Most governments pursue peace to bolster their authority. Yet the Islamic Republic stands apart as one of the few regimes for which peace presents a greater political threat than conflict.
Within days of securing a new understanding with Washington, Tehran found itself once again at the heart of military tension in the Persian Gulf.
Whether this latest escalation widens or recedes is almost irrelevant. The more critical question: Can the Islamic Republic endure a lasting peace with the United States?
Many Western policymakers assume that easing tensions between Washington and Tehran would enhance regional stability. They may be correct about the region, but they are mistaken regarding the regime itself.
For over four decades, the Islamic Republic has not merely tolerated the slogan “Death to America”; it has elevated it into an organizing principle of state ideology. The regime’s late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, declared in 2015: “The slogan ‘Death to America’ is backed by reason and wisdom.”
Since 1979, the leadership has built much of its legitimacy on the existence of a permanent external enemy. “Death to America” was never just a slogan—it became the ideological bedrock for extraordinary security measures, the suppression of dissent, and the mobilization of loyalists against both foreign and domestic opponents.
The regime’s survival has depended not only on controlling society but also on convincing its supporters that Iran faces constant existential threats. This is where peace becomes dangerous.
Authoritarian systems rarely govern through consent alone. They maintain power by perpetuating a sense of emergency. When citizens are told the nation endures imminent threat, extraordinary measures become easier to justify: checkpoints, internet restrictions, mass surveillance, arbitrary arrests, and the permanent deployment of security forces throughout the country.
Iran today exemplifies this dynamic. Large numbers of security personnel remain deployed nationwide—not only to deter external threats but also to prevent renewed widespread protests.
If relations with Washington genuinely normalize, an unavoidable question arises: Why does Iran still require such a vast internal security apparatus?
Peace therefore undermines more than foreign policy. It weakens the political justification for enduring repression.
The challenge extends further. Dictatorships do not merely repress society; they must continuously mobilize those who carry out that repression. Hundreds of thousands of members of Iran’s security services, the Basij, and other institutions cannot remain committed solely through salary. They require belief.
For decades, these forces have been taught that they are defending the Islamic Revolution against an American-led conspiracy. Domestic dissent has frequently been portrayed as an extension of foreign aggression. Within this worldview, suppressing protests is not policing citizens but defending the nation from hostile foreign forces.
If the United States gradually ceases to be portrayed as Iran’s principal enemy and becomes a negotiating partner, that narrative inevitably weakens. The question then becomes unavoidable: If yesterday’s enemy is today’s diplomatic partner, what exactly are we still defending?
No authoritarian system collapses overnight. But ideological cohesion can erode when the narrative sustaining it loses credibility.
This helps explain why external confrontation serves multiple domestic purposes: It justifies repression, diverts attention from economic decline, reinforces solidarity among security institutions, and preserves the atmosphere of permanent emergency upon which authoritarian rule depends.
Peace reverses each of these dynamics. Economic failures become harder to blame on foreign enemies. Public expectations rise. Social grievances become more visible. The justification for extraordinary measures weakens. Internal disagreements over the regime’s future become increasingly difficult to conceal.
Already, signs suggest two competing survival strategies may be emerging within Iran’s ruling establishment:
One current believes that maintaining confrontation with the United States remains essential because the ideological mobilization of Iran’s security apparatus is inseparable from regime survival—these are the same forces deployed nationwide to deter protests.
The opposing current argues that with Iran’s economy deteriorating rapidly, some degree of normalization has become necessary to preserve the system itself. Iranian economist and former pension fund director Hojatollah Mirzaei recently warned that economic growth could contract by 8.5% to 10% this year, potentially pushing another 4.5 million Iranians below the poverty line.
Despite their differences, both camps share the same objective: preserving the Islamic Republic. Their disagreement concerns only the method.
This internal contradiction explains why Tehran often pursues diplomacy and confrontation simultaneously. The leadership seeks economic relief through negotiations while trying to preserve external tension to sustain its political logic.
For American policymakers, this distinction matters. If Washington assumes that diplomatic normalization alone will transform the behavior of the Islamic Republic, it risks misunderstanding how the regime actually preserves power.
A government whose domestic legitimacy depends partly on permanent confrontation may continue to generate external crises even while negotiating.
The central question, therefore, is not whether peace would benefit the Iranian people. The real question is whether the Islamic Republic can politically survive the consequences of genuine peace.
This may be the greatest strategic dilemma facing Tehran today.
For the Iranian people, peace could create space for political expression, economic recovery, and renewed civic life.
For the Islamic Republic, however, genuine peace threatens something far more fundamental: the political architecture on which it has relied for over four decades.
Its greatest strategic dilemma may therefore not be how to survive war—but how to survive peace.
By Hamid Enayat
July 2, 2026
