When I moved to Portugal, I encountered a concept I had never truly experienced before: saudade. But before I understood the word, I heard it. In small cafés of Lisbon, in narrow cobblestone streets where yellow light slides across old walls, fado was played. A sound that was neither merely music nor merely narrative. Something in between, and beyond both.

When fado began, something inside me tightened. Not a clear emotion, not sadness, not joy. Something deeper, something that seemed to come from a place older than myself. The melodies would slowly rise, tremble, and then collapse into the singer’s voice. And in that moment, tears would flow involuntarily. Without a clear reason, without a defined story. As if my body understood something my mind had not yet reached.

At the time, I thought this experience belonged to them. To their seas, their long farewells, their history sedimented in sound. I never imagined that one day the same feeling—only harsher, more immediate—would take shape within me. Not in a café, not through music, but among sounds that tear through the body.

What is unfolding in Iran these days is often seen from the outside as contradiction. Dancing on graves, laughing in the midst of grief, celebrating in the streets while the sound of explosions still lingers in the air. But from within, these are not contradictions. They are the only way the body finds not to collapse.

With every missile, it is not only a building that falls. Something inside me collapses as well. Not as a metaphor, but physically, tangibly. As if memory fractures. As if parts of the past—sounds, laughter, moments that will never return—are torn away from within. Each explosion is not just a sound; it is a rupture in time. It splits before and after. You are no longer the same person you were minutes ago.

And when the names come, when you realize those who have died are not “others” but extensions of yourself, death is no longer a piece of news. You no longer say they died. Something inside you goes silent. As if each name creates a point of blackout within the body. A sudden cut. A drop. A void that nothing immediately fills.

At the same time, a counter-movement emerges. Something that, from the outside, may seem harsh or incomprehensible. Within this grief, within this loss, a kind of standing takes shape. Not the kind born of simple hope, nor optimism. Something harder, more severe, fed by the very presence of death. As if you are collapsing and holding yourself together at once. Mourning and moving at once. Losing something and tightening something within yourself at once.

And in the midst of this collapse, something older than all of it rises again. Nowruz. This most ancient rhythm of time in Iranian life had long been pushed to the margins of global awareness, as if buried under layers of history, overlooked by calendars that no longer noticed it. But now, not from peace but from soil and blood, it emerges again.

Amid the rubble, among homes that no longer have walls, within air still carrying the echo of explosions, there are people who pick up brooms, clear the dust, prepare for Nowruz, set the haft-seen table, visit one another. News networks speak of it with astonishment—of people who, under the weight of grief and destruction, still welcome the new year. But what remains unseen is that this is not merely tradition. It is resistance against collapse. It is an insistence on life at the very moment death is closest.

Years ago, we had read a word in literature and passed over it without understanding. We thought it was merely the name of a mourning, a story, a ritual. We had read it, but we had not understood it. Because understanding it requires an experience that cannot be reached from the outside. Now, we do not just understand it—we live it. In the streets, in the sounds, in bodies that, despite exhaustion and grief, continue to move.

This feeling is not simply sorrow. It is where sorrow does not stop, but transforms into movement. Where tears reach dance, and dance becomes standing. Where loss turns into a force that sustains continuation.

To others, these scenes may appear incomprehensible. But for us, this is not contradiction. This is the mechanism that allows us to remain standing.

We had the name for it all along. We had just never lived it: Savushun1.

Over the past four decades, “security” has become one of the most costly and most frequently invoked words in Iranian politics. From dress codes and employment to travel, media, and thought itself, everything has been defined within a security-centered framework. Yet the central question is not how securitized Iran has become, but what this vast project of security-making actually has to do with security itself.

During these years, a permanent architecture of control has come to dominate society as a whole. From the simplest personal choices to professional and social trajectories, everything has been defined under the gaze of security forces. Checkpoints, constant surveillance, media restrictions, filtering, the imprisonment or systematic removal of dissenters, and the control of foreign movement have functioned not as temporary policies, but as stable mechanisms of governance. Within this architecture, security was defined not as the reduction of risk, but as the expansion of monitoring. Society became a field of continuous observation, and the citizen a subject who must constantly prove that they are not dangerous.

But what has been the outcome of this project? If the security logic had been effective, at least one of two signs should have appeared: either a decline in the desire to leave the country, or an increase in the sense of safety during moments of crisis. What has occurred points in the opposite direction. More than ten percent of Iran’s population has emigrated over the past four decades—a phenomenon that does not occur at this scale in any genuinely secure system. A country whose borders are symbolically protected, while its citizens collectively abandon it, signals the failure of a project, not its success.

Recent events have laid this contradiction bare. The twelve-day war and the protests of 2025 showed that the security for which the Islamic Republic has paid an enormous price, and which it has made its central slogan for decades, has been less a reality than an institutional illusion. Infiltration from the air, infiltration from within, the collapse of alliance networks, and the inability to anticipate and prevent crises all demonstrated that the security apparatus not only failed to secure society, but also rendered the very structure of power deeply vulnerable.

What matters in this historical experience is not merely the failure of a political system. The deeper issue is that when security turns into an ideology, it gradually changes its nature—from a goal into a tool. Security is no longer employed to reduce danger, but to stabilize order, suppress difference, and engineer society. Under such conditions, the greater the pressure applied in the name of security, the deeper structural insecurity becomes.

What we are facing today is not the absence of security policy, but its excess—an excess that has itself turned into a source of insecurity. The experience of the past four decades shows that it is possible to construct a society in which the state is insecure, society is insecure, and the citizen is insecure. It is neither safe from external threats nor stable from within.

A wise individual—and by the same logic, a wisdom-based system—does not turn its critics into enemies. Instead, it keeps them close, not out of tolerance, but as part of a mechanism of feedback and self-correction. In such a system, criticism is not a sign of threat, but a sign of health: a tool for identifying error, correcting course, and preventing the accumulation of structural mistakes. By contrast, over four decades the Islamic Republic has responded to nearly all forms of criticism with repression, exclusion, and intimidation, gradually transforming every critic into an “enemy.” As a result, the system has not only lost its natural feedback network, but has deprived itself of its most vital source of reform: a society without criticism, and a power without the capacity to correct its own errors.

Such a system—a wisdom-based system—extends this logic even to its adversaries; even to those who from the outset have fixed their gaze on its geopolitical position and sharpened their knives. Within this framework, the enemy is not made “more enemy,” is not provoked, is not fed through stone-throwing or emotional spectacle. On the contrary, hostility is managed rather than intensified. When necessary, adversaries are invited to the negotiating table, received through diplomatic hospitality, and relations are kept in a state of balance: neither too cold nor too warm; neither so distant as to breed misunderstanding and accumulated tension, nor so close as to result in dependency or reckless concession.

What we need is not security, but a Rise of Wisdom—a rise of wisdom in both the individual mind and the collective mind. Without such a rise, appealing words like freedom, justice, democracy, and even development will remain trapped at the level of populist campaign slogans, while authoritarianism quietly returns, this time dressed in more refined and decorative forms. What is required is not another security doctrine, but a deliberate movement toward wisdom itself—a Wisdorise.

Slavery has never ended. Only its instruments have changed, its language has changed, and its modes of legitimation have become more complex. The iron chains have disappeared, but the golden chains of the happiness myth and the American Dream have taken their place. What remains is the same old logic: the extraction of…

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In Invisible Borders, in the section devoted to “narratives of control,” I have tried to show that freedom, suffering, and satisfaction are, before being political or legal phenomena, mental structures: products of the relation between memory, expectation, and the sense of control. What a human being experiences is not merely a reflection of external conditions, but the result of the distance that forms between what is and what the mind expects to be.

In that same place, to clarify this distinction, I used a simple allegory:

Let us imagine three human beings, all living on a remote island that is, in every respect, identical for all of them. An island with a suitable climate, sufficient food, and relative safety. The difference among these three people lies not in the environment, but in their mental pre-backgrounds.

