What does Iran’s future hold?

Plus: What to do if Trump invades Greenland

Jan 21, 2026

What would happen if the Ayatollah fell? This question has been on the lips of many Iranians and international observers in recent weeks, as protests across the country put the regime in Tehran under significant pressure. While a crackdown has quelled the protesters for now, this is unlikely to be the end of the story.

In today’s Lightbulb, Iranian-American scholar Saeid Golkar lays out four possible scenarios if the regime were to fall. “None of which would lead to Iran becoming a democracy overnight... Clerical rule has lost legitimacy in the eyes of many,” Golkar writes. “Yet loss of legitimacy does not automatically produce political order.”

Our hosts Ellen and Alona discuss Golkar’s four scenarios on the latest episode of the Prospect Podcast. And for another perspective on Iran’s future, they call Middle East analyst Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi in Abu Dhabi. She explains how the current protests differ from previous rounds of unrest in the country, both in terms of their mammoth scale and the different geopolitical context.

That context feels like it’s shifting underfoot by the minute, with Trump touching down in Switzerland this morning ahead of his speech at Davos later today. Canadian prime minister Mark Carney pre-emptively told Davos yesterday that “compliance” (presumably with Trump’s increasingly erratic administration) “will not buy safety”.

Our columnist Andrew Adonis agrees—and argues that Keir Starmer needs a contingency plan for if Trump makes good on his threat to invade Greenland. Adonis’s suggestion? Pivoting from America to Europe by rejoining the single market and customs union. “Without the US there is only one path to security, which is further European integration,” he writes.

Trump’s officials certainly aren’t cooling things down. US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said this morning that Denmark is “irrelevant,” despite Greenland being an independent Danish territory. He clearly didn’t read security expert Elisabeth Braw’s analysis from last year, suggesting that Trump and JD Vance shouldn’t underestimate the small Scandinavian nation.

Starmer won’t be travelling to Davos, but he must be busy trying to contain a new flare up in relations between Westminster and Washington: the Chagos Islands deal. Trump seems to think it is a dud. But last year, DAT Green argued it suits the US and Mauritius more than the Chagos Islanders themselves. The coordinator of the Chagos Islands all-party parliamentary group, David Snoxell, however, argued the deal is beneficial to all parties.

What do you think? Email your thoughts to ben.clark@prospectmagazine.co.uk.