https://arab.news/beags
Iran is in a war that it did not choose in full, yet helped to script in part. The country is also in a leadership rupture that no missile can resolve. Outsiders will claim authorship of the outcome — Washington by force, Israel by daring, Russia or China by opportunism, Europe by handwringing. But Iran’s future, in the end, can only be decided by Iranians — by what they consent to build, and what they refuse to tolerate.
That is not romantic nationalism. It is strategic realism. Military campaigns can shatter infrastructure; sanctions can starve investment; covert action can decapitate elites. None of that produces legitimacy. And legitimacy, more than centrifuges, proxies, or slogans, is what decides whether a country regenerates after trauma or sinks into permanent siege.
Iran has been living through a leadership crisis for more than a century, and the issue keeps reappearing in different costumes. The Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11 produced a Majles and a constitutional framework that many Iranians still cite as the origin of modern political legitimacy — only to be battered by internal factionalism and foreign pressure. The Pahlavis modernized at speed — schools, infrastructure, law codes — while relying on top-down social engineering that treated citizens less as partners than as raw material. The 1979 revolution promised dignity, authenticity, and justice; it delivered a hybrid system where popular politics exist, but ultimate sovereignty is anchored in the doctrine of Vilayat-e-Faqih (guardianship of the jurist), embedded in the post-revolution constitution.
