When it comes to the Iran War, President Trump has at least one very distasteful frog to eat, but instead of reaching for the utensils, he keeps desperately scanning the menu for other options. There aren’t any, and it is well past time for this U.S. administration to eat the frog.

We should be grateful the U.S. administration finally realized, six months into this ill-conceived war, that superior U.S. military might hasn’t translated into strategic success. But while President Trump is to be commended for putting aside one failed policy (at least until after the mid-terms), it is unfortunate he has replaced it with an equally flawed one, one announced on an August 24 press conference by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. As with so much else relating to the administration’s Iran policy, the unveiling of “Operation Economic Outcast,’, was to quote Shakespeare “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” more sound bite than sound policy.

According to Secretary Bessent, the newest administration strategy is tightening secondary sanctions against countries doing business with Iran, in the hopes of ‘collapsing Iran’s economy,’ or ‘severing Iran’s economic lifelines.’ Recycling President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 talking point (”Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists“), Bessent warned “Those who stand with the United States will reap the rewards of our partnership. Those who tether themselves to Tehran should expect to share in the isolation of a withering regime.”

First, let’s note it is hard to say this policy will fail, when the Secretary was so unclear as to its ultimate goal. If it is to ‘collapse Iran’s economy,’ let’s assume the improbable and say we do so. Then what? Is the administration goal really creating a failed state of 95 million people in the heart of the Middle East?

If the administration goal is instead to force Iran to capitulate and ease its negotiating red lines, for example forfeiting its putative right of enriching uranium on Iranian soil, giving its 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to the US, or allowing intrusive inspections of its nuclear and military facilities, such a goal is wildly improbable. Even the admittedly much more modest goal of Iran allowing the Strait of Hormuz to return to its pre-war status is highly unlikely. It is far more likely this newest U.S. stab at ending the war, like its innumerable predecessors, will fail, i.e. while it will indeed make the lives of ordinary Iranians much worse, it will not compel the Iranian regime to abandon its key redlines. Here is why:

REASON ONE: The theory behind Operation Economic Outcast is that if the U.S. makes life miserable enough for ordinary Iranians, they will put effective pressure on their leaders to compromise with the U.S. That premise is deeply flawed. The Iranian regime, unlike President Trump, isn’t facing mid-term elections shortly that could weaken its power. Over the decades it has built a vast and effective apparatus for suppressing its own citizens, and as recently as January of this year has shown it is quite willing to slaughter thousands of its own citizens to stay in power. Breathless U.S. government recitals of Iran’s increasing economic woes are largely irrelevant, as immiseration of the Iranian people doesn’t lead to forcing its leaders to soften their strategic priorities. It should also be noted the regime elites running Iran – called ‘sanctions merchants’ by ordinary Iranians - actually profit financially from US sanctions, as they control the means to circumvent them. So not only will they be the last people economically hurt by any U.S. economic tightening, they’re also the first to profit.

REASON TWO: The current Iranian regime, more hardline, more militaristic, and less risk-averse than the Iranian leadership we killed at the start of the war, assumes it is in an existential battle with the U.S. It takes as a given the US will continue seeking to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran, using a combination of military means, economic warfare, cyberattacks, and fomenting internal insurrection. For the ageing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers currently running Iran, any compromise in the face of unremitting U.S. pressure will only increase, not decrease, the pressure. And, as Reid Pauly and Matthew Cebul argued in their excellent essay, The Lost Art of Coercion: Why Trump’s Belligerence is a Sign of Weakness:

“…threats alone are insufficient for successful coercion because even highly credible threats fail if they are not conditional. For coercion to work, the target must trust that it will be able to avoid pain through compliance.”

So U.S. economic pressure is unlikely to bring a softening of Iran’s position, since the IRGC assume future unremitting U.S. hostility, and as such any compromise will only hasten its fall.

REASON THREE: As the famous military maxim goes, “The enemy gets a vote.” As such, the likely Iranian response to Operation Economic Outcast won’t be whimpering capitulation but rather aggressive escalation. If the U.S. is successful in ratcheting up economic pressure on Iran, at some point it will bring about Iranian military retaliation, not just against U.S. bases in the region, but also U.S. and Gulf economic and energy targets in the region. As such, this latest U.S. initiative is inherently escalatory, since either it won’t work in causing palpable economic pain for Iran’s leadership, or it will work and provoke Iranian aggression to make it stop.

