How The War In Iran Has Brought European Countries Closer Together – Without Trump

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz met in Paris to discuss the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. Michel Euler/AP/AAP

BY ROMAIN FATHI

The United States under President Donald Trump and the European Union have a complicated relationship. On one hand, European countries and the US have built some of the strongest alliances since the end of the second world war. On the other, since the start of Trump’s second term in 2025, they have openly clashed on significant issues: tariffs, NATO contributions, Palestinian statehood, Israel’s interventionism, Ukraine support levels and Greenland’s sovereignty.

Trump’s sudden war on Iran is the latest of these clashes, but it is distinctive because it is shaking the world’s economy. The US war on Iran, alongside Israel’s war on Lebanon, is accelerating a notable reshaping of European alliances and strategic thinking about the union’s future.

The EU has more than 450 million inhabitants, and its GDP is nearly on par with that of the US or China. Despite its polymorphic nature, and in fact perhaps because of it, it is a world player that can exercise considerable sway over international affairs.

European leaders are now attempting to drive a lasting ceasefire, and perhaps even peace, between the US and Iran, with the aim of reopening the strait of Hormuz as soon as possible.

A non-UN/NATO sanctioned conflict

EU countries believe in the rules-based order and international institutions. This is not only because of their democratic constitution and values, but also because they offer them better protection than “might makes right”.

Trump’s unilateral war on Iran sits well beyond international conventions. It was neither sanctioned by a UN mandate or resolution, nor approved by NATO. As a result, European leaders have refused to contribute.

Spain and Italy have outwardly refused to allow US weapon-carrying planes bound for the Iran conflict to use their bases. Meanwhile, France is taking a more case-by-case approach in authorising or declining use of its airspace as part of operations linked to the conflict.

Spain, Italy, Germany, France and the United Kingdom have also refused to send direct military support to contribute to Trump’s war. However, France and the UK are willing to deploy within a peace or maritime security framework once the war is over.

Europe united, at last?

Trump’s war on Iran has accelerated a much deeper, more significant process: the coordination of European leaders on central issues such as European strategic independence in defence, diplomacy and energy.

Since Trump’s return to the Oval Office, there has been a subtle but important diversification of the EU’s diplomatic and military agreements with regional partners. Six such agreements have been signed by the EU, followed by a dozen more bilateral agreements of its member states with other countries.

This greater European coordination is being validated and reinforced by the war in Iran. The global disruption in the production and circulation of petro-based products generated by the near total closure of the Straight of Hormuz is prompting urgent European responses.

On April 17, in Paris, UK and French leaders Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, flanked by their German and Italian counterparts Friedrich Merz and Giorgia Meloni, co-presided over a conference on navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. They were joined by 49 other countries, with more than half of the EU’s member states present alongside representatives of EU institutions and international organisations.

The meeting proposed the “full, immediate, and unconditional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz”. The leaders agreed to start planning, from London next week, a neutral mission to guarantee safety and free passage in the strait.

The war in Iran and Trump’s criticisms of the pope have ruptured Trump’s relationship with Meloni, whose electoral base has grown worried about the US president’s unpredictability.

A shifting tide

For a time, Trump and the MAGA movement had worked hard, and somewhat successfully, to drive a wedge between European leaders. They supported the far right in Germany, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and Meloni in Italy.

But, just three days before Meloni arrived in Paris, Orbán faced an enormous electoral defeat. During the 16 years of his iron-fist rule in Hungary, the pro-Russian Orbán had been a critic of Europe, creating considerable headaches for the EU by blocking a range of initiatives and providing sensitive information to his friend Vladimir Putin. His replacement by a more moderate leader, Péter Magyar, has sparked significant hope in European chancelleries for greater unity.

The internal divisions that Trump relied on to deal with Europe are eroding.

Furthermore, his threats to acquire Greenland only months ago were met by immediate European reactions such as putting a commercial agreement with the US on ice, launching operation “Arctic Endurance”, and affirming Danish and European sovereignty. The EU has once again shown its ability to resist Washington’s pressures and affirm its strategic autonomy.

Where now for Europe?

These episodes in national and international affairs have prepared the ground for a more united approach to the current crisis. European leaders, so often hampered by divisions exacerbated by Russia and the US, are now in a unique position to weigh in on the current Iran crisis and the shock it is delivering to the global economy.

This is because the concerns that unite them – energy security, potential inflation and unemployment – overrule any ideological affinity towards Moscow or Washington.

Besides greater diplomatic integration of European member states, the current crisis is also a catalyst for the European Commission to accelerate its efforts to limit consumption of fossil fuel, safeguard supply networks and accelerate the electrification of Europe’s economies through nuclear and renewables.

Paradoxically, the Iran and Hormuz crises have – as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did in 2022 – driven further European integration. This renewed faith in a European voice is happening both between member states and between European institutions such as the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Foreign Affairs Council.

This rapprochement between European leaders is starting to yield outcomes beyond the Iranian crisis. Visiting Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on April 20, Macron declared he was “reasonably optimistic” for a “new era in Europe”, starting with more support for Ukraine, previously vetoed by the departed Orban.

The significant disruptions created by Trump’s attack on Iran may well have the side effect of a more autonomous and sovereign Europe. Despite the tensions between the US and European states, all have an interest in a peaceful Iran – and Ukraine.

For some in Europe, the war in Iran may be resolved amicably if further collaboration is achieved through US support in Ukraine.

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NATO’s Internal Cohesion Is Being Threatened (Again) – But In Pushing For Support On Iran, Trump May Risk Eroding US Influence On The Alliance

BY MICHAEL A. ALLEN, CARLA MARTINEZ MACHAIN AND MICHAEL E. FLYNN

Soon after the Israeli-U.S. war in Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump called upon NATO allies to help support the effort. The response of European leaders was at first mixed. Some, like the United Kingdom, offering limited or qualified support. Others — chief among them Spain — refused to assist the U.S. at all.

NATO members’ opposition to getting involved with the conflict hardened further after the alliance decided to sit out the subsequent U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

The extent of the division between Washington and other members is such that European leaders have quietly begun considering a plan B should Trump make good on his threats to pull out of NATO altogether.

As experts on foreign policy, overseas military bases and security cooperation, we believe that even though historical tensions within NATO are not new, the recent divisions nonetheless pose a major challenge for the long-term viability of the alliance, particularly in an increasingly fragile U.S.-led international order.
The divisions that preceded Iran

Beyond the recent disagreements over Iran, 2026 has also seen the possibility of conflict between NATO members themselves.

In January, long-standing Trump designs over Greenland seemed closer than ever, with the U.S. verbally, at least, suggesting it was prepared to use economic and military coercion to acquire the territory from Denmark, a NATO ally. Despite tensions having since subsided, Denmark has released unprecedented details about how it prepared to defend against military action by its longtime ally.

While the extent of the Trump-originated rifts are new, NATO member nations disagreeing – sometimes vociferously – is not.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, when the U.S. was embroiled in the Vietnam War, members of Congress called on NATO members to contribute more to their own defense. Those were demands that the first Trump administration would later repeat.

