement of the Supreme Leader's office, the Guardian Council and clerical control of the IRGC, or loss of de facto power over most Iranians. Protests, strikes, sanctions escalation and cabinet turmoil do not qualify. This is the largest single force holding the probability down, and it is fixed for the life of the contract.
Security-force cohesion
Every past crisis was survived because the IRGC, Basij and police enforced the state's authority. Credible, sustained defections or unit-level refusals to act would be the clearest signal the market has under-priced this, and would move the probability faster than any protest headline. Absent that, unrest tends to be contained and the price barely reacts.
Renewed Israeli or US military action
Another campaign of the kind fought in June 2025 raises the tail risk of state breakdown and would push the probability up in the short term. But 2025 is also the counter-example: strikes on nuclear sites and the loss of senior commanders did not break continuity of government. The direction is up, the magnitude is smaller than the headlines suggest.
Khamenei's succession
At his age, a transition inside the settlement window is a live possibility. Under these rules an orderly handover by the Assembly of Experts resolves No, so succession pushes the probability up only through the narrow channel of an open split among clerical and IRGC factions. Most succession scenarios are neutral to the outcome.
Economic stress and the calendar
Currency depreciation, fuel and electricity shortfalls and the effect of reimposed UN sanctions since late 2025 keep the protest floor high, which argues for a probability above zero rather than near it. The constraint is time: roughly five months remain to 31 December 2026, and revolutions that clear this bar rarely run on that schedule from a standing start.
The case for
- A second war with Israel or the United States, larger than June 2025 and aimed at command structures rather than nuclear sites, could degrade central control to the point where the state no longer exercises sovereign power over most of the population.
- Khamenei's death inside the window, combined with a contested succession that split the IRGC from the clerical establishment, is the one internal path that could produce competing claims to authority rather than a managed handover.
- Compounding economic stress โ currency collapse, fuel and power shortages, the effect of reimposed UN sanctions โ could turn a localised protest into a general strike wave that security forces refuse to suppress, which is how the 1979 revolution actually ended.
- Because the contract also resolves Yes on civil war or a military coup, the outcome does not require a popular revolution to succeed, only a decisive break in continuity of government.
The case against
- The Islamic Republic has survived an eight-year war, four major protest waves and direct strikes on its nuclear programme without any break in continuity, and the security apparatus has never fractured.
- Every intermediate outcome is excluded by the rules: elections, reforms, a new president, a new Supreme Leader, partial territorial losses and exile-group offensives all resolve No.
- Only about five months remain to the 31 December 2026 deadline, and a system change of this magnitude would need to begin and complete inside that window.
- Sanctions and economic pain have historically strengthened the state's coercive apparatus relative to civil society rather than weakening it, so pressure alone has not been a path to collapse.
What to watch
Four things between now and 31 December 2026. First, any resumption of Israeli or American military action, and specifically whether it targets leadership and command structures rather than nuclear facilities โ that is the difference between a price blip and a genuine re-rating. Second, IAEA Board of Governors meetings in September and November 2026 and the September session of the United Nations General Assembly, which set the diplomatic temperature and shape whether sanctions pressure tightens further. Third, the protest calendar and the economic triggers behind it: the mid-September anniversary of Mahsa Amini's death, any fuel or subsidy adjustment, and the rial's exchange rate, which has historically preceded unrest. Fourth, credible reporting on Khamenei's health and on any Assembly of Experts activity โ and, if a transition begins, whether the IRGC publicly aligns behind a single successor.
Trade this contract
Open on Polymarket
- gas covered
- no trading fee