REASON FOUR: For this policy to work it requires three factors the U.S. doesn’t have: 1) the full cooperation of Iran’s key economic trading partners, to include China, the UAE and Turkey; 2) a competent U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy to implement it; 3) time. For the first, despite UAE’s recent announcement of ending trade with Iran, the whole ball game for this initiative is with China, Iran’s most important trading partner, and history has shown China doesn’t take well to U.S. economic bullying. Apart from China’s stated reluctance to cooperate, it takes a functioning U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy to implement sanctions, and this administration has gutted this bureaucracy. The Obama administration worked intensively with allies in a serious and sustained manner to implement multilateral sanctions against Iran that helped bring it to the diplomatic table, leading to the 2015 JCPOA. This administration, unable or unwilling to do the hard slog of multilateral diplomacy, has chosen instead to threaten the rest of the world in the hopes of forcing universal compliance with its diktats. Finally, it takes time for such sanctions to work, and given the ongoing Iranian closure, or at least significant constraint of the Strait of Hormuz, we don’t have that time. The U.S. administration’s jawboning of the markets is failing, U.S. prices are starting to rise, the bond markets are starting to push back, and no administration talking points, regardless of whether THEY ARE IN ALL CAPS or how often they’re repeated, are going to convince people that success is just around the corner.

So, given the Trump administration is now taking an off-ramp to a dead end, what exactly is the best (or more accurately, least bad) frog it needs to eat? The frog is accepting defeat (while of course CLAIMING VICTORY), and seeking a deal with Iran allowing it quasi-control of the Strait of Hormoz, in exchange for Iran increasing maritime traffic through it as much as possible and as quickly as possible.

There are problems even with this minimal goal. Firstly, Tehran’s current thinking is the U.S. administration hasn’t suffered enough to optimize deterrence of future attacks, and so the Strait should stay closed for the time being. Secondly, it could well be too late for U.S. diplomacy, even if this administration were willing and able to give it a try. After launching two wars in a little over a year, killing Iran’s leadership and over 3,000 ordinary Iranian citizens, and causing hundreds of billions of dollars of damage, the grounds from which a diplomatic solution could spring are far less fertile, if not totally fallow. Additionally, Iran wants money, lots of money, and now, not in the indeterminate future. So the U.S. might have to toss in a ‘sweetener’ of unblocked Iranian assets at a minimum, which would be a hard sell domestically for the U.S. Finally, such appeasement would not go down well with our Gulf allies, whose U.S. security umbrella has left them wet, neglected, and looking for security patches to supplement their unreliable U.S. protector. At a minimum, they will be left to make their separate peace with Iran, given the Trump administration’s demonstrated indifference to their security.

Likewise, none of this ‘least bad’ solution will go down easily in the U.S., but it is likely the unavoidable price of avoiding a far more distasteful diet in the future. Yes, maritime passage through the Strait is higher than war-time lows. But the current workarounds, even if they manage to keep maritime traffic higher than before, requires active U.S. military presence and overwatch, and at a certain point, given Iranian determination to exercise control over the Strait, will engender increased Iranian attempts to attack maritime traffic. A more durable solution is needed, and for the administration, taking the political hit now, two months before mid-terms, is better than two months of a steady stream of dire economic news springing from the ongoing conflict.

President Trump’s ill-advised war has broken something integral in the Middle East that cannot be restored, but at best he should try to fix what he can. Forget about a nuclear deal “better than Obama’s” or even '“as good as Obama’s”: at this point all the US should be trying to get out of this war is to get out of this war. The administration highest achievable goal now is to take the loss and just get maritime circulation in the Strait back up as much as it can as quickly as it can.

Meanwhile, diminished stocks of critical US weapons, plummeting approval ratings heading into the midterms and a looming global economic crisis due to increasing commodity shortages stemming from a closed Strait of Hormuz, are all putting political pressure on the US to end the conflict.

Given this situation, what options does President Trump have for ending the war?

From ‘Iran war’ to ‘Hormuz war’

When the Trump administration launched the war on Iran in late February, its stated reasons kept changing, but at least part of the rationale involved the threat of Iran’s nuclear programme. In previous negotiations, the US had insisted on no indigenous uranium enrichment for Iran and the surrender of its 440kg of highly enriched uranium. Iran had refused, and Trump ultimately decided to go to war.

After being attacked by the US and Israel, Iran moved swiftly to close the Strait of Hormuz by threatening maritime traffic passing through it. Although this response was expected – indeed, Iran had repeatedly threatened to do so in the build-up to the war – the US administration was caught off-guard and had no effective response.