In 2003, the U.S. push to invade Iraq also divided NATO. While some members, like the U.K. and Poland, joined the U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq, others, such as France and Germany, opposed the invasion. Turkey, another NATO member, notably denied the U.S. use of bases in its territory in the lead-up to the campaign.

The increasing tensions led the NATO secretary-general at the time, George Robertson of Britain, to downplay the growing divide and assure the world that NATO members still supported the United States.

NATO countries have even come close to war with each other in the past. Most notably, Turkey and Greece came to blows several times, usually over their still-unresolved territorial conflict over Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
NATO’s evolving mission

Reducing tensions among European nations was always part of the NATO project. With the two world wars driven in large part by French-German rivalry, reducing intra-alliance conflict was central to NATO’s purpose. The first secretary-general of NATO, Lord Lionel Hastings Ismay, famously described NATO as aimed at “keeping the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.”

With the fall of the Soviet Union, one of NATO’s core pillars collapsed.

In the 1990s, the organization’s mission shifted from an anti-Russian defense pact to promoting European regional security. During this period, NATO took part in conflicts in the Balkans from 1992 to 1999. It still maintains a peacekeeping presence there.

In 2001, when launching its war against Afghanistan, the U.S. invoked Article V, NATO’s collective defense clause, for the first and, to date, only time. This led NATO member nations to become militarily active well beyond Europe’s borders, including operations in Pakistan, the coast of Africa, Libya and Iraq.

The 1990s and early 2000s also saw NATO expand to include several former Soviet republics, a move that Russia opposed as hostile to its interests. In fact, post-Cold War NATO expansion into East Europe has long been one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chief grievances against U.S. foreign policy in Europe.

The Russian invasions of Crimea in 2014 and Ukraine in 2022 led to a renewed focus on Russia and Europe’s eastern borders, with NATO member nations coordinating on sanctions and military aid in support of Ukraine’s government. The war also led to another round of expansion, with Finland joining the alliance in 2023 and Sweden in 2024.
Trump’s opposition to NATO

While NATO has grown and its mission focus has changed over time, the Trump administration’s call to action against Iran is not an obvious extension of the organization’s evolved focus.

The war is geographically removed from Europe, and Trump has largely been unsuccessful in making the case for why Iran posed an imminent threat to NATO nations. The United States’ motivations and war aims also remain unclear and have been prone to change.

European countries largely agree on issues like preventing Iran from pursuing an unlimited nuclear program. But they have long preferred diplomatic initiatives – like the 2015 nuclear accord deal with Iran brokered during the Obama Administration – to military strikes.

Part of the disconnect now is how the U.S. under Trump views multilateral institutions compared with his predecessors. While past U.S. presidents have viewed NATO as an extension of the United States’ global interests, they also tended to value the alliance as a whole, despite Washington not always getting its preferred outcomes from it. For Trump, it is far more transactional.

Indeed, the Trump administration has framed the lack of support from NATO nations as evidence of the alliance’s decreased utility to the U.S.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently echoed that position, questioning the use of the alliance after several NATO members refused to allow the U.S. to use their airspace to conduct military operations in Iran.

During his first term, Trump also openly questioned NATO’s purpose. And he has repeatedly pressured allies to increase their defense spending, suggesting that allies were cheating the U.S. by an overreliance on American military strength.
The specter of unintended consequences

Even before Trump’s threats during his second term, Europe had already decided to change course. After the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the increasing fragility of the United States’ involvement in NATO, European countries began increasing military spending; NATO allies have also set targets for further increases in the coming years.

Germany aims to increase its military personnel by 50% in the next 10 years, and it has created its first permanent military deployment abroad – in Lithuania – since World War II. France has likewise announced plans to expand its nuclear arsenal and use it for extended deterrence for the rest of Europe.

Ironically, more spending may increase the chance of tensions between the Trump administration and NATO members.

Over time, the U.S. has reaped some benefits when allies spend less on their own defense. That’s because the U.S. has historically provided security guarantees for countries in exchange for more say over their foreign policies – something scholars refer to as the security–autonomy trade-off.

However, as the U.S. moves further away from a shared vision with European countries and U.S. policy becomes more volatile, American security guarantees may be less reliable in the eyes of many Europeans. Increased European defense budgets will therefore mean NATO members have more opportunities to assert their preferences against those of the U.S.
A changing role for NATO?

The world for the past 80 years has been characterized largely by U.S. political and military dominance. While it is clear that that world is changing, it is less clear what will replace it.

But understanding NATO’s history and its possible paths forward can give us some clues as to what that world will look like. And contrary to Trump’s short-term aims in nudging NATO allies to rebuild their militaries, a more powerful Europe likely means less U.S. influence in the long term, not more.

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Trump And Netanyahu Want Regime Change, But Iran’s Regime Was Built For Survival. A Long War Is Now Likely

Smoke rises in central Tehran after the US-Israel attack. Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

BY AMIN SAIKAL

EMERITUS PROFESSR OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, 

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY; THE

UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA; VICTORIA

UNIVERSITY

The joint US–Israel strikes on Iran, which killed the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Tehran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel and neighbouring Arab countries have again plunged the Middle East into war.

US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said their aim is to bring about a favourable regime change in Iran. The implications of this for Iran, the region and beyond should not be underestimated.

Although Khamenei’s killing is a significant blow to the Islamic regime, it is not insurmountable. Many Iranian leaders have been killed in the past, including Qassem Soleimani, Tehran’s regional security architect, who was assassinated by the US in January 2020.

But they have been replaced relatively smoothly, and the Islamic regime has endured.

Khamenei’s departure is unlikely to mean the end of the Islamic regime in the short run. He anticipated this eventuality, and reportedly last week arranged a line of succession for his leadership and that of senior military, security and political leaders if they were “martyred”.

However, Khamenei was both a political and spiritual leader. He has commanded followers not only among devout Shias in Iran, but also many Muslims across the wider region. His assassination will spur some of them to seek revenge, potentially sparking a wave of extremist violent actions in the region and beyond.

A regime built for survival

Under a constitutional provision of the Islamic Republic, the Assembly of Experts – the body responsible for appointing and dismissing a supreme leader – will now meet and appoint an interim or long-term leader, either from among their own ranks or outside.

There are three likely candidates to be his successor:

* Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, the head of the judiciary

* Ali Asghar Hejazi, Khamenei’s chief-of-staff
*Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic,

 Ayatollah Rohullah Khomeini.

The regime has every incentive to do what it must to ensure its survival. There are many regime enforcers and defenders, led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its subordinate paramilitary Basij group, across the country to suppress any domestic uprisings and fight for the endurance of the regime.

Their fortunes are intimately tied to the regime. So are a range of administrators and bureaucrats in the Iranian government, as well as regime sympathisers among ordinary Iranians. They are motivated by a blend of Shi’ism and fierce nationalism to remain loyal to the regime.

Trump and Netanyahu have called on the Iranian people – some 60% of whom are below the age of 30 – to topple the regime once the US-Israeli operations have crippled it.

Many are deeply aggrieved by the regime’s theocratic impositions and dire economic situation and took to the streets in protests in late 2025 and early 2026. The regime cracked down harshly then, killing thousands.

