The Politics of Crisis and Crisis in Politics — English edition

Politics of Crisis and Crisis in Politics

Iran after the 2025-2026 Wars, the Succession Shock, and Competing Pathways of Political Transition

Peyman Bakhshayesh, MD, PhD, MBA

Consultant Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgeon

Originally written in July 2026; editorially revised on 13 October 2026. The scenarios below retain the original analytical horizon and should not be read as a report of a completed transition.

Political analysis with references | July 2026

Author's methodological note

This paper develops an analytical argument from the author's original Persian essay. It is not written as a judicial finding or a definitive historical record. Because the events discussed are recent, politically contested, and partly affected by wartime information restrictions, the paper distinguishes between verified public reporting, documented human rights claims, contested casualty estimates, and the author's interpretive hypotheses. The central purpose is to examine possible transition pathways, not to treat every claim circulating in political debate as established fact.

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between politics of crisis and crisis in politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran after the 2025-2026 military escalations, the January 2026 mass killings, and the reported death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. It argues that the Islamic Republic has historically governed through manufactured or instrumentalized crises, but the present moment is analytically different because crisis has moved from being a technique of rule to becoming a crisis of the ruling formula itself. The article uses narrative and scenario analysis, drawing on the literature on authoritarian resilience, elite bargaining, democratic transition, and transitional justice. It evaluates the possibility that a pragmatic faction associated with figures such as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Abbas Araqchi, and President Masoud Pezeshkian could attempt a negotiated transformation of the post-Khamenei order. This possibility is contrasted with other scenarios: coercive continuity, externalized bargaining without domestic liberalization, revolutionary collapse, and state fragmentation. The paper treats the proposed 'Ghalibaf scenario' neither as an endorsement nor as a prediction, but as a testable political hypothesis. It concludes that any internal transition led by former regime elites would require immediate, observable, and legally binding measures: a general amnesty for political opponents and the diaspora, freedom of the press, legalization of political parties, abolition of compulsory hijab, separation of religion from state coercion, a timetable for constitutional change, and credible mechanisms of transitional justice. Without these steps, crisis politics is likely to reproduce authoritarian continuity under a new managerial face.

Keywords: Iran; crisis politics; authoritarian resilience; democratic transition; Ghalibaf; velayat-e faqih; secular democracy; transitional justice; US-Iran negotiations

1. Introduction

Political systems often reveal their deepest structure not during normal administration but during crisis. In ordinary times, constitutions, offices, elections, courts, ministries, slogans, and diplomatic rituals create the appearance of continuity. During war, succession shock, mass protest, economic collapse, and elite fragmentation, the difference between formal authority and real power becomes visible. The Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly survived by converting crisis into a method of government. Yet the present period raises a different question: what happens when the regime can no longer simply govern through crisis because the regime itself has become the site of crisis?

The title of this article, politics of crisis and crisis in politics, captures this reversal. Politics of crisis refers to the use of emergency, foreign threat, ideological mobilization, security panic, and controlled scarcity as instruments of rule. Crisis in politics refers to a deeper condition in which the symbolic, institutional, coercive, and elite foundations of a system cease to work together. In the Islamic Republic, these foundations have historically included the doctrine of velayat-e faqih, the coercive capacity of the Revolutionary Guard and associated security institutions, ideological narratives of resistance, managed electoral institutions, and a regional posture built around armed non-state allies. The crisis sequence of 2025-2026 has placed all of these pillars under simultaneous strain.

The argument developed here begins from the author's original political observation: the Islamic Republic appears to have entered an unprecedented condition in which the first layer of leadership has been removed or severely damaged, the office of Supreme Leader has lost part of its embodied authority, and international actors are no longer dealing only with the traditional clerical center of power. Public reporting by the House of Commons Library states that Israel and the United States began strikes on Iran on 28 February 2026, that a conditional ceasefire was declared on 8 April, and that the conflict followed earlier joint strikes in 2025 that undermined parts of Iran's defence and nuclear programme (Loft, 2026). Associated Press reported in July 2026 that mourning ceremonies were being held for Ali Khamenei after he was killed in the opening phase of the war, while public reports also described uncertainty around Mojtaba Khamenei's condition and visibility (Karimi & Gambrell, 2026; Wintour, 2026). These claims are politically consequential because the Islamic Republic is not simply a presidential or parliamentary system; its constitutional identity is tied to the person and office of the faqih.

The second point of departure is the January 2026 repression. Human Rights Watch described countrywide mass killings after protests escalated on 8 January 2026 and called for urgent international attention (Human Rights Watch, 2026). Amnesty International emphasized that an internet shutdown made verification difficult but that available videos and eyewitness accounts indicated mass unlawful killings at unprecedented scale (Amnesty International, 2026). The UK Home Office country bulletin summarized open-source reporting and noted large discrepancies in casualty estimates, including an Iranian official figure of at least 5,000 verified deaths reported by Reuters and human rights claims of much higher numbers (Home Office, 2026). Iran International reported documents suggesting more than 36,500 deaths, while also acknowledging that independent verification remained impossible under communication restrictions and security pressure (Iran International, 2026). A scientific analysis cannot simply repeat the highest estimate as fact; it must instead register the evidence hierarchy and note that the repression, at minimum, severely intensified the regime's legitimacy crisis.

The third point is diplomatic. Reuters has described Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of Iran's parliament and former Revolutionary Guard commander, as increasingly central to Tehran during the war and as a key figure in truce negotiations, alongside Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi (Hafezi et al., 2026). Reuters later reported that Ghalibaf had been reelected as parliament speaker while serving as Iran's top negotiator in talks with the United States (Reuters, 2026). Euronews reported that US Vice President JD Vance said direct talks with senior Iranian officials in Switzerland had created a good foundation for a possible final deal to end the war (Euronews, 2026). These reports do not prove that the United States has chosen Ghalibaf as a transitional leader, nor do they prove that a secret project of controlled regime change exists. They do, however, justify the analytical question: is Washington treating elements of the Islamic Republic's pragmatic-security elite as possible interlocutors for a new political settlement?

