How to topple Iran’s ayatollahs

IN THE WAKE of a popular uprising, and a crackdown that has left thousands dead, the big question in Iran is how the Islamic regime should be politically confronted. This question has been only sharpened by Donald Trump’s warning that “time is running out” for Iran to negotiate a deal on its nuclear programme.

American intervention in Venezuela has promoted the idea of “leadership change” as an alternative to the more problematic policy of regime change. The unique institutional architecture of the Islamic Republic provides the Iranian people and the West with an opportunity to combine these two strategies.

Iranians cannot expect any major change in governance while the institution of the supreme leader (known as velayat-e faqih, or “guardianship of the Islamic jurist”) exists. And the West can’t expect the regime to shed its belligerence while this institution is at the centre of decision-making in Iran.

It is worth recalling that in the 47 years since Iran’s Islamic revolution, nine administrations in the White House have tried all sorts of sticks and carrots to deal with the Islamic Republic. But whenever the regime has shown flexibility, it has proved to be a mere tactical retreat.

Why? It is important to understand that the Islamic Republic is institutionally sui generis. It comprises two non-congruent subsystems whose interaction generates chronic instability and permanent disequilibrium: the state and velayat-e faqih. The functional operation of one produces dysfunction in the other.

Each of the two subsystems pursues its own organisational logic and incentive systems across domains ranging from sovereignty and foreign policy to governance and citizens’ rights. Any reform project that seeks to strengthen state institutions while preserving velayat-e faqih fundamentally misunderstands the incompatibility of these logics and is doomed to fail.

This incompatibility is evident in the political trajectories of those who attempted to act as statesmen within the Islamic Republic. All have eventually been neutralised: barred from future office (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani); eliminated (Ali Rafsanjani); or imprisoned (Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi). Time and again, the role has proved to be structurally incompatible with the ambitions and logic of velayat-e faqih.

The roots of this contradiction lie in the aftermath of the collapse of the monarchy in 1979. The dominant role of the Shia clergy in the anti-monarchical movement produced a fragile compromise between two sources of legitimacy: popular sovereignty expressed through elections, and divine legitimacy, which in turn justified the enforcement of Islamic law.

This compromise required two parallel hierarchies. One was a conventional, inherited state bureaucracy. The other, an Islamic bureaucracy, had no historical precedent. Clerical elites resolved this tension by elevating an undisputed authority—the supreme leader (or “guardian jurist”)—above the state itself.

To impose obedience, the supreme leader had to transcend the state altogether. Revolutionary Islam—redefined as a transnational project committed to opposing American imperialism and Zionism—provided the necessary framework. The supreme leader thus emerged not merely as the head of state, but as the “Leader of the Islamic Revolution”, endowed with global ambitions.

The seizure of the American embassy in Tehran in 1979 marked a crucial moment in this transformation. The hostage crisis embedded “Death to America” into the ideological core of velayat-e faqih. From then on, permanent confrontation with the West became a constitutive feature of the system.

The strategic objective of both the Iranian people and the international community must therefore be the dismantling of velayat-e faqih. Because the Islamic Republic’s constitution stipulates that velayat-e faqih is the supreme institution overseeing the state, doing away with it would require a new constitution. Leadership change would mean regime change.

This cannot be achieved through elite manoeuvring or foreign pressure alone. It requires national reconciliation among Iranians and the initiation of a political process leading to free and fair elections for a constitutional assembly capable of founding a democratic state.

Despite the barbarous recent repression, the opposition remains more fragmented than ever. To shift the balance of power a new type of coalition must be forged. Former adversaries need to unite under the banner “From Pahlavi to Mousavi”.

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late shah, represents the prosperity of the Pahlavi era and total opposition to velayat-e faqih. Meanwhile, Mir Hossein Mousavi, a long-detained opposition leader and former prime minister, has said publicly that he no longer thinks a system that gives the final say to a supreme leader is in Iran’s interests. Now is the time to get behind Mr Mousavi’s recent call for a referendum to write a new constitution.

The presence of Mr Mousavi in a new coalition would reassure military and security personnel that the goal was an orderly change rather than civil war. Mr Pahlavi’s involvement would provide assurance to the international community that Iran’s regional adventurism and nuclear dilemmas will not return.

By bringing these two symbols of opposition together under inclusive slogans—such as protecting Iran’s territorial integrity and respecting the ballot box—those seeking change could create a new national momentum to dislodge the guardians of the Islamic Republic. This double act offers the best hope for a new Iran, finally released from the suffocating grip of velayat-e faqih.■