Could a public uprising happen now? So far, the coercive and administrative state apparatus seems to be solidly backing the regime. Without serious cracks appearing among these figures – particularly the IRGC – the regime can be expected to survive this crisis.

Global economic pain

The regime has also been able to respond very quickly to outside aggression. It has already hit back at Israel and US military bases across the Persian Gulf, using short-range and long-range advanced ballistic missiles and drones.

While many of the projectiles have been repelled, some have hit their targets, causing serious damage.

The IRGC has also set out to choke the Strait of Hormuz – the narrow strategic waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and Indian Ocean. Some 20% of the world’s oil and 25% of its liquefied gas flows through the strait every day.

The United States has vowed to keep the strait open, but the IRGC is potentially well-placed to block traffic from going through. There could be serious implications for the global energy supply and broader economy.

Both sides in this conflict have trespassed all of the previous red lines. They are now in open warfare, which is engulfing the entire region.

A prolonged war looks likely

If there was any pretence on the part of Washington and Jerusalem that their attacks would not lead to a regional war, they were wrong. This is already happening.

Many countries that have close cooperation agreements with Iran, including China and Russia, have condemned the US-Israeli actions. The United Nations secretary-general António Guterres has also urgently called for de-escalation and a return to diplomatic negotiations, as have many others.

But the chances for this look very slim. The US and Iran were in the middle of a second round of talks over Tehran’s nuclear program when the attacks happened. The Omani foreign minister, who mediated between the two sides, publicly said just days ago that “peace was within reach”.

But this was not enough to convince Trump and Netanyahu to let the negotiations continue. They sensed now was the best time to strike the Islamic Republic to destroy not just its nuclear program but also its military capability after Israel degraded some of Tehran’s regional affiliates, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and expanded its footprint in Lebanon and Syria over the last two and a half years.

While it is difficult to be definitive about where the war is likely to lead, the scene is set for a long conflict. It may not last days, but rather weeks. The US and Israel do not want anything short of regime change, and the regime is determined to survive.

With this war, the Trump leadership is also signalling to its adversaries – China, in particular – that the US remains the preeminent global power, while Netanyahu is seeking to cement Israel’s position as the dominant regional actor.

Pity the Iranian people, the region and the world that have to endure the consequences of another war of choice in the Middle East for geopolitical gains in an already deeply troubled world.

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Despite Massive US Attack And Death Of Ayatollah, Regime Change In Iran Is Unlikely

A group of demonstrators in Tehran wave Iranian flags in support of the government on Feb. 28, 2026. AP Photo/Vahid Salemi

BY DONALD HEFLIN

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE EDWARD

R. MURROW CENTER AND SENIOR 

FELLOW OF DIPLOMATIC PRACTICE, THE

FLETCHER SCHOOL, TUFTS UNIVERSITY

After the largest buildup of U.S. warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades, American and Israeli military forces launched a massive assault on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026.

President Donald Trump has called the attacks “major combat operations” and has urged regime change in Tehran. Iranian media reported Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the strikes.

To better understand what this means for the U.S. and Iran, Alfonso Serrano, a U.S. politics editor at The Conversation, interviewed Donald Heflin, a veteran diplomat who now teaches at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.

Widespread attacks have been reported across Iran, following weeks of U.S. military buildup in the region. What does the scale of the attacks tell you?

I think that Trump and his administration are going for regime change with these massive strikes and with all the ships and some troops in the area. I think there will probably be a couple more days’ worth of strikes. They’ll start off with the time-honored strategy of attacking what’s known as command and control, the nerve centers for controlling Iran’s military. From media reporting, we already know that the residence of Khamenei was attacked.

Regime change is going to be difficult. We heard Trump today call for the Iranian people to bring the government down. In the first place, that’s difficult. It’s hard for people with no arms in their hands to bring down a very tightly controlled regime that has a lot of arms.

The second point is that U.S. history in that area of the world is not good with this. You may recall that during the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the U.S. basically encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up, and then made its own decision not to attack Baghdad, to stop short. And that has not been forgotten in Iraq or surrounding countries. I would be surprised if we saw a popular uprising in Iran that really had a chance of bringing the regime down.

Do you see the possibility of U.S. troops on the ground to bring about regime change?

I will stick my neck out here and say that’s not going to happen. I mean, there may be some small special forces sent in. That’ll be kept quiet for a while. But as far as large numbers of U.S. troops, no, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Two reasons. First off, any president would feel that was extremely risky. Iran’s a big country with a big military. The risks you would be taking are large amounts of casualties, and you may not succeed in what you’re trying to do.

But Trump, in particular, despite the military strike against Iran and the one against Venezuela, is not a big fan of big military interventions and war. He’s a guy who will send in fighter planes and small special forces units, but not 10,000 or 20,000 troops.

And the reason for that is, throughout his career, he does well with a little bit of chaos. He doesn’t mind creating a little bit of chaos and figuring out a way to make a profit on the other side of that. War is too much chaos. It’s really hard to predict what the outcome is going to be, what all the ramifications are going to be. Throughout his first term and the first year of his second term, he has shown no inclination to send ground troops anywhere.

Speaking of President Trump, what are the risks he faces?

One risk is going on right now, which is that the Iranians may get lucky or smart and manage to attack a really good target and kill a lot of people, like something in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or a U.S. military base.

The second risk is that the attacks don’t work, that the supreme leader and whoever else is considered the political leadership of Iran survives, and the U.S. winds up with egg on its face.

The third risk is that it works to a certain extent. You take out the top people, but then who steps into their shoes? I mean, go back and look at Venezuela. Most people would have thought that who was going to wind up winning at the end of that was the head of the opposition. But it wound up being the vice president of the old regime, Delcy Rodríguez.

I can see a similar scenario in Iran. The regime has enough depth to survive the death of several of its leaders. The thing to watch will be who winds up in the top jobs, hardliners or realists. But the only institution in Iran strong enough to succeed them is the army, the Revolutionary Guards in particular. Would that be an improvement for the U.S.? It depends on what their attitude was. The same attitude that the vice president of Venezuela has been taking, which is, “Look, this is a fact of life. We better negotiate with the Americans and figure out some way forward we can both live with.”

But these guys are pretty hardcore revolutionaries. I mean, Iran has been under revolutionary leadership for 47 years. All these guys are true believers. I don’t know if we’ll be able to work with them.

Any last thoughts?

I think the timing is interesting. If you go back to last year, Trump, after being in office a little and watching the situation between Israel and Gaza, was given an opening, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Qatar.

A lot of conservative Mideast regimes, who didn’t have a huge problem with Israel, essentially said “That’s going too far.” And Trump was able to use that as an excuse. He was able to essentially say, “Okay, you’ve gone too far. You’re really taking risk with world peace. Everybody’s gonna sit at the table.”

I think the same thing’s happening here. I believe many countries would love to see regime change in Iran. But you can’t go into the country and say, “We don’t like the political leadership being elected. We’re going to get rid of them for you.” What often happens in that situation is people begin to rally around the flag. They begin to rally around the government when the bombs start falling.

