Read Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr on the remade Islamic Republic.
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Iran’s New Grand Strategy

How a Remade Islamic Republic Will Reshape the Middle East

By Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr

Iran’s New Grand Strategy

How a Remade Islamic Republic Will Reshape the Middle East

By Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr

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The war on Iran “has been a crucible, forging a new iteration of the Islamic Republic and the first major generational shift since its founding,” write Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr in a new essay in the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. Tehran’s approach to waging conflict and running a state now reflects the style of a new cohort of leaders who “came of age after the 1979 revolution.”

“The republic born of the U.S.-Israeli wars is defined less by ideology than by nationalism, less by revolution than by statecraft, less by clerical charisma than by the confidence and technocratic ethos of a new officer class,” Bajoghli and Nasr argue. And this remade Iran “will reshape the Middle East and influence the course of geopolitics for years to come.”

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