This article examines that question through political science rather than prophecy. It asks whether figures such as Ghalibaf, Araqchi, and Pezeshkian could become representatives of a post-velayat managerial order; whether such an order could plausibly move toward secular democracy; and what minimum tests would distinguish genuine transition from authoritarian recycling. The paper takes seriously the author's claim that the Islamic Republic is buying time. It may be buying time merely to regroup, access resources, and reproduce the old structure without the old leader. Alternatively, it may be buying time because factions inside the state understand that the nuclear path, the regional proxy path, and the total repression path have become strategically exhausted. Political science cannot know which intention is real. It can, however, specify observable indicators.

The central claim is conditional. A transition led by former regime insiders is theoretically possible, because many democratic transitions have involved elements of the old regime negotiating their own exit, survival, or transformation. Such transitions can involve morally difficult compromises and institutional fragility; their prospects depend on the balance of power and the safeguards negotiated. They succeed only when old-regime elites accept constraints on their own power, when coercive organizations are brought under accountable authority, when opposition forces can organize openly, and when society receives credible guarantees that reform is not merely a pause before renewed repression (O'Donnell & Schmitter, 1986; Linz & Stepan, 1996; Przeworski, 1991). In Iran, the bar would be exceptionally high because the security elite has been deeply implicated in repression, corruption, and ideological governance. Ghalibaf's own record, including allegations and admissions reported by the Center for Human Rights in Iran regarding the suppression of student protests, creates a severe legitimacy problem for any scenario in which he is presented as a national transitional figure (Center for Human Rights in Iran, 2013).

The article therefore avoids two simplifications. The first simplification is revolutionary certainty: the assumption that the system must collapse immediately because it has lost legitimacy. Many illegitimate regimes survive for long periods when they retain coercion, elite coordination, and external bargaining capacity. The second simplification is pragmatic naivety: the assumption that any negotiation with a regime faction can become democratization. Authoritarian systems often use negotiation to divide opponents, demobilize society, secure resources, and rebuild coercive capacity. The analytical task is to distinguish between concession as transition and concession as survival.

2. Methodology and Evidence Status

This paper uses narrative analysis and scenario analysis. Narrative analysis is appropriate because the subject is not a completed transition but an unfolding crisis in which actors compete to define what is happening. The regime may frame events as foreign aggression and national resistance. The opposition may frame them as the final phase of liberation. External actors may frame them as nuclear crisis management, counter-proliferation, regional security, humanitarian concern, or strategic bargaining. Each narrative has political consequences. Scenario analysis is appropriate because the future is indeterminate; the aim is to identify plausible pathways and indicators rather than predict a single outcome.

The article draws on four categories of evidence. The first category consists of public institutional and journalistic sources about recent events, including the House of Commons Library, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Reuters, Associated Press, Euronews, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the UK Home Office, and Iran International. The second category consists of established academic literature on authoritarian rule, regime breakdown, elite splits, democratic transition, and transitional justice. The third category consists of the author's political interpretation, developed from the perspective of an Iranian with lived experience of political Islam and from a medical-ethical concern with preventing mass casualties. The fourth category consists of contested political claims that circulate among activists, diaspora communities, and wartime media environments. These claims are not ignored, because they shape political behavior, but they are not treated as proven unless corroborated.

This distinction matters most for four sensitive issues: casualty counts, the health and political capacity of Mojtaba Khamenei, the existence or non-existence of hidden US arrangements with Iranian figures, and the degree of Israeli or American commitment to regime change. Casualty counts remain contested because of internet shutdowns, restricted access, intimidation of families, and politicized information. Mojtaba Khamenei's status has been described in public reporting as uncertain, with some reports saying he was seriously wounded and absent from key public rituals, but the regime's internal functioning cannot be inferred with certainty from absence alone (Karimi & Gambrell, 2026; Wintour, 2026). The hypothesis that Ghalibaf and Araqchi were prepared in advance by the United States is treated as a hypothesis, not as evidence. Finally, Western and Israeli statements may combine public messaging, coercive diplomacy, domestic politics, and strategic deception; therefore, they should not be read literally without caution.

The following table summarizes how major claims are handled in this paper.

3. Conceptual Framework: Politics of Crisis and Crisis in Politics

3.1 Crisis as a technique of rule

Authoritarian regimes do not merely suffer crises; they often produce, curate, and exploit them. A crisis can justify emergency law, suppress pluralism, demand unity, discredit dissent as treason, redirect economic blame outward, and transform political opposition into a security threat. The Islamic Republic has repeatedly used this method. The language of foreign conspiracy, sacred defence, resistance, martyrdom, cultural invasion, and national security has allowed the state to treat normal social demands as existential threats. Compulsory veiling, censorship, ideological education, policing of universities, suppression of labor activism, and repression of ethnic or religious minorities have all been defended through a crisis grammar.

Political theorists have long observed that emergency can become a permanent structure rather than a temporary exception. In authoritarian systems, the emergency is not only a legal status; it is a mode of perception. Citizens are asked to live as if the state is always at war, as if criticism always assists the enemy, and as if personal freedoms must be suspended until some future victory. This produces a moral inversion: the state claims unlimited rights in the name of survival, while citizens' rights become conditional on loyalty. Crisis becomes government.

