What’s next in Iran after the bombardments?
Badamchi argues Iran faces a constitutional turning point: reform from within, or rupture—while war, succession, and regime change pressures reshape every possible path ahead.
Interview by Bea Bakó, originally published in Hungarian on the Gemist intellectual website as: https://www.gemist.hu/p/milyen-rendszer-johet-iranban-a-bombazasok
Bea Bakó: What is going to happen in Iran now, as Khamenei is dead?
Meysam Badamchi: Right now, we are in a constitutional moment. We are either going to stay within the current system, or there is going to be a complete upheaval in the sense that they overthrow the current constitution and put something totally different in its place. That’s another project.
In Iran, we have had at least two constitutional moments before this. In the last 100 years of Iranian modern history, Iran was one of the first countries to adopt a modern constitution, one of the first modern Muslim countries. In 1906, they adopted a constitution which was supposed to limit the power of the monarch and establish the rule of law in Iran. It was supposed to limit the absolute power of the king and make him a constitutional monarch.
Iran is a Shia-majority country, and Shia identity in Iran is significant. In the time of the Qajar dynasty, which ruled Iran from the end of the 18th century until 1925, Shia identity was also very important. At that time, we had this powerful class of ulama, the Shia clerics. I am telling you all this because right now we are supposed to choose a new Supreme Leader, who will be selected from among the Shia clerics.
In the time of the Qajars, under pressure from the ulama, they added Article 2 to the constitution, according to which no law passed by parliament should contradict Sharia, Islamic law, or Shia jurisprudence. Also, the religion of the country was codified as Shia Islam. This is what, in some theories of Islam and constitutionalism, is called the Islamic supremacy clause.
When the Shah took power in a coup in 1925, they did not remove the Qajar constitution; they just replaced the name of the Qajar dynasty with the Pahlavi dynasty. The coup was also supported by the British at that time, but also by some Iranian intellectuals inside Iran, in the name of modernization. Under the Shah, Reza Shah and later his son Mohammad Reza never, in practice, allowed the ulama to veto laws that were against Islam.
So they would have had the formal power, but they did not exercise it.
The ulama actually did not apply Article 2 of the constitution. It was there like decoration, but in practice there was no assembly of ulama whom the Shah would ask whether a law passed by parliament was acceptable. So at that time, the country was more secular.
And this is one of the reasons the clerics, the Shia clerics, were angry with the dynasty, the Pahlavis, because they were neglecting them. But he was not only neglecting the Shia clerics. He also neglected the constitutional limits of the monarchy: the king was supposed to be a constitutional monarch with limits, like in Britain or other European constitutional monarchies.
But Mohammad Reza Shah, and also his father, were for most of their rule absolutist kings. For ten years, the son presided over a constitutional monarchy with democracy, a powerful parliament, and yet unstable governments. But after the coup against Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953, the Shah gained absolute power, and held it from 1953 until 1979, when the revolution happened.
To put it simply: after the revolution, the 1906–1907 constitution was totally overthrown by revolutionary Islamists and replaced with a completely new constitution based on the principle of guardianship of the Shia jurist. After the revolution in 1979, the new constitution was drafted by a constituent assembly convened with 73 members, and they drafted the constitution that was later approved by the people in a referendum in December 1979. At that time, laymen were also allowed to participate in that constituent assembly, not just clerics. This right was later limited. Anyway, the new system is a mixture of Islamism and republicanism, named the Islamic Republic.
What makes Iran a theocracy? The legal order of most Muslim countries is based on Sharia law anyway. Does the fact that clerics formally exercise power make a significant difference?
After the 1979 revolution, the committee of ulama who were supposed to veto laws under the previous constitution was put into practice in a stronger form, in the form of a Guardian Council consisting of 12 members. Six of them are Shia jurists appointed by the Supreme Leader, and six are lawyers appointed by parliament. They are always vetting the laws passed by parliament. Over time, the Iranian Supreme Leader increased the power of this council so that it now vets candidates for the presidential and parliamentary elections as well. It is both like a constitutional court and a kind of Sharia court. It is a combination of both. So this system became much more theocratic compared to the previous constitutional monarchy.
What exactly is the role of the Supreme Leader?