Given the strait’s importance as a critical chokepoint for Middle East oil and refined products, the subsequent global economic consequences of a closed strait have been building up these last five months.

As such, the US administration’s priority is no longer getting Iran to capitulate on its nuclear programme but getting the strait open as soon as possible.

However, in trying to do that, it faces a problem. On the one hand, Iran has decided operational control of the strait is essential for its national security and a much-needed strategic deterrence to prevent future US-Israeli attacks. On the other, the US military cannot open the passage and keep it open.

Surprisingly, despite having a military budget more than 100 times the size of Iran’s, the US military is unable to prevent Iran from projecting enough military force to pose an enduring threat to maritime traffic through the strait.

Trump has repeatedly threatened apocalyptic carnage on Iran with the goal of inflicting enough pain on Iranian society to force its leaders to agree to US demands. Most recently, he threatened to expand US targets to include Iranian civilian energy installations. At a July 31 cabinet meeting, he told the media, “Well, we’ll be hitting them very hard and, you know, at some point they’re going to say, we just can’t take it anymore”.

A day later. he backed off, probably because he realised “hitting them hard” will not force Iran to submit.

Why? Because Iran’s new hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) leadership believes the US and Israel seek to eliminate the Islamic Republic. It feels any compromise in the face of US pressure only invites more pressure.

As such, US escalation is likely to cause not Iranian surrender but major retaliatory Iranian attacks on Gulf infrastructure. So unless the US is prepared to militarily “collapse” the regime by far more widespread bombing of critical civilian infrastructure than it has done heretofore, making Iran in effect a “failed -state”, future US use of military force won’t do the job.

The least bad option

When contemplating realistic options going forward, the most important fact to consider is that this US administration doesn’t believe in diplomacy with Iran – it never has. It believes in force, whether punitive tariffs and sanctions or punishing bombings. When it talks about “meaningful diplomacy” with Iran, it means “Iran accepting US demands”.

This US unwillingness to engage in serious, sustained diplomacy means that even if the US administration were to come to an agreement with Iran on the strait, it would likely be unable to continue on to a negotiated nuclear agreement that would put effective constraints on its nuclear programme.

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The last nuclear negotiations took a total of five years (2010-2015), with two years of serious, intense negotiations (2013-2015). But this US administration is tired of this failed war and has other priorities, and so is likely unwilling to commit to any such process.

Given this US unwillingness and inability to actually engage in diplomacy to “solve the strait”, it should allow the process outlined in Article 5 of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding signed in June to play out: “The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman, to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz, in discussions with other Persian Gulf Littoral States, in line with applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz”.

These Iran-Oman talks are ongoing and they are the best chance for a least-bad resolution of the problem. In this scenario, all the US administration has to do is provide input to Oman as needed and approve whatever final settlement the two sides reach. Any such agreement will likely include the US lifting of its naval blockade on Iranian ports, since Iran has linked this lifting to any reopening of the strait.

The outcome of these Iran-Oman talks is unknowable. But what is clear is that Oman and the rest of the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council are more adept and more motivated to negotiate with Iran than the US. There are significant differences between the two sides: the Gulf countries want a return to the pre-war status quo; Iran wants a “new normal”, where it controls maritime flow through the strait, perhaps in coordination with Oman.

Unfortunately, given Iran’s strategic leverage over the strait, it is likely that at least in the short term it will have its way, which might well entail “fees” collected by Iran on maritime traffic moving through the strait.

If any such deal over the strait is made, it would be fragile. Pre-war maritime traffic volumes would not return for a long time, if ever. US bases would remain in the region; US sanctions on Iran would remain in place. For its part, Iran would try to rebuild its defence industrial base to get ready for a next US-Israeli attack. And this is the likely best-case scenario.

Such is the likely legacy of a foolish war that brought not peace and stability but economic suffering, regional instability and a major loss of US prestige and power.

Published on Al-Jazeera - https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/8/2/how-to-end-the-hormuz

This article is part of an MEI strategic initiative that examines how to enhance regional cooperation between the United States and its partners on addressing the challenges posed by Iran across the region, particularly in key areas like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Israel-Palestine, and the Ukraine war. Through a series of articles, short papers, events, podcasts, and a final policy report, the initiative will showcase a broad range of viewpoints and subject-matter expertise to inform a holistic and resolute approach toward Iran.