Yet crisis politics has limits. It depends on the state's ability to maintain narrative control, distribute coercion selectively, and convince enough people that the danger is external rather than internal. When the state uses massive violence against its own population, the crisis narrative can reverse. Citizens may conclude that the regime itself is the source of insecurity. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International's accounts of the January 2026 repression are politically significant not only because of the scale of violence but because such violence can destroy the state's residual claim to guardianship (Amnesty International, 2026; Human Rights Watch, 2026). A state that claims to protect the nation but treats the nation as an enemy can lose the moral core of sovereignty.

3.2 From regime resilience to regime exhaustion

The literature on authoritarian resilience warns against assuming that illegitimacy equals imminent collapse. Authoritarian systems survive through coercion, patronage, party structures, ideology, elite coordination, and international alliances (Geddes et al., 2018; Levitsky & Way, 2010; Svolik, 2012). They may hold elections without democratizing, allow limited dissent without tolerating real competition, and negotiate with external powers without liberalizing internally. The Islamic Republic has historically combined clerical authority, revolutionary ideology, elected institutions, security penetration, oil revenue, and regional networks. This hybrid structure allowed it to adapt after war, sanctions, protests, leadership deaths, and factional conflict.

However, resilience is not infinite. A regime becomes exhausted when its mechanisms of adaptation begin to contradict one another. If it represses too little, protest expands; if it represses too much, legitimacy collapses. If it negotiates with the West, ideological loyalists accuse it of betrayal; if it refuses negotiation, economic and military pressure intensifies. If it relies on the Revolutionary Guard, the clerical character of the state is diluted; if it relies on clerics, it may lack operational capacity. If it pursues nuclear threshold status, it invites external attack; if it abandons that path, it loses a central deterrent. The present Iranian crisis is analytically important because several such contradictions appear to be active at once.

3.3 Elite splits and transition from within

Democratic transitions often begin when ruling elites divide over how to respond to crisis. O'Donnell and Schmitter's classic distinction between hard-liners and soft-liners remains useful, even if every case differs (O'Donnell & Schmitter, 1986). Hard-liners believe survival requires repression and ideological closure. Soft-liners or pragmatists may still be authoritarian, but they recognize that controlled liberalization or negotiation may preserve their interests better than maximal confrontation. Transitions from authoritarian rule frequently involve bargaining between regime soft-liners and opposition moderates. Such bargains can open political space, but they can also produce pacted transitions that leave old coercive structures intact (Karl, 1990; Przeworski, 1991).

In Iran, the equivalent split is not simply reformist versus conservative. After decades of managed elections and repression, the old reformist project has lost much of its credibility. The more relevant distinction may be between ideological maximalists and security-pragmatists. Ideological maximalists are committed to revenge, resistance, the symbolism of velayat-e faqih, compulsory Islamization, hostility to Israel and the United States, and the preservation of revolutionary identity. Security-pragmatists may share much of the regime's history and coercive background but calculate that survival now requires a different external posture, economic reopening, reduced ideological policing, and limited social concessions. Ghalibaf, if interpreted as a political type rather than merely a person, represents this ambiguous category: hardline in record and rhetoric, pragmatic in managerial self-presentation.

3.4 The transition dilemma: peace versus justice

A recurring ethical problem in transitions is the tension between justice and harm reduction. A rights-based approach demands accountability for perpetrators, recognition of victims, and principled rejection of impunity. A consequentialist approach may prioritize ending violence, preventing civil war, reopening the economy, and creating conditions under which future justice becomes possible. Transitional justice scholarship rejects the idea that societies must choose simply between revenge and forgetting. Truth commissions, conditional amnesties, vetting, reparations, institutional reform, and criminal prosecutions for the most serious crimes can be combined in different ways (Hayner, 2011; Sikkink, 2011; Teitel, 2000).

This dilemma is central to the Ghalibaf question. If a figure deeply associated with the security state were to issue an amnesty, open the press, legalize parties, end compulsory hijab, and permit the diaspora to return, should society accept the opening as a step toward transition? Or would acceptance legitimize a perpetrator and betray victims? The answer cannot be purely abstract. Political morality must consider both justice and consequences. But minimum conditions are essential: any amnesty must protect citizens from the state, not protect state perpetrators from citizens; any transition must be time-limited, legally constrained, and supervised by institutions that can later investigate abuses.

4. Iran's 2025-2026 Crisis Sequence

4.1 The military shock: from the 2025 twelve-day strikes to the 2026 war

According to the House of Commons Library briefing, Israeli military strikes in 2024 and joint strikes with the United States over twelve days in 2025 undermined Iran's defences and nuclear programme (Loft, 2026). The same briefing states that on 28 February 2026 the United States and Israel began a new series of strikes against Iran, claiming that their aims were to induce regime change and target Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programme. Iran responded with counter-strikes against Israel, US military bases, and military and civilian locations in Arab states; a conditional ceasefire was declared on 8 April and talks followed (Loft, 2026).

For Iran's domestic politics, the significance of these events goes beyond military damage. In the author's interpretation, the Islamic Republic's deterrence model rested on four assumptions: that its nuclear threshold capability would deter attack; that regional allies would impose costs on adversaries; that missile capacity would create strategic depth; and that domestic repression would prevent internal uprising during external conflict. The 2025-2026 sequence challenged all four. The IAEA had already warned in June 2025 about Iran's rapid accumulation of highly enriched uranium, including more than 400 kg of highly enriched uranium, and stated that Iran's cooperation had been insufficient for assurance that the program was exclusively peaceful (International Atomic Energy Agency, 2025a). At the same time, Director General Grossi emphasized that a diplomatic solution backed by verification remained within reach and could prevent a nuclear crisis (International Atomic Energy Agency, 2025b). The military conflict therefore occurred in a context where the nuclear issue, regional security, and regime survival were intertwined.