Since the revolution, Iran has had only two Supreme Leaders, both of whom held the position for life. The first leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900–3 June 1989), was also the founder of the revolution. He was already old when the revolution happened, so he was in power for only ten years. He died in 1989, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, at a time when Iran’s geopolitical situation was very different from now. At that time, people’s view of the regime was also very different. The regime was almost popular.
The second leader, who died just last Saturday as a result of the U.S.-Israeli attack, was Ali Khamenei (1939–2026), who became the second Supreme Leader of Iran in 1989 after Khomeini’s death. The mechanism for electing the Supreme Leader was established after the revolution. There is the so-called Assembly of Experts. Since 1981, it has been codified that the Assembly of Experts must consist exclusively of clerics. It has 88 members today.
Is the participation of clerics in public office prescribed as a guarantee? Are they deemed to be strict enough in interpreting the Sharia? When and why did the regime start to become more and more oppressive?
Yes, maybe, but it is complicated. All Muslim countries are a mixture of Sharia and non-Sharia. Sharia does not speak about everything. Sharia does not tell you how to make a missile or how to enrich uranium for nuclear facilities. The ruling clerics do not have a problem with natural sciences. But when it comes to the humanities and social sciences, they are being Islamized. At the same time, Iran is a sophisticated country. Even the clerics study philosophy in Iran, and they are proud of it. Even Iran’s first Supreme Leader, Khomeini, was an expert in Islamic philosophy and mysticism.
It is also important to note that after the revolution, the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) was established to “protect the Islamic revolution.” The Iran-Iraq war was, by the way, a gift for the Revolutionary Guard, not only because it justified its existence, but also because top commanders were trained and turned into generals during the Iran-Iraq war and shortly afterwards. And Ali Khamenei, the then new Supreme Leader, relied even more on the Revolutionary Guards than his predecessor Khomeini did.
Just after the new Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was elected, came the time of economic reconstruction after the war, the time of Hashemi Rafsanjani, the fourth president of Iran. President Hashemi Rafsanjani was a modernizer. He wanted to liberalize the economy as the Iran-Iraq war and the Cold War had ended. He and Ali Khamenei involved the Revolutionary Guard in economic projects to reconstruct the country. The Revolutionary Guard became bigger, more powerful, and richer. They started to own companies to build roads, manage oil extraction facilities, and so on.
When Khamenei became the Leader, he was less charismatic than Khomeini. He was not even among the highest-ranking clerics. So he had to be more dependent on the Revolutionary Guard. He also put a lot of bureaucratic layers around him, composed of loyalists. He made the Revolutionary Guards more powerful and placed them under his control. He also removed all the army commanders from the Iran-Iraq war who were not fully loyal to him. So he made it a kind of unified and very ideological military.
In 1997, the highly popular president Mohammad Khatami was elected. Over time, the Revolutionary Guards started to become an obstacle to political liberalization, greater press freedom, freedom of parties, and the reforms that President Khatami wanted to pursue after Rafsanjani. Because of his reformist projects, there was, at the end of the 1990s, a boom in freedom in Iran.
What about Iran’s nuclear project?
It turned out in 2003 that Iran was pursuing a nuclear project. Until then, nobody knew that Iran had a nuclear project that had supposedly started back in the 1990s, in the time of Rafsanjani. It was top secret, apparently. When I was a student, none of us had heard about any governmental nuclear project. But in 2003, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) opposition group revealed, perhaps in collaboration with Mossad, that Iran had nuclear sites and nuclear projects to enrich uranium.
So from 2003, negotiations started to allow the international community to go and observe the sites. Then came the first comprehensive U.N. nuclear-related sanctions against Iran in December 2006, and after almost ten years came the 2015 nuclear deal with the U.S. under Obama, which Trump withdrew from in 2018. During the June 2025 twelve-day war between the U.S.-Israel and Iran, Israel assassinated many top IRGC commanders and scientists working on the nuclear program, and then came the airstrikes on the nuclear sites.
And now there is war again, with Supreme Leader Khamenei and many other leading officers killed. What’s next? Israel claimed it even bombed the building where the Council of Guardians is sitting to elect the new Supreme Leader.
Okay, they bombed the building, but nobody was in there. I think they are probably even having meetings online. They know, of course, that they might be targeted. But I think that was symbolic. What Israel wanted to say was this: “Even if you select the wrong person, I might kill that person.” Right now, we have something like a council of archbishops electing the Pope. The difference is that they are choosing under bombardment.
