{"id":244,"date":"2026-06-05T13:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T13:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/housingnewsamerica.com\/?p=244"},"modified":"2026-06-05T13:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T13:06:14","slug":"the-real-war-for-irans-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housingnewsamerica.com\/?p=244","title":{"rendered":"The Real War for Iran\u2019s Future"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On March 1, 2026, the Iranian government made it official. \u201cAfter a lifetime of struggle,\u201d a state broadcaster declared, \u201cIranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei drank the sweet, pure draft of martyrdom and joined the Supreme Heavenly Kingdom.\u201d The broadcaster praised Khamenei for being \u201cunceasing and untiring\u201d and for his \u201clofty and celestial spirit.\u201d As he read the announcement, people offscreen wailed. When he finished, he, too, broke down in tears.<\/p>\n

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Most Iranians probably didn\u2019t cry when they learned of Khamenei\u2019s passing. For over 35 years, Iran\u2019s supreme leader ruled with an iron fist, repressing women, minorities, and anyone who dared challenge him. But the dramatic wording of the death announcement was, in a sense, warranted: more than anyone else, Khamenei is the architect of the Islamic Republic and all it has entailed. Although it was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who established the theocracy by seizing power during Iran\u2019s 1979 revolution, it was his successor who transformed it into the country it is now. It was Khamenei who ensured that the supreme leader remained Iran\u2019s paramount authority in practice, not just in principle. It was Khamenei who pushed Iran to pursue regional hegemony, thus committing it to perpetual conflict with Israel and the United States. And it was Khamenei who transformed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), once a military with an uncertain future, into the central pillar of the government.<\/p>\n

The Iranian elite moved quickly to name a replacement. Just over a week after his death, the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body tasked with appointing the supreme leader, announced that Khamenei\u2019s son, Mojtaba, would assume the position. But speed and lineage will not prevent a power vacuum in Iran. Only the elder Khamenei had the experience and standing required to keep the regime\u2019s various camps in check. As a result, Iran\u2019s top officials are now lining up to chart the country\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

At the time of this writing, the actors best positioned to succeed are those affiliated with the IRGC, Mojtaba Khamenei included. As Iran\u2019s strongest armed actor, it has the resources to impose its will on the country\u2019s populace. This bodes poorly for Iran. The IRGC\u2019s leaders are, for the most part, hard-liners who thrive in perpetual conflict with both external and internal forces. If they solidify power, Tehran will remain reflexively antagonistic toward Israel, the United States, and pro-democracy elements inside the country.<\/p>\n

But this future is not foretold. The IRGC\u2019s unbending policies have clearly failed to protect the country, much less benefit its people, and have long been seen by the regime\u2019s reformists as a dead end. And there are many reformists, including current officials and former presidents, who could chart a more accommodating course. If they can shape the state, the regime might agree to trade its nuclear program and regional aggression for economic relief and development.<\/p>\n

The pragmatists have an uphill fight. Unlike the hard-liners, they have little armed power. They have also lost trust with the Iranian people for either weakly condemning or outright backing the regime\u2019s brutal suppression of popular protests. But Iran is in chaos, and reformist insiders have the experience needed to guide the government onto more stable ground. They can capitalize on the fact that the hard-liners\u2019 ranks have been decimated by U.S. and Israeli strikes to take the reins of power. To do so, however, they must appeal to Iran\u2019s frustrated, long-suffering citizens by promising a more peaceful, prosperous, and politically free future.<\/p>\n

WATCH THE THRONE<\/h3>\n

Ali Khamenei was never supposed to be Iran\u2019s supreme leader. During the country\u2019s revolution, he was just one of many acolytes of Khomeini. His status as a midlevel cleric, one more interested in politics than scholarly production, put him beneath the lofty religious standards Khomeini demanded of future rulers. Khamenei quickly made powerful allies and gained prominence, and he was elected president in 1981. But at the time, the charismatic rule of Khomeini had rendered the presidency a tertiary position. It was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the speaker of parliament, who was Khomeini\u2019s most trusted hand.<\/p>\n

