“For the first time in nearly four decades, Iran is on the cusp of a change of leadership—and maybe even of regime,” writes the Iran analyst Karim Sadjadpour in a new essay from the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. At 86 years old, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can’t rule for much longer. And the 12-day war in June, in which Israeli and U.S. bombers struck Iranian cities, military installations, and nuclear sites, “laid bare the fragility of the system he built.”
After Khamenei, Iran’s political order “could take several forms: nationalist strongman rule, clerical continuity, military dominance, populist revival, or a unique hybrid of these,” Sadjadpour writes. “The question is not whether change will come,” he concludes, “but whether it will finally deliver a long-awaited spring—or merely another winter.”
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