There are supposedly six candidates: all clerics, because non-clerics are excluded. Lay people cannot even be among the selecting committee. All of the candidates have knowledge of Shia jurisprudence. They should be highly qualified, like professors of Shia Islamic law. Among these six candidates, only two are reformists. There were a lot of rumours about who the candidates would be. Some of them, especially two of the hardliners, have been discussed for the last ten or fifteen years. One of them is Khamenei’s eldest son, Mojtaba Khamenei. The other is Sadeq Larijani, who was also head of the judiciary under Khamenei. His brother is now the head of the Security Council. So he is also powerful, from a powerful family.
And who are the reformist candidates?
In my view, if there were no pressure right now from Israel and the U.S., and no bombardment, the reformists probably would not have any chance. Even their names would not be appearing on the list. One of them is Iran’s former president, Hassan Rouhani, who served between 2013 and 2021. He is the president who made the nuclear deal, so Westerners know him well. He has a PhD in law from the UK. So he has clerical training, but also a doctorate in secular law. He is from within the establishment, but more professional. Also, he was the second right hand of Hashemi Rafsanjani, the earlier reformist president, who died suspiciously after swimming in a pool in 2017. His family believed he was somehow poisoned.
The second reformist candidate is Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder and first Supreme Leader. He is clearly within the establishment, but his father also died under suspicious circumstances in 1995.
His father was the main officer of Khomeini’s office. Anyone who wanted to meet Khomeini had to go through Ahmad, his son and the father of Hassan Khomeini. This was during the 1980s. Ahmad served as his father’s secretary and held a very important position because his father was the Supreme Leader. There were rumours that Ahmad wanted to become the leader himself, but his father disagreed, saying that Iran should not become a monarchy passing from father to son. So Khamenei was selected after Khomeini’s death. A couple of years after Khamenei’s leadership began, Ahmad died under suspicious circumstances, reportedly from a heart attack. He was only 49 years old, not very old. There were rumours that he was killed by intelligence services because he had started criticizing Khamenei and the establishment. The government never admitted this, but they built a tomb for him next to his father’s, treating him as a great man.
His eldest son is Hassan Khomeini. Ironically, both Hassan Rouhani and Hassan Khomeini have someone close to them who died under suspicious circumstances. Perhaps that makes them less hardline. You understand people’s pain better when you know what an oppressive system can do. I think that is beneficial in a way.
Right now, as I said, there are four hardline candidates and two reformists, and many rumours about who will become the leader.
And there is Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah, in exile in the U.S., giving interviews, writing op-eds for the Washington Post, and openly preparing for a comeback. What are the odds of such a scenario?
Pahlavi coming back would mean that, as in Iran’s 1979 revolution, they would overthrow the current system, discard the constitution, create a totally new constitution, and start a new system from zero. In 1979, Khomeini did exactly that. There was a constitutional monarchy, but Islamists and leftists rejected the monarchy and threw it out.
But the question is whether he is as charismatic as Khomeini was at that time. The times are different. Back then, Khomeini was supported by many leftists, socialists, Islamic socialists, religious people, and educated people. It was an era of revolutions happening worldwide. Figures like Michel Foucault were supporting Iran’s revolution. There were student uprisings. There was a global revolutionary spirit, with socialism and the Cold War.
Pahlavi right now faces opposition from religious people because he is even more secular than his father. His father at least maintained diplomatic relations with clerics. But Pahlavi was raised mostly outside Iran. When the revolution happened, he was only 19 years old. He had already left Iran one or two years earlier for the United States to receive pilot training. He was supposed to become king after his father. But then he remained outside Iran because of the revolution. When he first emerged as an opposition figure, his Farsi was not very good, to be honest. He later improved his Persian. But the language, even the accent, shows that he was not raised in Tehran. He knows it as a second generation, somehow.
People in Iran’s post-revolutionary establishment hate him. They hated his father and grandfather’s families during the revolution, and some hate him even more. While his ancestors had some religious aspects, this guy has none at all. No religious life whatsoever. He also has some fanatical secular supporters. Okay, Iranian society has become secularized, but some of them are really Islamophobic, or anti-Islam. Some of them insult the Qur’an and Islam on social media. Under freedom of speech, that should be acceptable, but it makes religious people uneasy. Also, many Iranian leftists consider Pahlavists to be fascists who want to come to absolute power.
So you mean he would not get majority support because he is too secular?
