Reckoning after the wreckage in Iran: A conversation with Arang Keshavarzian

Mada

5 days ago

When Israel launched its attacks on key military facilities in Iran on June 13, escalating its war in the region, now in its second year, fears of a broader spillover mounted, though its scale remained unclear.
Twelve days later, with only a limited Iranian response, the bombing ceased and the war did not extend beyond Iran's borders. What remains, however, is what Arang Keshavarzian, associate professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, describes as an indispensable 'reckoning' inside Iran: To what extent has the regime been weakened? How will Iranians returning from their displacement contend with the aftermath? And is a new Iranian polity possible after this war? We ask Keshavarzian some of these questions.
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Mada Masr: What is the significance of the nuclear program internally, beyond it being an instrument in regional power dynamics?
Arang Keshavarzian: Part of what the Iranian revolution was about was independence. And to be independent and make your own decisions, you need to produce our own knowledge. You don't want to import it from the West or from the United States. That's what the Shah did. You want to have our own MIT and scientific centers. You want to have your own leading scientists. So, there was a lot of investment, especially in the 1980s and 90s, in science and technology.
The Iran-Iraq war is part of this story too, because it mobilized the thinking that Iranians have to develop their own military strength and therefore need to invest in science and technology. For many Iranians, the eight-year war proved that no one would come to Iran's aid, that they have to defend the nation, the state, and the revolution themselves.
From what I understand, this is also what the Iranian scientific community has been advocating for, especially in its push for the development of an autonomous nuclear technical program. The goal is for Iranians to develop and master the technology themselves. There are also some who make economic arguments, saying that Iran should export and refine oil and generate electricity through nuclear means.
Obviously, nuclear energy can serve as a foundation for a weapons program, but the expansion of Iran's nuclear program over the past 30 years has been driven by a range of factors — geopolitical, scientific, etc… — not solely military calculus.
MM: What can be said of the social base of the program, especially the scientists, who were a main target in this recent war, but also previously?
AK: Israel's targeting of scientists goes back a good 15 years now, and there's an even longer history when you include Iraqi and Egyptian scientists. Israel has been successful in assassinating these scientists. But Iran is a country of 90 million people. There are a lot of educated people and a lot of investments in education and universities. You can't eradicate knowledge. At best, you can bomb buildings, kill experts, and so forth, but knowledge gets passed down and science centers are rebuilt.
I haven't conducted research on the topic of scientists, and I'm a little uncomfortable making this statement about this community. But there's an older generation of scientists who studied in the United States and Europe in the 1970s and, during their studies, some of them became involved in the revolution as student activists. Some later participated in negotiations with the Barack Obama administration 10 years ago — people who earned their PhDs at MIT and other leading universities.
There was this famous case where negotiators on both the US and Iranian sides had studied nuclear physics and engineering at the same time and had connections with MIT. Let's say there is an older or first generation of scientists who are intimately connected to US Western academia. This younger generation, who received their training in the 1980s, may have been involved in the Iran-Iraq war. I assume they come from more diverse and maybe even working-class backgrounds, some probably from more provincial backgrounds.
What I can say about these past couple of weeks is that the killing of these scientists, even for the Iranians who oppose the Islamic Republic, feels like a real violation of national sovereignty. When Israel was assassinating generals the first few days, my sense was that many people understood this and thought of them as 'people with blood on their hands.' But killing the scientists was different. The attacks on the scientists resonate in society in different ways than attacking members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or military installations.
I'll make a generalization here: In many third world countries, science still has a very positive reputation and value socially. Doctors and engineers build roads and irrigation dams and provide health services that extend lives. There's a certain trust that science is good and brings development and modernity that make lives better. Even if it is not true, science is treated as separate from politics.
MM: In relation to your research on spatial politics in Iran, how were the military facilities targeted by Israel and the US situated within Iran's physical and social space? How did they seek natural and social protection and how did people interact with these sites?
AK: The number of provinces and sites that were hit by Israel was truly national in scale. Every province and city where the majority of Iranians live was hit. Nowhere was spared. In part, it's a reflection of the breadth of Iran's military, economic and scientific footprint. This built environment is not just Tehran, and it's not just Esfahan. The targets were not just Natanz and Fordo that were in the news headlines. The bombing of Tehran received most of the attention, but everywhere in Iran was affected, in part because Tehranis fled to all corners of the country. In a sense, the bombing reified the notion of the nation. It's all of us in this together, whether we're living in the north or the south, whether we're Azeri, Arab, Persian, or Kurdish speakers. No one was spared. In some ways, the cartography of the violence helped nationalize this war.
Now, I think many Iranians don't even know about many of these nuclear sites or the more secretive military bases that were attacked. They are hidden in the mountains and kept behind gates, likely known only to very local communities or those who work there.
But the other thing that came up, to go back to Tehran, is that people saw buildings for years and thought, 'We're not quite sure what's there in that building, who's there?' So in those 12 days, when a bombing happened, people began sharing information about suspicious buildings, and as the bombing took place, they updated their speculations and rumors. And there seemed to me to be an assumption that the Israelis knew what they were doing; they must have attacked a building because regime-connected people or assets were there.
