A few months ago, I was chatting with an esteemed Iranian historian when the conversation turned to a macabre matter that we often like to discuss: when was the last time Iran had it so bad? We struggled to name an era as hopeless as today.
It’s all relative, of course. During the 20th century, Iran experienced destructive famines, wars and eras of mass execution at the hands of the state. Iran of 2024 might pale in comparison to the worst of that suffering, but it is still saddled with intense social repression, economic decline, international isolation and political impasse. Things feel particularly depressing because Iranians can remember a recent past when we had high hopes for better times.
Iran of today is no Venezuela or Yemen. There is no societal collapse, no run on basic necessities. In Tehran, the capital, long lines are formed not outside supermarkets but for trendy pasta restaurants. Look beneath the surface, however, and you will find a society filled with despair. Young people see little room for progress. Formerly middle-class households have problems affording meat or chicken. Armed goons of the state can harass or arrest a woman because she is wearing lipstick that is too red or failing to observe one of the regime’s most hated rules: mandatory veiling. Alongside the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran is the only other country in the world to enforce this draconian rule on its female population. And this is only one item in a long list of misogynist laws that reduce Iranian women to second-class citizens.
Prisons are filled with labour leaders, human rights lawyers, Christian converts or ordinary citizens who simply published the wrong post on social media. Thousands of Iranians, like myself, are barred from visiting the homeland we love because of our dissent. Tens of thousands flee every year in a crushing drain on human capital. Despite its economic problems, Tehran spends billions of dollars funding its anti-Israel “Axis of Resistance” in the Middle East, which plagues Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine and other countries, putting the country on the path to a war its citizens don’t want.
The aid to Iran’s various proxies is directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an unaccountable militia that was founded shortly after 1979 to protect Iran’s revolution at home and export it abroad. It has since extended its control to vast swathes of Iran’s armed forces and economy. The fact that its title doesn’t even include the word “Iran” is not accidental. Its commanders openly boast that they don’t see themselves as bound by the country’s constitution or borders. They are thus a nexus of power and corruption, justifying any action so long as it purportedly “guards” the ideals of the revolution. Donald Trump’s 2019 designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organisation was controversial, given that it is effectively a large part of Iran’s armed forces, but the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau in Canada did the same in June.
An octogenarian man is largely responsible for this state of affairs, since he has held most of the power for most of our lives: Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Having assumed his position in 1989, when I was a year old, the 85-year-old cleric is the only leader most Iranians today have ever known.
Throughout Khamenei’s 35 years in office, various military and political factions with fundamentally different outlooks have relentlessly jockeyed for power. The regime’s elites have splintered into three broad factions: the conservatives, or “principlists” as they call themselves, who wish to preserve the authoritarian structures of the Islamic Republic; the reformists who, since the late 1990s, have advocated some degree of democratisation of these structures; and centrists (or “moderates” as they sometimes call themselves) who are mostly former conservatives who broke with their more hardline peers, emphasising technocracy and the need for better relations with the west.
In the past few decades, masses of Iranians have called for change. In 1997, 2001, 2009, 2013 and 2017 they voted for presidential candidates running in the regime’s very limited elections who promised, in the case of the reformist Mohammad Khatami, to democratise Iran or, in the case of the centrist Hassan Rouhani, to bring good governance and help lift western-imposed economic sanctions via a deal with the United States. In 2009, 2017-18, 2019, and 2022-2023, when those promises went unfulfilled, the masses came out with one unmistakable slogan showcasing their central demand: death to the dictator. In other words, they took the fight to Khamenei who, regardless of who the president is, wields most of the power.
The masses came out with one unmistakable slogan: death to the dictator
But by the spring of 2024, when I was talking to my friend, it felt like we had entered a dreary stalemate. In 2021, for the first time in decades, the presidential elections didn’t feature a genuine competition between the regime’s own factions. The Guardian Council, a body of clerics and jurists whose members are appointed by Khamenei directly or indirectly, threw out the candidacy of almost all serious reformist or centrist candidates. Unsurprisingly, only 48.9 per cent of the electorate voted. The majority stayed at home for the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, a sore point for a regime which likes to boast about high voter turnout.
The presidency was effectively handed to Ebrahim Raisi, an unimpressive cleric whose only qualification was total obedience to Khamenei. The supreme leader had previously clashed with every single president serving under him and didn’t wish to repeat the experience. The coronation of Raisi was the last in a long line of actions designed to neuter Khamenei’s rivals. The regime’s reformist faction had long been banished to the political wilderness, with Khatami’s image banned from state TV and the vast majority of reformist candidates barred from running for the parliament in the 2020 and 2024 elections.