He has 30 percent support in Iran right now, which is not small. Pahlavi’s base consists mostly of secular people who were somehow excluded from government after the revolution. Some of them are families of people who were monarchists in the establishment and were kicked out of Iran during the revolution. Some are families of people executed in the 1980s. Some have always been secular and excluded because, in this theocratic regime, secular people have been marginalized. Many pro-Pahlavis live outside Iran, including in the U.S.
But there is another 20 percent who are very religious Shia. They support the Revolutionary Guard. They follow the Ayatollahs and the Supreme Leader. They attend religious festivals and perform all the rituals. They participate in Shia ceremonies. They are very devoted to Shia Islamism. They are also well consolidated and armed. They have also fought ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Some of them are highly educated fighters. They have a religious ideology that makes them fanatical, perhaps like the soldiers of the Pope in medieval times, but many among them are also trained for combat. So this is not a small group, and this 20 percent is not a base you can neglect.
How about the other 50 percent?
There are many people in between, a grey area. Many people, I think, are republican. They want something more secular and moderate. So a moderate Supreme Leader, like Rouhani or Hassan Khomeini, could be acceptable, if he stays moderate in practice after becoming leader, for which there are no guarantees. The system gives enormous power to the leader. If the leader changes his mind and character, the entire system can change.
This is what happened with Khamenei. Khamenei was apparently more moderate in the 1980s, before becoming leader. He was Islamist, but somewhat moderate. He became totally hardline after becoming leader. So there is always this danger. Whoever becomes the leader can change. But the issue is that geopolitical circumstances and internal dynamics back then perhaps made it better to be a more hardline leader. Right now, we are not living in the early 1990s. Right now, the opposite is true.
What will the Council of Experts consider when selecting the new Supreme Leader? To what extent will the geopolitical situation and the open conflict influence their decision? And to what extent will they consider people’s feelings in the country? There were huge mass protests just a couple of weeks ago, thousands of people were massacred. Could the protesters achieve something? Could they at least influence the council?
It is a good question. It was unfortunate that Khamenei was killed by a foreign power, but he was really a hardliner, a fanatic, unfortunately. He was stubborn in his mind. “I will not compromise with the U.S.” For 40 years, that was his stance. But politics does not work like that.
In theory, this council is like a papal conclave. They should decide only according to religious criteria, and that is the irony. In theory, it is purely about who is the most knowledgeable, wise, prudent, and just. But it is very vague. It can be interpreted in very different ways. And additionally, there are some concrete religious criteria.
Also, Khamenei was such a hardliner that he controlled this council. He did not let many reformists be part of it. This Assembly of Experts was elected two years ago: no reformists were allowed. So if they followed only their own preferences, no moderate person would be selected. If 88 people are from one camp, of course they choose someone from their own camp. It was like that until now, perhaps if this war had not happened.
But right now, there is huge pressure internally and externally on the council. The council members are mostly old clerics. Some are younger, but they were not raised in open environments where they were connected with different segments of society. Still, there should be people around them who know Iranian society and geopolitics, and hopefully that is happening. I am not in contact with any members of this council, so I do not know.
In theory, they also cannot decide apart from the rest of the system: the security establishment, the government, and the president, who is a reformist and moderate. He has some influence. We voted for Pezeshkian because we were predicting that something like this might happen. He is from within the system, but he is moderate. He became president a year and a half ago, in 2024. Some people argued against people like me, saying, “Why are you voting in the system? The Supreme Leader will not allow him to do anything.” But I was saying that, okay, the president has maybe 20 to 30 percent of the power in the system. The rest is with the leader and the establishment. But even that 20 to 30 percent, in a time of transition, if something happens to Khamenei, or even before that, is important. I think that might turn out to be true.
So you expect the president to pressure the council toward a reformist candidate.
He has some influence. He is not the only factor, because the Iranian president is not like the president of Turkey, who has all the power. But he has some voice, of course. He and other reformists within the system can, for example, remind the council of the Israeli defence minister’s message, which is important despite its militant vocabulary: “Every leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime to continue and lead the plan to destroy Israel, to threaten the United States and the free world and the countries of the region, and to suppress the Iranian people, will be a target for elimination.”
Meaning if they elect a hardliner, he is threatened to be assassinated again, just like Khamenei.