But Khomeini and his inner circle sidelined clergy who could challenge his religious authority. Grand Ayatollah Kazem Shariat-Madari, for example, was fired from his position as the head of the Qom Seminary, a major center of Shiite clerical authority, and placed under house arrest by Khomeini\u2019s deputies. The supreme leader likewise turned against his original appointed successor, the more progressive-minded Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, for openly defying him on a number of issues, including by opposing the execution of thousands of political prisoners at the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. As his health failed in 1989, Khomeini thus found that there were no viable potential successors who had the requisite religious credentials, the correct politics, and sufficient support among the rest of the regime. He then had the constitution rewritten so that any midlevel cleric who backed Iran\u2019s Islamist system of rule and was knowledgeable about the country\u2019s geopolitical conditions could succeed him. These changes allowed Khomeini\u2019s younger lieutenants to compete for his throne\u2014Khamenei among them.<\/p>\n

Even then, Khamenei\u2019s ascension remained far from assured. Instead, the leading candidate was Rafsanjani. Indeed, Rafsanjani probably could have secured the position had he not decided that he would rather be Iran\u2019s president after Khomeini died. In Rafsanjani\u2019s view, the supreme leader\u2019s office would become far less consequential after Khomeini\u2019s death, and the presidency would become the position with the most authority. He was thus happy to cede the supreme leader\u2019s office to his friend Khamenei, and indeed lobbied Khomeini and the Assembly of Experts on Khamenei\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s most likely future is a military-controlled authoritarian state.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It worked. Khomeini died on June 3, 1989, Khamenei was appointed his successor the day after, and Rafsanjani was elected president the following month. But if Rafsanjani thought he was on a glide path toward becoming Iran\u2019s uncontested authority, he was mistaken. The two senior officials were soon at odds over postwar policy and locked in a power struggle.<\/p>\n

At first, Rafsanjani had the edge. He was the most capable of Khomeini\u2019s disciples and the most cunning politician in Iran. He also had a clear agenda for rebuilding the country\u2019s crumbling economy and infrastructure. By comparison, Khamenei had no clear plan. More troubling, he had little legitimacy. Whereas Rafsanjani became president by winning an election and Khomeini became supreme leader by leading a revolution, Khamenei gained his position through backroom dealing. He had no popular support.<\/p>\n

But Khamenei recognized his weak standing and set about finding a group that could shore him up. He did not need to look long: the IRGC was similarly searching for a new political partner. The organization had helped Khomeini defeat his rivals after the revolution, but the destruction and high costs of the war with Iraq had damaged its standing, and Rafsanjani was moving to curb its influence. Khamenei, however, was happy to help it maintain and expand its position. Khamenei thus threw his weight behind the Revolutionary Guards\u2019 domestic agenda, which sought to refocus society around conservative Islamic mores. He used the authority of his office to give IRGC commanders a bigger voice in domestic politics and more power in Iranian society. The IRGC, in turn, used its armed might to coerce and arrest reformist figures, including those aligned with Rafsanjani. When Rafsanjani left office after two terms, the presidency had lost much of its luster.<\/p>\n

By the start of the millennium, the symbiotic relationship between Khamenei and the Guards had fully secured the rule of hard-liners in Tehran. The IRGC repeatedly put down pro-reform demonstrations and student protests. It blocked Rafsanjani\u2019s reformist successor, Mohammad Khatami, from making any meaningful changes to the country. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fellow hard-liner who served as president from 2005 to 2013, was marginalized by Khamenei and the IRGC for attempting to restore influence to the executive branch. Only Khamenei and the Guards could hold real power.<\/p>\n

DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR<\/h3>\n

The supreme leader\u2019s partnership with the IRGC worked, in part, because of their shared conservative Islamist domestic agenda. But it also worked because of their coalescing perspectives on global affairs. Both sought to make Khomeini\u2019s view of the world\u2014in which the United States was the leading enemy of Islamic civilization and Israel was the primary mechanism of American influence\u2014central to Iran\u2019s foreign policy. The \u201cliberation of Jerusalem\u201d\u2014that is, the defeat of Israel as a Jewish state\u2014and the overturning of the American-led international order became their chief causes.<\/p>\n

At first, progress proved fitful. Iran\u2019s drive to export its Islamist revolution lost momentum amid the war with Iraq. The 1990s turned into a period defined by domestic issues, and the IRGC\u2019s foreign operations were mostly reduced to carrying out acts of terrorism. Yet the IRGC remained ambitious, and when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, their fortunes changed. Both operations created open-ended conflicts ripe for exploitation, and Iran, which borders both states, was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the regional upheaval. The IRGC thus quickly began clandestine interventions. In Afghanistan, it played both sides of the conflict but ended up supporting factions of the Taliban, providing them with funds and arms. In Iraq, Tehran cultivated new militias to fight American forces. When U.S. troops left Iraq in 2011, these linkages remained, and Tehran became the most powerful external player in Baghdad. The success in both places gave Iran a template. As the Arab Spring swept across the region in the 2010s and set off new conflicts, the IRGC exploited the instability to forge relationships with various armed actors, intervening in Syria to save Bashar al-Assad\u2019s government from collapse and later helping the Houthis rise to power in Yemen.<\/p>\n

Khamenei\u2019s assertive foreign policy was matched by his ambition to make Iran a great military power. The regime invested heavily in weapons that allowed Iran to threaten its enemies from a distance, leading to the development of sophisticated missile and drone programs. The regime also worked to master nuclear enrichment. Although Tehran consistently denied it was trying to produce nuclear weapons\u2014Khamenei even issued a religious edict banning them\u2014the program\u2019s advancement went well beyond what was needed for civilian use. At a minimum, Iran\u2019s nuclear endeavors gave the country the material and know-how needed to build a bomb.<\/p>\n

For a time, this strategy proved effective. By the early 2020s, Iran was the dominant political actor in a wide swath of the Middle East, including Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. Iran\u2019s expansionism and the conflicts it produced further empowered the IRGC inside the regime, transforming it into the dominant voice in foreign affairs. Its expansive security-related schemes also allowed it to control an outsize portion of the Iranian economy.<\/p>\n

Read more Can the UAE Go It Alone?<\/a><\/p>\n

The costs of this approach, however, were extraordinary. Massive military outlays, for example, prevented Tehran from investing in Iran\u2019s people. The country\u2019s nuclear and missile programs resulted in severe U.S. sanctions. Iran\u2019s economy thus declined while inflation soared. Iranians started protesting against their unelected dictator\u2014first in 2009, then sporadically from 2017 to 2022, and, most recently, in December and January.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Tehran began facing international setbacks. After Hamas, another Iranian ally, struck Israel on October 7, 2023, the Jewish state dispensed with its previous reluctance to destroy the Islamic Republic\u2019s capacities. Over the next two years, it repeatedly struck Hezbollah, IRGC positions in Syria, and the Houthis. Finally, it took out many of Iran\u2019s air defenses and missile production sites and, with the help of the United States, bombed and buried many Iranian nuclear facilities. In February 2026, the two countries attacked again, killing Khamenei and other prominent officials and massively degrading Iran\u2019s entire military and security apparatus.<\/p>\n

CRISIS OF FAITH<\/h3>\n

Khamenei\u2019s death has opened the door to change within Iran. But so far, its main consequence has been the empowerment of the IRGC. By the time he was killed, Khamenei was the only remaining check on the group\u2019s whims, ensuring that although the IRGC got what it wanted most of the time, it was never totally triumphant. Now, it has no peer. Whether Mojtaba Khamenei lasts or not (as of this writing, U.S. officials say he is injured), the supreme leader\u2019s office will no longer have the standing to impede the Guards\u2019 agenda. The new supreme leader will be as much an agent of the IRGC as its overseer.<\/p>\n

