'Let 100 flowers bloom': what Mao, Khrushchev can tell us about Iran today

Underlying the renewed debate is the concentration of power in the office of the Supreme Leader. After nearly four decades in power, 86-year-old Ali Khamenei exercises final authority over foreign policy, the economy and security matters, leaving elected institutions with little real leverage.

Calls to amend the constitution—long a staple of reformist discourse—have returned as moderates search for an institutional way out of what they describe as systemic dysfunction.

The proposals focus on strengthening presidential authority, restoring accountability and fixing an election system that critics say has been hollowed out over two decades.

“Based on the current version of the Iranian Constitutional Law, two-thirds of government institutions in Iran are not answerable to anyone and cannot be held accountable for wrongdoing,” Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a former head of parliament’s national security committee, told moderate outlet Khabar Online on Thursday.

The remarks echoed similar comments a day earlier by former lawmaker Mansoor Haghighatpoor, who argued that the constitution itself allows for revision and that treating it as immutable has become a political choice rather than a legal necessity.

Long overdue

Reformist and moderate figures have made such arguments for years, most notably former presidents Mohammad Khatami (1997–2004) and Hassan Rouhani (2013–2021), both of whom sought to expand executive authority and curb unelected power centers.

Their efforts went nowhere. Any constitutional amendment requires Khamenei's approval—an obstacle widely seen as insurmountable.

Much of the current critique centers on the 1989 constitutional revision, which transferred sweeping powers from the presidency to the Supreme Leader.

Since then, Khamenei has also entrenched the Guardian Council’s role in vetting election candidates, an extra-constitutional practice that has steadily narrowed voter choice. Politicians have protested biased disqualifications in every election since 2005, without effect.

Rouhani went further during his presidency, floating the idea of a referendum on limited issues such as legislation needed for Iran to join international financial conventions. Khamenei publicly—and angrily—rejected the proposal.

‘Not God’s word’

Haghighatpoor has focused on what he describes as the constitution’s internal contradictions, citing requirements such as the stipulation that the intelligence minister be a senior cleric.

“The Constitutional Law was not drawn by God,” he said. “It was written by the first Assembly of Experts in 1979, and they explicitly allowed for amendments. If laws no longer fit modern needs, they should be changed. That is a strength, not a weakness.”

Falahatpisheh added that Iran’s system lacks even basic mechanisms found elsewhere, such as the ability of a government or parliament to resign after failure. “This absence of accountability is itself a structural flaw,” he said.

Wishful thinking?

Parliament has no supervisory role over the armed forces, state television, the intelligence ministry or vast financial bodies operating under the Supreme Leader’s office.

Haghighatpoor also pointed to the Executive Headquarters of Imam Khomeini’s Decree (EHIKD), an opaque entity created in 1989—weeks before the death of Iran’s first supreme leader—to confiscate assets linked to the toppled monarchy.

That “temporary” body is now one of Iran’s largest financial conglomerates, second only to the Mostazafan Foundation. It operates directly under Khamenei’s authority and remains beyond parliamentary oversight.

The EHIKD is just one example, Haghighatpoor said, of structural problems that could only be addressed through constitutional reform.

Any such reform, however, requires Khamenei’s consent. For now, even proponents of constitutional revision concede that the debate remains largely theoretical.

Despite being officially blocked in Iran, YouTube has in recent years grown into a major source of both entertainment and dollar-based income in a country where cultural censorship and economic malaise are deep.

Persian-language creators inside the country and in the diaspora built large audiences, while viewers relied on VPNs to access content largely unavailable on domestic platforms.

That ecosystem has now been disrupted by changes to YouTube’s advertising and location-detection systems, which more accurately identify users’ real locations—and pay far less for viewers from a country where major brands have little to no presence.

Aria Keoxer, a veteran YouTuber with more than 750k followers, said in a video this week that while some videos previously earned up to $11 per thousand views, that figure has now fallen to around $1.

“The game is over for Iranian YouTubers,” he said.

Users happy

For many ordinary users, however, the same shift has been met not with anger but with relief. Most viewers were never part of YouTube’s advertising economy.

Their concern is access and usability, not revenue, and many on social media describe the experience as unexpectedly positive.

“Not showing ads for us Iranians is basically free YouTube Premium,” one X user posted with a tinge of irony. “Looks like we’re seriously moving forward by going backward.”