But in the last few months, we’ve seen a huge human rights crackdown in Iran. We may never know the number of people the Iranian regime killed in the last few months, but 10,000 to 15,000 protesters seems a minimum.

That’s the excuse Trump can use. You can sell it to the Iranian people and say, “Look, they’re killing you in the streets. Forget about your problems with Israel and the U.S. and everything. They’re real, but you’re getting killed in the streets, and that’s why we’re intervening.” It’s a bit of a fig leaf.

Now, as I said earlier, the problem with this is if your next line is, “You know, we’re going to really soften this regime up with bombs; now it’s your time to go out in the streets and bring the regime down.” I may eat these words, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. The regime is just too strong for it to be brought down by bare hands.

This article was updated on Feb 28, 2026, to include confirmation of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death.

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Ruled Iran With Defiance And Brutality For 36 Years. For Many Iranians, He Will Not Be Revered

A man walks past a mural depicting Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) and late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (right) during a funeral ceremony for security personnel killed during anti-government protests, in Tehran, Iran, January 14 2026. Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

BY ANDREW THOMAS

LECTURER IN MIDDLE EAST STUDIES,

DEAKIN UNIVERSITY

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader for 36 years, has been killed in US and Israeli airstrikes on his country, Iranian state media reported.

As one of Iran’s longest-serving leaders, Khamenei was almost as ubiquitous in Iranian society as his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.

And despite the fact Khomeini authored the Iranian Revolution, some say Khamenei was actually the most powerful leader modern Iran has had.

In more than three decades as supreme leader, Khamenei amassed unprecedented power over domestic politics and cracked down ever more harshly on internal dissent. In recent years, he prioritised his survival – and that of his regime – above all else. His government brutally put down a popular uprising in December 2025–January 2026 that killed thousands.

Ultimately, though, Khamenei will not be remembered by most Iranians as a strong leader. Nor will he be revered. Instead, his legacy will be the profound weakness his regime brought the Islamic Republic on all fronts.

Khamenei’s rise through the ranks

Khamenei was born in the city of Marshad in northeastern Iran in 1939. As a boy, he began to form his political and religious world view by studying at Islamic seminaries in Najaf and Qom. At 13, he started to embrace ideas relating to revolutionary Islam. These included the teachings of cleric Navab Safavi, who often called for political violence against the rule of the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Khamenei met Khomeini in 1958 and immediately embraced his philosophy, often referred to as “Khomeinism”.

This world view was informed by anti-colonial sentiment, Shia Islam and elements of social engineering through state planning, particularly when it came to preserving a “just” Islamic society. Khomeinism stipulates that a system of earthly laws alone cannot create a just society – Iran must draw its legitimacy from “God Almighty”.

The concept of velayat-e faqih, also known as guardianship of the jurist, is central to Khomeinism. It dictates that the supreme leader should be endowed with “all the authorities that the Prophet and infallible Imams were entitled”.

Essentially, this means Iran was to be ruled by a single scholar of Shia Islam. This is where Khomeini, and later Khamenei, would draw their sweeping power and control.

From 1962, Khamenei began almost two decades of revolutionary activity against Pahlavi (the shah) on behalf of Khomeini, who was exiled in 1964. Khamenei was arrested by the shah’s secret police in 1971 and tortured, according to his memoirs.

When the shah was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Khomeini returned from exile to become the new supreme leader.

Khamenei was selected to join the Revolutionary Council, which ruled alongside the provisional government. He then became deputy defence minister and assisted in organising the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). This military institution – initially created to protect the revolution and supreme leader – would become one of the most powerful political forces in Iran.

After surviving an assassination attempt in 1981, Khamenei was elected president of Iran in 1982 and again in 1985. He held the presidency during the majority of the Iran–Iraq war – a conflict that devastated both countries in both human and economic cost.

Although subordinate to the supreme leader, Khamenei wielded significant power compared to later presidents, given the revolution was still very young and the Iraq war posed a great threat to the regime. But he remained in lock-step with Khomeini’s wishes. He also managed to build a close relationship with the IRGC that would go far beyond his presidency.

A surprising choice for supreme leader

Khomeini died in June 1989 after a period of deteriorating health, with no clear successor.

Khomeini had initially supported Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri to be his successor. However, Montazeri had become increasingly critical of the supreme leader’s authority and human rights violations in the country. He resigned in 1988 and was put under house arrest until his death in 2009.

Khamenei had the political credentials to lead. He was also a steadfast support of Khomeinism. However, he was seen a surprising choice for supreme leader when he was elected by the Assembly of Experts, a group of Islamic clerics.

In fact, his appointment sparked a significant amount of controversy and criticism. Some Islamic scholars believed he lacked the clerical rank of grand ayatollah, which was required under the constitution to ascend to the position. These critics believed the Iranian people would not respect the word of “a mere human being” without a proper connection to God.

A referendum was held in July 1989 to change the constitution to allow for a supreme leader who has shown “Islamic scholarship”. It passed overwhelmingly and Khamenei became an ayatollah.

Khamenei’s position had been consolidated on paper, but despite being president since 1982, he did not enjoy the same popularity as Khomeini within both the clerical elite and general public.

The constitutional amendments, however, had given Khamenei significantly more power to intervene in political affairs. In fact, he had far more power as supreme leader than Khomeini ever enjoyed.

This included the ability to determine general policies, appoint and dismiss members of the Council of Guardians, and order public referendums. He also had enough power to silence dissent with relative ease.

Consolidating power over the decades

Khamenei worked with his presidents to varying degrees, though he exercised his power to undermine legislation when he disagreed with it.

For example, he largely backed the economic agenda of President Hashemi Rafsanjani (who served from 1989 to 1997), but he often stood in the way of Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005) and Hassan Rouhani (2013–21). Both had attempted to reform Iran’s political system and foster a better relationship with the West.

Khamenei’s most famous intervention in domestic politics occurred after the first term of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–13). After Ahmadinejad claimed victory in the disputed 2009 presidential election, thousands of Iranians took to the streets in one of the largest protest movements since the revolution. Khamenei backed the election result and cracked down harshly on the protesters. Dozens were killed (perhaps more), while thousands were arbitrarily arrested.

Khamenei later clashed with Ahmadinejad and warned him against seeking the presidency again in 2017. Ahmadinejad defied him, but was later barred from running.

After the death of hardline President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in 2024, Khameini continued his manoeuvring behind the scenes. After the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian won the presidency, Khameini immediately blocked him from negotiating with the United States over sanctions relief and used his influence to thwart his economic reform agenda.

And when protests again broke out at the end of 2025 over the struggling economy, Khamenei again ordered them to be crushed by any means necessary.

A tarnished legacy

Thanks to the powers vested in him in the constitution, Khamenei also had extraordinary control over Iran’s foreign policy.

Like his mentor, Khomeini, he staunchly supported the regime’s resistance to what it considered “Western imperialism”. He was also a key architect of Iran’s regional proxy strategy, funding militant groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and others to carry out Iran’s military objectives.

Khamenei had, at times, been amenable to cooperation with the West – namely negotiating with the US over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

During the first Trump administration, however, Khamenei returned to a staunchly anti-Western posture. His government railed against Trump’s scuttling of the 2015 nuclear deal, the reimposed economic sanctions on Iran’s energy sector and the assassination of the head of the IRGC’s Quds force, Qassem Soleimani.