This, in turn, could mean that Iran\u2019s elected officials have less power than ever. Under Khamenei, Iran\u2019s executive branch would occasionally defy the IRGC; the supreme leader, for example, let President Hassan Rouhani, a reformist who served from 2013 to 2021, negotiate and sign the 2015 nuclear deal with the United States despite the Guards\u2019 objections. Today\u2019s reform-minded president, Masoud Pezeshkian, is in a much weaker position.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s most likely future is thus a military-controlled authoritarian state with a theocratic figurehead. Such a government would almost certainly be belligerent. The IRGC is dominated by hard-liners, so it is primed to keep confronting Israel and the United States and to steer what\u2019s left of the country\u2019s economy into rebuilding the military. To help, these officials would likely seek assistance from China and Russia, Iran\u2019s two main patrons.<\/p>\n

But this path comes with serious challenges. Beijing and Moscow are preoccupied with their own foreign policy problems and must balance their connections to Iran with their relations to Arab states, which are now furious with Iran for attacking them in retaliation for the United States and Israel\u2019s strikes. They are unlikely to help Iran reclaim its lost regional influence. Tehran, meanwhile, is broke. It cannot afford to quickly build back its military, create new subterranean infrastructure to restart its nuclear program, or rearm its proxies, particularly all at once. In the meantime, its aggression and its allergy to compromise will only invite future attacks. And as much as the regime finds comfort in its unimaginative rhetoric of resistance, tough talk will not address the extreme disaffection of the Iranian people or quell future episodes of unrest. To stay in power, regime officials will have to keep relying on violence.<\/p>\n

Ordinary Iranians have not yet had a true champion within the government.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The IRGC doesn\u2019t mind this. To its leaders, staying in power on their own terms is all that matters; the lives of ordinary Iranians are unimportant. They are energized by their anger at Israel and the United States, and that anger has grown exponentially thanks to the war. But not everyone in the regime wants Iran\u2019s future to look like its past, especially given that its policies helped lead to disaster, and some of them are willing to push for a different trajectory. That includes Pezeshkian. In March, in the midst of the war, the president asked the IRGC to work with his government to preemptively address Iran\u2019s dire postwar economic situation. According to reporting by IranWire, when a young IRGC officer brushed Pezeshkian off during a meeting, declaring that a perpetual state of emergency would be good for Tehran because it would ensure that no Iranians \u201cdare to voice dissatisfaction,\u201d the president was incredulous. \u201cThat is no answer!\u201d he shot back. \u201cDoes it mean that once the war is over, we must kill another round of protesters? Is this what you call planning?\u201d<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean prying Iran away from the IRGC will be simple, given its raw coercive capacity. But although the Guards\u2019 relative power within Iran has increased since the attacks began, their absolute power has been diminished. It was, after all, the IRGC\u2019s strategy and policies that led Iran to the brink of defeat, bankrupted its economy, and turned vast swaths of the Iranian people against the regime. That has cost the corps internal political capital, making it vulnerable to attacks from critics within the regime. It has gained authority now that Ali Khamenei is no longer around to serve as a check. But his death also costs the IRGC its biggest and most powerful supporter.<\/p>\n

