Six months into the war, the central question about Iran’s regime is no longer its missile arsenal, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) ability to menace the Strait of Hormuz, or how long the confrontation can endure.The deeper question is political and historical: Who governs Iran? Is it Mojtaba Khamenei, whose position at the apex of the system remains opaque; Masoud Pezeshkian, whose office of president was never designed to hold sovereign power; or the IRGC, which after decades of accumulating military, intelligence and economic authority may have become the state’s true center of gravity?Iran increasingly resembles not a Shiite theocracy protected by soldiers, but a militarized dictatorship in which the notorious clerical establishment provides ideological cover for the men with guns.The Shiite Republic or Islamic Caliphate of mullahs emerged from the bleak winter of 1979 promising salvation and delivering coercion.
Khomeinism turned political Islam into state power and terrorism, proxy warfare and revolutionary expansion into instruments of foreign policy.For nearly half a century, Tehran built armed transnational terrorist networks abroad while suffocating political life at home.IRAN’S UNSEEN SUPREME LEADER BECOMES WEAPON IN ESCALATING POWER STRUGGLE, EXPERTS SAYNow, this outlaw regime that once dreamed of exporting its revolution is consumed by a more primitive instinct: survival.
War serves that purpose.Under its shadow, dissent becomes treason, criticism becomes collaboration and repression becomes patriotism.
Washington must reject the regime’s oldest deception: Iran is not the Islamic Republic, and the Islamic Republic has never been Iran.Iranian opposition leader and son of the last shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Reza Pahlavi, holds a press conference in Paris on June 23, 2025.(Joel Saget / AFP via Getty Images)That distinction matters as economic pressure intensifies.
Operation Economic Outcast seeks to sever the financial ...