The author's phrase that the Islamic Republic lost the practical possibility of becoming North Korea should be understood strategically rather than literally. North Korea represents a model in which nuclear weapons, extreme isolation, and dynastic militarized rule create a durable deterrent against external attack. Iran appears to have pursued a threshold version of this model without fully crossing into declared nuclear status. If its enrichment infrastructure, command hierarchy, and deterrent credibility were damaged before a weaponized shield was achieved, then the regime would be trapped between provocation and vulnerability. This is the strategic logic behind the current bargaining moment.

4.2 January 2026 and the collapse of moral legitimacy

The January 2026 mass killings, even when described cautiously, represent a decisive political rupture. Human Rights Watch reported mass killings after nationwide protests escalated on 8 January and urged a special UN Human Rights Council response (Human Rights Watch, 2026). Amnesty International reported that internet shutdowns prevented communication and verification, while available evidence revealed mass unlawful killings and overwhelmed medical facilities after the 8-9 January repression (Amnesty International, 2026). The UK Home Office country bulletin collected multiple sources and noted both the difficulty of verification and the existence of sharply differing casualty figures, including official or semi-official lower figures and human rights or media estimates in the thousands or tens of thousands (Home Office, 2026).

For political analysis, the exact number matters morally and legally, but the structural implication is already clear: the state crossed a threshold of violence that transformed crisis management into mass atrocity politics. Such events affect regimes in contradictory ways. In the short term, mass killing can demobilize protest through fear. In the medium term, it can radicalize society, deepen diaspora mobilization, split elites, and make compromise with the regime appear morally impossible. It also creates a future justice problem. Any transition that ignores the victims of January 2026 would be born with a legitimacy deficit.

The author's medical background matters here. A trauma surgeon understands violence not as abstract strategy but as bodies, bleeding, disability, families, morgues, and long-term psychological injury. Political analysis often speaks of casualties as numbers, but societies remember violence through personal grief. The January killings therefore cannot be treated merely as a variable in regime stability. They are also the central ethical fact around which any future settlement must organize truth, reparations, and accountability.

4.3 The succession shock and the weakening of velayat-e faqih

The Islamic Republic's constitution is built around the Supreme Leader as the ultimate source of political arbitration. Presidents, parliaments, ministries, and elected bodies operate within a structure in which the faqih stands above ordinary politics. The reported death of Ali Khamenei and the unclear public status of Mojtaba Khamenei therefore matter not only as personal events but as institutional shocks. Associated Press reported in July 2026 that Khamenei had been killed in the opening moments of the war and that funeral ceremonies were underway, while also reporting that Mojtaba Khamenei had reportedly been wounded (Karimi & Gambrell, 2026). The Guardian reported earlier that Mojtaba had been selected by the Assembly of Experts but had not been seen and was believed to be seriously injured, while Iran insisted he remained the functioning decision-maker (Wintour, 2026).

A system can formally appoint a successor while still losing charismatic, clerical, and practical authority. The author's description of a republic without velayat-e faqih should therefore be interpreted as a political thesis: the office may exist, but its capacity to command, symbolize, arbitrate, and embody the regime may be severely reduced. If the Supreme Leader is absent, invisible, injured, contested, or dependent on security managers, real power shifts toward those who control negotiation, coercion, logistics, and money. In that context, figures such as Ghalibaf, Araqchi, Pezeshkian, and senior security commanders become more important than the formal constitutional map suggests.

4.4 Negotiation as necessity rather than reconciliation

The author's argument that the United States turned to negotiation because the alternatives were costly is strategically plausible. If Iran dispersed forces, adopted mobile tactics, embedded command capacity across the country, and threatened regional escalation, then external actors faced unattractive options: broad bombing of infrastructure, attacks across populated areas, ground operations, or acceptance of a negotiated framework. The author calls this a form of Talibanization: not ideological equivalence with the Taliban in every respect, but a tactical movement toward dispersal, mobility, decentralization, and endurance warfare. In this reading, the regime tried to make itself too costly to destroy quickly.

Negotiation under such conditions does not mean trust. It means cost management. From Washington's perspective, a bargain with a battered but functioning Iranian state might reduce the need for deeper military intervention, prevent uncontrolled collapse, secure nuclear concessions, protect Gulf energy routes, and avoid open-ended occupation. From Tehran's pragmatic perspective, negotiation might secure time, money, food, agricultural imports, sanctions relief, or political breathing space. From Israel's perspective, such a bargain may appear dangerous if it leaves the regime able to rearm. From the Iranian opposition's perspective, it may appear as a betrayal of the January victims and a rescue package for the Islamic Republic.

The analytical issue is not whether negotiation is morally pure; it is what negotiation produces domestically. A deal that merely feeds the coercive state may stabilize repression. A deal conditioned on civil liberties, prisoner releases, diaspora return, party formation, the separation of religion from coercive state authority, and monitored elections could become a bridge to transition. The difference lies in enforceable domestic transformation.

5. Ideological Power versus Pragmatic Survival

5.1 The ideological faction

The ideological faction of the Islamic Republic is not simply a group of clerics. It is a worldview sustained by institutions, martyrs, economic interests, security networks, educational systems, media, mosques, foundations, and paramilitary identities. In the author's interpretation, its public mobilisation places particular emphasis on humiliation and revenge: revenge for Qassem Soleimani, killed by a US drone strike ordered by President Trump in 2020 (Reuters, 2022); revenge for Ali Khamenei, reportedly killed in the 2026 war; revenge for attacks on nuclear and military infrastructure; and revenge for the symbolic assault on the Islamic Republic's claim to divine legitimacy. For this faction, compromise with the United States or Israel is not merely policy adjustment. It is betrayal.

