Only a few hours after the United States bombed three nuclear sites in Iran on Sunday, President Masoud Pezeshkian joined thousands of anti-American demonstrators in the Enghelab place in Tehran. Enghelab means “Revolution” in Farsi. The angry crowd agitated signs promising that they were “ready for the great battle” and calling for “revenge, revenge”. A poster represented President Donald Trump as a rumbled vampire. The Iranian regime has long been able to mobilize its basis for propaganda and social imaging. But, after ten days of dams by the American and Israeli soldiers, the most revealing banners made plaintive and proud statements. “Iran is our homeland,” said one of them. “His soil is our honor. And his flag is our shroud. “
On Monday, President Trump said on Truth Social that Iran and Israel had “fully agreed” by a “full and total ceasefire”. But the result of this war can be more shaped by Iran’s culture and politics than by the military prowess of its adversaries. The controversial nuclear program of Iran is only part of a larger enigma. Can the United States and Israel coexist with the Islamic Republic after forty-six years of fury enmity? And the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Is Islamic theocracy politically survive after military forms?
Trump had already called in the end of hostilities and renewed negotiations with Tehran, following the unprecedented deployment of stealth aircraft and bunker bombs during the weekend. “Iran, the Middle East intimidator, must now make peace,” he said in a television address. In a further briefing at the Pentagon, his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, told journalists that Operation Midnight Hammer, who had lasted twenty-five minutes, “was not a change of diet”. But, Sunday afternoon, posted Trump, on Truth Social, “It is not politically correct to use the term,” change of diet “, but if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran big, why wouldn’t it be a change of diet ??? Miga !!! “
Israel was even more explicit. His Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, said that Khamenei is a “modern Hitler” and “cannot continue to exist”. On Monday, Israel struck two of the biggest symbols of Iranian repression: the entry of the infamous Evin prison, where thousands of dissidents were detained, and the siege of the Basij, the paramilitary wing of the revolutionary guard, which is used to suppress the opposition. He also struck other internal security sites. In a statement, Israeli defense forces said that the facilities were responsible for the defense of the fatherland, the threats and maintaining the stability of the regime. “
The announcement of Trump’s ceasefire followed Iran’s early response to American strikes: short and medium-range missile dams on the Air Udeid air base in Qatar, the largest American military installation in the region. The Supreme National Security Council, the main decision-making body in Tehran, which includes political and military leaders, said in a statement that it had drawn the same number of missiles that the United States has used the weekend. The answer reflected the reprisals of Iran in 2020, after the United States killed General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guardian force. He pulled missiles from American forces on the basis of Ain Al-Asad in Iraq. Hostilities are defused after that. This time, Tehran would have sent the warning of his strike in advance. Several war planes and American ships had already been moved last week.
I suspect that millions of Iranians would not miss Khamenei, an accidental leader who has only entered the best jobs after others are deadly. He was a religious of intermediate level when he became president in 1981; A terrorist attack had killed his predecessor. Six years later, I had breakfast with him, in a room adorned with the Waldorf-Astoria, in New York. It was during his only trip to the West, when he spoke during the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly. During our meeting, he lacked charisma, worldlyness and intellectual depth. He mumbled his path through an inflammatory rhetoric as a member of his revolutionary guard team leaned over to cut his meat from breakfast. (He lost the use of his right arm in 1981, after a hidden bomb in a tape recorder died as he spoke in a mosque in Tehran. His hand doubt by his side.) In 1989, he intervened after the revolutionary leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died suddenly, without heir. Khamenei had an independent limited political basis, so he exploited the Iranian army. They have since been empowered since.
The fate of the Islamic Republic does not necessarily depend on the fate of its Ayatollah in power. “Khamenei as a leader cannot survive this war, either because it is literally withdrawn from the scene with an assassination, or because the war ends with such a disastrous result for the country that it will be forced to resign,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, a main person in the European Council for Foreign Relations, told me. Khamenei no longer faces bad options. However, it will avoid unconditional surrender at all costs. He “would probably prefer to be withdrawn as a martyr rather than going into history as Iranian chief who capitulated with a pistol in the head,” said Geranmayeh.
The majority of Iranians are Shiite. The sect appeared in the 7th century, after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, during a political dispute on leadership with traditional Sunnis. Shiism preaches that it is better to die by fighting for justice than to live with injustice. Imam Hussein, a first Shiite chief, fought the Sunnis in the Omeyyad dynasty, even if he had only a few dozen fighters and knew that they were largely in numerical inferiority and die. Martyrdom remains central to devout Shiites. I have traveled in Iran for decades, and I think it is among the most secular countries in the Middle East. However, the history of faith and its traditions still define the culture and mentalities of many. Iranians are also religious and ethnic minorities in the broader world, and this has raised the existential fears of the foreign conquest.
“Shiism is a culture of resistance,” said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of the Iranian Parliament. Elected in 2000 at the age of thirty-two, she was the youngest legislative woman in the history of the Revolution. She was excluded to present herself a second time in 2004, after accused the regime of torturing political prisoners and manipulating the elections. She left Tehran a year later and now lives in Massachusetts. Iranians “are fundamentally against authoritarianism, and they don’t like what’s going on in the country,” she told me. But Haghighatjoo does not see the regime suddenly collapsing. Khamenei could easily be replaced, she said. Article 111 of the Iranian Constitution, which is inspired by French and Belgian law, calls for a Troika – was part of the president, the head of judicial power and a clerk of the Guardian council – to assume the functions of the chief if he is incapable or licensed. An assembly of eighty-year-old experts, which is democratically elected every eight years, would then select a new one.
After almost half a century, the Islamic Republic has deeply anchored institutions – and intense rivalries among its executive, legislative, judicial, military and intelligence branches. But they all want to survive despite their quarrels, John Limbert, one of the fifty-two diplomats, was hostage after the United States Embassy was seized in 1979. “They love power. They kept it. They kept other people away,” he said. “For better or for worse, they have built a resilient system. There is a framework, a male club ”which includes the first generation of revolutionaries or their acolytes. During most of the last twenty -five hundred years, Iran was led by dictators – “some bad, some terrible. Some with crowns, some with turbans, some with military uniforms. ” And, if the regime change occurs, he warned: “Why should we assume that it is for the best?” People assumed that in 1979. “Let’s get rid of the Shah and everything will be better. “”
