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The Iranian regime appears to be facing a significant challenge, with reports emerging of Iranian soldiers, police officers, and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) not showing up for duty. These insights, reportedly stemming from Israeli intelligence sources and highlighted by The Economist on Wednesday, suggest a potential decline in morale within the IRGC. This development could be promising for Iranians who are hopeful that a final uprising might successfully destabilize the fragile regime in Tehran.
The IRGC, a crucial and elite component of Iran’s military apparatus, is notorious for executing terrorism operations abroad while maintaining a harsh grip on domestic dissent. A breakdown in discipline and commitment within this group may signal a weakening of the regime’s hold over the country’s military forces.
Meanwhile, The Economist has been closely monitoring the unfolding events of Operation Epic Fury. Their analysis from the first five days of this operation reveals significant disruptions within Iran’s political leadership. The report notes a dramatic 86% decrease in Iranian ballistic missile launches since the conflict’s onset, alongside a devastated naval force.
A critical factor in these developments is Iran’s compromised air defenses, largely dismantled during a previous 12-day conflict. With air superiority quickly established, the United States and Israel have shifted to using more affordable ordnance, moving away from the costly high-tech weaponry initially utilized. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth remarked on the availability of a “nearly unlimited stockpile” of these cost-effective munitions, underscoring the strategic and economic advantage gained by the allied forces.
The analysis attributed some of this success to the “dire state of Iran’s air defenses, which were mostly dismantled in last year’s 12-day war.” With total air superiority swiftly achieved, the U.S. and Israel have been able to switch to cheaper ordnance than the big-ticket super-weapons deployed during the first phase of the conflict, including what Secretary of War Pete Hegseth described as a “nearly unlimited stockpile” of inexpensive bombs.
“For all that, military attrition, however overwhelming and effective, by no means guarantees the regime’s demise — Israel’s key war aim, and one of Mr. Trump’s ever-shifting goals,” the report cautioned.
Another worthy note of caution would be that virtually every conflict includes reports of enemy soldiers deserting their posts and, even if such anecdotal accounts are true, they may not reflect a complete collapse of morale.
Iran’s own Farda news outlet, for example, reported that Iranian soldiers, police, and even military officers refused to report for duty during Israeli airstrikes in June 2025, obliging Iran’s military judges to warn that “disobedience or desertion” would be treated as “treason, whether motivated by aiding the enemy or personal reasons.”
During the widespread popular uprising in January 2026, the IRGC issued a statement that briefly included a warning that “defiance, desertion, or disobedience” among Iranian troops would be punished with “trial and decisive action.”
This warning was later deleted from the statement, leading hopeful observers to speculate that Iranian security forces were suffering worse morale problems than it wanted to admit. As things turned out, the regime was able to crush the January uprising by murdering thousands of its own people, without suffering any crippling morale problems among its thugs and trigger men.
Iranian opposition media site Iran International claimed on Friday that “multiple conscripts” within Iran’s armed forces said their officers “abandoned their barracks, leaving soldiers in dangerous conditions and forcing them to remain on guard duty under ongoing bombardment.”