This faction is likely to resist any move toward secularization, normalization with Israel, abolition of compulsory hijab, press freedom, or party pluralism. It may accept tactical ceasefire but reject cultural and political opening. It may interpret agricultural imports, frozen-asset arrangements, or economic concessions as humiliating proof that Iran is being treated as a defeated and hungry society rather than as a revolutionary power. Ideological actors often prefer scarcity with dignity, or at least the performance of dignity, over prosperity that reveals dependence.

5.2 The pragmatic-security faction

The pragmatic-security faction is different. It may not be democratic. It may have participated in repression. It may believe in state control, national security, and limited political pluralism at most. But it calculates survival differently. It may understand that compulsory ideological confrontation has exhausted the country, that the nuclear option has become too dangerous, that the regional proxy model has weakened, and that the population no longer accepts the moral authority of the state. Its priority may be preserving the Iranian state, the bureaucracy, the army, parts of the Revolutionary Guard, borders, oil and gas capacity, and the financial system.

Ghalibaf's political biography places him at the intersection of hardline coercion and managerial pragmatism. Reuters describes him as a former Revolutionary Guards commander, Tehran mayor, police chief, presidential candidate, and a key node between political, security, and clerical elites, combining fiery rhetoric with a reputation for pragmatism (Hafezi et al., 2026). The Guardian similarly described him as a strongman figure with roots in the IRGC and a history of both managerial modernization and repression (Wintour, 2026). This duality is precisely why he is analytically interesting and morally problematic. He is close enough to the regime to bargain with its coercive institutions, but that closeness is also why much of society may reject him.

5.3 The Pezeshkian-Araqchi component

President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi represent another layer of the possible pragmatic axis. Pezeshkian's formal presidency gives a civilian and electoral surface to any bargain, while Araqchi's diplomatic experience provides technical negotiation capacity. Yet neither the presidency nor the foreign ministry can by themselves transform the Islamic Republic if the coercive apparatus and ideological institutions remain intact. The significance of a Ghalibaf-Araqchi-Pezeshkian configuration would lie in whether it could align enough of the security state, bureaucracy, and external actors to create a controlled opening.

This is where the author's question becomes sharp: are these figures merely buying time for the Islamic Republic, or are they capable of becoming instruments of transition? The answer must be measured by actions rather than declarations. A regime can speak the language of reform while arresting dissidents. It can negotiate abroad while executing prisoners at home. It can promise national unity while preserving ideological monopoly. Only irreversible institutional steps can reveal seriousness.

6. The Ghalibaf Scenario: Transitional Leadership or Authoritarian Recycling?

6.1 Why the scenario exists

The Ghalibaf scenario exists because revolutions and transitions are not always led by morally pure outsiders. Sometimes the person with enough coercive access to stop violence is also implicated in the old order. Spain's transition involved figures emerging from Francoist institutions. Chile's transition required negotiation with a military structure shaped by Pinochet. South Korea's democratization involved pressure from below and concessions from within a security-oriented state. Such examples do not excuse perpetrators; they show that political transformation often begins inside compromised institutions.

In Iran, an insider-led transition might appear attractive to external actors because it promises continuity of state capacity. Foreign governments fear nuclear leakage, civil war, refugee flows, attacks on energy infrastructure, and fragmentation along ethnic or regional lines. They may therefore prefer a controlled transition managed by recognizable state figures over revolutionary collapse. Some domestic actors may also prefer a gradual transition if it prevents Afghanistanization, Syriaization, or Libya-style collapse. The author's concern that Iran could be pushed toward an Afghanistan or Gaza scenario reflects a fear that uncontrolled war and state breakdown would destroy society before democracy could be built.

6.2 Why the scenario is morally and politically weak

The same features that make Ghalibaf useful to negotiators make him illegitimate to many citizens. The Center for Human Rights in Iran reported in 2013 that it had obtained an audio recording in which Ghalibaf allegedly detailed his prominent and direct role in repression during the 1999 student protests, 2003 student movement, and 2009 post-election protests (Center for Human Rights in Iran, 2013). The Guardian later summarized his record as including participation in the 1999 coercive response and broader repression of dissent (Wintour, 2026). Reuters reported that as police chief he could be ruthless and that he took credit for helping suppress unrest after the disputed 2009 election (Hafezi et al., 2026). These are not minor accusations. They go to the heart of whether a society can trust him to protect civil liberties.

A transitional leader must have legitimacy. Legitimacy can come from election, revolutionary recognition, constitutional legality, moral authority, international recognition, or performance. Ghalibaf lacks moral legitimacy for many Iranians because of his security record. He lacks clerical legitimacy for the office of Supreme Leader. He lacks democratic legitimacy unless chosen through open competition. He may possess performance legitimacy only if he delivers immediate concrete reforms. Therefore, any Ghalibaf-led transition could be acceptable only if he is a temporary administrator under strict constraints, not a new national savior.

6.3 Minimum conditions for a credible internal transition

A credible internal transition would require at least seven immediate steps. First, a general political amnesty must be issued for prisoners, exiles, activists, journalists, artists, students, labor organizers, and ordinary citizens accused of protest-related offences. This amnesty must protect citizens from the state; it must not be a blanket amnesty for perpetrators of mass killing. Second, the diaspora must be allowed to return without fear, with consular guarantees and international monitoring. Third, independent media must be legalized and censorship institutions dismantled or suspended. Fourth, political parties must be allowed to register and organize freely, including monarchist, republican, secular, liberal, socialist, nationalist, federalist, and religious-democratic currents that accept nonviolence and territorial integrity.