The first person was born on this very island. He has no image of the outside world. He has never experienced any alternative possibility. For him, this island is neither a limitation nor an opportunity; it is the whole world. Concepts such as freedom, deprivation, or happiness have not yet become problematic for him, because he has nothing to compare his situation with. What exists simply appears natural.

The second person has come to this island by his own choice, for a holiday. He knows that he will return. He understands his presence on the island as the result of a personal decision. This attribution of his condition to his own choice activates a sense of control in his mind. For him, the island is not a prison, but a pleasant place, even a symbol of freedom, because he relates his presence to his own will.

The third person, however, is an exile. He has been separated from his home, his city, his relationships, and his possibilities, and sent to this island. He carries the memory of another life. He has a vivid image of freedom, choice, and a different future in his mind. Now, even if in practice he faces no concrete limitation, the island is for him not nature, but negation. Not merely the absence of a road, but the denial of the right to move. His suffering is produced not by the conditions of the island, but by the gap between what is and what should have been.

In this allegory, the external conditions are almost identical, yet the experience of suffering is entirely different. What creates this difference is not the environment, but memory, comparison, and the sense of control.

If we extend this model to human societies, the relation between North Korea and Iran becomes clearer from this perspective.

In this framework, the experience of happiness and suffering is not the direct product of external conditions, but a construct formed by the horizon of expectations, the range of comparisons, and the space of possibilities that the mind considers conceivable for itself. Human beings suffer not because of what they lack, but because of what they believe they could have had.

From this point of view, North Korea is a profoundly unjust society in which institutional discrimination, a hereditary caste-like system, and severe inequality exist. The Songbun system places citizens in fixed political classes from birth and determines their educational, occupational, and even nutritional destinies. Yet the essential difference between this society and modern capitalist societies lies not in the absence of discrimination, but in the way discrimination is perceived. Inequality in this society is not constantly made visible, displayed, and rendered comparison-provoking. The privileged class does not present itself in a public media showcase. Conspicuous consumption does not exist. There is no network for endless horizontal comparison. As a result, a large part of the chronic suffering produced by symbolic humiliation, class shame, and crises of self-worth in modern societies is not generated here in this particular form.

A society with extremely limited access to information, without the possibility of sustained comparison with the outside world, without a collective memory of a long period of prosperity, and without a stabilized image of an alternative life. In such a society there is poverty, there is repression, there is deprivation, but the narrative gap is narrower. Broad expectations do not form, or remain very weak. The concept of a “lost right” can hardly stabilize, because the mind does not possess the necessary tools to construct it. This description is neither a defense of repression nor a recommendation of a model; it is merely the description of a cognitive mechanism.

By contrast, the situation of Iran can be seen as a classic example of a society in which all the components of producing narrative suffering are simultaneously active.

A society with a historical memory of past greatness, with direct experience of relative prosperity in previous generations, with constant access to images of other forms of life through media, migration, and global connections, and with abundant resources that it knows could allow a better life, but cannot. Today’s Iranian is not only deprived, but knows that he could have not been deprived. Not only constrained, but carries a clear image of possible freedom in his mind. Not only poor, but bears the memory of having once enjoyed prosperity. This is precisely the situation I described in Invisible Borders as a “persistent gap between narrative and experience”: a point at which the mind can no longer construct a credible story about its own future.

In such a condition, suffering is produced less by absolute poverty than by violated expectation. A society that believes in a different future but sees no credible path toward it becomes trapped in a form of chronic dissatisfaction that neither fades with temporary improvements nor dissolves with superficial changes.

This is how I come to see the people of Iran as the most in-suffering nation in the world.

In 2018, I traveled to Paris. I found a hotel near the Champs-Élysées at an unbelievable price. I quickly read all the reviews and realized I was dealing with a reputable hotel with thousands of positive ratings. Without hesitation, I booked it and set off.

When I arrived in Paris, the metro passed my station and stopped at the next one. I changed lines, and from the other direction the same thing happened again. I assumed the station was temporarily closed. I left the metro and decided to walk to the hotel. The route was about forty minutes, and I have always loved walking through the narrow streets of Paris.

After a while, I noticed an unusual concentration of security forces and riot police. Their number was so large that I was certain something serious was underway. I approached an officer who seemed to be in command and asked whether he spoke English. He explained that a Yellow Vests gathering had turned violent and the area had been sealed off.

I showed him my hotel reservation and said I needed to reach my hotel. He smiled and said he did not recommend going and suggested I book another hotel. With a mix of stubbornness and curiosity, I replied, “I’ve paid for the hotel and they haven’t said anything. I’m going.” He said any consequences would be my responsibility and opened the way.

The further I went, the harsher the scenes became. Trash bins were burning. The sound of explosions grew louder. The smell of tear gas and smoke filled the air. Shop windows were being smashed. Cars were set on fire. People showed no restraint.

What surprised me, however, was the behavior of the police. The police were present and had control of the area, but they had not entered a logic of physical elimination. There was no widespread gunfire. There was no direct shooting at people. There was force, gas, batons, but there was a red line they did not cross.

The next day, the city looked like a ruin. Destroyed shops, shattered windows, and burn marks were visible everywhere. Yet this urban violence, despite its intensity and scale, had not turned into a mass killing. According to official statistics published in France, over the entire period of the Yellow Vests protests across the country, about eleven people lost their lives, and the number of injured — including protesters and police — was reported to be around two to three thousand. These figures were the result of months of continuous protests and dozens of waves of urban clashes.

This experience is not merely a personal observation, but an example of an institutional pattern in urban crisis management. In many European policing systems, crowd control is an independent specialized field built on the principle of minimum violence. The basic assumption is that street crises are multi-causal phenomena: a combination of social discontent, collective emotion, organized actions, opportunistic elements, and at times external interventions. The institutional response must be designed in such a way that the field does not slip out of control, without turning human life into a tool of management.

In recent weeks, Iran has faced a crisis far more extensive. Protests took shape on a national scale. Streets were blocked. Widespread destruction occurred. Confrontations between people and security forces rapidly expanded. The field was clearly a multilayered one: part of the actors were ordinary protesters, part were cores prone to escalating violence, part were opportunistic elements, and on the other side stood various police, military, and paramilitary forces, each entering the scene with different doctrines, levels of training, and rules of engagement.

In such fields, the main issue is not merely “protest,” but the management of a hybrid space in which real grievances, external agitation, targeted destructive operations, and spontaneous collective behavior are intertwined. In this kind of crisis, the boundary between civil protest, urban riot, and destabilizing operation is rapidly erased.

Moreover, street violence in Iran cannot be understood merely as the product of the moment of crisis. As I have explained in Invisible Violence, an important part of our behavioral patterns is rooted in historical memory and cultural training — especially the memory of the 1979 Revolution and the kind of official narrative of it that has been continuously reproduced in educational and social spaces. In this framework, violence is not only a reaction to political or economic pressure, but the gradual outcome of narrative construction, institutional education, and the consolidation of mental patterns that shape society’s relationship with conflict, the street, and collective action.

In Iran, numerous reports speak of tens of thousands killed and thousands more wounded, without any precise figure, independent registration mechanism, or transparent reporting being available. This very lack of reliable data is itself a sign of institutional weakness. When mechanisms of registration, reporting, and accountability collapse, the crisis moves from the security level to the level of an institutional crisis.

The central question of this discussion is not who initiated the violence. In every major crisis, there are multiple initiators. My main question is whether such a complex field could have been managed without leading to the mass killing of citizens.

In all political crises, external interventions play a role. Intelligence operations, psychological warfare, organized agitation, and destabilization projects are part of contemporary politics. But even in the presence of such factors, the decision about the level of violence is an institutional decision. This decision is made not at the level of the officer or soldier, but at the level of doctrine and institutional design.

Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference between Paris and Tehran that cannot be ignored. In Paris, the main issue of the protests was an economic and social dispute — a demand for policy reform within the existing political order. Even in the most intense moments, the issue was not regime change or the collapse of the political system.

In Iran, the crisis was multi-dimensional from the outset. Economic, social, identity-based, and political demands gradually intertwined and led to a discourse that directly raised the issue of transition and change in the structure of power. In such a situation, the perceived level of threat to the political structure is far higher, and this structurally lowers the threshold for coercive intervention.

