Less than a day after the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran denied that significant damage had been caused to its nuclear sites by U.S. airstrikes, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi acknowledged that the facilities had been “seriously damaged.”
The two inconsistent statements may be interpreted as a role reversal, but the issue appears to be deeper than that.
There are two distinct perceptions in Iranian political discourse following the Iran-Israel war and the U.S. attacks.
The issue falls within the framework of a hardline political vision that has been unable to protect the regime itself, despite the courage to confront and claims of victory, versus a moderate political vision that has sought to protect the regime since the 1990s by changing its internal and external stances, represented by the reformists.
Pre-War Political Crises
Iran has been facing questions about the status of various factions within the regime, since the assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. airstrike near the Baghdad airport in early 2020.
Hardliners took advantage of the end of former President Hassan Rouhani’s term, which served as a compromise between conservatives and reformists, to secure Ebrahim Raisi’s election as president.
However, in 2024, the outcome was disastrous, as Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash.
Another dilemma stood the widespread demonstrations across the country following the murder of Mahsa Amini, which resulted from her being assaulted by security forces for imposing the hijab.
Therefore, the reformists’ resurgence to power with the successful campaign of Masoud Pezeshkian indicated a deliberate ‘breathing room‘ strategy by the hardline factions.
No Revolution in Wartime
A day before the end of the war, Israel bombed Evin Political Prison, hoping the prisoners would escape. The move was ill-advised, a shot in the air. During the war, except for voices from opposition groups abroad, such as Reza Pahlavi, Head of the House of Pahlavi, who leads the movement to restore the monarchy in Iran, and the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), opposition voices at home and abroad headed towards anti-war positions.
Iranian opposition intellectuals and activists, including Nobel Peace Prize winners Shirin Ebadi, Narges Mohammadi, and academics Hamid Dabashi and Abdolkarim Soroush, issued a statement condemning Israel’s attacks as the direct cause of the war and the Islamic Republic’s policies that contributed to its escalation.
"The signatories," the statement read, "call on all to open an alternative pathway to counter both the Iranian regime's warmongering and those who have set their hopes on foreign invasion and encourage it."
Former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, who supported the protests following Amini’s killing, considered the Israeli attack a threat to the country’s unity, heritage, and “territorial integrity“. It was clear that the war had a negative impact on the broader opposition elites, as they denounced it and did not exploit it to escalate against the regime.
Instead, they sometimes limited themselves to criticising its rhetoric, which emboldened Israel.
The Day-After-War: IRGC
The Revolutionary Guard is the wealthiest institution in Iran.
It is a political-security presence that represents a kind of ‘deep state‘. However, the killing of a number of its senior and second-ranking commanders in Israeli attacks is not only a blow to the group structure, but to its influence in moving the political system toward its military options.
Field movements and logistical communications of its leaders will also be difficult, for fear of a sudden new attack or a new type of assassination war orchestrated. The inflexibility of its actions, the loss of crucial leaders, and the fear of public’s anger against the regime because of the war and any new American pressure are factors that could give the moderates holding political power an opportunity to manoeuvre.
This is similar to the political opening exploited and undertaken by former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani when he undermined the influence of the military and security power centres in the early 1990s.
Although it is not yet clear what reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian’s steps will be in this regard, it is clear that Iran’s political discourse, both domestically and internationally, reflects a flexibility through which it seeks to overcome its weaknesses, namely the loss of a key part of its military arsenal, the damage to its nuclear project that renders it less effective in negotiations, and the fear of street protests if the damage is not quickly remedied.
Revolution: The Obstacles
It is difficult to predict whether Iranians will revolt under the current pressures.
The external opposition does not seem capable of mobilising the street at the present time, and the internal opposition has many concerns, including the fear of a dramatic partition of the country if the regime falls. The regime is trying to tighten its security grip through arrests carried out on charges of collaboration with Mossad.
However, a mistep such as a similar repitition of the killing of Mahsa Amini could ignite the street in the medium term. Therefore, the regime's ability to control the situation depends on what it offers the street, in addition to the measures implemneted to address security and diplomatic challenges.
The regime, on the other hand, lost its prestige due to its weakness in the face of Israeli incursions and this lost prestige has internal repercussions.
The war wounded Iranian national sentiment; it is a “national humiliation,” says Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews, so “there will be a reckoning.”
These wounded sentiments, along with the blockade, corruption, and repression, are factors that could lead to a movement unless accountability from within the regime is swift and decisive and delivers a significant portion of what the people need. The Islamic Republic is now fighting on its own turf, not through its proxies in its backyard.
The battle on the ground is not only against its external enemies but domestic in the face of internal demands that previous solutions, via repression, cannot extinguish.
Khamenei in Absence
On the other hand, the difficulty of accessing Khamenei for security reasons may be an advantage for reformist tendencies in making a difference. Turkish mediation attempted to bring Iranians and Americans together in Istanbul during the war, but the inability to reach Khamenei to obtain his approval prevented this.
The limited powers of the executive branch, coupled with the difficulty of accessing Khamenei who is cut off from the outside world, represent a critical moment in the history of this government, requiring it to act on the need to take measures outside the regime’s usual bureaucracy.
This requires the courage of the moderate axis within the regime. Naturally, it is hard to assume that any Iranian official is expected to abandon the foundations essential to the regime’s survival, but it is possible to say that it will take revolutionary steps to effect real change in the nuclear file and domestic policy, based on the fact the failures of the regime, noticeably the penetration of Israeli intelligence agencies inside Iran.
The Iranian Islamic regime faces a test: affect radical change that could reduce the risk of a revolution, given the ongoing economic, security, and political insecurity.
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