Can Ayatollah Khamenei and Iran’s theocratic politics survive this war?

Just hours after the United States bombed three nuclear sites on Sunday, President Masoud Pezeshkian joined thousands of anti-U.S. protesters in Tehran’s Enghelab Square. Enghelab means “revolution” in Porsey. The angry crowd waved placards, vowed that they were “prepared for a large-scale battle” and called for “revenge, revenge”. A poster describes President Donald Trump as a roaring vampire. The Iranian regime has long been able to mobilize its foundations for propaganda purposes and social media images. But the banner with the taller banner made simple and proud statements after ten days of attacks by the U.S. and Israeli forces. One declared, “Iran is our home.” “Its soil is our honor. Its flag is our shroud.”

Later Monday, President Trump said in The Society of Truth that Iran and Israel “completely agree” to a “complete and complete ceasefire.” But the outcome of this war may be more shaped than Iran’s culture and politics than its rival’s military strength. Iran’s controversial nuclear program is only part of the bigger problem. Can the United States and Israel coexist with the Islamic Republic after forty-six years of hatred? Will the supreme leaders, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Islamic theocratic politics survive politically after military attacks?

Trump has called for an end to hostilities and negotiated with Tehran after unprecedented deployment US stealth aircraft and sabotage bombs On the weekend. “Iran, the bully in the Middle East, must achieve peace,” he said in a televised speech. In a subsequent briefing at the Pentagon, his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that the Midnight Hammer Operation, which lasted only twenty-five minutes, “is not about the change of the regime.” But by Sunday afternoon, Trump’s publication on “Truth Social” “politically using the term “regime change” is not politically correct, but if the current Iranian regime cannot make Iran excellent again, why is there no regime change?

Israel is more clear. Its defense minister, Katz, said Khamenei was a “modern Hitler” and “cannot continue to exist.” On Monday, Israel attacked two of the biggest symbols of Iran’s crackdown: the entrance to the infamous Evan prison, where thousands of dissidents were held, and the headquarters of the revolutionary Guard’s paramilitary wing is the revolutionary Guard’s paramilitary wing, which is used to strike the opposition. It also hit other internal security sites. The IDF said in a statement that the facilities were responsible for “domestic defense, suppressing threats and maintaining regime stability.”

Trump’s ceasefire announcement follows Iran’s expected response to a U.S. strike: short- and medium-range missile barrage at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military device in the region. The highest decision-making body of the Supreme National Security Council, including political and military leaders, said in a statement that it launched the same number of missiles as the United States used over the weekend. In 2020, the reaction reflected Iran’s revenge after the United States killed Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard Quds unit. It launched missiles at the U.S. military at the Ain Al-Asad base in Iraq. Since then, hostilities have been reduced. It is reported that this time, Tehran issued a warning in advance. Several U.S. fighter jets and ships have been moved last week.

I doubt millions of Iranians won’t miss the accidental leader Khamenei, who only works in top jobs after someone else’s accidental death. When he became president in 1981, he was an intermediate pastor. The terrorist attack killed his ex. Six years later, I had breakfast with him, in the gorgeous room in Waldorf-Astoria, New York. It was his only trip to the West, when he spoke at the opening ceremony of the United Nations General Assembly. In our meetings, he lacks charm, secular and intellectual depth. He murmured to himself as members of his revolutionary guard team bent over to cut breakfast meat. (He lost his right arm in 1981 because the bomb hidden in the recorder fell while he was talking at a mosque in Tehran. His hands were hanging down beside him. Khamenei had a limited independent political foundation, so he attacked the Iranian army. Since then, they have empowered each other.

The fate of the Islamic Republic does not necessarily depend on the fate of its rule over Ayatollah. Ellie Geranmayeh, senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told me: “A leader may not be able to survive this war, and that’s because he was actually brought to the scene through assassination, or the war ended with such a catastrophic result of the catastrophic result he would be forced to step down.” Khamenei now faces only bad choices. However, he will avoid unconditional surrender at all costs. Geranmayeh said he might “may have rather been knocked down as a martyr than landed historically as an Iranian leader who succumbed to his head with a gun.”

Most Iranians are Shiites. The prophet Muhammad emerged in the seventh century in a political dispute with the mainstream Sunnis. Shiism preaches that fighting for justice is better than living unjustly. Early Shia leader Imam Hussein fought Sunnis in the Umayyad Dynasty, although he had only a few dozen warriors and knew they were far outnumbered and doomed to die. The difficulty remains at the heart of the devout Shia. I’ve been traveling in Iran for decades and I think it’s one of the most secular countries in the Middle East. Yet, faith and its traditions still define the culture and way of thinking of many people. Iranians are also religious and minorities in the wider world, which raises doubts about the existence of foreign conquests.

“Shiites are a culture of resistance,” said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of the Iranian parliament. She was elected 32 in 2000 and is the youngest female congresswoman in revolutionary history. She was banned from running for a second time in 2004 after accusing politically aggressors and manipulating elected regimes. A year later, she left Tehran and now lives in Massachusetts. She told me that the Iranians were “basically against authoritarianism and they didn’t like what was going on in the country.” But Haghighatjoo didn’t suddenly collapse. She said Khamenei could be easily replaced. Article 111 of the Iranian Constitution is simulated by French and Belgian laws, calling for the creation of the president, the attorney general and the priest of the Guardian committee to assume the responsibility of the leader to be incapacitated or dismissed. Then, the eighty-eight expert conference, which is democratically elected every eight years, will select a new expert.

Nearly half a century later, the Islamic Republic has been deeply rooted and fiercely competed among its enforcement, legislation, justice, military and intelligence services. But despite their arguments, they all longed to survive, and John Limbert was one of the fifty-two diplomats were taken hostage after the U.S. embassy was arrested in 1979. “They love power. They retained power. They disengaged others from power.” “For better or worse, they built a resilient system. There was a cadre, a men’s club,” which included the first generation of revolutionaries or assistants. Linbert noted that for most of the past twenty-five years, Iran has been led by dictators – “some are bad, some are scary. Some are crowned, some are wearing headscarves, some are wearing military uniforms.” And, if a change in the regime does happen, he warned: “Why should we think this is better? People assumed in 1979. ‘Let’s get rid of Shah, everything will be better.” Transparent