This difference in the nature of the demand directly affects the logic of crisis management. A protest for economic policy reform, even if it turns violent, is usually treated as a manageable crisis within the order. But a protest with the horizon of political change or transition is quickly understood as an existential threat to the structure, and the logic of response shifts from “crisis control” to “defense of survival.”

The decisive question arises precisely at this point: at what time, and at what stage, was this demand for transition neither seen, nor heard, nor institutionally represented, and therefore forced to overflow in a violent form. Violence here is not merely the product of collective emotion, but a sign of the long-term blockage of nonviolent paths to change — what I call “dignified revolt.”

From this perspective, the difference between Paris and Tehran is not only a difference in policing doctrine, but a difference in the structure’s relationship with the possibility of change. In Paris, even a violent crisis unfolds within an order in which the very possibility of internal reform is institutionally recognized. In Iran, the crisis took shape in a context where gradual paths of reform and transition had been blocked for years.

In Paris, the doctrine is based on attritional containment: buying time, controlling routes, separating active cores, limiting the field, gradually exhausting the crisis, and restoring order without crossing the lethal threshold. The guiding principle is that the death of a citizen is considered a sign of failure in crisis management.

In Iran, the implemented doctrine is based on rapid and decisive deterrence. In this model, when the crisis is interpreted as an existential threat to the structure, the speed of ending the crisis is prioritized over human cost. This is not necessarily the result of an intention to kill, but the logical outcome of an institutional design in which survival gains structural precedence over the life of the citizen.

Prevention does not necessarily mean tolerance. The literature of control provides dozens of non-lethal tools to institutions. But the question is to what extent these tools are activated while the structure still considers the crisis “manageable within the order,” and from which point onward the logic of the field shifts from crisis control to the logic of defense of survival.

In Iran, the problem is not only a lack of training. The problem is the relationship between change, security, and human life in the governing intellectual system. To what extent peaceful transition is recognized as legitimate, and from which point onward every demand for change is redefined as an existential threat.

The decisive point is not what narrative is placed on the crisis. National security, public order, survival of the structure, or preservation of stability are concepts used in all political systems. The decisive point is whether the political structure is fundamentally designed to confront crises of transition without crossing the threshold of mass killing.

This discussion is not a defense of any side. Not a defense of protesters, not a defense of security forces, not a defense of the political system. This discussion concerns a deeper institutional issue: the capacity of a political structure to hear, represent, and manage demands for transition before they are forced to become violent.

On January 14, in an essey titled Lost Moments published on Wisdorise, I described as one possible scenario that the theatrical confrontation between the United States and the Islamic Republic could be a cover for a behind-the-scenes deal. At the time, this hypothesis felt more like a marginal possibility. Today, however, when I put together the behavior of the main actors and a basic cost–benefit logic, that same scenario has moved from a theoretical option to the most plausible narrative.

Today, however, when one puts together the behavior of the main actors, the pattern of pressures, and a basic cost–benefit logic, this scenario has moved for me from a theoretical possibility to the most plausible narrative.

What is now publicly framed as a “Trump versus the Islamic Republic” standoff, once stripped of its performative layer, looks far more like a high-cost but managed bargaining process than a prelude to war or a genuine regime-change effort. The dominant assumption is that the United States is on the verge of attacking Iran or seeking its immediate collapse. But the actual behavior of Washington and Tehran resembles a negotiation more than a gamble.

First, a direct attack on Iran would be extraordinarily costly in financial, human, and geopolitical terms. Iran is not Iraq in 2003 and not Libya in 2011. Any serious military scenario would mean destabilizing the entire Middle East, disrupting global energy markets, and dragging the United States into a long-term crisis-management cycle. This does not align with Trump’s strategic logic, which is built around minimizing direct costs and maximizing symbolic returns. Trump does not want a war; he wants a “deal brand”: a sellable victory at limited cost.

Second, Iran’s asymmetric response capabilities mean that no strike would be “one hit and done.” U.S. bases in Iraq, Syria, and the Gulf, shipping lanes, and regional energy infrastructure would all be exposed to retaliation. Even if Iran is militarily weaker in conventional terms, it has the ability to expand the scope of the crisis. That alone is enough to strip Washington of narrative control and of any clear exit point. For the U.S., the real danger is precisely this: a war that can be ordered to start but cannot be ordered to end.

Third, the ideological and at times apocalyptic structure of the Islamic Republic is not merely a sign of irrationality; it is a high-risk bargaining tool. A side that signals that the cost of collapse or death is lower for it than usual makes the other side more cautious. This is the logic of strategic madman theory: creating doubt about whether classical deterrence will fully work. The result is that the war option exists on paper but in practice becomes leverage for negotiation.

Fourth—and this is the key point—for Trump, Pahlavi is not a winning card but a risk. Contrary to the common belief that the U.S. would prefer any alternative, from a realpolitik perspective a bad but predictable regime is often less costly than an unknown future. If Trump cares about control, he will not bet on an ambiguous variable. His distrust of Pahlavi can be understood at a deeper level.

For Trump, Pahlavi is not just a person; he represents a potential new order. A new order means new actors, new coalitions, new demands, and a full renegotiation of relations with the U.S. If a future Iran were genuinely nationalist and grounded in electoral legitimacy, it would no longer behave like a rentier, isolated state with a few narrow pressure channels. It could enter reciprocal bargaining instead of one-sided deals. It could diversify partners in energy markets, regional policy, and economic contracts instead of offering rapid concessions. It could rebuild relations with Europe and reduce Washington’s weight in strategic decisions. It could even adopt a multi-vector policy in the U.S.–China rivalry instead of becoming a pressure tool. For Trump, such an independent Iran is precisely what reduces controllability.

Moreover, if Pahlavi wants to build an internal base inside Iran, he will have to distance himself from the image of dependency. That means that even if he needs foreign support in the short term, in the medium term he will be incentivized to signal independence and raise the political cost of “giving concessions to America.” Trump prefers a pawn whose output is measurable and guaranteed. Pahlavi does not offer that guarantee.

Fifth, what we are witnessing in the media and public-opinion sphere is more a cognitive war aligned with pressure logic than a single centralized conspiracy. Outlets such as Iran International and BBC Persian play a role in magnifying imminent collapse narratives, emotional mobilization, “last moment” framing, and a heightened sense of urgency. Structurally, this environment fits Trump’s bargaining logic: raising psychological costs for the other side without committing to an actual strike. In this same framework, the role of Reza Pahlavi becomes more intelligible: not necessarily as an independent architect, but as a piece—wittingly or unwittingly—integrated into this pressure game. His prominence in certain media and the simplification of regime-change narratives serve a psychological function: constructing a “ready alternative on the table” to intensify pressure, not necessarily to execute a real transfer of power.

Sixth, maximum sanctions, recent limited confrontations, internal insecurity, and economic and currency pressure have created a complete leverage package. On one side, a real weakening of the Islamic Republic’s maneuvering capacity; on the other, keeping the negotiation door open. At the same time, parts of Iran’s nuclear capability have been slowed or neutralized without the U.S. entering a full-scale war. This is the optimal pressure point: neither uncontrolled collapse nor cost-free compromise. Compounding this vulnerability is the erosion of Iran’s proxy and alliance network, from Syria and Hezbollah to regional militias and symbolic partners like Venezuela. These tools of power projection are no longer as coherent or dependable as they once were, further narrowing Tehran’s options and making a controlled de-escalation through behind-the-scenes bargaining not just likely, but structurally rational.

Seventh, a point that receives far less attention is the geopolitical cost of the Islamic Republic’s collapse for the United States itself. Collapse would mean a power vacuum in a country of ninety million people, the risk of de facto fragmentation, multi-polar civil war, the entry of regional actors, energy instability, and the opening of uncontrolled pathways for Chinese and Russian influence. From Washington’s perspective, “a weak but standing Islamic Republic” is far less costly than “a collapsed and unpredictable Iran.” This fits perfectly with the logic of a behind-the-scenes deal.