Last month marked the second anniversary of the death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini and the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement born of her murder. The authorities’ subsequent brutal crackdown on the protesters is but one flagrant example of the government’s appalling human rights record. The regime’s disdain for international human rights norms is not the recent result of Iran’s transition from Islamic theocracy to nationalistic military-security state. Rather, it has been a feature of the regime from the beginning, as shown by (inter alia) the 1988 mass executions of Iranian prisoners.

When talking about human rights in Iran, many defenders of the Islamic Republic, or at least critics of the United States, engage in “whataboutism,” suggesting the US itself is hardly without blemish on this issue. Indeed, in 2022, Iran published a 72-page annual report criticizing the US human rights record, in imitation of the Department of State’s annual country reports on human rights conditions internationally. In this report, Iran claims, “America’s anti-human rights actions … clearly confirm the fact that the statesmen of that country take a position regarding the human rights situation in the world based on political preferences and interests,” a sentiment with which many in the Middle East and North Africa region would agree. However, qualitative distinctions can still be made among countries, and in this regard, one must note there have been United Nations special rapporteurs on human rights in Iran from 1984 to 2002 and from 2011 to the present, indicating Iran’s notorious global status as a human rights violator.

Many who follow events in Iran, especially the large and vocal Iranian diaspora, urge the US government to “do more” regarding human rights in Iran. But before answering the question of what the US should do, we must first assess what it can do. Even a perfunctory glance at recent history (think 2003 Iraq invasion) illustrates the limited nature of American power and the often-unbridgeable gap between intention and result. A better sense of options regarding Iran’s human rights situation comes only after first noting the challenges Washington faces in tackling this issue.

Impediments

(Not) setting an example

One main challenge to the US in calling Iran to account for its human rights violations springs from its own track record in the Middle East, at least in the eyes of much of the MENA region. American admonitions and exhortations work best when the US is acknowledged as leading the way on human rights, which is not the case these days. For much of the Middle East, America’s “bully pulpit” is more of a “bully’s pulpit,” and American concerns over human rights are in inverse correlation to its strategic interests in any given country. This perception of a double standard on human rights is most evident in relation to support for Israel, both before Oct. 7 and even more so after the subsequent Israeli military operations in Gaza, which, while seeking to extirpate the Hamas terrorist group, have left more than 40,000 Palestinians dead and much of Gaza in rubble. In this context, US government proclamations regarding human rights seem pharisaical if not risible to much of its intended audience.

The need for coalition-building

The US acting in isolation will always be less effective than when acting as part of a global coalition. Yet rallying such a united international front to pressure Iran on its human rights record comes with its own challenges. While the European Union and many of its member states have traditionally proved to be strong allies regarding Iranian human rights violations, much of the rest of the world, to include the vitally important UN Security Council Permanent Members Russia and China, have been decidedly unwilling to take up the cause. In this regard, one should note that among the current 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council there are but a handful of countries that traditionally have been zealous on this issue.

Sanctions over-reliance

Additionally, one of the main policy options — sanctions — has become somewhat degraded as a tool for tackling human rights in Iran. When it comes to sanctioning Tehran, the US has already not only picked all the low-hanging fruit but almost deracinated the tree. Ongoing issuance of new sanctions falls between diligent and essential rounds of “whack-a-mole” to penalize new Iranian sanctions evaders and human rights violators on the one hand and largely performative announcements of new sanctions that inflict no real pain on the other. Furthermore, this long history of using sanctions as a policy cudgel on a wide variety of issues has caused Iran to resort to 1) a “Resistance Economy,” which emphasizes domestic production unexposed to Western sanctions, and 2) a “Turn-to-the-East” reliance on economic partners such as Russia and China that refrain from pressuring Iran on human rights.

Competing priorities

There is also the issue of bandwidth. Considering the lack of official bilateral relations between the US and Iran, there is only so much carrying capacity in any bilateral dialogue. By definition, solving only one issue with Iran is easier than solving two, which is easier than solving three, and so on. Outside of the treatment of its own citizens, problematic aspects of current Iranian policy include but are not limited to:

• Iran’s nuclear program, which has violated its Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) agreements, and which presents the world with the threat of a(nother) nuclear-armed “rogue state”;
   

• Iran’s support of an extensive network of regional proxies, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran-affiliated militia groups in Iraq, all of which are destabilizing a region that, in large parts, is already on the verge of failed-state status;
   

• Iran’s military and weapons support of Russia in its war against Ukraine;
   

• Iran’s cyber-hacking, disinformation, and interference in the US and other Western democracies.

