![Insights on the Iranian Regime and Society with Walter Posch [PODCAST]](https://4liberty.eu/phidroav/2025/06/Liberal-Europe-Podcast-Walter-Posch-1024x1024.png "Insights on the Iranian Regime and Society with Walter Posch [PODCAST]")
What are the main Iranian actors and their options in the conflict with Israel? Are negotiations possible? What is the legitimacy of the regime and the potential for change from within the Iranian society? And can Eastern Europe serve as an inspiration for the Iranian reformists? Leszek Jazdzewski (Fundacja Liberte!) talks with Dr. Walter Posch, a trained orientalist who works as a Middle East expert at the Institute for Peacekeeping and Conflict Management at the National Defense Academy in Vienna.
Leszek Jazdzewski (LJ): Why it is so difficult for Iran to come back to the negotiation table with the Israeli and, especially, the Americans?
Walter Posch (WP): Other than the historic legacy between the two countries, there is one technical and one political aspect which make it very hard for either side to come back to the negotiations table. First, the positions and the points of departure of both sides are very far away. Iran made it clear from the beginning that zero enrichment is not an option, whilst the Americans themselves, in their last statements, insisted on zero enrichment.
Then, there is also the way the Americans negotiate – for instance, with the special negotiator, Steve Witkoff (the United States Special Envoy to the Middle East), who is certainly a very capable person. However, there is a long history of Iranian international nuclear negotiations, and Iran shows up with the team, including very experienced technocrats and nuclear scientists to begin with. Therefore, you may be a great businessman and a great negotiator, but I doubt it that it will be easy if you do not have someone like Abbas Araghchi (the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran) on board, on your side, who understands the minutiae of negotiating a very, very delicate nuclear deal with all the technical loopholes and details.
Having said this, there is a second aspect from the Iranian understanding of events. When you were preparing these negotiations, Israel attacked and continues to attack and kill, among others, your nuclear negotiators. Iran let its guard down because they thought that when they are negotiating with the Americans, there will be no attack on them because President Donald Trump will never allow that a third party would interrupt a bilateral talk or negotiation. As such, they are puzzled whether perhaps the Americans have double-crossed them from the beginning. Whether this is true or not, it is certainly an option as seen from the Tehrani perspective, especially given the fact that so many of the nuclear negotiators are dead now.
Therefore, restarting negotiations will take a lot of political will and increasingly also courage on behalf of the Iranian negotiators teams. If you expose yourselves and then you get attacked at home with about 60 neighbors who are uninvolved dying with you, that is something that is a really heavy weight to restart it. On the other hand, all the other options (like non-negotiating, doubling down, or even going so far as to attack American troops) is even more risky and most certainly will lead to the very kind of confrontation Iran has always avoided.
Interestingly, both Donald Trump and JD Vance said that this is really only about the Iranian nuclear program and not about anything else. Therefore, the question is now, how can they restart these talks? Given the fact that there is no more EU mechanism which would allow the EU in case of crisis to jump in and make it possible for all sides involved to talk to each other directly or indirectly.
LJ: As for now, it seems that Israel is primarily in control of the skies over Iran and hitting different targets. To what extent does this mean that Iran is trying to mobilize society, get ready for confrontation, and undermine the legitimacy of the regime? What do you think are the Iranian regime’s options vis-a-vis its society?
WP: There are many options. First of all, let us clarify some things. Indeed, Israel is controlling the skies by its air force, that is absolutely true. However, on the other hand, what does ‘control over skies’ mean when the opposite side is capable of sophisticated missiles against your territory and harming your infrastructure in ways that have never been recorded until now? We have never seen such a destruction, not even with the Six-Days War or when the Syrians attacked Israel in the early 1970s. What the harm and the damage Iran is inflicting right now in Israel, also on its self-esteem, is rather high because it is really tough, I would say.
The second point is political language which is going away from the revolutionary ‘Big Satan,’ ‘Little Satan,’ and anti-imperialism for national defense. This is why the legal aspect is so important. This is why the army is leaving. This is why the language is, ‘This is our home country. We have been attacked!’. Moreover, over the last few weeks, the Iranians were able to detect numerous sabotage groups who cooperated with the Israelis or with elements of the Israeli security apparatus. This may sound like no big deal, but it is big enough for them to show that they are in command and in charge.
After the first wave of shocks (like the attack on the water facility in Tehran and car bombs being detonated), Tehran seems to have been capable of maintaining the order for the time being. This may explain why the last attacks of the Israelis have been tougher and more hurtful and psychologically devastating for the Iranians. What was not so devastating was very interesting. This were the American attacks on the nuclear sites, because it is hard to believe that there were no casualties.