Eighth, this game is not only about Iran. A behind-the-scenes deal—or even moving close to one—also sends a signal to China: the United States can keep a major regional actor in a bargaining position using low-cost tools, without occupation and without classical war. This is an indirect display of power within the broader Washington–Beijing rivalry.

Ninth, Trump needs a symbolic foreign-policy achievement that can be sold as a “deal,” not as a war. Even a minimal agreement with Iran is far more marketable domestically than another bloody Middle Eastern conflict. On the other side, the Islamic Republic also needs economic breathing room, even temporarily, to avoid accelerated collapse. This overlap of needs strengthens the logic of a deal.

Tenth, that is why the performance of absolute hostility continues on stage. The Islamic Republic needs the enemy image for internal legitimacy, and Trump needs it for his narrative of toughness against America’s enemies. The global public, with hashtags, headlines, and statements, plays the role of stage décor. Behind the scenes, however, the logic of the game looks more like a geopolitical bazaar than a battlefield.

At this point, three objections usually arise.

The first objection is: if a deal is in play, why all this tension and threat? The answer is simple: a deal without tension has no leverage. Pressure is part of the deal itself, not its negation. The more real the war image appears, the easier it becomes to extract concessions behind the scenes.

The second objection is: this view is conspiratorial. But this analysis is not based on assuming secret coordination; it is based on reading actor behavior through cost–benefit logic. There is no need to assume that Washington and Tehran are “friends.” It is enough to assume that both want to avoid the worst-case scenario.

The third objection is: war might still actually happen and this entire analysis could turn out to be wrong. Yes, the risk of war is real. But the existence of war risk does not contradict the dominance of the deal scenario. On the contrary: the risk of war is precisely the tool that makes a deal possible.

In this framework, the core question is no longer whether the United States will attack Iran. The real question is what will be traded away in this behind-the-scenes bargaining, and what will only be temporarily spared. If the deal scenario is correct, the main danger is exactly this: not an all-out war, not a clear victory, but a dark recalibration that may, for the people of Iran, mean nothing more than the continuation of the same deadlock in a new format.

All of this exists at the level of possibilities and probabilities, not certainties. From my perspective, power appears where possibilities are weighted—where some paths become more likely and others less so. In this sense, politics is not a field of conscious decisions, but a field of probability regulation. What is political is not necessarily the command, but the configuration of the field itself.

The greatest victims of this geopolitical theater are the ordinary people of Iran. Behind every calculated move and every behind-the-scenes deal, there are real lives at stake, real casualties, and a profound grief that weighs heavily on all of us. While the major players may see this as a strategic game, the human cost—measured in lost lives and deep mourning—remains the harshest reality of all.

Discussions about street mobilization in Iran tend to slide quickly into emotional and partisan judgments when they remain focused on names and individuals. But if we step back, the core issue is neither the call itself nor even the number of casualties. The real question lies in the mechanism through which political action and collective violence are legitimized, and in how that mechanism operates through power and narrative. Whether a call to the streets is framed as “duty, uprising, and martyrdom” or as “public incitement and a call to killing” depends far less on the nature of the act than on the speaker’s position within the structure of power.

In the years leading up to the 1979 revolution, calls for protest, strikes, and mass presence in the streets were gradually redefined through a language that elevated politics from a social act to a moral and religious obligation. Being present in the streets, resisting the ruling order, and even being killed were no longer understood merely as political actions, but as participation in a sacred cause. Within this narrative framework, the deaths of protesters were not treated as human tragedies or painful costs, but as “martyrdom.” Bloodshed became proof of righteousness, and violence was morally cleansed through a shift in language. The success of the revolution later fixed this narrative in place, rewriting the past in a way that transformed the killing of civilians from an ethical problem into symbolic capital for political legitimacy.

Today, the same dynamic operates in reverse. Calls issued by various opposition figures are now labeled through an entirely opposite vocabulary. Actions that were once described as “uprising” or “resistance” are framed, in official discourse, as public disturbance, incitement to violence, or calls for mass killing. The difference lies not in the act of calling people into the streets, but in the speaker’s relationship to power. Language changes, meaning flips, and interpretation is reversed.

This contrast reveals that the central issue is not human life, nor a principled rejection of violence. The issue is the monopoly over defining legitimacy. Political power determines which deaths are called “martyrdom” and which are labeled “crime.” In both cases, human beings are subordinated to narrative rather than judged by a consistent moral standard.

There is, however, another layer that is often overlooked. Imagine that these calls, instead of ending in repression or failure, had led to the success of a movement and a political transition. In such a scenario, it is unlikely that the same voices now criticizing opposition leaders for irresponsibility and risk-taking would maintain their stance. The narrative would likely shift. Criticism would give way to hero-making, and those same calls would be reinterpreted as signs of courage, leadership, and foresight.

This shift is not exceptional; it is a recurring pattern in political history. Success cleanses methods, while failure criminalizes them. What is described today as recklessness or provocation, if it succeeds, is tomorrow recast as historical wisdom and moral bravery. This is why moral judgments about political calls to action are often shaped not by fixed principles, but by outcomes.

Stating this does not amount to defending calls for street action or legitimizing violence. As I have stated before, I oppose all forms of violence and all undignified methods of political struggle. The purpose of this argument is neither to encourage street mobilization nor to sanitize political risk-taking. It is to expose a mechanism that frequently goes unnoticed: the way political outcomes retroactively rewrite moral judgment.

Ultimately, this is not about defending or attacking any particular call. The deeper issue is how political power uses language to sanctify violence or criminalize it; how it assigns meaning to death or strips it of meaning; and how it reduces people from conscious agents to instruments of narrative control. As long as this mechanism remains unseen, public debate will continue to oscillate between “sacred uprising” and “criminal incitement,” without ever reaching a serious critique of power and legitimacy.

In some societies, the street turns into a field of dialogue—but a dialogue whose language is violent from the very first moment: stones, Molotov cocktails, fire, destruction, Guns and ultimately killing. This pattern is neither the result of momentary anger nor merely a reaction to political or economic pressure. What appears on the street is the direct outcome of years of education, narrative construction, and the reproduction of mental patterns.

This behavior is not abnormal. From an evolutionary perspective, humans are beings who, under threat, have learned aggressive defense and the elimination of rivals. This is examined in detail from an evolutionary–neuroscientific perspective in the section On Why We Fight in Invisible Borders.

In Iran, children are introduced to “revolution” from the earliest years of schooling—but not as a historical event with complex layers, costs, failures, and long-term consequences. Revolution is taught as an aestheticized, heroic narrative. Wallpapers, anthems, ceremonies, and romanticized commemorations all reinforce a single message: change is not possible without violence. The street is the birthplace of the hero, and violence is not an error but a sign of courage and resistance.

In such an environment, the child does not learn that conflict can take multiple paths. They learn that when you reach a dead end, you must go to the street. They learn that shouting, fire, and destruction are legitimate tools of action. Gradually, this pattern becomes fixed in the mind and, in adulthood, turns into an automatic response.

France offers a different but structurally related example. The tradition of the French Revolution, from the eighteenth century to today, has legitimized the street as a tool of political pressure. Strikes, riots, arson, and clashes with the police have become part of the historical memory and political identity of this society. The difference is that in France these behaviors are mostly reproduced within a secular and labor-oriented tradition, rather than an ideological or religious one. Still, the underlying mental model is shared: the street is where rights must be taken, not merely demanded. Here too, violence—though more limited and controlled—remains part of the language of collective action.

In Iran, this pattern is reinforced through imagery of “resistance” and simultaneously rooted in religious myths. Palestinians are often represented as symbols of victimhood for whom the only possible response is throwing stones or taking up arms. This image is usually presented without complex historical, geopolitical, or human context, and alongside it religious narratives enter the scene. The implicit message is clear: if you are oppressed, you must rise; if you lack power, violence is legitimate; and if you are killed, you will be sanctified. Within this framework, violence shifts from an emergency reaction to a moral and identity-based virtue, and the street becomes the stage for the continual reenactment of this myth.

