> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.iranglobalaffairs.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # For Iran and Its Future - URL: https://www.iranglobalaffairs.org/for-iran-and-its-future/ - Published: 2026-10-18T10:33:43.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-18T12:39:15.000Z - Description: Iran & Global Affairs brings together writers, scholars, and practitioners to discuss Iran and its place in the world. It offers a forum for informed debate about the country’s future, individual freedom, pluralism, and accountable government. - Author: Babak Rezaee - Tags: Politics, Society & Rights, Essay, Democracy, Democratic Deliberation, Political Transition In my work as a scholar, in public debate, and in conversations with policymakers, I often return to the same difficulty. We are asked to explain what has just happened in Iran and what should happen next, sometimes before we have established who made a decision or what shaped it. The demand for an answer is understandable. Still, the explanation deserves more attention than the pace of the discussion often allows. Iran's future matters to me personally. As a social scientist, I also have a responsibility to ask whether the evidence supports an argument, even one I want to believe. I want a place where people can examine those arguments carefully and remain in conversation when they disagree. That becomes harder when political claims circulate without evidence, when information is misleading, or when it is deliberately manipulated. Mistrust can make even a well-supported argument difficult to hear. We need to distinguish mistakes and differences of interpretation from efforts to mislead, because responding to each requires a different kind of judgment. This is why I founded Iran & Global Affairs. I want it to support sustained democratic deliberation about Iran's political future, grounded in credible information. Scholars, practitioners, and democratic opposition voices should have a place to put forward proposals, answer criticism, and reconsider their positions as the discussion develops. Part of the difficulty lies in how we speak about Iran. Personal experience can reveal things that a broad account of the country misses, while looking at Iran as a whole helps explain its international position. Both have value. Confusion begins when we generalize from one person's experience, or attribute intentions and decisions to “Iran” without saying whose intentions or decisions we mean. Institutions, businesses, civic networks, and political movements help connect these levels of analysis. Examining them helps explain how individual views become political demands and how institutional and organizational decisions affect the country more broadly. We also need to distinguish Iran from the Islamic Republic. Iran is a country and a historical and political community whose life extends well beyond its rulers. The Islamic Republic is its current governing order, with particular institutions and an official ideology. Its decisions must be examined through those structures, while understanding Iran requires a wider view of its society and history. The interests of those who govern and the aspirations of those they govern should never be assumed to be the same. Distinguishing Iran from its rulers helps clarify what political change requires. Public grievances can become political pressure through organization. Rulers rely on officials and security forces with their own interests. A proposed system of government may win support before anyone explains how it would work. Iran & Global Affairs should help readers examine Iran’s past and present and scrutinize proposals for its future. That includes asking who can organize public support, how a future government could deliver security and prosperity, and how security forces could be held accountable. Iran & Global Affairs aims to help readers understand Iran’s current affairs and its place in the world. It also seeks to give liberal democratic aspirations room to develop into considered proposals for governing. A commitment to freedom requires explaining how rights would be protected. Anyone claiming to represent a constituency should explain the basis of that claim. Economic promises need an account of the resources and institutions that would make them possible. Working through these questions requires both scholarship and practical experience. Debates about Iran’s future need to be grounded in an understanding of its society and history. The country has experienced conquest, religious change, and repeated struggles to rebuild political authority. Persian survived the Arab-Muslim conquest and became a major language of literature and intellectual life. Traditions with pre-Islamic roots, including Nowruz, continued through changing political and religious settings.\[1\]\[2\] These traditions continue to shape how Iranians understand their country. The struggle to make government answerable to society also has its own history. The Constitutional Revolution sought to limit arbitrary power through law and representative institutions.\[3\] Later generations have confronted these questions under different rulers. Their demands belong in our assessment of those governments, alongside the conditions in which they operated. That is also why comparisons matter. The Pahlavi period should be assessed alongside other nondemocratic Middle Eastern states and developing societies facing similar pressures and nation-state building challenges. Even democracies of the same period can differ greatly in state capacity, economic conditions, and international constraints. A useful comparison must help explain development, repression, and the alternatives available at the time. The same care should extend to 1979\. I regard the revolution as having failed to fulfill a central aspiration of modern Iran: free and accountable government. The Islamic Republic has placed decisive power beyond meaningful democratic control and suppressed dissent.