The IRGC may also struggle to muster its coercive capacities. The war has ravaged its ranks, including by killing many of the most capable personalities, such as Ali Larijani, a top security official, and Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to the elder Khamenei. Meanwhile, the most competent reform-minded leaders were mostly spared. That includes Pezeshkian, Rouhani, and Khatami, the last of whom remains the country\u2019s most prominent reformist. It also includes Ahmadinejad, who reinvented himself as a critic of the status quo after his presidency and was effectively placed under house arrest. (The U.S. and Israeli strikes may have helped free him from confinement.) Last, it could include outwardly hard-line associates of the IRGC who are less dogmatic, such as the speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has tried to brand himself as a pragmatic manager and has enough clout inside the system to change it. These officials are all canny operators, and they could exploit the newfound looseness in Iran\u2019s regime to push for change. They could do so by unifying the state, working behind the scenes to galvanize support for a different path forward, and taking their case to the public. If these figures can come up with a clear plan to improve the country\u2019s economy, resolve its insecurity, and ease social pressures\u2014all in service of preserving the theocratic system\u2014the IRGC might struggle to ignore them.<\/p>\n

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN<\/h3>\n

There is a final group that could force Tehran to change course: ordinary Iranians. They are the most powerful potential source of national legitimacy. They have not yet had a true champion within the government, but there has never been a better opportunity for someone inside the regime to act as one. In fact, the best chance for an enterprising regime insider to either circumvent the IRGC or force it to change would be to appeal directly to the people.<\/p>\n

The mass protests of the past have not brought about substantial reforms. But Iranian society still has classes with real influence. One is the country\u2019s small merchants, or bazaaris,who make up a small percentage of Iran\u2019s population but control the traditional economy and important urban centers. During the first two decades of the Islamic Republic\u2019s history, the bazaaris were the theocracy\u2019s most important constituency, yet years of economic instability have eroded their support for the regime. Similarly, Iran\u2019s many trade unions and guilds have influence over Iran\u2019s energy and transportation sectors and have suffered from the country\u2019s decline. If the bazaaris and the labor groups united, they could bring much of the economy to a halt through strikes and boycotts.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s younger generation could also prove to be a potent ally. The young have no connection to the 1979 revolution and know the regime only for corruption and cruelty. Their lives have been shaped by decades of conflict and privation. They have led most of the recent protests and have suffered the most from the regime\u2019s violent campaign against dissent. Yet they are still the most politically energized demographic. An enterprising politician pushing for change could gain millions of enthusiastic followers by successfully motivating this cohort.<\/p>\n

If Iran\u2019s pragmatists or reformists do manage to gain power, the country\u2019s future could look much different from its past. Its new leaders would likely focus on improving the economy and broadening the government\u2019s base of support, a task that would force them to search for ways out of perpetual conflict with Washington. They might therefore pursue either a grand settlement with the United States or a series of compromises that together produce concessions on the nuclear and military fronts in exchange for sanctions relief. Doing so would give Iran\u2019s people a reason for hope and, by extension, less desire to rebel.<\/p>\n

The United States should try to help empower these more pragmatic elements in ways beyond simply killing their hard-line competitors. Washington should, for example, engage diplomatically with whoever is willing to talk. Having a direct line to Washington would by itself give pragmatic elements more potential influence inside the system. The United States should also proactively offer measured inducements to Iran, such as targeted sanctions relief, in exchange for its willingness to compromise on key areas. Even the more moderate Iranian leaders are unlikely to accept maximalist demands from Washington, but they could agree to incremental steps that initially focus on the nuclear issue and later expand to the military and foreign policy. U.S. officials could also push Iran to allow for greater social freedoms and to end the persecution of religious minorities\u2014steps that would reduce anti-regime sentiment within Iranian society.<\/p>\n

Such measures would not be a panacea. The regime\u2019s pragmatists are hardly advocates of democracy; even though it was the hard-liners who drove Iran into the ground, the country\u2019s moderates were fully complicit. But despite all the bombings, the regime remains intact, and there is no viable alternative that is ready to replace it. As a result, the most effective way to transform Tehran for the better is to work with insiders who support change. They know how the system works and how to work the system. And after decades of dominance by ultraconservatives, Iran\u2019s tumult means these moderates finally have a shot at enacting change.<\/p>\n

Read more Iran and the Hidden Cost of Wartime Access<\/a><\/p>\n

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