When such patterns are planted in the mind from childhood, they no longer remain confined to religion or politics. They become a cognitive framework for understanding the world. The individual learns that rights are something to be taken, not built, and that taking them often passes through the street and confrontation.

By contrast, in many Nordic countries, education begins from a different point. Instead of practicing physical defense or forcibly taking one’s rights, children practice dialogue. In the classroom, they play different roles: complainant, accused, observer, and even the one who has made a mistake. They learn that the world cannot be seen from only one angle and that the other is not necessarily an enemy. Conflict, rather than becoming a field of elimination, becomes a field of mutual understanding.

In these countries, the issue of Palestine is usually discussed within the frameworks of human rights, international law, and the humanitarian consequences of conflict—not as a model for action. Children learn that empathy with a people’s suffering does not mean reproducing their violent behavior. Education is designed to draw a clear boundary between “understanding victimhood” and “sanctifying violence.” Students are encouraged to examine opposing narratives simultaneously, to discuss different tools of protest, and to analyze the short- and long-term consequences of violence. Within this framework, the street is not a heroic stage but one costly and limited form of collective action, not its core identity. Empathy is taught, but violence is not institutionalized as the natural path to change.

In these systems, empathy is not a slogan or merely a moral virtue; it is a skill practiced repeatedly. Children are repeatedly required to place themselves in another’s position, even when they dislike that person. Over time, these exercises shape the dominant mental mechanism—one in which the first reaction is not attack.

In our formal education, by contrast, children are often trained in only one role: the self-righteous one. They are either victims or heroes. In both cases, the other is either a devil or an obstacle. There is no room left for complexity, doubt, or shared responsibility. The result is a mind that easily constructs an us-versus-them dichotomy and sees the elimination of the other not only as permissible but as necessary.

Such an educational system produces, in the future, a society that treats the street as the natural instrument of action. Street violence in this context is not a deviation; it is the continuation of the same mechanism that was formed years earlier—quietly and persistently—in classrooms, anthems, and official narratives. The street is merely the stage on which something already built in minds finally appears.

After every revolution or major collapse, there is a moment that is usually overlooked: the moment when the old order has fallen, but the new order has not yet been built.

In Invisible Borders, I use the term “day zero of order” to refer to the moment when a new order replaces an established one. Day zero is not merely a political condition; it is also a mental one. Society is saturated with emotion: anger, hope, relief, fear. Everything appears possible, but precisely for that reason, everything can also slip out of control. At this moment, the desire for justice can very easily turn into a desire for elimination.

Those who were present in the previous system suddenly become enemies of the new order—not based on what they actually did, but simply on who they were. Complexity disappears, and the world is divided into two simple poles: us and them. This simplification soothes the mind, but it pushes society into a new cycle of violence.

In such an atmosphere, a significant portion of the leadership—and even the broader body—of the former system flees or seeks refuge abroad. Gradually, they turn into an external enemy: an enemy that both absorbs internal rage and allows the new order to preserve its internal cohesion through a permanent sense of threat. Elimination at home and enemy-making abroad are two complementary mechanisms that help reproduce the same old pattern of power.

But the cycle does not stop there. Over time, these exiled groups become not only carriers of the memory of exclusion, but also of humiliation, loss, and perceived injustice. Many of them—especially subsequent generations—shape their political identity not around a project for the future, but around revenge on the past. An opposition emerges that is oriented less toward building and more toward punishment; less fluent in the language of politics and more in the language of resentment.

This violent, vengeful opposition unintentionally becomes a mirror image of the very order it claims to fight. It reproduces the same simplifications, reinforces the same us-versus-them dichotomy, and reintroduces the same desire for elimination, merely under a different sign. In this way, the dominant order at home and the violent opposition abroad feed one another and ensure each other’s survival.

The 1979 revolution in Iran is a clear example of this pattern. The leaders and affiliates of the previous order were eliminated, exiled, or turned into refugees. Abroad, parts of the opposition gradually formed around nostalgia, anger, and a desire for revenge. At home, this image of an external enemy became a tool to justify repression and the concentration of power. The cycle was completed: elimination, exile, enemy construction, and the reproduction of domination.

On day zero, the central issue is not what to do with the past, but what to do with our anger. If anger is directly connected to power—whether in the form of a new state or a vengeful opposition—the outcome will not differ in substance. Elimination will simply change hands.

This is where tolerance acquires a different meaning—not as an invitation to forget or to compromise, but as a tool to break the cycle. Tolerance means separating justice from revenge, and politics from resentment. It means rejecting the assumption that the only way to move beyond the past is to punish it endlessly.

Within this framework, justice is no longer limited to traditional punishments. Long prison sentences and executions not only fail to contain violence; they export it into the future and even beyond borders. Rehabilitation, by contrast, is an attempt to break the intergenerational transmission of violence. Restricting access to power, accepting responsibility, and confronting the bitter experiences of victims are not acts of absolution, but measures to prevent the reproduction of the cycle of elimination.

Tolerance without acknowledging the victims’ suffering is meaningless. But tolerance without restraining the desire for revenge is equally incomplete. A society that merely relocates elimination will sooner or later encounter the same pattern again—only this time in a new guise.

If a new day zero arrives in Iran and this cycle is not broken, the danger is that once again there will be no true rupture, only a reversal of roles: yesterday’s excluded becoming tomorrow’s eliminators. Day zero is where the revolution ends, but responsibility begins—where society can decide whether it wants merely to repeat the past or to genuinely move beyond it.

If tolerance on day zero is managed wisely and society succeeds in severing the direct link between emotion, elimination, and power, then the most pressing issue ahead will be how to confront foreign intervention. Such intervention often enters under the language of assistance and stability, but in the absence of domestic management, it can internally undermine newly formed mechanisms of trust and transition. The experience of countries such as Iraq shows that even after escaping a repressive order, handing over the management of power to external actors turns political competition into proxy competition and reproduces cycles of instability. Whether Iran can avoid this trap depends not on the intentions of interveners, but on society’s capacity to manage intervention itself—a subject I will address in the next post.

In Invisible Borders, I distinguish between two concepts, both related to collective action but pointing to two different states of social movement: romantic fervor and dignified revolt. What follows here is neither a restatement of the book nor an attempt at abstract theorizing. It is a reading of these two concepts in Iran’s current condition, where one has reached its peak while the other has been pushed to the margins.

Romantic fervor emerges when accumulated pressures lose their gradual channels of release. The horizon of vision narrows, collective experience becomes compressed, and acceleration replaces pause. In this condition, narratives are simplified, boundaries sharpen, and society moves toward immediate answers. This fervor is not sudden and does not arise out of a vacuum; it is the product of long-term erosion, an accumulation of experiences that have, one by one, eliminated the possibility of calm, gradual action.

By contrast, dignified revolt belongs to a stage that once existed but has gradually lost the conditions for its expression. Dignified revolt means protest without the collapse of language, resistance without fully surrendering the field to emotion, and gradual action before explosion. This form of action requires time, channels, and a minimum possibility of being heard—conditions that, in Iran, have been eroded not accidentally but systematically.

One common misunderstanding is to reduce today’s social outburst in Iran to economic pressure alone. This view is both superficial and misleading. Economic pressure exists, but not as a single cause; it is one layer within a multi-decade process of erosion. A society in which the future horizon has gradually shortened, hope has given way to despair, and the ability to imagine tomorrow has been continuously constrained cannot be explained solely through inflation figures or exchange rates.

A rent-based and discriminatory system, gendered and ideological repression, the systematic elimination of diverse ways of living, the collapse of social trust, and the transformation of the Islamic Republic into an isolated and problematic actor on the global stage have all fed into this erosion. Inflationary pressure is merely the last tangible layer of this process, not its source. Society was worn down before it became poor; its horizon narrowed before its table shrank.