After Trump returned to office in 2025, Iran grew even weaker. And Khamenei’s anti-Western posture began to look increasingly hollow. Iran’s defeat in the 12-day war with Israel in 2025 shredded whatever legitimacy his regime had left.

In the months that followed, Khamenei ruled over a population increasingly resentful of the Iranian political system and its leadership. In the 2025–26 protests, some openly chanted for Khamenei’s death.

When Khomenei died in 1989, his state funeral was attended by millions. Mourners pulled him out of his coffin and scrambled for sacred mementos.

Though Khameini served longer, Iranians will likely not show the same grief for him.

    READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Ceasefires Like The One Between Iran And Israel Often Fail – But An Agreement With Specific Conditions Is More Likely To Hold

Search and rescue efforts continue in a building in Beersheba, Israel, hit by a ballistic missile fired from Iran shortly before the ceasefire announced by U.S. President Donald Trump came into effect on June 24, 2025. Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)

BY DONALD HEFLIN

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE EDWARD

R. MURROW CENTER AND SENIOR FELLOW

OF DIPLOMATIC PRACTICE, THE FLETCHER

SCHOOL, TUFTS UNIVERSITY

Within hours of President Donald Trump unexpectedly announcing an upcoming ceasefire between Israel and Iran on June 23, 2025, both countries launched airstrikes against the other.

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f–k they’re doing,” an angry and frustrated Trump told reporters outside the White House on June 24.

While Iran and Israel have tentatively agreed to the truce – and Trump reiterated on June 24 that the “ceasefire is in effect” – it is not clear whether this deal can hold. Some research shows that an estimated 80% of ceasefire deals worldwide fail.

Amy Lieberman, a politics and society editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with former Ambassador Donald Heflin, an American career diplomat who serves as the executive director of the Edward R. Murrow Center at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, to understand how ceasefires typically work – and how the Israel-Iran deal stacks up against other agreements to end wars.

How do ceasefire deals typically happen?

There are classes taught on how to negotiate ceasefires, but it is ad hoc with each situation.

For example, in one scenario, one of the warring parties wants a ceasefire and has decided that the conflict isn’t going well. The second party might not want a ceasefire, but could agree that it is getting tired or the risks are too high, and agrees to work something out.

The next scenario, which leads to more success, is when both parties want a ceasefire. They decide that the loss of life and money has gone too far for both sides. One of the parties approaches the other through intermediaries to say it wants a ceasefire, and the other warring party agrees.

In a third situation – which is what we are seeing with the Iran-Israel deal – the outside world imposes a ceasefire. Trump likely told both Israel and Iran: Look, it’s enough. This is too dangerous for the rest of the world. We don’t care what you think. Time for a ceasefire.“

The U.S. has done this in the Middle East before, like after the Yom Kippur War in 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab countries led by Egypt and Syria. Israel was achieving big military victories, but the risk was pretty great for the world. The U.S. came in and said, "That’s enough, stop it now.” And it worked.

Does the US bring the warring parties to a table in this kind of situation, or simply pressure the countries to stop fighting?

It is more of the U.S. saying, “We are done.” When the U.S. does something like this, it is often going to have backup from the European Union and other countries like Qatar, saying, “The Americans are right. It is time for a ceasefire.”

It appears that this Israel-Iran deal does not have specific conditions attached to it. Is that typical of a ceasefire deal?

This deal doesn’t seem to have any specific details attached to it. Ceasefires work better when they have that. Lasting ceasefires need to address the concerns of the warring parties and give each side some of what it wants.

For instance, in the Ukraine and Russia war, we have not seen either one of those countries push for a ceasefire. Part of the problem is Crimea and eastern Ukraine, sections of land in Ukraine that Russia has annexed and claims as its own. Russia would be happy with a deal that puts it in charge of Crimea and Ukraine, but Ukraine won’t agree to that. The question of who controls specific areas of land has to be addressed in this conflict; otherwise, the ceasefire isn’t going to last.

Who is responsible for ensuring that both sides uphold a ceasefire?

Security guarantees are an important part of negotiating and maintaining long-term ceasefires. Big countries like the U.S. could say that if a warring party violates a ceasefire agreement, they are going to punish them.

In the 1990s, the U.S. and Europe assured Ukraine that if it gave up its nuclear arsenal, the U.S. would defend Ukraine if Russia ever invaded it. Russia has invaded Ukraine twice since then, in 2014 and 2022. The U.S. gave a more substantial response in the form of sending weapons and other war materials to Ukraine after the 2022 invasion, but there have been no real consequences for Russia.

That has created a problem for ceasefires in the future, because the U.S. didn’t deliver on its past security guarantees.

The further away you get from Europe, the less interested the West is in wars. But in those kinds of disputes, United Nations and other international peacekeeping troops can be sent in. Sometimes, that can work brilliantly in one place, like with the example of international peacekeeping troops called the multilateral Observer Mission stationed between Israel and Egypt helping maintain peace between those countries. But you can copy it to another place and it just doesn’t work as well.

How does this ceasefire fit within the history of other ceasefires?

It’s too early to tell. What matters is how the details get fleshed out.

Ideally, you can get representatives of the Israeli and Iranian governments to sit around a conference table to reach a detailed agreement. The Israelis might say, “We have got to have some kind of assurances that Iran is not going to use a nuclear weapon.” And the Iranians could say, “Assassinations of our military generals and scientists has got to stop.” That kind of conversation and agreement is what is missing, thus far, in this process.

Why is it so common for ceasefire deals to fail?

Some ceasefire deals don’t get to the underlying conditions of what really caused the problem and what made people start shooting this time around. If you don’t get to the core issues of a conflict, you are putting a Band-Aid on the situation. Putting a Band-Aid on someone when they are bleeding is a good move, but you ultimately might need more than that to stop the bleeding.

The outside world might be pretty happy with a ceasefire deal that seems to stop the fighting, but if the details are not ironed out, the experts would say, “This isn’t going to last.”

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Who Is Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

BY SAHAR MARANLOU

LECTURER IN LAW AND SOCIAL LEGAL 

STUDIES, ROYAL HOLLOWAY 

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Ali Khamenei was born in Mashhad, Iran, in 1939, as the second son of a local religious leader, Javad Khamenei, and he grew up in relative poverty.

He learned to read the Qur'an in early childhood before attending a theological seminary school in Mashhad. At 18, he travelled to Najaf in central Iraq to study Shia jurisprudence, but was later asked by his father to return. He was a student of Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

There is not much known about Khamenei’s family life, except that he is married and has six children. Khamenei’s interest in poetry is a well-known part of his public persona. He often cites poems in his speeches and hosts poetry gatherings where pro-government poets gather to read their poems to receive his comments. Khamenei’s interest in literature is quite rare among religious clerics. The same goes for his interest in gardening.

In the 1960s and 1970s Khamenei was involved in protests against the US-backed monarchy (the shah), and was an ardent supporter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then living in exile, and against the “westernisation” of Iran. This led to his arrest by the shah’s secret police and intelligence operation, the Organisation of National Security and Information (Savak), which suppressed opposition to the shah.

