This image provided by the Iranian army's press office on June 23, 2025, shows the army's chief commander, Amir Hatami (center), during a meeting in the Iranian army's command room. (Credit: Iranian armed forces press office/AFP)
There is no real choice. Neither war nor peace, just the familiar limbo maintained by Iran and its allies.
The Iranian regime has no shortage of flaws, but it is not suicidal. For three decades, Ali Khamenei has methodically built his absolute authority over the Islamic Republic, expanded his reach across a hostile Middle East, and pursued a nuclear program under some of the world’s harshest sanctions.
He has just endured the hardest week of his life. His legacy lies in ruins. But it’s safe to assume he will do everything he can to salvage what remains.
Iran took nearly 48 hours to respond to the U.S. strikes on the Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear facilities. The supreme leader has yet to speak.
The regime knows the balance of power is angled sharply against it and that its options are limited. But that’s not the only reason it took time to calibrate its response. Khamenei is a cautious man who tends to act strong with the weak and weak with the strong.
Nothing matters more to him than the survival of the regime. He proved it after the assassination of [Iranian commander] Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, again after the killing of [Palestinian leader] Ismail Haniyeh inside a secure building in Tehran, and even more so when Israel set Hezbollah — the crown jewel of his regional network — back more than three decades.
This time, he faced a choice between a slow death (surrender) and suicide (escalation). True to form, he opted for a third way: a strike, likely pre-announced to the United States, on the largest American base in the region, in Qatar, one of the Gulf countries least hostile to Iran.
It serves his rhetoric and, above all, carries symbolic weight. Iran beats its chest but still appears unwilling to fully enter the fight.
At 86, the supreme leader has limited time left, especially if Israel and the U.S. decide to target him directly. Yet he continues to act as if his greatest advantage over his enemies is his ability to think in the long term.
From that perspective, what matters most is not to avoid the hits, no matter how powerful, but to remain standing. Even after the collapse of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ — whose remaining forces in the region, once again, remained inactive Monday — even after the war waged by Israel and the U.S., even after the destruction of all or most of Iran’s nuclear program, Khamenei may still believe that none of it is irreversible.
As long as the regime does not break and does not fall, he may reason, it can rebuild in the decades to come everything Israel has destroyed in recent months. Ande may find an unlikely partner in Donald Trump, who now wants to bring this conflict to a swift end. That could lead to a deal that, at least on paper, does not resemble the “unconditional” surrender initially demanded.
But that would require Israel to accept such an outcome: that the Iranian threat has been pushed back for a decade or two — while retaining the ability to strike again at will — without being fully eliminated.
In that scenario, the Iranian people would suffer the biggest losses. The regime would likely tighten its repression to maintain its grip on power, much like Saddam Hussein did in Iraq after the first Gulf War.
This is where things stand. The regime may emerge from this war significantly weakened, but with a security apparatus still strong enough to crush any form of dissent, at least in the short to medium term.
Iran could change its appearance if the Revolutionary Guards take power or if Khamenei’s eventual successor deviates slightly from the official line. It could even collapse — though that seems unlikely — if the cease-fire collapses and the resumed war drags on, dismantling the regime’s power centers one by one.
But none of these scenarios aligns with the vision of democratization and peace promoted by the hawks in Washington and Tel Aviv.
Whatever one thinks of Israel’s ambitions in the Middle East, the Iranian case raises an exceptionally complex question in the realm of international relations. The regime has spent decades crushing any form of protest, and there was no indication that an Iranian version of Gorbachev was about to take power anytime soon.
Under such conditions, only a direct confrontation can bring it down. But at a cost so staggering — for the Iranian people, and to a lesser extent for the region — that it understandably frightens everyone. Syria is a stark example of how long it can take to unseat such a repressive regime, and how difficult it is to then pacify and stabilize the country.
One can imagine any number of geopolitical scenarios and speculate endlessly about where this conflict might lead, no doubt with more surprises to come. But it takes quite a bit of optimism or cynicism – even if one sincerely hopes to be wrong — to believe this will bring peace to the region and freedom to the Iranian people.