Meanwhile, the regime brutally crushed the latest round of mass protests, which broke out in September 2022 after a young Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Zhina Amini, died in the custody of the regime’s security forces. She had been arrested during a routine patrol for allegedly breaking the law on wearing hijab. These protests, which quickly mushroomed to perhaps the largest challenge ever faced by the Islamic Republic, became known by their central slogan as the Woman Life Freedom movement. Hundreds were killed and thousands arrested. As the protests grew, an attempt to form an opposition leadership outside Iran fizzled out before it could get anywhere.
This elimination of both internal and external threats to his power wasn’t exactly a triumphant moment for Khamenei. The fundamentals of his regime (an Islamic society with enforced hijab, a desire to fight the US and destroy Israel) could hardly be more unpopular with the populace. Privately, the more far-sighted elements of the Iranian establishment also admit the status quo to be untenable and in need of change.
Yet when I was chatting with my friend in mid-May, it appeared to us that the dreary years of Raisi would drag on for the rest of the decade. We both expected the next big political event to be the death of Khamenei, whenever it might come. Meanwhile, all we could do was engage in our own version of Kremlinology, guessing as to the supreme leader’s potential successors and the future of power in the Islamic Republic.
But we were wrong, of course. Iran has a way of surprising you.
On 19th May, Ebrahim Raisi died a most dramatic death. Following a visit to a border area with the Republic of Azerbaijan, his helicopter crashed in Iran’s north-western mountainous region. A few hours later his body was found alongside others.
Whether or not the crash was an accident is still a matter of speculation. And shocking as this event was, it didn’t necessarily mean change. Lacking an independent streak, Raisi was an empty suit for Khamenei’s whims, crowned in a sham election. Surely, the supreme leader could simply arrange to replace him with another rubber-stamper?
But the hastily organised presidential elections of 2024 were not an uncompetitive contest like those in 2021. By the time the dust settled, the results were a total surprise: For the first time in almost 20 years, Iran has a reformist president.
Khamenei is a doctrinaire ideologue, still as rigid today as when he was a young revolutionary in the 1960s. But if he has survived for this long in power, it’s because he also knows how to be flexible. He had clearly understood the dangers of too much international isolation, especially with a Trump victory looming, and the evident dangers of relying on too narrow a domestic voter base. By allowing reformists to run their own candidate, he had hoped to increase the turnout and bring this political faction back in from the cold. Masud Pezeshkian, a physician, former health minister under Khatami and an MP, stood as the sole reformist candidate, competing with a range of conservatives including the ultra-hardliner Saeed Jalili and the conservative Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a former mayor of Tehran with a technocratic bent and a base in the IRGC ranks.
Experts on Khamenei have different ideas as to who was his favourite candidate. I personally think he sets the stage and lets different factions vie for power without necessarily having someone specific in mind. The history of his actions seems to show he is rather indecisive.
Each of the candidates came with their own sets of problems for the supreme leader. Qalibaf was too technocratic, a strongman wannabe with no ideological fervour, despite his rhetorical pretensions. Jalili was too austerely fundamentalist, his camp a cross between North Korea and the Taliban. Khamenei’s own outlook is closer to this camp (as president in the 1980s, he travelled to Pyongyang and helped lay the foundations for the two regimes’ close military collaboration). But he understands how explosive their agenda of social repression and international grandstanding can be—and how dangerous it could be for his staying power.
It might seem surprising, but the best candidate for the old ayatollah might have been Pezeshkian. Although nominally a reformist, Pezeshkian did not run on an agenda of even the slightest democratisation. Perhaps no other candidate tried as hard to establish his loyalty to Khamenei, whom he referred to with his full title (“The Exalted Supreme Leader”) throughout the campaign. He openly said that Khamenei’s positions were a “red line” he wouldn’t cross.
This made him unlike most reformists who have previously sought high office in the Islamic Republic—and provided a clue as to why he had been allowed to run. His approach could be contrasted with, say, that of Mahmud Sadeqi, a popular former Tehran MP who also registered to run for president but was denied. As I write, Sadeqi is being prosecuted for his open critiques of Khamenei. Instead of reformists like Sadeqi or Mostafa Tajzadeh, a deputy interior minister under Khatami who is languishing in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, Pezeshkian’s team is led by cabinet ministers of the centrist former president Rouhani. Acting as something of a running mate to him was Javad Zarif, the energetic former foreign minister, famed in the west for long months of negotiations with American and European counterparts. Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi, Rouhani’s young and tech-savvy communications minister, is another Pezeshkian campaign lead.
Instead of promising fundamental reform, they have mostly run on an agenda of half-measures, such as not enforcing the mandatory hijab as forcefully and not fully restricting the internet. They’ve also promised a return to the Rouhani-era policies of diplomatic talks with the west, with the goal of lifting the sanctions that have destroyed much of the economy. Rouhani would not have been previously allowed to pursue such policies without a green light from Khamenei. The leader just might welcome them again, at least as a stop-gap measure to prevent the regime’s further isolation.