Yes, and especially the last sentence is important: “We will continue to act with full force together with our American partners to crush the regime’s capabilities and create the conditions for the Iranian people to overthrow it and replace it.” Overthrow it and replace it. Overthrow means Pahlavi. So that means that for Israel, Pahlavi is a candidate.
Trump was less enthusiastic about Pahlavi. He said something like he is a nice guy, but maybe not the best choice.
Yes, because of the things I mentioned: he is very polarizing. Many Iranians hate him for religious or republican reasons. He is also unpopular among non-Persian ethnic groups.
So, you say that the lowest common denominator would be to stay within the current constitutional framework and elect a moderate Supreme Leader. The question is, if this happens, what will change and what will remain the same?
The Supreme Leader in Iran is very powerful; his power is incomparable to that of most presidents or prime ministers.
Whoever holds this position can carry out many kinds of reforms, maybe not regime change necessarily, but who knows. Changing the constitution can happen only with the approval of the Supreme Leader. He has to appoint a designated committee, under specific criteria, to change the constitution. So the changes would be within the system, not a total regime change, and this is a real worry for Iranian seculars. A constitutional amendment has not happened since 1989 because Khamenei was a hardliner and never wanted one, even when people demanded constitutional change in protests.
And would Rouhani or the young Khomeini be willing to do so?
Rouhani, as a moderate, would definitely have the power to implement changes, but only if, first, he is elected despite the extremist opposition to him within the system, and second, he does not turn hardline because of the complex geopolitical and internal dynamics. It is risky to have any kind of Supreme Leader because of the unchecked power the office holds. One optimistic view would be that geopolitical pressure from Israel and the United States plays a role here. The global left often criticizes Trump, calling him erratic and without a plan, but I think the American establishment more or less knows what it is doing. When Trump was asked about it, he often mentioned letting the future leader emerge from within.
If the system truly listens to the Iranian people and the international community, even countries like Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia would prefer a moderate Supreme Leader. Some might even be okay with Pahlavi, though Turkey and Qatar might not. A hardline leader would have few supporters in the region, especially among Arab countries, and the United States and Israel would completely disagree and take action. Also, I would add that some Iranians still do not trust Israel at all, and doubt that Netanyahu prioritizes Iran’s national interest. According to this argument, for Netanyahu and the IDF, Iran’s disintegration is acceptable as long as those parts are not enemies of Israel. Of course that is not acceptable to us as Iranian patriots at all.
The Israeli foreign minister said a couple of days ago that “Turkey is the new Iran.” Why?
Turkey is very complicated. If you compare Khamenei with Erdoğan, Khamenei was always against NATO, even though Turkey remains a NATO member. Khamenei was threatening NATO, and that is one reason he met his end. He said that he did not want NATO bases near his borders. Iran, under his leadership, was an enemy of the U.S., and he was pleased when the U.S. left Afghanistan. But look at Afghanistan now, is it better for the Afghan people? He did not care, because he was that anti-American. Khamenei was so fanatical in his anti-American and anti-Israeli stance that he even blocked McDonald’s from opening in Iran. He feared that if McDonald’s came, then American products and cars would follow, leading to colonization by America. There was even a deal to buy American passenger planes from Boeing after the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA), but it did not happen. Airlines in Iran, under the Rouhani government, wanted to buy from Boeing, but Khamenei and the hardliners disagreed, and when Trump came along, the JCPOA was destroyed in 2018.
Turkey is problematic democratically and poses a challenge for the EU in this regard. The opposition in Turkey is suppressed, and we are unhappy about it. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the former and very popular mayor of Istanbul, has been in prison for almost a year on alleged corruption charges. While there may always be some small truth in such accusations, AKP officials with bigger corruption issues are not treated the same way. The rule is not applied equally, and most of what he did is not really corruption. Still, Erdoğan wants to keep him in prison, maybe at least until the next election, because he was his main rival within the opposition and was able to beat him twice in Istanbul elections.
Turkey has to act as if there are normal elections. Khamenei did not even have to do that. He was officially elected for life.
