The Race to Shape Iran After the War

The war launched by the US and Israel against Iran has entered its sixth month, and Washington appears to be betting that sustained military pressure will cause Tehran to unravel. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently suggested that some members of the Iranian government have reached out to the Trump administration, viewing this as evidence of a split between officials seeking a deal and hardliners.

Those divisions are real, but Washington may be misreading how war affects them. For now, external attacks have compressed dissent rather than creating open rifts. When fighting subsides, a struggle over Iran's reconstruction will almost certainly emerge. The security establishment will argue that the country survived because of its ability to retaliate and therefore must restore its deterrence. Conversely, the government is likely to push for prioritizing trade, oil revenues, reconstruction, and diplomacy.

The first major test for Mojtaba Khamenei, the successor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is whether he can turn opposing visions of Iran's future into a binding post-war strategy that the various centers of power are willing to follow.

The Diffusion of Power

Iran's political system disperses decision-making across elected and unelected institutions but concentrates ultimate authority over security and foreign policy in the supreme leader. Ali Khamenei's role was to decide when debate ends. His powers included approving national security decisions, appointing senior commanders, and resolving disputes among government branches.

His death leaves the policymaking machinery intact but weakens the pivot that converts competing options into binding state positions. The appointment of his son Mojtaba as successor preserves the formal center of power but does not automatically recreate the political weight, institutional relationships, and symbolic prestige Ali Khamenei accumulated over decades.

That allows competition to deepen. One bloc comprises the security establishment, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij volunteer paramilitary, the regular Artesh military with its ground, air, naval, and air defense forces, plus intelligence and domestic security agencies. The IRGC remains the most politically influential, but Iran's security capabilities are distributed across multiple institutions and chains of command.

Mojtaba enters office with longstanding ties to IRGC figures, giving him a key support base, but those relationships do not automatically translate into command over the entire military and security system.

On the other side is the elected government. President Masoud Pezeshkian controls the ministries managing the economy, reconstruction, and diplomacy but does not command the armed forces or hold the final say on war and national security. His government thus bears the burden of keeping the country running and negotiating with the outside world, while operating within security limits set by the supreme leader and the Supreme National Security Council.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf occupies a different position. He has access to both civilian and military networks, making him important in building consensus around sensitive files, including negotiations. His influence stems from the ability to move between institutions that do not always share common priorities and to turn military red lines into enforceable government positions.

The boundaries are not simply between the government and the IRGC. Different institutions control different parts of the same decision, and various actors have divergent interests and goals.

Mojtaba's advantage is that he does not start as an outsider, but those relationships can also bind him. A leader whose authority depends heavily on one part of the system will find it harder to arbitrate when the president, parliament, military, and IRGC pull in different directions.

Competing Narratives

For now, tensions have not erupted because the war provides a unifying narrative in the short term. Different factions converge around the story that this is “Trump's war,” the culmination of a policy that abandoned the nuclear deal, escalated coercion, and ultimately imposed conflict costs on Iran. The destruction of bridges, transport links, and energy infrastructure allows them to frame the war as a national survival struggle.

The security establishment can present deterrence as protecting the country, while the government can describe negotiations and sanctions relief as necessary to safeguard reconstruction. That common language lowers the political cost of compromise without eliminating the underlying competition.

The limits of the narrative matter too. Domestic unity against foreign attack does not erase anger over the war's human and economic toll, nor does it resolve disagreements over how to wage the war or negotiate.

When the war ends or enters a longer lull, internal friction in Tehran will almost certainly surface. The reconstruction question becomes a power struggle. In principle, the government—which negotiates ceasefire terms and peace frameworks—should control the process. Moreover, as an elected body, the government is accountable to the public. But in practice, the government lacks sufficient authority to fully determine economic or security outcomes.

The IRGC already has extensive influence in energy, construction, and strategic infrastructure. Its deployment around the Strait of Hormuz gives it operational influence over a critical chokepoint.

Pezeshkian and his team will likely argue that recovery should focus on the economy, prioritizing the reopening of trade, restoring oil revenues, and easing pressure on households. Meanwhile, the security establishment will push for a recovery that prioritizes preparation for the next attack. The core argument is that military readiness and far-flung regional networks helped the country survive. Under this reading, reconstruction should restore deterrence rather than rethink the pre-conflict strategic model.

A recovery dominated by IRGC-linked organizations would shape the post-war state's trajectory, not just allocate contracts. It would force choices about what to rebuild first, how to allocate scarce resources, which foreign partners to bring in, and whether to view economic opening as a strategic asset or a security risk. If the IRGC and its affiliated networks prevail in those choices, recovery could entrench the structures that expanded under sanctions and war, increasing the security establishment's sway over Iran's energy, infrastructure, and foreign economic ties.

If Mojtaba cannot impose a common political direction, the security establishment may continue to measure success by endurance and the costs imposed on adversaries, while the government remains accountable for inflation, damaged infrastructure, negotiations, and declining living standards.

The outcome may not be a formal military coup. The president, parliament, and Supreme National Security Council would still function, but their room for maneuver could shrink as security priorities increasingly shape the terms of diplomacy, investment, and reconstruction. Mojtaba would remain the constitutional center of the system, but his present dependence on the security establishment could become a lasting feature of his rule.

For now, the war allows the new supreme leader to borrow authority from the language of resistance. After the fighting, he will have to decide what to rebuild first, how much more economic pain Iranians can bear, and what compromises are acceptable. If the security establishment resolves those questions ahead of him, the succession transfers the title of supreme leader without transferring the power to shape Iran's direction.