‘Nobody Knows What to Do About the Future’

Iran is still reeling from the 12-day war, but its politics are locked in stasis.

By Arash Azizi

At the end of November, two aging clerics gave speeches in Tehran reflecting on the lessons to be drawn from the summer’s Israeli and American strikes on their country.

The contrast between the men’s visions shows just what sort of pickle Iran now finds itself in.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared total victory. “Without a doubt, the Iranian nation defeated the Americans and the Zionists in the 12-day war,” he said triumphantly on November 26. “They failed to achieve any of their goals.”

Speaking a day earlier, Hassan Rouhani, a former president and a rival of Khamenei, recommended instead that Iran stop underestimating its adversaries and focus on using diplomacy to deter another war.

“Unfortunately, we are still in the state of ‘no war, no peace,’” he said before a group of his former cabinet ministers. “There is no feeling of security in the country.”

Only one of these clerics appears to have the authority to enforce his vision. Khamenei has been the single most powerful person in Iran, and its head of state, since 1989. Rouhani, by contrast, holds no official position and was barred last year even from running for a seat he has held on a supervisory body since 2000.

But appearances can be deceiving. The war dealt a harsh blow to Khamenei. For decades, the leader has congratulated himself on keeping Iran out of direct conflicts.

But the past two years have seen the fall of one Iranian ally in the region, the Assad regime in Syria, and Israel’s battering of two others, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Then came the June bombardment, which Khamenei spent hiding in a bunker; this cost him the respect of many in the Islamic Republic.