Elections are becoming less meaningful in Turkey, with Erdoğan suppressing the opposition, like İmamoğlu. Erdoğan has become more hardline since the failed coup of 2016, and even before that since the 2013 Gezi protests, and now elections seem insignificant unless Turkey returns to its democratic path. However, even after 2016, the country maintained good relations with the U.S. under Trump and with Gulf countries, especially Qatar. I think the AKP and Qatar support a vague idea of Islamic democracy, but Turkey’s secular constitution, shaped by the Kemalists, prevents the formal adoption of Islamism. Erdoğan’s approach is seen as a stealth Islamization, without openly imposing Sharia law. In April 2017, a controversial referendum held under emergency conditions expanded Erdoğan’s powers, abolishing the prime minister’s office and shifting Turkey from a more pluralistic parliamentary system to a one-man-rule presidential system. This was significant, because Turkey had been a parliamentary system since the Republic’s establishment in 1923. Now Erdoğan’s powers are comparable to those of a Supreme Leader: he oversees the military, intelligence, and foreign policy, as well as domestic cultural issues.
The burdens of reform in Iran can be significant. If a moderate Supreme Leader were to come to power and gradually change the constitution to democratize the country, the changes might still be limited. The country would likely remain based on Sharia. The question is, to what extent could Iran realistically democratize in the next ten years?
As I said, this scenario applies only if the current constitution and the institution of the guardianship of the Supreme Jurist can survive this war. If regime change really happens at the end of the war, the story is different. But within this constitution, the Iranian state has numerous councils, with members often appointed by the Supreme Leader, including the top military. A new leader could change the Guardian Council, which is currently composed of six hardline clerics. As I said, Khamenei always appointed hardliners to these positions, though Shia reformist clerics have always existed. A new Supreme Leader could appoint reform-minded clerics, totally altering legal and Islamic constitutional interpretations.
For example, they could argue against the state-imposed hijab, saying that Islam does not mandate state enforcement. That could lead to significant changes. While Iran would remain an Islamic democratic state, different interpretations of Sharia could promote gender equality, allowing women to hold positions like the presidency or even become the Supreme Leader. Historically, reformists have pushed for this, but they were mostly excluded under Khamenei, with only a token presence among hardliners. A reform-minded leadership could change this dynamic, encouraging more balanced democratic representation in key positions.
And do you think the Revolutionary Guard would not prevent such reforms? If there is a reformed Ayatollah, would they be loyal to him?
With reform, the Ayatollah system would remain influential. It might not be the IRGC’s preference, but some hardliners would be okay with working with the new leader insofar as the constitution is not changed. For instance, they worked with Hassan Rouhani for eight years under the same system while he was president, though there was also a lot of tension. Before that, in the early 2000s, he was the head of the Security Council and the head of the negotiating team on the nuclear issue. Many hardliners dislike Rouhani, and it is not their preference to work with him. Khamenei and the hardliners even excluded him from the Assembly of Experts in the last election, and he was not allowed to run, because they did not favor him. During the nuclear deal with Obama, hardliners heavily criticized Rouhani and his foreign minister Zarif, accusing them of selling out Iran to the U.S.
If you consider Rouhani or Khomeini’s grandson, Hassan Khomeini, the latter might be better for them. Khomeini, the founder of the revolution, remains a charismatic brand in Iran. Like the Pahlavis, Khomeini’s name still holds weight among some Iranians and, unlike the Pahlavis, among Muslim Islamists worldwide. Khomeini the founder was a charismatic Shia leader, a mystic, and a philosopher, excelling in Islamic teachings despite not having a Western education. Yet he was not well versed in democratic political theory at all. Another problem is that his grandson lacks the experience Rouhani has. In his forties or fifties, he has not held a presidential or ministerial office. Instead, he managed his grandfather’s shrine, the largest in Tehran, and related projects. Though he has been part of the system, he has not been involved in significant political or executive roles. He still needs that experience. Also, I am not totally sure that Americans and Israelis would like him either. They might prefer the total abolition of the guardianship of the jurist system (velayat-e faqih). I think this is Netanyahu’s preference, and he probably does not trust Rouhani or Hassan Khomeini.
So, you do not expect that the Revolutionary Guard would resist if the framework is kept and there is a new Ayatollah; they would comply.