The history of Khamenei’s actions seems to show he is rather indecisive
When Iranians went to the polls on 28th June, Pezeshkian led with 42.5 per cent, making it to the run-off with Jalili, who got 38.6 per cent. Qalibaf, who had started the race as a frontrunner and had the most executive experience, was vanquished with only 13.8 per cent of the vote. It was also a blow to the IRGC, many of whose outlets and commanders had openly backed Qalibaf. The regime’s core base clearly preferred the extremist Jalili to the technocratic Qalibaf.
Whatever Khamenei’s feelings about who led the poll, he is unlikely to have been happy with another number: only 39.9 per cent of Iranians bothered to vote, a dramatic drop from 2021. Such low turnouts are not unheard of in some democracies (ask Romania). But Khamenei has long publicly regarded voter turnout as a key indicator of the regime’s health. Such an embarrassingly low number shows the depth of popular disillusionment with the regime’s official politics. One wonders if any republicanism is left in the Islamic Republic.
In the run-off on 5th July, it was fear of Jalili’s fundamentalism that spurred many Iranians who had boycotted the first round to show up and vote for Pezeshkian. As in the election’s first round on 28th June, the turnout remained low—49.8 percent—meaning that a slight majority still stayed home. Many voted reluctantly for the 69-year-old reformist candidate, with no illusions as to any change he may actually achieve in office. Ultimately, Pezeshkian won by 53.6 percent to Jalili’s 44.3 percent. His 16.3 million votes are less than what Raisi got in 2021 and, in fact, represent the lowest vote-share for a winning president since 1993 (Iran’s population has grown by more than 50 percent since the 1990s.)
As Pezeshkian moves into Iran’s sprawling presidential complex on Tehran’s Louis Pasteur Street, he knows full well the limits of his power. As president, he has to face a hardliner-dominated parliament that will have to approve all his choices for cabinet ministers, and could impeach them afterwards, making life hard for any reformist or centrist politicians he might introduce. More importantly, the new president will be encumbered by unelected institutions dominated by Khamenei, the IRGC and other shadowy centres of wealth and power in the Islamic Republic. For a man who was, until recently, a relatively unknown parliamentarian, this is a tall order. Rouhani, a core member of the establishment for decades, could barely withstand hardliner pressure during his eight years in office. What can Pezeshkian hope to achieve? When it comes to sensitive issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme, its talks with the US or its risky shadow war with Israel, he will have little sway.
Unlike Rouhani, whose economic team were outspoken, neoliberal free-marketeers, openly singing the praises of the Austrian school, Pezeshkian has more social-democratic leanings when it comes to the economy. It remains to be seen whether he can use such tendencies to build a political base among the downtrodden, as former populist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did, and as reformists have often failed to do.
By a twist of fate, Pezeshkian is likely to be in power when the key moment of Khamenei’s death finally arrives. It is for this reason that he matters. Khamenei’s succession is a favourite topic of conversation among the Iranian establishment, with few privy to the leader’s own thinking on the matter of succession. The task of picking the next supreme leader falls to the Assembly of Experts, a body of mostly ageing clerics, dominated by hardliners, who were elected earlier in 2024 in a severely restricted and uncompetitive vote.
But the question can’t be reduced to the assembly’s formal role. Clerics, aside from the supreme leader, have long lost their monopoly on power in the Islamic Republic: they now answer to those with real influence, the men with access to butter and guns, such as IRGC officials. With regime factions currently engaged in their internecine conflict over power, Khamenei’s rule is the only thing that keeps the system together. When the music stops, it matters who is sitting in what chair. According to the constitution, if the assembly isn’t able to find a successor to Khamenei, a temporary committee consisting of the president, the head of the judiciary and a cleric member of the Guardian Council picked by the Expediency Council (currently led by the centrist-leaning Sadeq Larijani) will assume the leadership.
This might provide the perfect opportunity for the Islamic Republic to undergo much-needed change. It might even find its own Deng Xiaoping. Fundamentalists like Jalili represent a tiny sliver of Iranian society and even much of the regime establishment is sick of their unworkable ways. They have long learnt that revolutionary slogans can’t run a country of 85m people. Although hardliner members of the assembly such as Mohammad Mehdi Mirbaqeri or Alireza Arafi might try to stage a takeover, they are likely to be defeated by those who want a government more relaxed in its approach to its own populace, and more concerned with economic development than pursuing revolutionary utopias. Such pragmatism wouldn’t be the democratisation that my fellow Iranians have repeatedly fought for. But it might let us be a bit more hopeful about the future.
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 came to the world with a bang. It boldly claimed it would bring about an alternative to both capitalism and communism, a new spiritual form of governance that would improve people’s earthly and heavenly lives. Forty-five years later, it is clear how miserably it has failed on those lofty goals. Sturdy as it may seem, it is dying a slow death.