One of the reasons the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) were able to successfully reach an agreement with Iran on the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was because there was only one issue under negotiation. Regardless of what one thinks of the JCPOA, it is unlikely such an agreement could have been reached if all parties had to also reach agreement on Iranian support for its destabilizing proxies, its missile program, and its horrible human rights record. Given this limited carrying capacity and the need to mobilize international consensus, prioritizing the issues to be negotiated with Iran is never simple.

Finding a path forward

Having noted all the above impediments to taking effective action on the human rights situation in Iran, we now ask what can be done. It might sound like a cop-out, but the deflating truth of the matter is the US is pretty much already doing all it can. In foreign policy, it is a truth universally acknowledged that just because a policy has not yet worked does not mean it is not the best possible policy, and a lack of results does not imply a lack of effort. Policies are probabilistic and slow acting at best, especially given the limits of US power and the myriad complex issues on the American plate. What this means is that an optimal US policy regarding human rights in Iran should continue to: 

• Shine a spotlight on Iran’s human rights abuses, both with its annual human rights report and by other US government programmatic activities. In this regard, collective and coordinated action with like-minded allies has proven preferable to acting alone.
   

• Sanction human rights offenders. Ongoing sanctioning of Iran’s human rights violators is essential, and the US should continue such actions. Yes, there is no “knockout blow” from any single new sanctions rollout, but the cumulative impact grows over time, and targeted sanctions of specific human-rights offenders avoids the popular blowback to the US resulting from sectoral sanctions that hurt Iran’s economy.
   

• Support those non-governmental organizations (NGOs) focused on Iranian human rights. There are many excellent NGOs working on the issues and documenting Iran’s ongoing abuses, with expertise and insights the US cannot hope to match.
   

• Work with corporations, like-minded allies, and civil society activists to encourage tech companies to devise and distribute virtual private networks (VPNs) and anti-censorship tools. To effectively respond to the Iranian government’s ongoing efforts to limit its citizens’ internet access, Iranian civil society needs our technical support to maintain this access. In this regard, the White House held a meeting with key stakeholders earlier in September, and the amount the State Department has contributed toward funding VPNs has gone from $5 million in 2019 to more than $30 million in 2024.
   

• Work in international forums like the United Nations to hold Iran to account for its human rights violations. Again, this is a long, hard slog, but such work is the trench warfare of diplomacy, where progress is often measured in small changes in single sentences.
   

Managing history

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in The Irony of American History that “the illusions about the possibility of managing historical destiny ... always involve miscalculations about both the power and wisdom of the managers and the weakness and the manageability of the historical ‘stuff’ to be managed.” Conscious of what Niebuhr calls “the dreams of managing history,” we should not assume there is a magical US policy to “fix” human rights in Iran. Rather, the US should continue to support as best it can those in Iran and abroad working to better Iran’s human rights situation, realizing the outcome is in large measure out of our hands.

August 2024

Iran’s new president, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, entered office in July with low expectations and no voter mandate, having the narrowest margin of victory for any president since the 1979 Revolution. Had it not been for a sizable Azeri ethnic turnout supporting him in three of Iran’s 31 provinces, the election would have been far closer than it was. (Pezeshkian is half Iranian Azeri and his first language is Azerbaijani.) 

Against his deeply unpopular hardline opponents, Pezeshkian ran toward the center, pledging fealty to the Supreme Leader’s policies while also promising economic and social reforms and better relations with the West. 

Now ensconced in his Pasteur Street office in Tehran, Pezeshkian must prioritize the threats Iran faces. The US national security strategy categorizes threats based both on country of origin and topic (the latter being what CIA Director William Burns calls ‘problems without passports’ such as disruptive technologies, pandemics, and the threat of climate change). For Pzeshkian’s benefit, here are the topical threats organized by animal, a virtual bestiary of wolves, swans and rhinos.

Wolf Closest to the Sled: Economy

A well-worn military aphorism advises ‘killing the wolf closest to the sled’ or prioritizing imminent threats.

The wolf closest to Pezeshkian’s sled is Iran’s chronically underperforming economy. According to the World Bank, during the ‘lost decade’ between 2011 and 2020 Iran’s GDP contracted annually at a rate of 0.6 percent, with close to ten million Iranians falling into poverty. Although the economy has done better since then, largely due to improved oil sector exports, inflation remains dangerously high, especially in food and housing markets.