In Iran, YouTube Premium exists largely in theory. Subscribing requires foreign payment methods, and even when technically possible, the dollar-priced monthly fee can be prohibitively expensive.

Even for those who could afford it, payment remains nearly impossible because of sanctions and Iran’s exclusion from international banking systems.

Lost opportunity

Despite the ad-free relief for viewers, YouTube’s role as a source of income remains central.

The platform had become a rare outlet for Generation Z creators, artists constrained by political and social restrictions, rural families sharing local culture and cooking, and entertainment and political producers sidelined by state television.

For many, it was one of the few ways to earn in hard currency.

YouTube’s tighter enforcement now appears to undercut earnings even for creators operating abroad. Some popular online shows, including the Eternal Love reality show, have attracted millions of viewers, but their revenue streams are increasingly fragile.

Domestic platforms such as Aparat offer revenue shares of around 50 to 70 percent, but payments are made in rials, leaving them unable to compete with YouTube’s dollar-denominated income.

Solution: politics

Experts have urged creators to adapt by producing English-language content, targeting diaspora audiences, or securing domestic and foreign sponsors. Some YouTubers say they plan to shift content to other platforms, including Kick.

The technology website Zoomit argued that the loss of profitability could remove “one of the last justifications policymakers had for maintaining the platform’s filtering—those who viewed it as a source of foreign currency revenue.”

The daily Ham-Mihan, however, argued that even lifting the filter would not resolve creators’ problems, as sanctions and economic restrictions would remain.

“Companies like Adidas or Nike, which have no official presence in Iran, are unaffected by whether YouTube is filtered or not, because Persian-language YouTube users do not have free access to these brands to make purchases,” the paper wrote.

“What could help YouTubers and users in the long term is the lifting of sanctions and the presence of reputable brands in Iran.”

Aside from lifting censorship of WhatsApp and resisting enforcement of compulsory hijab laws, most of Pezeshkian’s campaign pledges remain unrealized.

Even on the sensitive issue of the hijab, his refusal to formally implement a hardline law has not halted pressure from radical factions, which have been pushing to regain the lost ground in recent weeks.

At the same time, the deepening impact of sanctions—which Pezeshkian had hoped to remove through direct dialogue with the West—and the almost daily decline in the value of the national currency have pushed conditions to a point where many say society could erupt at any moment.

Disillusionment is no longer confined to critics outside Pezeshkian’s original support base. Some of his former backers are now openly questioning whether he can continue in office at all.

Prominent sociologist Taghi Azad-Armaki, speaking to the website Khabar Online, stated bluntly that he hopes Pezeshkian will remain a one-term president.

“Mr. Pezeshkian is in unity with the heads of the three branches of government, all are aligned with the Supreme Leader, and power has effectively been consolidated to govern the country. However, this alignment has not resulted in broader national, social or regional cohesion,” he said.

“It would actually be a positive development for the ruling establishment … to finally put an end to the elections altogether—to abolish elections, and for the Leader and the ruling establishment to choose a president themselves, that there is a coup so that people could be freed from the current situation,” Azad-Armaki said.

Pezeshkian has one backer who's power is beyond match, however: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The 86-year old theocrat who has ultimate power over all Iranian decisions foreign and domestic has praised him repeatedly in recent speeches.

The office of the presidency has historically provided Khamenei a heat shield from criticism and allows the supreme leader to avoid messy arguments over governance even as officials are constrained by his policies.

Among the most influential voices sounding the alarm on Pezeshkian is Abbas Abdi, a prominent reformist commentator.

Referring to persistent attacks on the government, along with fragmentation and passivity within it, Abdi said in an interview with Eco Iran earlier this month that only if the deadlock is acknowledged and “a decision is made somewhere (above) to change course” could the crisis be overcome.

Without such a shift, he suggested, the next year could be deeply destabilizing for the system. He reiterated similar concerns on the online program Strategic Dialogue, warning that the continuation of a suspended posture toward Israel, combined with the absence of meaningful internal reforms, could trigger a renewed wave of domestic protests.

Abdi’s remarks prompted a sharp response from the Revolutionary Guards-linked newspaper Javan, which accused him of implicitly shifting blame for the government’s failure to implement reforms onto the “system” itself, meaning the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Undeterred, Abdi doubled down last week in an op-ed published in Etemad, defending his prediction that “events outside the will of the system” would occur if the current trajectory continued.