Fifth, compulsory hijab must be abolished immediately, and women's bodily autonomy must be recognized as a matter of citizenship rather than state ideology. Sixth, religion must be separated from coercive state authority: citizens may be religious, mosques may operate, clerics may speak, but the state must not coerce religious behavior or derive unequal citizenship from religious doctrine. Seventh, the transitional authority must announce a binding timetable for a referendum, constituent assembly, and internationally observed elections. Without a timetable, transition becomes indefinite emergency.

Additional steps would include releasing casualty data from January 2026, preserving evidence, protecting hospitals and morgues, inviting UN investigators, freezing assets of suspected perpetrators pending review, separating the regular armed forces from ideological paramilitary units, and placing the Revolutionary Guard under interim civilian authority. These steps are difficult. That is precisely why they are useful as tests. A pragmatic faction serious about saving Iran rather than saving the Islamic Republic would accept them. A regime merely buying time would avoid them.

6.4 The Erdoğan analogy and its limits

The author's comparison to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should be handled carefully. In the early 2000s, Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party presented themselves as socially conservative but electorally legitimate actors operating within a formally secular constitutional order, pursuing economic growth and European-oriented reforms. For some observers at the time, this appeared to show that religiously rooted political actors could adapt to democratic competition. However, Turkey's later authoritarian backsliding demonstrates the danger of treating electoral victory, economic modernization, or pragmatic foreign policy as sufficient guarantees of liberal democracy. The Turkish case is therefore both a possible analogy and a warning (Özbudun, 2014; Yilmaz & Bashirov, 2018).

If Ghalibaf were to play an Erdoğan-like role, the danger is not only that he might fail to democratize; it is that he might use democratic opening to consolidate a new security-populist order. Therefore, the relevant model should not be Erdoğan as strongman but early institutional constraints that prevent any leader from converting transition into personal rule. The goal should not be to replace one father figure with another. It should be to create a constitutional order in which no individual, clerical or military, can monopolize the state.

7. Comparative Lessons from Negotiated and Managed Transitions

7.1 Spain: reform through regime insiders

Spain's transition after Franco is often cited as an example of reform from within. King Juan Carlos and Adolfo Suárez helped dismantle Francoist institutions while preserving enough continuity to avoid civil conflict. The lesson is not that all old-regime insiders are trustworthy. The lesson is that insiders can become transitional actors when they legalize opposition, accept elections, subordinate coercive institutions, and allow constitutional redesign. Spain's success required both elite negotiation and societal pressure. It also required the old order to accept that its future depended on giving up monopoly power.

Iran differs profoundly from Spain. The Islamic Republic's ideological institutions, revolutionary guards, clerical networks, regional militias, and religious-constitutional doctrine create a different type of state. There is no monarch above factions who can symbolically authorize reform from within the old order. However, the Spanish case shows that a transition is possible only when formal changes are irreversible and opposition forces can organize openly.

7.2 Chile: the limits of pacted transition

Chile's transition from military rule illustrates both the value and danger of pact-making. The opposition defeated Pinochet in the 1988 plebiscite, but the military retained influence, constitutional constraints, and impunity for years. Chile achieved electoral democracy without immediate full justice. Over time, accountability expanded, but the transition remained marked by compromises (Constable & Valenzuela, 1991; Huneeus, 2007). For Iran, the lesson is that a pact may be necessary to avoid bloodshed, but a pact that permanently shields perpetrators will poison democracy.

A Ghalibaf-led transition would face this problem intensely. Security elites would demand guarantees. Victims would demand accountability. The state would require continuity. Democracy would require rupture. The only sustainable answer is conditional security guarantees combined with truth, vetting, reparations, and prosecution for the gravest crimes. Ordinary soldiers and civil servants may be reintegrated; architects of mass killing should not be immunized.

7.3 South Korea: pressure from below and elite concession

South Korea's democratization in 1987 demonstrates the importance of mass mobilization, civil society, student movements, and elite calculation. Authoritarian rulers conceded constitutional reform not because they became democrats overnight but because repression became too costly and international conditions favored liberalization. The lesson for Iran is that domestic society must remain central. External negotiation may open space, but only organized citizens can fill that space with democratic content.

This is why press freedom, party registration, union autonomy, and university freedom are not secondary issues. They are the infrastructure of transition. Without them, any elite bargain remains a transaction among power holders. With them, society can convert elite crisis into national reconstruction.

7.4 Turkey: modernization without liberal consolidation

Turkey's recent history warns that economic opening, electoral politics, and religious moderation can coexist with authoritarian concentration. A movement may begin by promising pluralism and end by capturing courts, media, bureaucracy, and security institutions. For Iran, this warning is essential. A post-clerical or post-Khamenei Islamic Republic could reduce some ideological features while preserving coercive nationalism, surveillance, corruption, and leader-centered power. Secular democracy requires more than removing a turban from the top of the state. It requires constitutional limits, independent courts, rights guarantees, free media, civilian control of security forces, and alternation in power.

8. Transitional Justice, Amnesty, and the Diaspora Question

8.1 Why amnesty matters

The author's proposed general amnesty is politically important because millions of Iranians outside and inside the country live under fear: fear of arrest, confiscation, interrogation, forced confession, professional exclusion, or punishment of relatives. A state that wants reconciliation must first stop treating its citizens as enemies. An amnesty for political speech, protest, exile, media work, and diaspora activism would immediately change the psychological relationship between state and society.

However, the word amnesty is dangerous if misused. Transitional justice distinguishes between amnesty for nonviolent political offences and impunity for crimes against humanity. The former can open society; the latter destroys justice. Therefore, any amnesty should be asymmetrical: broad protection for citizens, conditional procedures for low-level officials, and no automatic immunity for those credibly implicated in mass killings, torture, rape, enforced disappearance, or command responsibility.