In this context, the role of media and external arenas cannot be ignored. Over decades, through its own policies, the Islamic Republic has turned a number of countries into adversaries. The United States, Israel, and the European Union are not neutral actors. When enemy-making becomes part of a system’s mechanism of survival, the other side responds. Sanctions, economic planning, interventions related to exchange-rate engineering, the twelve-day war, encouragements directed at the opposition, and the media field that has taken shape have all played roles in intensifying this condition. Media outlets such as BBC Persian and Iran International, along with opposition statements, are part of this arena—not initiators, but amplifiers.

In recent months, Trump’s aggressive rhetoric and promises, alongside reciprocal threats from the Islamic Republic, have added another dangerous layer: the possibility of turning an internal crisis into an all-out war. Even if these promises are never realized, their mere prominence alters the logic of the field. As the shadow of foreign intervention grows darker, speed increases, fear and anger intensify, and romantic fervor escalates. In such a situation, dignified revolt is pushed further to the margins—not because it is invalid, but because conditions have changed.

That said, this chain cannot be reversed in a way that minimizes the role of the Islamic Republic. Not merely as an inefficient system, but as a structure in which inefficiency, discrimination, and violence are institutionalized. A structure that has repeatedly shown ideology to be woven into its fabric and not subject to deep recalibration. Systematic repression, the normalization of violence, the securitization of everyday life, and the absence of meaningful costs for the exercise of power have not been exceptions but components of its survival mechanism. Individuals change, faces rotate, programs and strategies shift, but what must change has never changed—and there is no sign that it will.

Reforms within this structure are possible, but they remain superficial. What stays intact is the core that reproduces discrimination, repression, and blockage. The Islamic Republic’s recent acts of violence have not only blocked any path toward reform or gradual adjustment; they have effectively buried the very idea of national reconciliation and a culture of dialogue under a graveyard of anger and resentment.

In the current condition, dignified revolt has not been eliminated; it has been sidelined. The demands of the moment have prioritized speed and reaction, narrowing the space for calm action. As the environment becomes more securitized and the likelihood of harsher repression grows, this tendency may intensify. If total repression occurs and foreign interventions are reduced to behind-the-scenes deals, society will be forced to return to quieter, fragmented forms of resistance—not out of virtue, but out of survival. Under such conditions, returning to dignified revolt is not a choice but an imposition of the situation.

On the other hand, if regime change occurs, the issue moves beyond protest and enters a phase that can be called the danger of day zero—a condition I will explain in the next section.

One of the most common analytical errors in confronting Iran’s current situation is to equate it with scenarios such as Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, or even Venezuela. Such comparisons are usually employed either to frighten society or to justify passivity and the preservation of the status quo. The problem is that these analogies are not only inaccurate but analytically misleading.

Iran is, first and foremost, a continuous historical nation-state. Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan—whose borders are products of twentieth-century colonial divisions—or Libya, which has largely lacked a stable tradition of centralized statehood, Iran has a long record of territorial, administrative, and cultural continuity. This continuity does not imply immunity, but it significantly reduces the likelihood of rapid and total collapse.

Institutionally, Iran’s situation is also distinct. Even under current conditions of erosion and inefficiency, Iran still possesses an extensive network of bureaucracy, education, infrastructure, institutional memory, and experience in governance. Iraq after 2003 was deliberately dismantled from above. Libya and Afghanistan largely lacked such a dense fabric of civil and administrative institutions to begin with. Collapse in those countries was not the outcome of a turbulent transition but the result of an institutional vacuum.

Iranian society is not built on a single source of identity. Ethnic and linguistic diversity in Iran has developed within a shared historical and cultural framework. This limits the reduction of society to purely tribal or sectarian fractures. Comparing this condition with a society like Libya—defined around armed tribes—or Afghanistan, with fragmented local and ethnic structures, is fundamentally flawed.

Levels of urbanization, literacy, and cultural complexity in Iran are also decisive factors. Iran is a highly urbanized, connected, and media-saturated society. These characteristics increase both the capacity for self-organization and the costs of chaos. A society that understands what collapse entails does not easily surrender to it, even when deeply dissatisfied with existing conditions.

That said, Iran’s differences do not amount to absolute security. The primary risk for Iran is not a sudden collapse resembling Afghanistan or Libya, but becoming a playing field for geopolitical competition. Owing to its strategic position, Iran is neither abandoned nor irrelevant. In the event of weak domestic institutions, decision-making vacuums, and political fragmentation, indirect intervention by actors such as the United States, Israel, and regional powers could distort the trajectory of change.

Likewise, while the probability of territorial fragmentation is low, it is not zero. Under conditions of eroded public trust, intensified economic crisis, and a weakened center, even low-probability scenarios must be considered analytically. Ignoring them is neither realism nor optimism; it is dangerous simplification.

The issue, then, is not whether Iran is or is not similar to Iraq, Libya, or Afghanistan. The issue is that relying on such comparisons—whether to instill fear or to deny risk—obstructs a precise understanding of the situation. Iran is neither on the brink of classical collapse nor immune to slippage. The path ahead depends less on simplistic scenarios than on the quality of transition, the capacity for institution-building, and society’s ability to contain collective emotion and external interference.

The real danger is not repeating others’ pasts verbatim, but producing a distinctly Iranian version of crisis—a crisis that, if not properly understood, may emerge precisely from those very differences.

The aim of this essey is neither to make a moral judgment about whether requesting foreign assistance is right or wrong, nor to offer a political defense of any particular position. The issue is to analyze the mechanisms through which a single act, depending on the position of the subject and the object, is alternately labeled “humanitarian aid,” “legitimate support,” or “foreign intervention” and “external aggression.” What matters here are the biases that make these labels possible.

In the face of natural disasters, requests for international assistance are almost universally accepted without resistance. Earthquakes, floods, or wildfires implicitly justify a temporary suspension of absolute sovereignty. The entry of foreign forces, equipment, money, and technology is not only not considered intervention but is seen as a sign of global solidarity. This consensus is so taken for granted that few ask whether, at a structural level, there is any real difference between this kind of assistance and other forms of foreign involvement—or whether only the narrative has changed.

When suffering moves beyond an acute phase and becomes chronic, political, and prolonged, the very same act—requesting help—suddenly becomes problematic. Concepts such as independence, influence, political indebtedness, and loss of territorial integrity enter the scene. From the outside, however, what is still visible is suffering and the possibility of alleviating it through assistance. The main difference lies not in reality itself, but in the interpretive frame applied to it.

The Islamic Republic offers a clear example of this narrative shift. Over recent decades, the regime has been actively present in countries such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. This presence has involved the deployment of proxy forces, financial and military support, and direct intervention in political and military structures. In the official narrative, these actions are not described as foreign intervention but as “support for the oppressed,” “resistance,” or a “religious–moral duty.” What is crucial here is that the principle of assistance or support is not questioned; rather, legitimacy is produced through the act of naming.

If we reverse this logic and look at the situation of the Iranian people themselves, the central question becomes clear. A population that has endured years of economic pressure, political repression, and social erosion, if it seeks help from the international community, is immediately accused of “inviting foreign intervention.” As if suffering is legitimate only when it aligns with the dominant ideological narrative.

The United States and the European Union operate on the other side of the same logic. Their involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, or even Venezuela has consistently been framed in the language of “assistance,” “stabilization,” “defending democracy,” or “humanitarian support.” Yet historical experience shows that these interventions are always intertwined with geopolitical, economic, and security interests. This, in itself, is not surprising; international politics does not exist without the calculation of interests. The problem begins when these interests are concealed behind narratives of absolute morality.

A common pattern emerges here. Wherever assistance is offered without transparency, without clear boundaries, and without explicit definitions of mutual obligations and liabilities, the ground for exploitation is prepared. Just as in human relationships, borrowing money or asking for help without clear agreements can lead to resentment and hidden domination, at the international level the same logic operates with far greater intensity.

If we accept that asking for help is natural—especially under conditions of chronic suffering—the focus should shift from “whether to ask for help” to “how to ask for help.” The first step is transparency. Any request for assistance must have clearly defined scope, objectives, duration, and red lines. Ambiguity is tempting for the provider and dangerous for the recipient.

Second, humanitarian assistance must be separated from political and military projects. The experience of the Islamic Republic in the region and that of the United States in the Middle East both show that whenever these domains are entangled, the result is not a reduction of suffering but the reproduction of dependency and instability.

