The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is likely producing the opposite of what is claimed to be its intended political effect, argues Emad Khatami, the son of former President Mohammad Khatami and a senior figure in his father’s reformist party, Etehad-e Mellat. Writing in Responsible Statecraft, the younger Khatami brings a unique perspective: He is not an outside analyst but an active participant in the Iranian political tradition the war is supposedly liberating.
His argument: The Islamic Republic rests on a relatively small but highly organized ideological base—networks tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), religious institutions, and hardline organizations—whose cohesion gives it outsized influence in times of crisis. External attack, he argues, is precisely the condition under which this base consolidates rather than fractures. The killing of Supreme Leader Khamenei deepens this dynamic: Within Shia political culture, martyrdom at the hands of a foreign enemy does not demoralize such hardliners; it intensifies their sense of sacred duty.
Meanwhile, the war is closing the political space that reformists depend on—the very openness his father’s Presidency (1997-2005) sought to expand. War frames all politics in terms of loyalty and resistance, pushing compromise-minded voices to the margins precisely when they might otherwise find openings.