Pezeshkian ran promising to improve the economy. His campaign stressed the need for less corruption and more transparency, structural reforms, and improved international relations (especially with the West) that would enable lifting of sanctions and increased foreign direct investment. Part of the reason Supreme Leader Khamenei approved of Pezeshkian’s candidacy was this putatively greater appeal to the West, or at least to Europe.

Khamenei’s prescription for Iran’s economy, however, has not been outreach to the West but rather autarkic calls for a ‘Resistance Economy’ that avoids the pain of sanctions by relying on domestic production. This slogan has not been translated into strategy, and instead Iran has resorted to a ‘Look East’ policy.

A powerful entrenched elite fearful of losing its prerogatives and a hostile Majlis dominated by conservatives place limits on how far Pezeshkian can go in his desire for economic reform and outreach to the West.

In terms of domestic social issues, although Pezeshkian made soothing noises when running about lessening compulsory hijab enforcement and internet restrictions, it is unclear how much progress he can make here. Iran’s median age in the reformist era of President Khatami era (1997-2005) was 19; now it is almost 34, making youth mobilization more difficult. The regime recently managed the wrenching mass protests touched off by the late 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, another reason for feeling public pressure on reform is less urgent.

Iran’s foreign policy is largely determined by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp under the aegis of the Supreme Leader. Here the new president’s problems call to mind the Persian saying ‘the bigger your roof, the more the snow.’ While Iran’s regional network of proxies, to include Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and Iranian-aligned militia groups in Iraq, has enabled it to stymie US regional strategy, it has also vastly expanded Iran’s own strategic vulnerabilities. Recent events, to include the July 31 assassination of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran, are further evidence of Iran’s being locked into a destabilizing escalatory cycle with Israel that could preclude any Pezeshkian initiative to improve Iran’s international profile.

At the other end of the threat spectrum from the imminence of the wolf closest to the sled are black swans. Risk analyst Nassim Taleb defines black swans as rare and unpredictable high-impact events. You don’t see them coming and they do serious, sustained damage, like the COVID-19 pandemic.

How prepared is Iran for a black swan event? Taleb classifies complex systems, to include governments, as either fragile, (damaged by change), resilient (undamaged by change) (resilient) or anti-fragile (improved by change).

If the best preparation against a destabilizing crisis is to have a flexible, responsive and decentralized system, Iran is in big trouble. Power is concentrated at the national level, where government is corrupt and ideologically hidebound, as evidenced by, inter alia, its handling of the COVID crisis. 

Pezeshkian knows this well, which is why he has vowed to appoint a young, technocratic cabinet, a refreshing change in a country where a 97-year old Ayatollah Jannati was recently reappointed as head of the Guardian Council, one of Iran’s most powerful institutions. However, his personnel choices so far, to include his first vice president choice of the 73-year old reformist Mohamad Reza Aref, are not characterized by dynamism. Regardless, Pezeshkian must begin the process of administrative reform.

Gray Rhino: Climate Change

Between the high visibility of the wolf and the unseen terrors of the black swan are gray rhinos. As Michele Wucker says in her book, “most of the crises in the world are very likely occurrences…we may not be able to foresee the details or the timing, but the outlines are hard to ignore.” A gray rhino charging down upon Iran is climate change and its regional effects, to include extreme heat and drought.

Climate change has already arrived in the Middle East. A 2023 RAND study predicts this about the Middle East: “More frequent and more severe extreme heat events, coupled with drier conditions, will make agricultural production more difficult.” The Soufan Center reports that, with temperatures in the Middle East warming at a rate 50 percent higher than the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, continuous access to air conditioning – and thus reliable electricity – becomes critical. 

Iran’s aging and mismanaged electrical grid is not up to the demands rising temperatures are bringing. According to Iran’s Tasnim news on July 20, temperatures in Iran rose above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in approximately 170 weather stations across Iran. Heat waves have caused massive power outages throughout the country, affecting Iran’s residences and industries. Per regional energy analyst Dalga Khatinoglu, Iran’s electrical grid currently produces fewer than 400 terawatt hours annually against a demand of approximately 500 terawatt hours (for comparison, the much smaller UK generated 325 terawatt hours in 2022).