Yes. But when it comes to Pahlavi, I think they would fight until the end, most of the revolutionaries. While it is possible he has some supporters there, they would not be in the core community; they would be in the very low ranks of the Revolutionary Guards, certainly not at the top. Furthermore, many factions of the Revolutionary Guard would fight against Pahlavi for various reasons. They are ideologically more aligned with a republic, though mostly an Islamic one. Some of their families might not even be fanatically religious, but they are accustomed to the system of the Islamic Republic. These people are used to a system with two fundamental criteria: that it is Islamic and that it is a Republic. The “Islamic” aspect is just as important to them as the “Republic” aspect. The regime’s official narrative for the last half century has been that the Pahlavi kings were corrupt. They use the term Taghut to refer to the monarchy. Taghut (الطَّاغُوت) in the Qur’an refers to any person, power, idol, or entity that rebels against Allah, exceeds limits, and is worshipped, followed, or obeyed in disobedience to God. The idea of monarchy is an insult in modern Iran among Islamist revolutionaries.
For Iran to turn to Pahlavi and secularize overnight, would that be like the Pope suddenly declaring: “As of tomorrow, I am an atheist”? Would it be a shock of that magnitude?
Not really. A Pope turning against his faith would be like a reformist movement within the existing structure. Pahlavi’s return is different. It is not a reform; it is like removing the Pope’s head entirely and replacing it with something new. The change would be that drastic. This matters because it touches the international legitimacy the Islamic Republic has cultivated among Muslims.
This legitimacy extends even to non-Shias. To be honest, many Sunni Muslims, while seeing the Shia regime as a rival, would still consider it preferable to a state aligned with Jewish or Christian interests. You can see this sentiment even in Turkey, where many people, especially those who vote for Erdoğan, would be happier if Iran remained an Islamic Republic rather than becoming a secular state, especially a monarchy.
So it is a delicate balance. The challenge, of course, is that those who want a more secular, egalitarian society in which religion is removed from public life, including secular republicans, who are not a small minority in Iranian society, would be disappointed with this kind of transition. There is also the risk that a new leader would not implement the necessary reforms after a couple of years, and I think this is also the concern of the U.S. establishment, since there is no legal mechanism to bind them to do so. In any case, the key issue this time, especially in a post-conflict scenario, involves the views of the Iranian people, the opposition, and the international community, specifically the United States and Israel. The hope with the more conservative option, which does not go for regime change, would be that the new leader would, over time, normalize relations with both Israel and the United States, and with the EU. This would mean operating in a pro-Western direction, which is not easy considering the weight of hardliners within the system.
If this normalization happens, Iran would not have to become completely adversarial toward Russia and China. After all, even Israel, Turkey, and the EU maintain relations with Russia and China; these are not countries one can simply neglect. This leads to another point. One of the reasons a figure like Trump would want a change is to prevent China from getting discounted Iranian oil. The current situation is that U.S. sanctions allow China to buy Iranian oil at a lower price, and he would want to stop that. Similarly, the EU wants Iran to stop selling drones and missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine.
The optimistic view would be that, with the right internal reforms, all of this could be achieved. In any future scenario, and even if regime change happens, Iran needs to maintain its autonomy and independence, perhaps adopting a foreign policy similar to Turkey’s, playing a balancing act between major powers. Ultimately, it is a complex region requiring a complex geopolitical game.
Would you move back to Iran now, after many years of emigration?
I left Iran in 2008 to begin my PhD in Italy. My academic journey started at Tehran University in 1998, where I earned my bachelor’s degree in physics, graduating in 2003. My undergraduate years, and most of my MA years, coincided with the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005), which was known as the reform era. I was exposed to what felt like a golden, or at least more open, atmosphere of reform at that time in the post-revolutionary era.
After my physics degree, in 2003 I pursued a master’s in the philosophy of science at Sharif University of Technology, a field I truly love. My education was in the analytic philosophy tradition, so we studied thinkers like Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, as well as movements like logical positivism. The curriculum covered epistemology, the philosophy of mind, logic, and the philosophy of religion. We also touched on some Islamic philosophy and the history of Western philosophy in general, including Kant and Locke. It was only a two-and-a-half-year program, but those were incredibly fruitful years for me.
That period, which extended into the early years of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, still carried the momentum of reform. Ahmadinejad came to power in 2004 or 2005 with the support of hardliners, including Mojtaba Khamenei, Ghalibaf, and of course Ali Khamenei, but the atmosphere during my master’s degree still felt relatively free. It was during this time that Iran’s nuclear program started to become a major issue. I vividly remember being a master’s student when negotiations began in the late Khatami era and inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency started coming to see what was really going on. Later Ahmadinejad banned them, and that was the very beginning of the long and, frankly, now boring Iran nuclear crisis, a matter that I hope gets resolved once and for all after this war, because it has brought no economic benefit to the Iranian people, only disaster and war. The public was never involved in it; it was a secret, security-driven project.