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the monarch who ruled Iran until 1979, was backed by western powers including the US and the UK. After a decade of economic growth in Iran, mainly based on oil revenues, did not lead to an improvement in the standard of living for ordinary Iranians, a combination of students, intellectuals and clerics created combined support for a revolution.

After the shah was overthrown in the 1979 revolution, Iran became an Islamic republic. Khamenei was appointed as a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Council, which was put in place to manage the revolution, and served as deputy defence minister and led Friday prayers in Tehran, which was considered highly prestigious.

The new republic adopted an anti-western “imperialist” foreign policy. This is known as “global arrogance” (Estekbar Jahani) in Iranian post-revolutionary discourse.

In 1982, he was elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, winning 95% of the vote, after the previous president, Mohammad Ali Rajai, was killed in a bomb attack in Tehran. Khamenei had been the target of an assassination attempt two months earlier, leaving him with serious injuries and paralysis in his right arm.

Iran’s war with neighbouring Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, lasted from 1980 to 1988 and is known in Iran as the “sacred defence”. The war began after an invasion by Iraqi troops on Iranian territory and resulted in around one million deaths across both countries.

This was another significant period in Khamenei’s career. He was active in managing Iran’s defence as the chairman of the supreme council of war support during this period. The council was formed to make sure the country was as prepared as possible during the war and to take measures to mobilise forces and to meet the needs of the war at the battlefront.

He also commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite part of the Iranian armed forces, from 1981. At the end of the war, Khamenei claimed Iran had won a “luminous victory”.

He praised Khomeini for his tactics in the war and said that the supreme leader had realised from the very beginning that it was not an ordinary conflict between two neighbours. “He recognised the enemy and realised that the main enemy is not present in the war, and he recognised that Saddam is just a tool.”

He went on to suggest that this was a war about US regional power and that Saddam Hussein would continue to receive US support.

Rising to supreme leadership

Khamenei became supreme leader in 1989 after the death of Khomeini. He was designated as the new leader by the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member body of Islamic clerics. He ruled in the same style, and with the same type of foreign policy, as his predecessor; looking for allies to offset US power in the region.

The duties designated for the rahbar (supreme leader) are listed in Article 101 of the constitution and range from determining the political direction of the government (in consultation with an advisory committee) to commanding the armed forces to declaring war, peace, and the mobilisation of armed forces to pardoning or commuting sentences upon recommendation of the head of the judiciary.

Khomeini’s conception of Islamic government was centred on the doctrine of the guardianship of “the jurist”, known as velayat-e faqih, and this continued at the heart of the government that followed under Khamenei. This gives the supreme leader extensive powers, including control over the military, judiciary and media.

This doctrine plays a vital role in legitimising theocratic power in Iran, linking religious authority with the state. Discussion about velayat-e faqih continues within Iranian society as part of an ongoing dialogue between traditional religious authority and civil society.

The question of who might come to power after Khamenei was raised during the grassroots uprising and pro-democracy protests around Iran in 2022 and 2023. It was expected that any transition would take a considerable amount of time, especially if the aim was for a more democratic form of government.

The current war might suggest a different outcome. Even though the Israeli attacks on Iran have again sparked discussion of a possible change of leader, the public is focused now on their own safety, and defending Iran, not on political change.

Any external war or threats coming from outside Iran has historically united Iranians against aggressors. This means that the path to democratic change is not likely to be created, or helped, by Israeli air strikes or US threats.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Friday Essay: ‘My Heart Is Full Of Sparks’ – As War Escalates, Can I Hope For Iran’s Liberation From A Tyrannical Regime?

Iranians drive past a wall painting of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) and late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (L), Tehran, Iran, June 1, 2025. Abedin Taherkenareh/AAP

BY HESSOM RAZAVI

CLIN ICAL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF 

OPHTALMOLOGY, THE UNIVERSITY

OF WESTDERN AUSTRALIA

We are at a dinner party in suburban Perth, a home away from home for our diaspora. As guests arrive, a Persian ballad plays in the background: Morq-e Sahar (Dawn Bird), a freedom song, a century-old protest against dictatorships and tyranny in Iran. This version was sung by the late Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, Iran’s most decorated maestro.

Dawn bird, lament!
Make my brand burn even more.
With the sparks from your sigh, break
And turn this cage upside down.

Shajarian’s virtuoso voice frames an old question. One I’ve heard, it seems, at every Iranian gathering since my childhood. It hangs in the air like a cloud, unanswered, as guests greet each other with customary bowing and rooboosi (cheek kissing). We settle around a table laden with âjil (trail mix), fruit and wine, the smell of saffron rice and ghorme sabzi (herb stew) all around.

For me, the scene is both familial and familiar. As is the question, which circles back around. “When will this regime change?” someone asks. The “regime” is Nezâm-e Jomhuri-ye Eslâmi-ye Irân, or the Regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A missing voice

Since the launch of Israel’s Operation Rising Lion against Iran last week, there has been a voice sometimes missing in the mainstream coverage – that of the Iranian people themselves.

“Israel is not our enemy, the regime is our enemy,” chant many Iranians in Tehran and in the diaspora, a common sentiment in our community. They cite the regime that they have endured for 46 years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution: a government most of them oppose and reject, with the vast majority of Iranians preferring democratic, if not secular, reform.

I hear some Iranians, on social media and in conversation with people who live there, commending Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for assassinating Iran’s top military brass. These are the leaders of the Sepah, or the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the most powerful branch of the Iranian Armed Forces. Together with the mullahs – Iran’s Shia Muslim clerical class – they form the backbone of Iran’s government and economy.

So far, Israel has assassinated Hossein Salami, the head of the Revolutionary Guards, as well as Mohammad Kazemi, its intelligence chief, plus senior nuclear scientists and dozens of other officers. Israel has also indicated an interest in killing Ayatollah Ali Khomenei, Iran’s supreme leader.

“Damet garm, aghayeh Netanyahu,” some Iranians are saying, literally “may your breath be warm”, or “good job, Netanyahu”. Amid the terror and confusion – not to mention the civilian deaths, so far, of over 200 Iranians – there is a rare and distinct sense of hope.

State of corruption

In view of Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza, this support for Israel may come as a surprise to many Australians, and Western liberals in general. Certainly, reconciling Israel’s role in Gaza versus Iran is jarring.

But for now, I hear some Iranians saying “maybe our regime can finally be toppled”. Maybe Iran can reclaim its place in the international community, as the proud and prosperous nation it should be? As this crisis escalates, as buildings collapse and distressed Tehranis, including my family, flee the capital for the safety of the countryside, there is a heady sense of possibility.

Wing-tied nightingale come out of the corner of your cage, and
Sing the song of freedom for human kind.
With your fiery breath ignite,
The breath of this peopled land …

I understand the allure of this hope; to an extent, I feel it myself. My family lives in Australia, not Iran, precisely because of the Iranian regime’s tyranny. We fled Iran in 1983 due to political persecution, after most of the adults in our extended family were arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned by the government.