Similarly, there has been no regional discussion of what to do about migration triggered by climate change. As Iran analyst Banafsheh Keynoush has noted, migration in Iran has already greatly increased, as people flee northwards from rural, largely southern heatscapes that yield no livelihood. The flow from rural south to major cities in Iran’s north will increasingly stress municipal governments, already chronically under-resourced. Additionally there is the looming possibility of refugee flows into Iran from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, as their governments prove increasingly unable to deliver essential goods and services to their citizens. 

The Middle East is the world’s most water-stressed region, holding 14 of the 17 most water-stressed countries globally, according to the UN. Iran is rated as ‘high’ on the water stress levels (below ‘critical’). As United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health Director Professor Kaveh Madani and others have pointed out, “water is intrinsically connected to national security in Iran and the rest of the Middle East.” While there have been protests over water scarcity for years in Iran, the government has never escaped from a vicious cycle of poor management of its water resources. As such, Madani characterizes present-day Iran as essentially ‘water bankrupt.’

Conclusion

Pezeshkian faces a hardline conservative Maljis and a powerful but ailing Supreme Leader fearful of reform and bent on preserving his legacy. There is a Persian saying, “the hand you cannot cut, you must kiss,” and the pragmatic Pezeshkian has been kissing many powerful regime hands. But such blandishments will not convince them to act against their own interests. 

So, what is likely to happen? Iran’s elite will judge Pezeshkian largely on the basis of how he deals with the headline threats, and the wolf closest to the sled is the economy. During Pezeshkian’s July 28 ‘Endorsement Ceremony,’ the Supreme Leader said “The priority is with economic issues. A sustained, strong, thought-out economic drive is needed.” Any Pezeshkian diplomatic initiative towards the West, aimed at an economic opening and a lessening of sanctions, will be influenced by the ongoing battle for escalation dominance between Israel and Iran.

Pezeshkian would be well advised to also devote significant energy to prepare Iran for the crash of the gray rhino – climate change – bearing down on it. He is aware of this issue; during the late July heatwave he tweeted “we need to move [economic] production out of Tehran, bring it closer to the sea, to a place where water and electricity supply won’t be a problem in the future”.

Although the feasibility of such a move is questionable, that he was talking at all about policy and resource constraints is encouraging. The threat of climate change will require increased cooperation among governments. If Pezeshkian were to begin the essential task of climate adaptation, or even just begin the needed policy conversation, this would be a boon not just for Iran, but also for a whole region facing electricity and water shortages.

On February 1, 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini debarked at Mehrabad airport in Tehran, he was asked what form of government he envisioned for post-Shah Iran. He said, “an Islamic Republic, not one word more or one word less.”

Today, as Iran draws closer to the eventual passing of Khomeini’s successor, it is worth focusing on the gradual changes within the country that have brought us to a point where the Islamic Republic has become something quite different. The ‘Ship of Theseus’ paradox probes the nature of identity, asking when something that replaces more and more of itself progressively over time essentially changes into something else. It is worth asking the same about the Islamic Republic of Iran.

From Islamic to Nationalist

Let’s start with the ‘Islamic’ part. When Khomeini returned to Iran, he and his followers methodically purged the opposition’s leadership of the various non-clerical factions that had contributed to driving out the Shah, including nationalists, socialists and communists. His followers ensured the principle of ‘Velayat-e Faqih’ – the ‘Guardianship of the Jurist’ – was enshrined in the new constitution, codifying the collective power of the clerical class and the individual power of the Supreme Leader.

At first, Iran’s strategic interests were defined largely in terms of Islam. There is the famous (possibly apocryphal) story of Khomeni being asked by reporters, as he descended from the plane in 1979, what he felt upon returning to his homeland after fifteen years of exile. “Nothing,” he responded, indicating that for him Iranian soil held no special attraction. For Khomeini, Iran was a beachhead for Islam’s global spread, as he proclaimed, “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry of ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

Over time the collective power of the clerical class has attenuated. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the Majlis (parliament). Over 50 percent of Iran’s first two parliaments were clerics, but in the last 24 years and last six parliaments, clerical representation has been consistently below 15 percent.

Islam’s global spread has also lost its luster as a policy priority. Although Iran is careful to portray its activities in an Islamic patina, its foreign policy has reverted to an essentially nationalist one, seeking the same regional hegemony that motivated Iran’s previous dynasties. The late Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) General Qassem Soleimani was popular as a nationalist figure, not because of any putative defense of Islam.

As for the ‘republic’ part, there has been a marked shift in political power from elected positions (‘entekhabi’) to appointed ones (‘entesabi’). Supreme Leader Khamenei accelerated this shift in reaction to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005). His surprise victory, and the election of the solidly pro-reform Majlis two years later, convinced Khamenei to do whatever was necessary to prevent the people’s will from being translated into (rival) political power.

