Can the IRGC Deliver Peace? (Part 1) |
Iran can withstand confrontation while losing the future its resistance is intended to protect. Military endurance may frustrate an adversary’s objectives, yet leave citizens facing damaged infrastructure, declining opportunities and a political order organised around recurring emergency. Former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s advocacy of accommodation brings this predicament into focus. The challenge is to convert the leverage accumulated through resistance into national recovery, requiring decisions about both the distribution of power within Iran and the regional order it seeks to establish.
In his April 2026 Foreign Affairs essay, “How Iran Should End the War,” Zarif proposed a comprehensive settlement combining nuclear restraint and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz with sanctions relief, economic engagement and arrangements against renewed hostilities. His intervention gave a political purpose to the sacrifices made by Iranian society: endurance should create an opportunity to negotiate a more secure future. The capacity to sustain confrontation does not establish that its continuation serves the national interest.
That distinction has become more consequential as war has altered the balance among Iran’s centres of authority. Before Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s killing, the Islamic Republic operated through overlapping institutions under his ultimate arbitration. The Supreme Leader commanded the armed forces and determined overarching policy; the president and cabinet administered government; and Parliament, the Majlis, legislated, approved budgets and scrutinised ministers. The Guardian Council reviewed legislation and supervised elections, exercising decisive influence over access to electoral politics.
The Assembly of Experts held responsibility for selecting and, under constitutionally prescribed conditions, removing the Supreme........