Two of my imprisoned uncles and one of my aunties were executed. Another uncle was beaten to death in custody. My grandfather, a noble old man, was imprisoned and tortured. We were far from unique; during the 1980s, the government imprisoned tens of thousands of its own people, executing many thousands of them.

Little has changed since then. The Iranian regime and the Revolutionary Guards have shown a pervasive disregard for human rights. They execute more of their own people than any country except China. They are a world leader in the use of torture; they deny freedoms of expression and press, association and assembly; they discriminate against women, girls, religious minorities, LGBTI people, and refugees. Tightly controlled elections ensure the success of desired candidates.

Freedom House, a nonprofit organisation based in the US, gives Iran a score of 11 out of 100 for its provision of political rights and civil liberties. For many Iranians, it felt overdue when, in 2019, the US listed the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation, a decision followed by other countries, including Canada and Sweden. In 2023, the European parliament overwhelmingly voted for a resolution to do the same, with calls to expedite this motion in early 2025.

In parallel to their human rights abuses, the Revolutionary Guard has hobbled the Iranian economy. Their corruption, financial incompetence and operation of black markets have compounded the effects of international sanctions. Consequently, the Iranian rial hit a historic low this year. It is now worth around one twentieth of its value in 2015.

People’s life savings have dwindled in value, rendering older Iranians financially vulnerable. Inflation was 38.7% in May of this year, down from highs of over 40%. My family in Iran experience this as grocery and commodity prices that may rise in a single day, higher in the afternoon than in the morning.

Some cities have experienced water cuts and power outages.

While it hasn’t yet qualified as a failed state, Iran has been failing.

All of this has occurred despite the country being richly endowed with the second- and third-highest natural gas and oil reserves in the world, respectively. Iran has a GDP of over $US404 billion – 36th in the world. Its youth are highly educated and literate, with more women enrolled in universities than men.

Rather than accelerating the nation’s domestic development, however, the Iranian government has by its own admission spent tens of billions of dollars to expand its empire by funding terrorist proxies: Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the recently deposed Assad regime in Syria, and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Iranian people have suffered financially, but the Revolutionary Guards have not. They are estimated to control at least 10%, and up to 50%, of the country’s total economy, including up to an estimated 50% share of Iran’s US$50 billion per year oil profits. They have achieved this by commandeering an industrial empire, made up of hundreds of commercial companies, trusts, subsidiaries and nominally charitable foundations.

A further US$2 billion or more per year comes from the government’s military budget, with periodic boosts during crises. Add to this the alleged shadowy operation of black markets, extortion, and the smuggling of alcohol, narcotics and weapons, accounting for an estimated US$12 billion per year in revenue.

Contemplating this corruption, I am reminded of an anecdote from a personal associate who worked for a firm affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard. They shared stories of officers, the nation’s purported “guardians of Islam”, hosting parties where alcohol, firearms and sex workers were readily available.

My associate recounted several instances of fraud and theft, one of them monumental in scale. In this “tea smuggling scandal”, the Revolutionary Guard defrauded billions of dollars from a government fund by illicitly exchanging some funds on the open market, falsely labelling cheap tea to on-sell as superior quality tea, and falsely labelling domestically produced machinery as “Made in Germany”.

“They’re untouchable, and they know it”, my associate said. Another Iranian community member described them to me as “Iran’s super-mafia”.

Speaking to family in Iran, they say many of the middle tier Revolutionary Guards live in their own shahrak-ha (towns) with dedicated markets, schools and resorts. Many of the Guards’ elite, meanwhile, live in mansions in the exclusive parts of north Tehran, with children who pursue conspicuously American “lifestyles of the rich and famous”. For an organisation that leads the chants of “marg bar America!” (death to America), one wonders if they see the irony in this.

Turn our dark night to dawn

I find myself sickened by the events of this war, and the harm it is causing. Struck with anxiety, some of our family members in Tehran haven’t slept for days. “The Israeli bombardments are non-stop, and so loud,” one family member told me.

This week our extended family has struggled frantically to leave Tehran. Petrol is hard to come by and, in a mass exodus, the bumper-to-bumper traffic stands still for hours. I know some of the neighbourhoods being bombed; we lived in one of them in my childhood.

“For every military commander that’s assassinated, a whole building might collapse, and with a dozen civilians trapped or killed,” another person told me, intimating that the civilian toll is higher than official counts.

I am also worried about the raised hopes of Iranians. I have seen this before, when a spark – sometimes an inspirational act of courage from an ordinary citizen – leads to public surges in solidarity. At these moments during my childhood, my parents would tell me that the regime’s time was limited, it’s downfall inevitable. Iranians would see better days and people power would prevail.

Truth and goodness rise like cream, my Dad would say, as if echoing Dr Martin Luther King’s arc of the moral universe bending towards justice.

A beautiful sentiment no doubt, but one that has become difficult to believe over time. It often appears that the universe’s arc bends towards power, not justice. Fairness seems the exception, hardly the rule. At the time, Dad’s reassurances were protective, even noble. But as the 1979 revolution and its aftermath have shown, might beats right most days of the week.

The cruelty of the cruel and the tyranny of the hunter
Have blown away my nest.
O God, O Heavens, O Nature,
Turn our dark night to dawn.

As I explain to Australian friends: how can a people surpass a government that has (1) the military on its side, (2) a stranglehold on oil revenue, and (3) a purported mandate from God?

Guns, money and a holy book – a hard trifecta to crack, and powerful enough to attract a sufficient minority of cronies, bottom feeders and sycophants.

What’s the size of this ruling minority? It’s difficult to be sure, but a 2023 survey of 158,000 respondents within Iran found that only 15% supported the Islamic Republic. Small, but sufficient to produce crowds burning American and Israeli flags. I’ve always marvelled at the regime’s ability to manufacture these images; I’m told by associates that they now use AI to produce some of these.

Women Life Freedom

As current events unfold, I find myself deeply sceptical of all the political actors, whether Iranian, Israeli, American, Arab or Russian. Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, none of them have shown any serious interest in supporting democratic reform in Iran. “They’ve all profited from this government,” a senior community member told me. “Why would that change now?”

For the sake of sanity, I find myself searching for credible sources of hope. The only one I settle on is faith in the Iranian people themselves. This the culture that has surrounded me since childhood, the qualities I’ve seen first hand in my countrywomen and men, whether young or old, home or abroad, Muslim, Bahai or secular: a resilience, a resourcefulness, a propensity for joy, a confidence and pride in culture, and an ability to prevail, over and again.

It’s a new spring, roses are in bloom…
…O rose, look towards this lover,
Look again, again, again.

These qualities are periodically staged for the world to see. Iranian people have not taken their oppression lying down, rising in (mainly) peaceful protests. There have been some 10 mass protests since the inception of the Islamic Republic in 1979. The largest of these was the Green Movement in 2009, when it was estimated that over a million citizens marched in Tehran alone. As recently as May 2025, strikes took place in over 150 cities, involving hundreds of thousands of workers.

