Neither the Trump nor the Netanyahu administrations have articulated clear plans for how to facilitate the rapid establishment of an internally-representational, externally-nonaggressive, new government in Tehran. When the reign of the ayatollahs ends, a national governance system will be needed posthaste to lead Iran as the country attempts to simultaneously reintegrate into the global community and rebuild its domestic socioeconomics. Establishing stable authority within Iran need not be the challenge it was in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran already has underlying constitutional and administrative structures which, with carefully applied modifications, can ensure a swift and viable transition to good governance.
Iran’s basic political problem is the overlay of a theocratic branch of power atop the rest of the government, a merger of religion and state in the constitution, which is protected by a special military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Moreover, of all Islamic Iran’s state institutions, only the theocratic branch’s highest office, that of the Supreme Leader, comes with constitutionally approved de facto permanent tenure. Appointed by the Assembly of Experts, which consists of eighty-six mujtahids or scholastically-trained Shi‘ite clergymen who are elected by the voting public to eight-year terms of office, an influential Supreme Leader can exercise considerable authority if not final say over most aspects of Iran’s politics, economy, security, and society. It is not only the Office of the Supreme Leader and the Assembly of Experts that have reinforced many decades of theocratic despotism. The unelected Council of Guardians consists of six Shi‘ite clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader and six Shi‘ite legal scholars selected jointly by the High Council of the Judiciary and the Parliament for six-year terms of office. That Council determines the constitutionality of all laws and screens all candidates for elected office, imposing clerical oversight of the entire electoral process. Likewise, the thirty-nine members of the Expediency Discernment Council are appointed by the Supreme Leader from among influential mollahs and other stalwarts of the Islamist regime.
Constitutional and related institutional change would not be difficult once the current regime is no more. Dissolution of the Office of Supreme Leader will make the Assembly of Experts, Guardian Council, and Expediency Discernment Council unnecessary. Those institutions can then be removed from both constitution and administrative authority. The IRGC would need to be stripped of its constitutional legitimacy, purged of Islamist ideologues and then integrated into the regular armed forces. Restrictions on women and religious minorities currently present in governance and law can quickly be expunged as well. The extent of Shi’ite religious underpinnings of the Iranian nation, which presently are absolute, should be modified or even eliminated depending on the will of the majority of Iran’s population, most of whom are ready to completely secularize their polity. The current direct elections for the Office of President and Members of Parliament should continue but no longer be subject to sectarian vetting of candidates. Thereby, Iran’s unrepresentative theocratic domination would give way to a transparently elected, legally removable, fully representative system of public officials who would better serve their own people and the community of nations.
The Islamic Republic’s surviving elites may seem to be continuing to resist political change publicly, even plotting to go ahead with installing a third Supreme Leader. Yet they have covertly reached out to their American counterparts to discuss terms of reconciliation, if only in the hope of self-preservation. Individuals like Ali Larijani, who has over three decades of leadership experience within the Islamic Republic’s government and is at present the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and Masoud Pezeshkian a former cardiac surgeon who is Iran’s popularly-elected President and therefore second only to the Supreme Leader within the government’s hierarchy, are two likely candidates to be open to change as both have not always been in line with the regime. The same is likely, for fiscal reasons, of commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Artesh or conventional armed forces—organizations that are deeply vested in economic sectors far-flung from military duties. The governance change of eliminating the theocratic branch would work well with opposition leaders inside Iran such as those who sparked the 2009 Green Movement including Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Zahra Rahnavard. Even a monarchist dimension for the new state could be added to the constitution and national administration if Reza Pahlavi’s quest to return as a shah proves to be successful in convincing a plurality of ordinary Iranians. Pahlavi has warm relations with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seems to be Jerusalem’s preferred choice to rule Iran. U.S. President Donald Trump, however, remains skeptical that the last shah’s son and his advisers can efficiently run Iran after 48 years in exile.
President Trump expressed his preference for Iran’s next leader: “It would seem to me that somebody from within [Iran], maybe would be more appropriate.” Therefore, the United States and Israel need to act more strategically when targeting prominent politicians and military commanders in Iran. Israeli forces however have been culling potentially pragmatic leaders who could reach compromise with Washington. As a result, President Trump is understandably concerned that “Most of the people we had in mind are dead. Now we have another group, they may be dead also, based on reports. So you have a third wave coming. Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody.”
So, policymakers in Washington should work quickly with those leaders of the faltering Iranian regime who are receptive to change and with well-known opposition figures inside Iran in addition to exiled leaders to establish the new national authority. The goal should be to toss out the theocratic branch of government, the clerics themselves, and those still loyal to them from politics while keeping constitutional apparatuses and bureaucratic systems that would facilitate a modern secular nation of Iran.
JAMSHEED K. CHOKSY is Distinguished Professor of Iranian studies in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies and Director of the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center at Indiana University and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science.
CAROL E. B. CHOKSY is Senior Lecturer of Strategic Intelligence in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University.