In this context, the damage is certainly extensive, but beyond that, now the last discussions are on how much of their enriched uranium the Iranians brought to another secure place. Under different circumstances, this might have been a minor success, but given the damage inflicted by the Israelis on Iran, Tehran cannot simply declare victory.
On the other hand, Israel cannot declare victory either and say, ‘Now we leave it.’ Obviously, to the big surprise of many military experts, neither side is running out of missiles, certainly not before this conflict ends.
Now, the society, especially the secular part of the Iranian society, does not want anything to do with the regime and certainly not with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is kind of a villain for many in the Middle East. On the other hand, the real opposition groups (those with connections to other countries or those who are capable to pick up arms) are mostly Sunni fundamentalists, and they sympathize so much with the Palestinians that they would not – according to their declarations – go to the defense of the Iranian homeland. That is, so to speak, a more radical opposition.
The broader picture is, however, that the regime has already lost a lot of its credibility over the last few years – especially the Iranian security apparatus – and therein, the revolutionary guards are in a rather big trouble from the viewpoint of the society.
First, because the numbers of the volunteers have dropped dramatically. Secondly, if one just looks at how the Revolutionary Guards avoid raking sole responsibility for certain events (like shooting down a civilian airliner because you insist on an unexperienced crew of air defense revolutionary guards units four years ago, or in the case of the strange accident of Mr, of the former President of Iran Ebrahim Raisi, when the revolutionary guards were responsible for his technical security, when the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh occurred, who was a state guest), all of this would be a lot for any country.
These events show something more than merely the need to reform the Revolutionary Guards, but taking even more serious steps, going so far as to a very deep restructuring. In fact, they were already restructured three times last year. Meanwhile, the ‘ordinary’ military has kept its reputation and its tradition intact. This is, basically, the old Iranian army, which is apolitical, and they command a little bit of respect.
The system itself is now in a phase in which they have walked through the same crisis as the one that occurred in last years of the Shah’s reign. Societal questions are expressed in antipathy towards the leadership; still, some of the questions that still remain are much bigger. How do you deal fairly with the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional society? We all know Iran is primarily Shia, but then there are 50 or 55% of Persians, and so the rest are what?
Our concept of minority clearly does not work in Iran, but there are different ethnicities there. As such, what is the answer to that? The last one who tried to give a better answer than the previous regime was President Hassan Rouhani, who tried to make it more democratic and inclusive. However, his papers remained academic and had no political traction.
When it comes to the question of the Sunnis, it is very strange that we have a correlation between women’s rights and the rights of a confessional minority, because the real tolerance is when you really say, ‘We do not care.’ As a state, you can say, for instance, that in official offices, women must wear a vail for certain reasons. You can do that, but in private life, in public life, you should not. Sunnis insisted on doing so because this is the manifestation of the religiosity of a certain middle class and the symbol of the revolution.
On the other hand, this denies half of the population the right of a choice. As a consequence, you now have Muslim and Islamist women who would say, ‘Well, I would like to have the right of a choice, and I want my sisters to have it too.’ Even a marginal figure like former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, ‘Well, it should be the woman who decides’.
At the same time, out of 95 million people, at least 30 million are Sunni, which is a huge amount. There are ethnic minorities like Baloch, Turkmen, Kurds, Arabs, and Persians, especially in Eastern Iran. These tensions and problems come to the fore. Whenever the Iranian regime is in a crisis, the current tensions help them a little because they can change the national defense and patriotic narrative. That works for maybe a month, but the real problems are being delayed.
At the same time, with the current leadership, and an octogenarian revolutionary leader, even if he wanted to, he will not be the person to change Iran, to rejuvenate it and conduct the necessary reforms. Given the longevity of the current regime, its weaknesses and its strengths are ingrained within the state structure right now. As such, state reform and regime reform go hand in hand now, thus any reform would be painful anyway in Iran – regardless of whether it happens on a peaceful level on their own pace or whether it is imposed.
It seems to me that all the political elites and the Iranian population shy away from any changes because they have been cut out all the time. Be it the intellectuals, technocrats whomever, although they tried their best to make the Islamic Republic a more rational and liberal place, they have never had the say equivalent to their importance.
This tension now comes to fruition, and it comes in eruptions regularly. And these eruptions come the more, the less foreign pressure exists. If they are left alone, after a phase of a relative calm, things get worse. We saw this several years ago with the death of Mahsa Amini, when everything erupted but not as a coordinated revolutionary or anti-regime movement. What was so striking, inside Iran, people were extremely disgusted and said, ‘Stop this useless killing, stop behaving like this!’. Still, people did not even bother to say, ‘We are revolutionaries, we want to overthrow their system!’. They said, ‘You just behave, just behave.’ This is a much newer civic approach than what we saw in the early years. Now, with the ongoing crisis, this attitude is a little bit in the hiatus, and it is waning a little bit, but it is resurfacing with any person tortured or killed.