Khamenei’s tool to this end was the Council of Guardians, an appointed body whose six clerics and six jurists are all either directly or indirectly appointed by the Supreme Leader. This council is charged both with vetting Majlis legislation to ensure it is consistent with Islamic law and the Constitution, and with vetting candidates for elective offices.

Post-Khatami, screening became increasingly stringent, with each candidate required to prove his ‘demonstrated fealty to Islam, the system and the Velayat-e Faqih.’ The increasingly narrow spectrum of approved candidates resulted in a progressive loss of popular enthusiasm for voting. Turnout in presidential elections tumbled from a high of almost 80 percent for Khatami in 1997 to a low of under 50 percent for Raisi in 2021. Similarly, Majlis election turnout plummeted from a peak of over 70 percent with the sixth (reformist) Majlis of 1996 to a historic low of approximately 40 percent in the twelfth Majlis elections of 2024.

Ever Rightward

In the Islamic Republic’s early years there were two main political camps, the conservative Tehran Militant Clergy Association and the leftist Militant Clerics Association. Khomeini never sided decisively with one faction over the other, although especially in his final days his heart seemed to be more with the leftists [Note: For insight into factional politics in its beginning, see the late Mehrdad Moslehi’s ‘Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran.’]

After Khomeini’s 1989 death and Khatami’s 1997 surprise election victory, Supreme Leader Khamenei’s efforts to purge the leftists (known as ‘reformists’ since the Khatami election) from the political system has been largely successful, and as a result the political center of gravity has continued to shift to the right.

For example, without changing any of his positions, former conservative Majlis Speaker (from 2008-2020) Ali Larijani has moved from becoming a regime insider to outsider, and was banned from competing in the 2021 Presidential election by the Guardian Council. The shrinking circle of approved elites, and its rightward march on the political spectrum, accounts for the record low turnout of the 2024 Malis election, which offered an indifferent public a choice between different flavors of ultra-hardline conservatives.

Following Khatami, President Ahmadinejad rooted out the ‘deep state’ in favor of patronage aiming to attract IRGC political support. The resulting incompetence and corruption, combined with effective international sanctions levied against Iran owing to its nuclear program, led to serious economic problems. Khamenei allowed the partial and temporary ‘return of the technocrats’ under Rafsanjani disciple Hassan Rouhani, who had a mandate of salvaging the economy and getting sanctions lifted. Once President Rouhani had carried out the Supreme Leader’s will, he too was effectively put in a box. With President Raisi’s 2021 election, the usual cabal of conservative apparatchiks were once again in key positions.

Today, the IRGC is both the main tool of Khamenei’s rule and the main beneficiary of his considerable largesse. The IRGC got its original ‘growth spurt’ after the 1988 iran-Iraq War ceasefire from then-President Rafsanjani. But it has been Khamenei who has expanded IRGC economic fiefdoms and increasingly relied on it for security and stability, to the point where the IRGC is the single most important institution in Iran today.

Conclusion

Iran’s ship of state has replaced many if not most of its parts since it set sail in 1979. Calling it an ‘Islamic Republic’ or an ‘Islamic theocracy’ now is a serious misnomer: while it still uses increasingly threadbare Islamic tropes to portray its actions, it has become an authoritarian, nationalist state ruled by a military-security elite.

Although most of the original parts of Iran’s revolutionary ship of state have been swapped out, it still has Khamenei’s hand on the rudder. An absolutist Khamenei, fearing regime change above all else, has seen any type of opposition as a fifth column, any calls for reform as a thin wedge, and any type of outreach by the West as a Trojan horse. After Khamenei’s death, it is by no means a given that Iran’s post-Khamenei leaders, whether IRGC or otherwise, will necessarily share this worldview.

Ayatollah Khomeini said he was forced to drink ‘a poisoned chalice’ in accepting the 1988 cease-fire with Iraq, and during the 2015 nuclear negotiations Ayatollah Khamenei cited the need for ‘heroic flexibility.’ We can’t foresee what Iran’s post-Khamenei leadership will be, much less whether it will continue the policies of a ‘rejectionist’ state. But as Arash Azizi recently noted, after a leadership change Iranians will have a rare opportunity to redefine Iran in a way more congruent with the considerable geopolitical forces pressing down on it.

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