People were trying to learn about Iran or the regime by what was being targeted and what wasn't being hit. When buildings were being hit, people concluded that these buildings must belong to the Revolutionary Guards or have been involved in the nuclear program. There were all these sorts of interpretations and information swirling around, which I'm not sure was necessarily accurate. But there was this phenomenon of people trying to learn from the bombings.
MM: What is this war leaving people with in terms of relations with the regime, between the sidelining of anti-regime rhetoric throughout the 12 days, the ceasing of the bombing, and people coming back to normal life?
AK: I get this question a lot in the United States: is this a moment when Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince of the Pahlavi dynasty, can return? This is pure fantasy. Even if he has pockets of support, there is no organization inside or outside the country and there is little meaningful attempt to build a coalition beyond staunch monarchists. What's striking about Reza Pahlavi is that he consistently lacks empathy for what Iranians are going through. He never once changed his tone or appeared to listen and learn from what was unfolding in the country. One friend wrote about how uninspiring he is. It is not just that he doesn't have a huge base, but, at this point, his preference for working with foreign politicians rather than expressing national solidarity has angered many people, even some monarchists.
More important than Reza Pahlavi are some activists and personalities in Iran, who also initially came out with statements downplaying Israel and using the war as an occasion to criticize the Islamic Republic and the nuclear program. But as the bombings expanded and there was no sign of rebellion by Iranians living in war conditions, many walked back and issued second statements and social media posts acknowledging Israel's aggression and the anger of Iranians.
Having said that, while the bombs were still falling, people in Iran did ask challenging questions: why were these generals sleeping in their own apartments when everyone knew that Israel wanted to attack Iran? Why were they so unprepared for this and for defending Iran? The regime has spent all this money on the military, but why can't it protect the homeland or retaliate? And then, with the last Iranian attack on the US base in Qatar being so symbolic and meaningless, the military limitations of Iran became even more obvious.
Meanwhile, another line of questions focused on the nuclear program and the rumor that the regime has removed a big portion of the enriched uranium from Fordo and invested in protecting the nuclear technology. Does that mean that policy-makers care more about the nuclear program than the plight of their own citizens? What are the regime's priorities? Are they military technology, built environment and infrastructure, or the actual 90 million people that you're supposed to be protecting?
Most immediately, people are wondering if the Islamic republic will actually sit down and negotiate with Donald Trump's government. And if so, what sorts of compromises is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei going to accept after this war?
I think what you're going to see in the coming weeks are different members of the government distancing themselves from what happened, or re-narrating it to deflect responsibility. This will create debates and divisions among the leadership, including, I suspect, the political and military factions.
There's going to be a huge reckoning in Iran in the coming months. We are still in the fog of war, in the public relations moment where political elites in Tehran, Tel Aviv, and Washington are trying to convince themselves and their citizens that they won the war, or at least did not lose it.
There are all of these major questions that the political establishment in Iran are going to have to answer, while the people won't be able to participate in the debate. The dilemma is that all of these decisions are being made by the government with little consultation, no freedom of speech, and no space for organization or representation of Iranian social groups.
All of this is happening in a context where the country is becoming even more securitized. As you probably know, there's been several executions of people accused of working for the Mossad, just in these few days since the war came to an end. There are targeted attacks on Afghans. I think, if I'm not mistaken, there are about five million Afghans in Iran, and they are quickly identified as possible fifth columnists. Kurds are also going to get targeted under the cover of war and national security concerns. This is yet another example of the most vulnerable being hurt by war.
Now there's a lot of evidence that Israel did penetrate Iran and ultimately dominate its airspace. And some of the drone attacks originated from within the country. But the penetration was not simply limited to Iranian society, it clearly extended into the Iranian government and even the security apparatus itself. Remember how Ismail Haneya, the Hamas leader, was assassinated a year ago in the middle of Tehran.
MM: Do you see signs of weakening within the regime, changes within the deep power structures of the Revolutionary Guards or the Supreme Leader, or will they find a modality for survival, including by increasing securitization?
AK: It's really hard to predict. If we take one step back and consider the Women, Life, Freedom movement in 2022, these past three years have brought seismic transformation and challenges to the Islamic Republic. In a sense, you have this popular protest that caught them off guard. In many ways, it was defeated — it did not overthrow the regime — but it was victorious in that it forced the state to transform its relationship with women, youth, and the cultural sphere. It had to make cultural compromises.
And then there is the collapse of the basic logic of the regime's two-decade deterrence policy since October 7. The idea that Iran was going to support a set of regional allies, such as Hezbollah and the Assad regime, to protect the homeland has been destroyed in the past year. That whole logic of deterrence is destroyed, and Iran has been exposed to threat.
We are in a fluid and unpredictable moment. It's not just this 12-day war — everything that has happened in the past three years inside Iran and, of course, regionally, has made the political leadership vulnerable. And this could lead to a greater concentration of power and greater repression, likely in the short-term.
