Iran’s regime may have one chance to save itself

Iran’s regime is on the ropes. The recent wave of protests, the government’s bloody crackdown, and the US threat of direct intervention all mark a profound turning point in its modern history.

The Islamic Republic’s current trajectory is unsustainable — without a course correction, a gradual internal disintegration of the economy and the increasing reliance on force to suppress dissent will doom the government to a painful death, albeit a slow one.

For many, this has increased the possibility of regime change. At least some protesters seem to be supportive of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the deposed Shah of Iran, who has openly auditioned for a leading role if the current government falls.

But the events of the last two weeks also illustrate the obstacles to such a transformation: an impassioned but disorganized opposition, a brutal state willing to kill to maintain its position, a unified elite who will band together to save their regime rather than see it overthrown, and an international community hamstrung by a lack of options and resources. If change comes to Iran, it will likely come from within the system, as unsavory a prospect as that might seem.

History is replete with nondemocratic governments course-correcting to save themselves from destruction. Iran’s leadership are well aware of their predicament, and there is likely a quiet consensus that the country must change its domestic and foreign policy to avoid a catastrophic slide into chaos and slow collapse.

There is one thing standing in their way: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Now 86 years old, Khamenei has held his post for more than three decades. It has not been a static role; rather, Khamenei has used his post to shape the nezam, or “system” as the Islamic Republic’s regime is generally known, and his position within it.

A mid-ranking cleric and president during Iran’s bloody war with Iraq, Khamenei was selected by the republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to be his successor as supreme leader in 1989. Khamenei was chosen for his revolutionary zeal, rather than his seniority or managerial acumen.

Initially, Khamenei was supreme leader but not supreme. He had to share power with other political heavyweights, most notably Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who served as president throughout much of the 1990s.

Rather than work within the existing system, Khamenei built a parallel one. He used the bayt-e rahbari, or Office of the Supreme Leader, to distribute patronage and largesse through a network of “foundations” that functioned as a shadow economy only his loyal supporters could access. With a shadow economy came a shadow army: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which grew from the praetorian guard of the revolution into a military-industrial complex sprawling across much of Iran’s economy. The IRGC is not just Iran’s most powerful military outfit — smaller, but better paid and equipped than the national army, or Artesh — but a conglomerate covering media, energy, construction, arms, and other industries, all closely linked to Khamenei’s office and person.

This is why Khamenei exercises such authority over the regime. It is not just because he is nominally supreme and commander-in-chief of the military, but because the country’s richest and most powerful institutions and actors are linked to him through decades of association.

In Venezuela, leader Nicolás Maduro’s removal after a US raid left room for the vice president to take over the government and quickly adjust policy to quell an immediate outside threat to the regime’s rule. But so long as Khamenei is alive, his position atop the regime is unlikely to be challenged, as he is glue holding the nezam together. A successful internal effort to sideline or remove him is hard to contemplate, even as the need for one has become self-evident.

The Islamic Republic has reached a dead end. Already suffering from declining legitimacy, the regime has now suppressed a popular revolt with breathtaking violence. It cannot rule by force alone. Many of the elite know this and have been vocally expressing the need for reform. Yet they always do so while paying obeisance to Khamenei, who remains the key decisionmaker.

Many of those decisions look stubborn, even irrational. Khamenei won’t condone direct talks with the US, nor will he permit Iran to back away from demanding the right to enrich uranium, despite the fact that a nuclear deal would bring desperately needed sanctions relief. He continues to decree support for Iran’s regional proxies, including Hezbollah, which Iran supplied with some $1 billion last year, despite the fact that these groups have become liabilities that drain the country of badly needed cash. Khamenei shields corrupt figures within the network of the bayt and stymies efforts to apply reform to the Islamic Republic’s ramshackle civilian government.

A rigid hardliner, he has dragged his feet on relaxing mandatory hijab for women, a religious headcovering requirement enforced by state morality police, something many of the regime’s elite acknowledge is necessary given how much it has become a rallying point for anti-government protests. And he is especially averse to opening Iran’s political system to more competition and democratic accountability, directing the cleric-dominated Guardian Council to disqualify politicians he deems too liberal. He has been especially averse to allowing formerly popular figures linked to the 2009 Green Revolution to be rehabilitated, seeing them as dangerous rivals.

Iran’s transformation into a liberal, democratic nation is likely the desire of most Iranians. It is unlikely to happen under the Islamic Republic.

But a course-correction that improves living conditions and rationalizes (to some extent) Iran’s foreign policy is not impossible, and there is ample historical evidence of authoritarian systems taking that route to save themselves from disintegration. Khamenei’s advanced age makes it much likelier that Iran will have a chance to reorganize itself sooner rather than later once he departs the scene, provided the transition is relatively smooth.

China under Deng Xiaoping embraced market reforms and pursued aggressive economic modernization following the chaos of the 1960s and early 1970s, with leader Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 providing a key opening for long-deferred changes. South Korea pursued economic modernization and democratization in the 1980s following the one-man rule of Park Chung-hee. In the Middle East, Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf became much more conscious of delivering real economic benefits to the people following the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, which toppled longtime authoritarian governments in multiple countries while raising fears of similar protests and uprisings elsewhere.

There is no guarantee that Iran’s rulers opt for such a strategy. There is ample scope for Iran to fall deeper into crisis, as its elite — many of whom share the obstinate hardliner views of the supreme leader — double down on more repression and ultimately more violence against any sources of dissent.

But should Iran’s leaders decide to rescue their country from the spiral of chaos they have inflicted upon it, an opening may appear soon, once Khamenei exits the stage.

Correction, January 18, 4:50 pm ET: A previous version of this story misidentified the Iranian president throughout much of the 1990s. It is Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.