Third, assistance should be multilateralized through international institutions and oversight mechanisms. Bilateral power relations are inherently asymmetric. Turning aid into an institutional process reduces the likelihood of its being transformed into an instrument of political pressure.

Perhaps the most important condition, however, is narrative honesty. Acknowledging that no assistance is ever pure and that no intervention is ever without benefit does not mean rejecting aid; it means approaching it with maturity. As long as a system can label its own interventions as a “sacred duty” while defining the same action directed at itself as “illegitimate interference,” the problem lies not in assistance itself, but in the double standard that turns human suffering into a narrative instrument.

To assess the risk of reproducing past patterns, comparing today’s situation with the 1979 revolution is necessary; however, this comparison must be structural, multidimensional, and free from emotional charge.

First, the social composition has changed. Before the revolution, a large portion of the educated, development-oriented population was present inside the country and emigrated afterward, while power shifted to groups with clerical training and an ideological mindset. Today, a significant part of that human capital has already emigrated in advance, and the question of return, at least at a theoretical level, is being discussed. This difference can become an opportunity for institutional reconstruction, or—if mismanaged—can deepen the divide between those inside and outside the country.

Second, society’s relationship with the world has changed direction. The 1979 revolution pushed Iran toward isolation, psychological warfare, and eventually military conflict. Today, the dominant social demand is oriented toward an open economy, de-escalation, and reintegration into global networks of exchange. At the same time, this very desire to exit isolation can turn Iran into a playing field for geopolitical competition among powers such as the United States, Israel, and regional actors—a risk that is real if domestic institutions remain weak.

Third, the position of religion has shifted. The institutionalized and political religion of 1979 has largely given way to religion as personal experience and individual choice. This transformation reduces the likelihood of forming a religious government, but simultaneously may provoke radical reactions from small extremist Islamist minorities—groups that, while lacking broad social support, retain the capacity for localized disruption.

Fourth, the structure of leadership has changed. The 1979 revolution was organized around a single charismatic leader. Today, the absence of such a figure may signal a move beyond personalism, but it also carries the risks of fragmentation, unproductive competition, and decision-making vacuums.

Fifth, collective historical memory has become more complex. Experiencing both centralized monarchy and religious governance has made society more skeptical toward salvationist narratives. This skepticism can act as a shield against deception, but if it turns into absolute distrust, it can weaken the capacity for collective action.

Sixth, the role of media and the space for dialogue have been fundamentally transformed. Social networks, podcasts, and debates enable the free circulation of ideas and critique. At the same time, this space is highly prone to polarization, emotional escalation, oversimplification of complexity, and the production of imaginary enemies—mechanisms that can legitimize high-cost decisions.

Seventh, society’s relationship with violence has changed. A large segment of society today understands the costs of violence, war, and extremism and shows less inclination toward them. Nevertheless, in conditions of systemic collapse, even low-probability events—such as terrorist actions by extremist groups—can produce disproportionate psychological and political effects.

Eighth, the issue of territorial integrity has become more sensitive at the discursive level. Although the probability of fragmentation is low, under conditions of power vacuum, foreign intervention, or intensified ethnic distrust, this risk exists in theory, and ignoring it constitutes an analytical error.

Ninth, the economy plays a more decisive role than it did in 1979. A society subjected to decades of economic pressure is prone to rushed decisions in search of immediate relief. This condition can serve both as a driver of change and as fertile ground for accepting simplistic, externally dependent solutions.

Tenth, the level of collective awareness regarding the risks of revolution has increased. Unlike 1979, today the very concept of “revolution” is itself under question. This creates the possibility of course correction, but offers no guarantee of avoiding error, since collective awareness without effective institutions can devolve into exhaustion and perpetual suspension.

Overall, the current situation is neither a repetition of 1979 nor immune to slippage. The likelihood of chaos, foreign intervention, fragmentation, or organized violence is low, but not zero. The key difference today is that society recognizes these risks to some extent. The central question is no longer whether danger exists, but whether collective, institutional, and dialogue-based mechanisms emerge to contain it.

How I see Reza Pahlavi

My understanding of Reza Pahlavi is neither based on his family background, nor shaped by the historical record of his grandfather and father, nor derived from narratives close to the family. Just as any individual can have a deep distance from their parents, Reza Pahlavi cannot be understood as a linear continuation of the Pahlavi family history.

My analysis is grounded not in the rhetoric of news networks or propaganda, but in his published books, the Emergency Notebook of the NUFDI Foundation, and the many long-form conversations, debates, and podcasts in which he has participated over roughly the past decade. These are spaces that allow a more coherent articulation of thought than short statements ever can. Within this context, one encounters a figure who, at least at the level of discourse and theoretical framing, recognizes ideological, ethnic, and racial plurality, is open to criticism, distances himself from aristocracy, and understands democracy not as a slogan but as an institutional process.

Alongside these characteristics, what matters is the existence of a structured plan for transition. Not an ideological program, not a blueprint for seizing power, but a minimal framework built on several principles: returning decision-making to the people, assigning a central role to civil institutions, avoiding the concentration of power, and making a referendum the final arbiter. This program is less a definitive answer than an attempt to open the space of choice and suspend claims to final certainty.

The image I see of Reza Pahlavi is neither that of a savior nor of an heir to power, but of a political actor proposing a minimal, dialogue-oriented framework for a transitional period.

At the same time, this distinction does not imply personal immunity from critique. Serious and well-founded criticisms have been raised regarding Reza Pahlavi’s language, actions, programs, and statements, and responding to them is his own responsibility. This is entirely normal and an essential condition of any political actor’s presence in the public sphere.

Pahlavism as a mental pattern

When I speak of “Pahlavism,” I am not referring to a specific historical period, nor merely to the name of a family. Pahlavism, in this sense, is a personality-centered, monarchist ideology: a mental pattern that views political power not as the product of a social contract, but as a hereditary legacy.

Within this framework, the prince is imagined as the natural heir to power, whether that power is represented in an absolute form or wrapped in constitutional language. The sacralization of the individual, the reproduction of aristocracy, the restriction of critique, and aggressive encountering with opponents are core elements of this mindset. What is visible today among segments of monarchists is less a reasoned defense of a political model than a reproduction of this very logic: the elimination of dialogue in favor of loyalty, and the replacement of argument with insult and verbal intimidation.

Pahlavism is better understood not as a contemporary reaction, but as a deeply rooted mental pattern. A pattern in which the desire for authority, the need for a savior, and the tendency toward obedience overlap. In Invisible Borders, I have addressed in detail the evolutionary and neuroscientific roots of these tendencies, where obedience is presented not as a deviation, but as part of human biological and social history.

Under conditions of crisis, uncertainty, and the collapse of dominant narratives, these tendencies easily move from the psychological level to the political one. Alongside these mechanisms, collective memory and idealized narratives of the past also play a decisive role. The combination of historical fatigue from instability, the failure of ideologies, and the need for certainty can render any society susceptible to reproducing personality-centered patterns.

In this sense, Pahlavism is not necessarily the product of Reza Pahlavi’s own actions; it is a phenomenon that can emerge even in opposition to his stated positions. This is precisely the point: at times, what is constructed in the name of an individual becomes an exaggerated shadow bearing little resemblance to the person himself, reflecting less his thought than society’s psychological response to uncertainty.

Ultimately, the central question is not whether there is a risk of sliding into Pahlavism or not. Such a question would require predicting the future based on countless variables, which is practically impossible. The more precise question is this: how can the reproduction of authority-centered patterns be prevented?

Yesterday, during conversations about Iran’s recent movements, a friend said something that made me pause:

“Don’t think about things you can’t control.”

At first glance, the sentence is calming. An invitation to let go, to step back from anxiety, to reduce psychological pressure. But the problem starts exactly here: with a mistaken understanding of “control.”

Control does not necessarily mean having real power to influence phenomena. More often, it refers to a sense of influence. If we take this distinction seriously, the picture changes entirely. In this framework, no one truly has full control over anything. Phenomena are the result of interactions among multiple forces acting from different directions: historical, social, psychological, and sometimes entirely random.