I don't like to predict, but the Islamic Republic has never been that well organized and centralized. It has never had a lasting ruling party, the Islamic Republican Party only lasted a few years, and factionalism keeps reemerging, even in a tightly controlled political spectrum. So, I have a hard time believing that the military, security, or even the clerical establishment, which is now a shell of what it once was, has the tools to unify political opinion and impose itself on the polity.
Unfortunately, many people are going to be thrown in prison, their lives overturned, but I don't think that repression will hold beyond the immediate moment. It might work for a few months, but not more. That's why I use the word reckoning. At some point, there has to be a recognition that this model of governance, playing the international and domestic off of each other, is not sustainable. Not economically, not militarily, and I doubt in terms of forging a social base.
There are many political activists who are mobilized and ready to protest at every turn, from union and women's groups leaders and environmental activists to pensioners and teachers. Iran's population is becoming quite old, and inflation has hit pensioners quite hard, so their movement is quite strong as well. Pensioners, nurses, teachers, farmers, and other practitioners are focused on social welfare and job security demands that the government has been unwilling or unable to fulfill because of mismanagement and international sanctions.
Bringing all of this political energy together has been the challenge of the past 15 years. While it does come together at certain moments, as we have seen time and again over the past ten years, it is very difficult to keep it together and prevent it from splintering. This is what is needed to make the political opposition sustainable.
For those who care about Iran, the question now is, how do we strengthen these social forces? This war actually hurts our colleagues in unions, organizations, and civil society, who have been doing a lot of work over the past 20 years. They are the ones who get hurt, and that's why we should oppose the war, whether it's in Iran, Sudan, or Palestine.
MM: And to go back 10 years, to what seemed like a moment of reformist politics, with the election of Hassan Rouhani in 2013 and the nuclear deal in 2015, do you see any relevance of that period in today's dynamics?
AK: Unfortunately, there's been a kind of break with the reformist moment of the first decade of the 2000s. The pro-democracy movement needs to be reconstituted — it's not enough to invoke Mohamed Khatami, Hassan Rouhani, or others. That no longer resonates with many people who neither remember those years or don't see them as a success. There are some figures, many of them in prison, who if freed by the regime could help bring a broader constituency under a common umbrella. But because of that threat, those in power will hesitate to do so, even at this critical moment.
If I am correct that there will be a moment of reckoning, then people can demand that Iran reaches a national reconciliation. At various moments over the past couple decades, that demand has come up. It came up during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. So maybe, in this particularly dramatic moment, political leadership could be pushed in that direction. Khamenei is aging and needs support in preparing the regime for new challenges. Much of the old leadership that he has around him have been killed, or embarrassed and sidelined. So maybe this is a moment when he can be convinced that regime-society relations need to be reconstituted and that he needs to create a new social base to strengthen Iran. I don't have much hope or anything concrete to point to. But there is a language of national reconciliation that could be revitalized at this particular moment, as Iranians are rethinking what independence and sovereignty mean.
MM: And finally, if we re-stage Iran within its Gulf context, what are you seeing in terms of the relationship Iran is trying to preserve with its Gulf neighbors?
AK: This is very significant. Iran has had a kind of working diplomatic relationship with Oman and Qatar for a long time, and to some extent with Kuwait. But importantly, two years ago, Iran also established working diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
I can't even imagine what the war in Palestine would have looked like without this rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, reached with the help of Iraq and China. The communications and strategic dialogue have probably helped reduce some of the conflicts in the region, including in Syria and Yemen, to be specific, over the past two years.
During the Israeli-Iranian war, many people in the United States expected Iran to bomb the oil fields in the Gulf or close the Strait of Hormuz. I thought that was unlikely, not only because it would be bad for Iran's economy and for the rest of the region, but also because in recent years Iran has been trying to align itself more closely with Gulf interests to meet its own needs and confront Israel and the US.
If you look at the UAE's statement around the sixth or seventh day of the war, it was explicitly critical of Israel and called for an end to the attacks on Iran. So, I think there is a sort of realignment that's gradually taking shape.
It also sent a signal to Iran's Arab neighbors that it was able to exercise restraint, or wouldn't fall into the trap — Israel would have loved for Iran to attack the UAE or Saudi Arabia to escalate the conflict and draw the US in more quickly.
At the geopolitical level, when the Abraham Accords were signed four years ago, the underlying logic was that Israel and its military would protect Bahrain, the UAE, and maybe even Saudi Arabia from Iran. But now, if I'm sitting in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi or Manama, I'd have to ask: who's going to protect us from Israel, which in the past year has bombed an increasing number of countries?
So, I would think that one of the lessons that some Gulf Cooperation Council states might take from this war is that normalization with Israel doesn't guarantee regional security or increased economic investment. If we want to be optimistic, on a regional scale, maybe what this moment reveals is that regional politics and security need to be taken into consideration. Broad regional cooperation is necessary, not a luxury. Our lives are interdependent, not just in terms of war and peace, but also when it comes to the environment, migration, and infrastructure. We need to think in terms of regional politics, not solely national politics.