8.2 The diaspora as a national resource

The Iranian diaspora is not merely an opposition audience. It contains physicians, engineers, entrepreneurs, academics, artists, investors, military specialists, lawyers, and administrators. A serious transition would invite this human capital back through legal guarantees, property protections, and transparent processes. The return of the diaspora would also symbolize that Iran belongs to citizens rather than to an ideological faction.

Yet diaspora return must not become elite replacement detached from domestic society. Those inside Iran have borne the heaviest risks. A transitional order must combine diaspora expertise with domestic legitimacy. Exiles can assist, but they cannot substitute for free organization inside the country. The role of figures such as Reza Pahlavi should be analyzed in this context. Pahlavi has publicly framed himself as a unifying figure for a secular democratic transition and has proposed transitional planning through initiatives such as the Iran Prosperity Project (Pahlavi, 2025, 2026). Many Iranians view him as a symbol of national continuity and secular statehood; others distrust dynastic politics or remember the authoritarian limits of the Pahlavi monarchy. A democratic transition must allow these views to compete openly rather than decide them by foreign preference or elite bargaining.

8.3 Truth before reconciliation

Reconciliation without truth is amnesia imposed by the powerful. The January 2026 killings, the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom repression, the 2019 protests, the 2009 crackdown, the 1999 student repression, the mass executions of the 1980s, and abuses against minorities must eventually be documented. A truth commission could collect testimony, preserve medical and forensic records, map command responsibility, and recommend reparations. Courts could focus on the most serious perpetrators. Vetting could prevent known abusers from occupying security, judicial, or intelligence positions.

The trauma of society must be treated politically. A medical analogy is useful: a wound cannot heal if it is closed over infection. Reconciliation that seals over atrocity will produce future infection in the body politic. Truth is the debridement of political trauma. It is painful, but without it, the nation cannot heal.

9. Scenario Analysis

The future of Iran cannot be reduced to a binary between immediate revolution and stable reform. At least five scenarios are plausible. Each has indicators.

9.1 Scenario A: coercive continuity

In this scenario, the Islamic Republic absorbs the leadership shock and reconstructs authority around Mojtaba Khamenei or another symbolic figure, while real power shifts further toward the security apparatus. Negotiations are used tactically. The regime accepts temporary economic arrangements but refuses domestic liberalization. Ideological media present survival as victory. Executions and arrests increase to prevent renewed uprising. This scenario is plausible because authoritarian regimes often survive by narrowing their coalition and increasing coercion. Its weakness is that it deepens long-term illegitimacy and may invite renewed conflict.

9.2 Scenario B: external bargain without domestic opening

In this scenario, the United States and Iran reach a limited deal on nuclear inspections, frozen assets, food or agricultural imports, energy routes, and regional de-escalation. Ghalibaf and Araqchi gain international relevance, but domestic society receives little. This would be the classic danger of geopolitics overriding human rights. It might reduce immediate war risk but produce moral outrage among Iranians who see the January massacre ignored. Such a deal would be a pause, not a transition.

9.3 Scenario C: managed internal transition

This is the scenario the author's essay explores most directly. It requires a pragmatic faction to understand that the Islamic Republic cannot survive in its old ideological form. The faction would then use state authority to dismantle the most coercive ideological structures, open political space, normalize foreign relations, and prepare a constitutional transition. Ghalibaf could play a role only as a temporary security-political bridge, not as a permanent leader. The scenario is possible in theory but difficult in practice because it requires old-regime actors to give up the very instruments that made them powerful.

9.4 Scenario D: revolutionary rupture

In this scenario, society rejects any internal bargain and mobilizes around regime removal. Defections from security forces accelerate. Strikes paralyze the economy. Opposition figures, including Reza Pahlavi and other republican, liberal, leftist, ethnic, labor, and civil society actors, compete to shape a provisional authority. This scenario may be morally clearer for many citizens because it rejects the legitimacy of regime insiders. It also carries risks: institutional collapse, revenge violence, fragmented opposition, and foreign manipulation. Revolutionary rupture requires preparation, unity, and disciplined non-revenge to avoid replacing tyranny with chaos.

9.5 Scenario E: fragmentation

The worst scenario is neither regime survival nor revolution but fragmentation. If the center weakens without a legitimate national transition, armed networks, regional commanders, ideological militias, smuggling groups, and foreign-backed actors could carve out zones of influence. Iran's size, ethnic diversity, strategic location, energy infrastructure, and regional entanglements make fragmentation catastrophic. Avoiding this outcome is one reason many external actors prefer controlled transition. Yet fear of fragmentation should not become an excuse to preserve dictatorship. The task is to build a legitimate national transition before collapse becomes disorder.

10. Discussion

10.1 What would prove Ghalibaf serious?

The most important analytical recommendation is to judge any claimed transition by immediate actions. Speeches are irrelevant unless accompanied by institutional change. A serious Ghalibaf-Araqchi-Pezeshkian transition would begin with visible rupture from the old order. Political prisoners would be released. Internet access would be restored. Independent media would broadcast. Families of the January victims would be allowed to mourn publicly. Diaspora citizens would receive guarantees of safe return. Compulsory hijab enforcement would end. The morality police and ideological surveillance bodies would be dissolved. Parties would open offices. International observers would be invited. Courts would stop issuing political death sentences. The Revolutionary Guard would be placed under a transitional security framework and separated from politics and the economy.

If these actions do not occur, the transition claim should be rejected as authoritarian adaptation. The regime may offer symbolic concessions, such as changes in slogans, limited prisoner releases, or carefully selected media openings. Such gestures are insufficient. The minimum test is whether citizens can organize to remove the transitional authorities through future elections. If they cannot, there is no democratic transition.