Put simply, any action you take can be influential, even if its effect is neither immediate nor predictable. Just as any other action, inevitably, affects you as well. We live within a network of influences, not within a domain of control.

From this perspective, a question arises: how did individuals who had no executive power, no control mechanisms, and who did not even live at the center of events manage to leave deep and lasting effects on a society? The answer lies neither in “control” nor in “will,” but in the interaction of forces that make influence possible.

If a sentence you say today slightly shifts my thinking, or that of a few others, have you not been influential? Even if none of this was under your control?

Phrases like “don’t think about what you can’t control” or “let go of what you can’t change” can undoubtedly be effective strategies for reducing anxiety. They lower uncertainty and pull the mind out of ambiguity. This is precisely what many popular versions of self-development do today: simplifying human experience to generate a better feeling.

But the problem is that these simplifications often come at the cost of ignoring the complex reality of suffering. To reduce pain, we construct mechanisms that ultimately reproduce the same pain.

Humans, especially when faced with uncertainty and helplessness, tend to accept narratives that restore a sense of control, even if that control is purely mental. The issue is not that this tendency is bad or useless, but that we ignore the price we pay for it: the removal of complexity, the denial of interactions, and the reduction of human experience to a few calming instructions.

Every action has an effect, even if that effect is neither immediate nor measurable. We are almost never able to predict the consequences of our actions precisely in advance. The only thing available to us is a retrospective view: understanding later which action, in what context, produced what effect.

Within this horizon, the value of action lies not in certainty of outcome, but in its presence within the network of influences. No action is inherently meaningless. What creates meaning is not guaranteed results, but the placement of actions within a context that becomes intelligible only later — and only later.

What has repeatedly occurred in Iran’s contemporary history is not merely a transfer of power between regimes, but the reproduction of a persistent pattern in the understanding of politics. The transition from monarchy to the Islamic Republic, and today’s renewed inclination to revisit the previous order, may appear as a shift in position; yet at a deeper level, they represent the continuation of the same logic of power, recreated through new narratives and symbols. The issue is neither individuals nor names; it is the inability to break away from the structure itself.

Reducing this history to simplistic oppositions yields an inadequate analysis. Both orders were heterogeneous combinations of constructive and destructive actions: the development of certain infrastructures and capacities alongside repression, concentration of power, and the elimination of dialogue. Ignoring this complexity leaves the mind prepared to repeat the same mistakes, because a mind incapable of seeing a spectrum inevitably seeks refuge in polarity.

The emergence of the Islamic Republic cannot be reduced to individual errors or merely to external interference. This system was the product of the interaction of historical, social, cultural, and psychological forces. In a society with a long memory of centralized authority, monarchy, and a deep entanglement of religion and power, the transition to an order that derived its legitimacy from institutionalized religion was, at that historical juncture, not accidental but inevitable. This inevitability does not imply moral legitimacy or political effectiveness; rather, it points to the constrained horizon of choices within a given context.

The Islamic Republic can be understood as a costly yet instructive phase. The most important lesson of this experience emerged not at the level of day-to-day politics, but at the level of collective understanding: the distinction between religion as lived experience and religion as an institution of power. This distinction could previously be articulated in theoretical or abstract terms, but only after the lived experience of the Islamic Republic did it become tangible, undeniable, and collectively grasped. The entry of religion into politics neither preserved religion nor reformed politics; instead, it turned both into instruments of domination and structural corruption.

If one can speak of an achievement at the level of collective discernment, this may be the most significant. Not in the sense that society has reached a final maturity, but in the sense that one of the most lethal historical errors has been tested and recognized at great cost. Religion, when transferred from the sphere of individual and ethical experience to the sphere of institution and power, is inevitably emptied of meaning and transformed into ideology. This recognition is irreversible, even if its political consequences have not yet been institutionalized.

The decline of the existing order is also intelligible within this framework. The erosion of legitimacy, the accumulation of inefficiency, and widening social fractures have made its continuation increasingly difficult. Yet the end of an order does not, in itself, mean a rupture from its underlying logic. Without a transformation of mental preconditions and without the internalization of historical lessons, any political transition may simply reproduce the same patterns in a new form.

In this context, speaking of collective prudence requires caution. History does not follow a linear rational or moral path, and there is no guarantee that societies necessarily become “better” through experience. Still, one can speak of the gradual accumulation of certain cognitive distinctions. One sign of this accumulation is a declining inclination toward individual-centered politics and the construction of charismatic leaders. This shift arises not necessarily from maturity, but from the erosion of trust in ideologies and salvation narratives.

A prudent transition becomes possible not through changing faces or replacing narratives, but through a transformation in how power, responsibility, and the relationship between the individual and institutions are understood. If there is to be any talk of the possibility of collective prudence, it depends on a form of development that finds meaning only within its own context—a development in which lived experience, historical memory, institutions, and a society’s temporal horizon enter into continuous dialogue.

Last week we came from Antalya to Germany to spend the New Year with my partner’s family. A few days later, heavy snow fell. We were stuck outside, the bus was late, and I—wearing inappropriate clothes, in the wrong place, standing in the middle of a bus stop—was practically freezing. That was where our discussion began; a discussion about the word Vernunft, a term Kant was particularly fond of and that is usually translated as “reason.”

The discussion started when sentences like these began appearing in my mind, one after another:

“Don’t you have any sense, coming here dressed like that?”

I tried to understand exactly in what situations German speakers use this word and what they mean by it. Gradually, a picture formed in my mind: if, in the middle of recording a serious podcast, I suddenly started dancing, most people would probably think I had gone mad or lost my reason. But if I did exactly the same thing at a wedding, such an interpretation would not arise.

What we usually overlook is not reason itself, but context. Our focus is often on a specific action or statement, not on the setting in which that action acquires meaning. Rationality, contrary to common belief, is not an intrinsic property of behavior; it is a relation between behavior and the context that makes it intelligible or absurd.

Trump is appealing to many people and appears “irrational” to many others—not necessarily because of what he says, but because he dances where seriousness is expected. He is unpredictable because he plays on a field that does not align with our established expectations. The issue is not whether he has reason or lacks it; the issue is that he acts within a different framework, and that very framework disrupts our judgment.

At this point, the main question is no longer what reason is or what counts as rational. The question is: who or what determines this context? Who decides that one should not dance in the middle of a podcast, or that in a presidential speech one should not speak like a clown and make people laugh?

Is the answer obvious?

Not at all. My answer is this:

Culture, social norms, educational systems, power structures, and a network of established expectations that заранее determine what will appear “reasonable.”

In political and philosophical discussions, beyond these factors, context is shaped by discursive systems, systems of meaning, and ideological frameworks. This is precisely where, in Invisible Borders, I have referred to what I call the chains of rationality—where reason, instead of being a tool for understanding, turns into a mechanism for discipline, boundary-making, and rapid judgment. A rationality that, instead of seeing, excludes.

These variables are so fluid and context-dependent that one cannot freeze them at any moment and say, “this is rationality.” And yet, every day we hear claims like “Trump has no reason!” or “the Islamic Republic lacks rationality.” But is that really the issue? Or do they exist within different contexts—contexts in which this kind of action and behavior is not a sign of irrationality, but the logical outcome of the very chains we call rationality?

When I was in the twenty-five-degree weather of Antalya, I truly could not imagine the minus-fifteen-degree cold here. The issue was not merely a difference of context; the issue was that I was fundamentally incapable of constructing a mental model of that difference. Of course, even if I had been able to, it would not have made much difference—because in practice I did not have more suitable clothes with me.

If we extend this inability to construct a mental model from the level of personal experience to the level of politics, the picture becomes clearer. Many of the judgments we make about Trump or the Islamic Republic arise not from analysis, but from our inability to understand the context in which those actions have taken shape. From within the twenty-five-degree weather of our own Antalya, we pass judgment on the minus-fifteen-degree cold of another world—and then we are surprised when those judgments fail to work.