Even if the regime may claim that there is now credible proof that there are spies here and there (which may be true or not), it is true that Iran is a prime target of the international intelligence world. We have seen it in so many places in Europe all along, when an ideological regime, which was started with young firebrains, gets old and simply nasty. A similar situation is occurring now in Iran, as it is an ideological system which loses its meaning as soon as you get loose and as you allow more voices and more forces to get a hold on the power. The Shah had the same problem when he created the one-party state, the Rastakhiz party. Now, the current regime faces the same problem.
LJ: From the outside, it seems that any legitimate alternatives to the Islamic Republic are limited. Is it viable to consider any such options in the future after the hostilities stop one way or another, or is it a too far-fetched scenario?
WP: I do not think it is far-fetched. This question will come up. I hope it will come up inside of Iran, formulated by young Iranians or by Iranian technologists, by Iranians of all layers of the society, and that they find their own path. One does not need a fantastic constitution. It is much more important that the abuse in prisons stops.
Iran has other problems. It is relatively close to Afghanistan with its drug centers. This is why Iranians are often ambivalent. On the one hand, they need a strong security system because, obviously, such a big country would need it. On the other hand, they fear it. Moreover, they have, of course, a strong authoritarian tradition. But let me make one point clear, given the history of the faulty but still vibrant Iranian parliamentarian system, if not democracy, the Iranians have always had this point of national sovereignty and democracy going hand in hand.
Even if you listen to some of the opposition figures, they have always described the current regime as a foreign implant, maybe going out of control, but being handpicked by the West to subdue the Iranian left and whatnot. Others would say that Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei was in Russia for a while. We observe high nationalism not in the sense of ethnic superiority of one group, but of independence in a very classic and un-European way.
We, Europeans, are used to having our national sovereignty, but we also share a common destiny with other countries. Meanwhile, when I talk to Iranian Democrats, people who are democratic in their mind, they would always jump between two extremes. On the one hand, they would say that with the help from the Western, they could get this and that, and move away from the current regime. On the other hand, they say that there must be no foreign interference. And that is a contradiction in itself. Therefore, in a way, they do not have a Masaryk-like figure who would be able to negotiate, to understand the international political system, to formulate what is their national destiny right now. This is all missing, because the intellectual tradition is not there.
At the same time, at least half of the population is conditioned by two pillars. One is the Iranian nationalism in the old tradition of Reza Shah – a very 1930s, thin-skinned nationalism. And often the same people say in the same breath that President Ahmadinejad was a good example for them. If the debate on democracy with Iranian ownership is not going to be well managed, it will be potentially dangerous because it can easily lead to local separatisms.
This brings me back to the notion of not ethnicity, but the Iranian regionalism, how the center and periphery system in Iran is managed. As such, it is much less about aiming for a wonderful constitution on paper, but more about the practice within a given system, and how the Iranians would like to do it right now – because the provincial system they have now, and the relationship between the provincial government and the central state is basically the same as it was in the 1920s. Therefore, the state is very concerned that this is irrelevant of the nature of the regime, but the nature of the regime can be changed. And this is where I see the only role of the West.
This is about torture and political prisoners. This is the good old classic liberal values and the fact that human beings do not serve such treatment. It does not have to mean a complete security sector reform, but a prison system reform. Iran almost holds the record in the number of executions, especially given the case that most executions are carried out on ethnic minorities. This is a problem. And the Iranians are very much aware of it and want to change it.
Once you change this, once you get the violence out of the systems, you have to debate differently. Then you can address more basic topics. And this is not so much about the religion and the state coming together. It is more about the idea that the head of the state is also its supreme judge, which constitutes the core problem. To have the obvious failure of the current legal system concerning constitutional law is an ironic repetition of the imperial system.
Nonetheless, the Shah said that this is the Constitution and that he cannot modernize the country, which is why he put the Constitution out of order. Now, there is another powerful figure, who is the constitutional judge and interpret what is wrong as he pleases. As such, it may seem that is it a completely different system, but the problem is the same as the previous one. It sounds very Islamic now, but it obviously is just a question of the authoritarian rule. And it is extremely convenient when you are the strongman in a place in which you are the judge, the president, the defense minister, and all this in one person.
Find out more: https://www.bmlv.gv.at/pdf_pool/publikationen/book_the_iranian_security_apparatus_posch_web.pdf
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