10.2 Why Israel, the United States, and Iranian society may disagree

External actors and domestic societies often have different priorities. The United States may prioritize nuclear verifiability, regional stability, the Strait of Hormuz, military cost reduction, and avoidance of occupation. Israel may prioritize permanent degradation of Iranian military capacity and prevention of rearmament. Gulf Arab states may prioritize energy security, non-interference, and economic predictability. Europe may prioritize refugees, non-proliferation, and human rights rhetoric without military escalation. Iranian society may prioritize freedom, dignity, justice, and return to normal life. These priorities overlap but are not identical.

A settlement that satisfies Washington may not satisfy Tehran's streets. A settlement that satisfies Israel may be too destructive for Iranian civilians. A settlement that satisfies regime pragmatists may outrage victims. The only durable settlement is one that connects external security to internal legitimacy. Nuclear inspections, sanctions relief, and regional normalization should be tied to civil liberties and transition benchmarks. Otherwise, geopolitical peace will become domestic violence by other means.

10.3 Secular democracy as substance rather than slogan

The author's desired outcome is a secular democratic Iran with normal relations with the United States, Israel, Europe, and the Arab Gulf states, and without ideological adventure. Secular democracy should be defined precisely. It does not mean hostility to religion. It means that religion becomes a private, communal, and civil matter, not a coercive source of state power. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Baha'is, atheists, and others must be equal citizens. Women must be legal persons equal to men. Political legitimacy must come from free consent, not divine guardianship. The military and security institutions must obey elected civilian authority. Courts must protect rights against the state.

A post-velayat Islamic Republic without these features would not be secular democracy. It would be a republic of security managers. Removing or weakening the Supreme Leader is therefore necessary but not sufficient. Security institutions must be bound by constitutional law, military control of the economy reduced, ideological coercion ended, and equal citizenship guaranteed.

10.4 The role of time

The author asks whether Ghalibaf can accomplish such changes within the limited diplomatic window described in the original July analysis. Time is crucial. Transitions move through windows of opportunity. If reforms happen rapidly, they can generate trust and momentum. If delayed, society may interpret delay as deception. A serious transitional authority should therefore sequence reforms: immediate civil liberties within days, legal party registration within weeks, transitional justice institutions within months, referendum or constituent assembly timetable within a fixed period, and internationally observed elections as soon as security allows.

Delay benefits hard-liners. Delay allows documents to disappear, victims to be intimidated, money to move, militias to reorganize, and foreign actors to lose focus. Therefore, the first hundred days of any claimed transition would be decisive. The burden of proof lies on the old-regime actors, not on the people.

11. Conclusion

Iran stands at a point where politics of crisis may no longer be sufficient to preserve the old order. The Islamic Republic has long governed through emergency, resistance, ideological mobilization, repression, and external confrontation. But the combined shocks of the January 2026 killings, the 2025-2026 wars, the reported death of Ali Khamenei, uncertainty around succession, nuclear vulnerability, regional weakening, and international bargaining have produced a crisis in politics itself. The question is no longer only whether the regime can survive another crisis. The question is what kind of state would remain if it survives.

This article has examined one controversial possibility: that a pragmatic-security faction represented by figures such as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Abbas Araqchi, and Masoud Pezeshkian could attempt to transform the Islamic Republic from within, perhaps under external pressure and as part of a negotiated settlement. The paper does not endorse this scenario. It treats it as a hypothesis that must be tested by actions. Ghalibaf's record of repression and deep association with the security state make him unacceptable as a democratic leader in the ordinary sense. Yet political transitions sometimes require temporary engagement with compromised insiders. The moral question is whether such engagement reduces suffering and opens irreversible democratic space, or whether it rescues authoritarianism.

The answer depends on minimum tests. A credible transition must include political amnesty for citizens, safe diaspora return, press freedom, legal political parties, abolition of compulsory hijab, separation of religion from coercive state authority, release of prisoners, truth mechanisms for mass killings, security-sector reform, and a binding constitutional timetable. Without these, any talk of transition is crisis politics in new language. With them, even a compromised insider-led process could become a bridge to a future chosen by the Iranian people.

The final legitimacy of Iran's future cannot be granted by Washington, imposed by Israel, inherited by dynasty, claimed by clerics, or managed by security elites. It must come from Iranians themselves through free, safe, plural, and internationally credible political choice. The task of external actors should be to prevent mass violence and support conditions for that choice. The task of internal pragmatists, if they truly exist, is to prove through irreversible acts that they are ending the Islamic Republic's coercive ideology rather than merely preserving it without its original leader. The task of the opposition is to combine justice with statecraft, memory with restraint, and national unity with pluralism. Only then can Iran move from crisis as a method of rule to politics as a method of freedom.

Appendix A. Minimum Democratic Tests for Any Transitional Authority

The following checklist converts the article's argument into practical indicators. A transitional authority that fails these tests should not be treated as a democratic transition, regardless of its language of reform.

Immediate release of political prisoners and publication of prisoner lists.

Legal guarantee that exiles and diaspora citizens can return without arrest, confiscation, or retaliation.

Restoration of unrestricted internet access and legalization of independent domestic media.

Abolition of compulsory hijab enforcement and dissolution of morality-policing structures.

Legal registration of political parties, civil associations, unions, and professional bodies.

Protection of public mourning, documentation, and investigation for the January 2026 victims.

Invitation to UN or internationally credible human rights investigators.

Publication of a binding timetable for referendum, constituent assembly, and free elections.

Subordination of the IRGC, Basij, intelligence bodies, and police to a temporary civilian legal framework.

Asset transparency and anti-corruption measures covering senior officials and their families.

Creation of a truth commission, reparations program, and prosecution pathway for mass atrocities.

Formal abandonment of state ideology that makes religion the basis of unequal citizenship.

Commitment to peaceful relations with neighboring states and termination of extraterritorial militia policy.

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