What does Iran want? Prof. Vali Nasr

TL;DR

Iran's grand strategy is rooted in sovereignty and anti-imperialism, not Islam, driving every military and foreign policy decision since the 1979 revolution.

Key Points

• 1.Iran's behavior is driven by sovereignty, not theology. Prof. Nasr argues the Islamic Republic acts like a revolutionary nationalist state resisting U.S. hegemony — its Islamic language is the idiom, but the logic mirrors Che Guevara and Frantz Fanon, both of whom Khamenei read extensively.
• 2.The 1953 CIA-backed coup is the foundational grievance. All factions of the 1979 revolution — Islamists, Marxists, and liberal democrats — believed the coup that toppled PM Mosaddegh made Iran a U.S. puppet, and the revolution was explicitly meant to end that subjugation.
• 3.Iran's proxy network was a cheap asymmetric defense innovation. Isolated by sanctions with no conventional arms suppliers, Iran invented 'forward defense' — funding Hezbollah, Houthis, and Iraqi militias to deter U.S. and Israeli attack far from its borders, at a fraction of conventional military cost.
• 4.January 2026 uprisings across 170 Iranian cities nearly ended the regime. Protests demanded not just social reforms but an end to the revolutionary anti-American posture that caused sanctions, 72% inflation, and poverty — suggesting the Islamic Republic's ideology had lost popular legitimacy before the war began.
• 5.The U.S.-Israeli war accelerated a hawkish succession, Iran's 'Gang of Four' moment. Khamenei's assassination triggered a rushed emergency succession by the Council of Experts, elevating his hardline son Mostafa Khamenei — IRGC generals who led brutal crackdowns since the 1999 student uprising now dominate, sidelining pragmatic restrainers.
• 6.Iran is fighting a time-based guerrilla war, not a conventional one. Nasr notes U.S. and Israel entered expecting a short knockout but are running low on Tomahawk missiles and air defense interceptors after one month; Iran's strategy mirrors the Taliban maxim: 'you have all the watches, but we have all the time.'
• 7.Iran's core war demands are security guarantees and sanctions relief, not ideology. Stripped of rhetoric, Tehran wants: no future military attacks (potentially UN-backed guarantees), U.S. base withdrawal from the Gulf, ability to export ~2 million barrels of oil, and potentially revenue from Strait of Hormuz shipping tolls.
• 8.The Strait of Hormuz has replaced the proxy network as Iran's primary deterrence lever. Trump's dismantling of Hezbollah and the axis of resistance inadvertently pushed Iran toward a cheaper, more effective tool — threatening global shipping and energy prices directly from its own coastline, without expensive foreign militias.
• 9.Israel has shifted from 'little Satan' instrument to near-peer independent threat in Iranian thinking. Iran traditionally viewed Israel as a U.S. tool, but now acknowledges Israel independently drives American policy — a recalibration still not fully absorbed into Iran's grand strategy, which remains structurally U.S.-centric.