The Iran America Didn’t Expect
The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran was accompanied by political expectations that went far beyond degrading Tehran’s nuclear program or weakening its military capabilities. In Washington and Tel Aviv, many believed the conflict would become a founding moment for a different Iran—either by producing a political order more closely aligned with the West and less committed to its anti-Western ideology, or by triggering a domestic uprising that would ultimately bring the system of Wilayat al-Faqih to an end.
Only months after the war, however, a major essay by Vali Nasr and Narges Bajoghli in Foreign Affairs offers a strikingly different interpretation. The Iran that emerged from the conflict is not the Iran that the United States and Israel anticipated. Instead, it is a state engaged in an ambitious process of internal reorganization. The Islamic Republic taking shape today differs from the one that evolved under Ali Khamenei—but in ways far more complex than its adversaries expected.
The significance of Nasr and Bajoghli’s essay lies not only in its conclusions, but also in its timing and authorship. Vali Nasr has long been among America’s leading scholars of Iran, developing an intellectual project that explains Iranian behavior through the lenses of statecraft, strategic culture, and geopolitics rather than ideology alone. His latest essay reads as a natural continuation of his work on Iran’s grand strategy, while introducing a new variable imposed by the recent war: the Islamic Republic did not emerge from the conflict unchanged.
Equally revealing is the broader context in which the article appeared. It follows Foreign Affairs’ recent issue devoted largely to Iran’s future and the implications of the war. This reflects a notable shift within American strategic thinking. Before the conflict, the dominant question was how the Iranian regime might collapse. Today, the debate is increasingly centered on a different question: what kind of political system is taking shape inside Iran after the war? That change in perspective may prove as consequential as the changes unfolding inside Iran itself.
Nasr and Bajoghli do not argue that Iran has merely changed faces or adjusted policies. They describe a much deeper process involving the reorganization of military institutions, new mechanisms of decision-making, revisions to national security doctrine, adaptations in the conduct of warfare, redistribution of authority within the state, and a recalibration of relations between the government and society. In this reading, the war became a vast laboratory in which Iran paid a tremendous price while simultaneously absorbing profound strategic lessons.
Perhaps the article’s most provocative argument concerns the gradual shift from revolution to state. This does not suggest that the Islamic Republic has abandoned its ideological foundations or the institution of Wilayat al-Faqih. Such conclusions would be premature. Rather, the authors observe that the language of national security, state interests, and institutional effectiveness has become increasingly prominent among the emerging political and military elite. A new generation within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the security establishment did not experience the revolution as its founders did. It was shaped instead by decades of sanctions, regional wars, and security pressures, growing up within the institutions of the state rather than the revolutionary movement itself.
This observation deserves careful consideration, although it should not be accepted uncritically. Ideology remains central to the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy and institutional identity. Yet the war undoubtedly accelerated an internal transfer of authority and reinforced the primacy of the state as the framework through which ideology now operates. This corresponds with the increasingly visible role played by military and security institutions in managing political, economic, and media affairs during the past several months, alongside the relative decline of traditional revolutionary discourse.
The essay also examines the changing relationship between the state and society. According to Nasr and Bajoghli, the war generated an unprecedented wave of national solidarity around the state, including among social groups that had led anti-government protests only months earlier. This solidarity reflected less a sudden embrace of the regime than a widespread perception that Iran itself had become the target of an existential confrontation. Iranian nationalism consequently emerged as a powerful political force, transforming the defense of the country into common ground shared by regime supporters and some of its critics.
Still, this interpretation warrants caution. History shows that wars often postpone domestic conflicts rather than resolve them. The economic crisis, social grievances, youth discontent, women’s demands, and the persistent tensions between society and the state have not disappeared. They have merely receded under the extraordinary pressures of wartime. The more important question therefore concerns not how Iran behaved during the conflict, but how it will govern the postwar period.
One important indicator lies in the repeated statements made by President Masoud Pezeshkian after the war. His remarks hinted at growing discomfort with hardline factions and with attempts by certain actors to dominate political decision-making—a reference widely interpreted as directed toward the Revolutionary Guards and the expanding militarization of the state. If Iran’s pragmatic camp chose restraint during the conflict, there is little reason to assume that it will remain equally silent during the postwar phase.
Regionally, the article argues that Tehran has redefined its strategic priorities. The Strait of Hormuz, the partnership with China, missile capabilities, and the restructuring of relations with regional allies are no longer separate policy files. Together they form elements of a broader conception of Iranian national security. This point deserves particular attention in the Arab world. An Iran operating increasingly through the logic of the nation-state may become more pragmatic in some areas, yet also more determined to defend the sources of power it now regards as integral to its long-term strategic interests.
Ultimately, the article’s greatest value lies less in whether one accepts all of its conclusions than in the questions it raises. It challenges conventional Western and Arab assumptions about Iran by suggesting that major wars reshape states from within as much as they reshape regional balances of power.
The central question today is therefore no longer who won the war. A more consequential question has emerged: what kind of Iran emerged from it? If the conflict has indeed contributed to the birth of a different Islamic Republic, then the entire region is entering a new strategic phase that demands a different analytical framework. Policies built on the assumption that Iran is steadily moving toward fragmentation or irreversible decline may require substantial revision. Iran itself now faces an equally difficult test: whether it can transform the lessons of war into a sustainable political project. Only time will determine whether this “new Iran” represents a lasting structural transformation or simply an extraordinary response to extraordinary circumstances. What is already clear, however, is that the debate over Iran’s future has entered an entirely new phase.