\[4\] Understanding this outcome requires examining which organizations gained power, the rules they established, and what sustained them. It also raises a difficult question about what governing has done to the clergy's authority. > Explaining decisions, answering criticism, respecting opponents' rights, and accepting accountability are practices we can expect of ourselves now. Opposition to dictatorship can build courage and organizational capacity. Accountable government also depends on protecting disagreement and allowing power to change hands peacefully. We can begin practicing these responsibilities well before a transition. Explaining decisions, answering criticism, respecting opponents' rights, and accepting accountability are practices we can expect of ourselves now. After a transition, people who had argued for change would face immediate decisions about distributing and constraining power. How should authority be allocated, and how would we enforce limits on rulers? Working through these questions now gives proposals time to be challenged and improved. I hope this work can contribute to democratic consolidation over the longer term. International experience can also inform that discussion. Europe's postwar integration, for example, involved building institutions intended to make renewed conflict less likely.\[5\] There are lessons to examine, while recognizing that Iran's choices will be shaped by its own history and circumstances. Iran's domestic politics also belong in an international setting. Decisions made through its governing institutions affect energy supplies, trade, and security beyond its borders. War, foreign pressure, investment, and diplomacy can reshape the opportunities available within the country. That relationship is why Iran and global affairs belong together in the name of this platform. As I write this essay, the costs are visible in energy markets. The International Energy Agency's September 2026 report describes disrupted Gulf supplies and sharply higher fuel prices, compounded by disruptions to Russian refining.\[6\] The Islamic Republic's military support for Russia's war against Ukraine provides another direct connection to European security.\[7\] Decisions concerning Iran have consequences for the societies policymakers serve. Iran & Global Affairs takes those consequences seriously. Risks can accumulate when politicians and policymakers postpone difficult decisions about the Islamic Republic, but the alternatives carry their own costs. We need to ask what political actors seek, what they can do, and what different responses are likely to produce. Iran & Global Affairs publishes primarily in English so that Iranian arguments and experiences can enter international scholarship and policy conversations directly. We also welcome submissions in Persian and Dutch and may translate them into English for publication with the author’s agreement. The exchange should work both ways, with Iranian experiences informing wider debates and international research raising questions for discussion within Iran. Making work available in Persian can give more readers access to that discussion. This is also why Iran & Global Affairs needs to draw on several fields. Political economy helps us understand what sustains power and makes prosperity possible. Studying society reveals how people organize and how their expectations change. History, art, literature, and cultural memory help explain how people understand their country and imagine its future. These fields help us ask different questions about the same country. I began this project, and our founding editorial board brings the expertise and judgment to develop it together. We have a responsibility to contributors and readers to make our standards clear and apply them consistently. Iran & Global Affairs supports individual liberty, political pluralism, the rule of law, democratic accountability, and human dignity. It is independent of governments, political parties, opposition movements, and interest groups. Our editorial principles emphasize evidence, clear reasoning, attention to institutions and power, and openness about uncertainty.\[8\] We welcome contributions from scholars, practitioners, and democratic opposition voices willing to support their arguments with evidence and engage with criticism. Historical analysis, research on society, and policy debate all have a place. Where contributors propose a course of action, they should explain what it requires, whose rights and interests it affects, and how those implementing it would be held accountable. Over the longer term, I hope Iran & Global Affairs can contribute to a democratic transition and the consolidation of accountable government. Our immediate contribution is more concrete: publishing careful arguments, editing them carefully, and making room for the exchanges through which they improve. Readers should leave with a better basis for judging a difficult question or decision. No one can guarantee that Iran’s future will be democratic or prosperous. Iranians will have to make consequential choices, often under conditions they did not choose. They are entitled to determine their own political order. Those of us who study the country or advise on policy toward it have a responsibility to examine those choices and their consequences carefully. I founded Iran & Global Affairs because Iran's future matters to me, and because I believe better-informed debate can make a difference to the choices people face. That is the work I want this platform to do. --- ## Sources \[1\]: Ludwig Paul, [“Persian Language i. Early New Persian”](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/persian-language-1-early-new-persian/?ref=iranglobalaffairs.org), *Encyclopedia Iranica*. \[2\]: Alireza Shapur Shahbazi, [“Nowruz ii. In the Islamic Period”](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nowruz-ii/?ref=iranglobalaffairs.org), *Encyclopaedia Iranica*. \[3\]: Abbas Amanat, [“Constitutional Revolution i. Intellectual Background”](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/constitutional-revolution-i/?ref=iranglobalaffairs.org), *Encyclopaedia Iranica*. \[4\]: Freedom House, [“Iran: Freedom in the World 2026”](https://freedomhouse.org/country/iran/freedom-world/2026?ref=iranglobalaffairs.org). \[5\]: European Union, [“History of the European Union, 1945–59”](https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/history-eu/1945-59%5Fen?ref=iranglobalaffairs.org). \[6\]: International Energy Agency, [*Oil Market Report—September 2026*](https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-september-2026?ref=iranglobalaffairs.org), September 11, 2026. \[7\]: Council of the European Union, [“EU Sanctions against Iran”](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/sanctions-against-iran/?ref=iranglobalaffairs.org), section on Iran's military support for Russia's war against Ukraine. \[8\]: Iran & Global Affairs, [“Editorial Principles”](https://www.iranglobalaffairs.org/editorial-principles/).