In 2008, I left Iran to start my PhD. At the time, I thought I might return after finishing my degree if the situation improved, but it only got worse and worse. During my PhD, I met my wife, who is Turkish, and we got married. I became more involved with Turkish culture through my relationship with her and with her, now our, family, not because of my PhD topic itself, which was not related to Turkey. My doctoral dissertation, which I completed in Italy at Luiss Guido Carli University, was about “Political liberalism for Muslim-majority societies,” a topic still very much related to the work I do now, and to the transition to democracy from the velayat-e faqih system.
Through my wife, I became more connected to my own Turkish side, as my father’s family is Azeri. Azeri Turks speak a Turkic language very close to the Turkish spoken in Turkey. After I moved to Turkey in 2011–2012, I was able to improve my reading and writing skills in the language. This highlights a significant problem in Iran: we were not taught our native language in school. This is a central issue for the movement for the rights of Turks in Iran. We could speak it freely, even at school, some teachers would speak it, but our ability to write it was very limited. This personal experience is why one of my fields of expertise is ethnic minorities and multiculturalism, and the theories of the Canadian philosopher Will Kymlicka as applied to Iran.
I have since become a Turkish citizen. Therefore, if I were to decide to go back to Iran to live, it would have to be a family decision. During the Rouhani era and after the 2015 JCPOA, I remember some relatives and academic friends inside Iran suggesting that it was a good time to return. They would say, “It’s time you come back. There’s a nuclear deal now, you can return to your country and work as an academic.” However, my wife and I were hesitant. I felt that the situation was not truly normalized and that my writings could still get me into trouble. Unfortunately, my hesitation proved justified, because as we have seen, the hardliners in Iran only gained more power, and the nuclear deal eventually fell apart when Trump exited the JCPOA in 2018, under pressure from Netanyahu and Israel.
My parents are currently in Tehran, and the city is unfortunately under bombardment. While they claim they are not targeting civilians, there is never any guarantee. You never know whether a member of the Revolutionary Guard is living in the flat next to you. If that building is targeted, who knows what could happen? It is incredibly dangerous. The psychological toll on people is immense. Friends in Iran have told me about the constant fear, even when they can barely get an internet connection to communicate. I have been able to speak with my parents directly only once since the war started, and that was through an expensive international phone call, not over the internet, which is almost completely cut. People inside Iran with Iranian phone numbers might use an internal Iranian messaging app to send updates to each other, but I do not have it, so communication is sporadic at best.
We also hope the Israelis do not destroy Iran’s essential and historical infrastructure. To be honest, some of the bombing targets seem totally unreasonable. For example, hitting the presidential palace or the security council building, most of which are empty and historically valuable buildings. Does Iran not need a presidential palace in a democratic future? Are future leaders supposed to work in a schoolyard? It is destructive, and it will cost a fortune to rebuild. It reminds me of when Israel bombed Assad’s highly decorated palace or the defence ministry building even after he had fled to Russia. I do not know whether targeting those buildings was reasonable then, and it is the same now. Also, some big and important sports halls have been bombed in Iran, apparently on the claim that IRGC forces were sheltered there. Of course, some of the Israeli attacks on Gaza’s infrastructure, and the killing of many civilians there, have been totally unjustified according to international law. I truly hope they stop this war soon.
In my view, a future democratic Iran, even after the guardianship of the jurist is gone, should not be completely defenceless. It does not mean Iran cannot have a navy or some kind of missile program for defence. The goal should not be to annihilate Iran’s military capabilities entirely, leaving it with nothing but handguns. That is not a reasonable objective for a country like Iran. The Americans and Israelis know that the real solution is political change. Missile technology is just knowledge; you can always build it later.
Ultimately, we hope for a transformation similar to what Germany and Japan experienced after the war, but without the same level of utter destruction, like the bombing of Dresden or the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. We want a regime that is more democratic, more pro-Western, and aligned with its allies such as the EU. This is what the Iranian people want as well. But for that to happen, as I said before, the existing establishment also needs to see a way forward. You cannot simply eliminate everyone from the previous regime. Also, the role of the Iranian opposition, both inside Iran and in the diaspora, is totally important here.