For the most part, these demonstrations have been met with severe repression by state authorities. One episode, from September 2022, deserves special mention. The world watched in horror as the regime cracked down on young women in Iran. This was their response to the Zan Zendegi Azadi (Woman Life Freedom) movement, where mass protests were triggered by the death in custody of Mahsa Jina Amini.

Amini was a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who had been detained by the government’s “Morality Police” for wearing an improper hijab. Three days into her detention she died under suspicious circumstances. A leaked CT scan showed a skull fracture and brain haemorrhage. This corroborated eyewitness accounts that Amini had been severely beaten by police.

Intentionally or not, a dress code infringement had been punished by death. Even for Iranians long accustomed to state violence, this was too much. Mass protests erupted in more than 100 cities across all of Iran’s 31 provinces.

The protests were led by women, many of them defiantly removing their headscarves. True to its nature, the regime responded violently. In the months that followed, over 20,000 protesters were imprisoned, many later testifying to having been tortured through electric shock, flogging, waterboarding and rape.

Human Rights Watch estimates that over 500 civilians – including 68 children and adolescents – were killed by security forces, which included the paramilitary Basijis, Revolutionary Guard Corps, police and prison guards.

Things would get darker. That December the regime was accused of deliberately poisoning over 1,200 students at Kharazmi and Ark universities on the eve of a planned protest. Soon thereafter, there were allegations of toxic gas attacks against thousands of schoolgirls, in apparent retaliation for removing their hijabs. By 2024, the UN had accused Iran of a coordinated campaign of crimes against humanity, a claim rejected by the regime.

As an eye surgeon, I was distressed to read a letter signed by over 100 Iranian ophthalmologists detailing eye injuries among protesters. The letter alleged that security forces had deliberately targeted people’s eyes with teargas canisters, rubber bullets and shotgun fire, resulting in traumatic injuries and irreversible blindness among protesters.

Dew drops are falling from my cloudy eyes
This cage, like my heart, is narrow and dark.
O fiery sigh set alight this cage
O fate, do not pick the flower of my life.

There were separate reports of women’s faces and genitals being targeted by shotgun fire. The regime appeared to have interfered with medical services: protestors transported to police stations in ambulances were arrested after surgery or denied treatment. Doctors were reportedly coerced to supply false death certificates to disguise the true cause of protestors’ deaths. The British Medical Journal documented healthcare professionals being arrested, intimidated, kidnapped or killed in retaliation for treating protesters.

If we didn’t know it already, Zan Zendegi Azadi reminded us of the risks, if not futility, of advocating for change in Iran.

When mass civil movements like this, performed ten times over, have not worked, what alternatives are the people left with? Brutalised and impoverished by their own government, should we be surprised when a traditionally Islamic people welcome a Jewish state’s decapitation of their political leaders? Is it not tempting, even if lazy, to invoke the historical comparison of Cyrus the Great, Persian King of the Achaemenid Empire, who freed the Jewish people from Babylonian captivity?

For the people of Iran and Israel – at the risk of naivety and romanticism – are we approaching an age of karma?

O rose, look towards this lover,
Look again, again, again.
O heart-lost bird, shorten, shorten, shorten,
The tale of separation.

An uncertain scenario

Regarding Operation Rising Lion, it is safe to say that Iranians, like any healthy community, hold a diversity of views.

At one end of the spectrum, those who unconditionally condemn Israel’s attack should consider that the Iranian government has stockpiled over 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium. While not enough to build a nuclear warhead, this is far more enriched uranium than is needed for peaceful purposes.

The Iranian government has also vowed to “wipe Israel off the map” for decades. Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei lauded the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians. In other words, Iran has said to Israel “we want to annihilate you, we’ll celebrate your deaths, and we could do it with nuclear weapons if we wished to”.

Following Iran’s recent breach of its nonproliferation obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Israel says it has acted lawfully in attacking Iran for self-defense – a claim disputed by some international law experts. Even if one does not agree with Israel’s action, it is evident that they’ve long been baited by Iran.

On the other side of the coin, Iranians who salute Israel and the US as their saviours should take caution. The US director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declared as recently as March 2025 that there was no evidence that Iran was actively pursuing nuclear weapons, a finding corroborated by over a dozen other US intelligence elements including the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Insitute for Defense Analyses.

One cannot ignore the disturbing echoes of the 2003 war on Iraq, where the absence of evidence for weapons of mass destruction was intentionally misrepresented by the US and UK governments. The consequences for Iraq have been disastrous.

As for Netanyahu and his administration, they have shown a ruthless pursuit of narrow self-interest in Gaza. The deaths and injuries inflicted by the Israeli Defence Forces on more than 50,000 Palestinian children appear to have done nothing to quell their ambitions.

With regards to Netanyahu himself, he is facing corruption charges that could result in his domestic imprisonment and he has more recently been the subject of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, including starvation and murder.

What can Iranians learn from this? The evidence suggests this could be a war of passion and opportunism for Israel, rather than one of legitimate self-defence. In any case, they are not waging it for the benefit of Iranians.

Israel has a tendency to set ambitious military goals that it can’t achieve. While it promises Operation Rising Lion will soon end, its track record suggests otherwise.

A protracted conflict would see Iran’s civilian toll rise much higher. Power outages and fuel shortages have already begun; what happens once water, medical and food scarcity set in? Since Iran doesn’t allow many international aid agencies onto its soil, who will come to the rescue of Iranians as things escalate?

Truth’s life has come to an end
Faith and fidelity have been replaced by the shield of war.
Lover’s lament and beloved’s coyness,
Are but lies and have no power.

Even if Israel succeeds in capturing or killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, what happens next? With the Revolutionary Guard’s roots in place, there is no guarantee, and in fact a low likelihood, of true democratic reform. In recent times, foreign interference in the region has not gone well. Look at Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria: all evidence of catastrophic worsening after the removal of autocrats.

This is a complex and uncertain scenario with little room for moral grandstanding. Disabling Iran’s nuclear and ballistic capabilities could be a net win, but the manner in which it is being done sets a dangerous precedent. For the Iranian people, Netanyahu’s ambitions could ultimately prove both heroic and villainous.

The cup of the rich is full of pure wine,
Our cup is filled with our heart’s blood.
O anxious heart, cry out aloud
And avoid those who have powerful hands.

As I watch coverage of the war, I find myself drifting back to Shajarian’s voice and to Morq-e Sahar, probably for distraction and comfort. What is real is my faith in my fellow Iranians. Many examples comes to mind. One, during a trip to Iran, was when I stayed with family at a roadhouse. That evening, we heard music emanating from the courtyard and followed some steps into an dark basement beneath the accommodation.

There we found a large gathering of young Iranians, two dozen or more men and women risking the law by hanging out together to sing. We joined them as strangers, seated on the floor and holding hands at times. In the dim light, the group sang and sang, a couple of them playing instruments.

I can’t say I knew the songs or comprehended all the lyrics; I didn’t need to, to understand their meaning. You may force our people underground, you may cage them, bombard and even kill them. But you will never extinguish their eternal Persian spirit.

O rosy-cheeked cup-bearer, give the fiery water,
Play a joyful tune, O charming friend.
O sad nightingale lament from your cage.
Because of your grief my heart is
Full of sparks, sparks, sparks.

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