War has strengthened the Islamic Republic. Peace could split it

For now, the hardliners are in the ascendant

Jun 18th 2026

It proved to be the regime, not the people, that triumphed. The Iranians in whose name Binyamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump launched their war, repressed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (irgc), scarcely seem to matter. The authorities still hang people in twos—like the serpents on the shoulders of Zahak, the tyrant of Persian myth, who demanded two human brains daily to sate them. Memories of the massacres after the protests of January have dulled any appetite to rise up. Mr Trump, meanwhile, is cursed for bringing penury, not liberation.

War steadied a wobbling regime, but the peace will bring challenges. Gone is the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who arbitrated among rival factions. Gone too, for now, are the foreign attackers that helped keep the elite united. In its place comes Mr Trump’s offer: a deal that could bring the Islamic Republic its biggest windfall in decades. For an impoverished country, the prospect is tantalising—and is dividing pragmatists from purists.

The leading pragmatist is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliamentary speaker, a former irgc commander and ally of Iran’s oligarchs. Alongside Masoud Pezeshkian, the president, and Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister, he has championed the deal as “a great stride to final victory”. Mr Ghalibaf, together with J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, signed it remotely on June 14th before Mr Trump and Mr Pezeshkian put their names to it.

Mr Ghalibaf’s political evolution has been striking. As an irgc commander, he boasted of clubbing protesters from his motorbike in 1999. Yet since first running for president in 2005 he has courted the middle classes, seeking support from a public that has never trusted him. He now hopes to inherit the mantle of Hassan Rouhani and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former presidents who sought to open Iran to the West, says an Iranian analyst.
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Original link:
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/06/18/war-has-strengthened-the-islamic-republic-peace-could-split-it

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