Calls for resignation

Public frustration has increasingly spilled onto social media, particularly after the recent sharp fall in the value of the rial. Hardliners accuse Pezeshkian of incompetence, while disillusioned supporters argue that if structural constraints prevent him from acting, he should step aside.

A user named Saeed wrote on X: “Either you have been allowed to work, in which case you must be accountable for these crushing price increases, or you have not been allowed to work, in which case you must have the courage to tell the people and resign!”

“It’s best to resign before public anger reaches its peak and the people’s patience runs out. We have had enough; we are at our breaking point,” another user, Shirkoohi, posted on X.

“You may not understand the meaning of poverty, misery, and livelihood, but surely by now you should have understood the meaning of the 1979 revolution and the sound of an approaching revolution,” he added.

“I wish all officials would resign collectively and make the Iranian people happy… An entirely corrupt and flawed system needs fundamental change, not the replacement of one individual,” another user posting as Ali Shomali wrote.

As heavy rainfall hits parts of the country, flooding has replaced drought as the most visible sign of Iran’s environmental crisis.

But instead of easing water shortages, the rain is accelerating destruction, washing through cities, villages and farmlands without replenishing groundwater or restoring depleted aquifers.

Decades of destructive urban expansion, dam building, interbasin water transfers and unchecked groundwater extraction have compacted the land, Eskandari said, chalking it up to "bad governance"

Trained in hydraulic structures and environmental research, Eskandari studies how dams, urban expansion, soil degradation and groundwater extraction affect flood behavior and water scarcity, placing him at the intersection of engineering, environment and policy.

Land that once drank in the rainfall no longer can: "The soil has lost the ability to absorb the water," Eskandari said.

A familiar pattern has emerged across Iran: rain arrives after prolonged drought, but instead of recharging groundwater, it turns into runoff. Water remains on the surface, rushing downhill, collecting mud and debris and producing floods.

Climate change has altered rainfall patterns, Eskandari adds, increasing intensity and shortening precipitation periods, which he calls "not a root cause, but can be considered as an intensifier."

Flooding offers little relief because Iran lacks the systems needed to manage water when it arrives. Watershed management, land-use planning and early warning mechanisms that could turn floods into a resource are largely absent.

"These floods could be used to feed the aquifers," Eskandari said. Instead, without preparation, they are simply not used."

Environmental injustice

Damage consistently concentrates in areas with weak infrastructure and limited political influence. These include villages, informal settlements and poorer urban districts.

Wealthier neighborhoods are better protected by drainage networks, reinforced construction and faster access to emergency services, turning flooding into an issue of environmental injustice.

The flooding now unfolding is also taking place against a deeper structural crisis.

When Dr. Kaveh Madani spoke to Eye for Iran earlier this year, he warned that Iran is no longer facing a typical drought but what he calls water bankruptcy, a condition in which consumption exceeds supply and reserves built over generations have already been exhausted.

“We have never seen such a thing,” Madani said. “The people of Tehran, the city that is the richest, most populous and strongest politically, is running out of water, is facing day zero.”

Madani’s warning reinforces Eskandari’s assessment that short bursts of rain or even seasonal floods will not reverse the crisis without systemic reform.

For Eskandari, the shift from drought to flooding is not an anomaly but a warning.

“We are one step closer to territorial collapse,” he said. “These policies have taken Iran into, as I call it, a point of no return,” Eskandari said, “for the land and for the people, both at the same time.”

You can watch the full episode of Eye for Iran on YouTube or listen on any podcast platform of your choosing.

The Hamas attack, the 12-day Iran-Israel war in June and Israel’s relentless strikes on Iranian-aligned actors did not end the region’s conflicts, but they changed how states now manage them.

In place of grand diplomacy or formal pacts, a loose alignment has begun to form from overlapping security, political and economic imperatives.

Stretching informally from Baghdad to Damascus, this nascent arc of stability is emerging less as a peace project than as a constraint on Iran’s regional reach—interlocking with the logic of the Abraham Accords and pressing against the network of proxies through which Tehran has long projected power.

This shift has unfolded alongside a parallel Iranian track: diplomatic outreach, particularly towards Saudi Arabia and other Arab neighbors, aimed at preserving room for manoeuvre even as Tehran’s proxy network comes under strain.

That dual approach matters, shaping regional calculations as Iran seeks both to absorb pressure and to prevent the emergence of a more openly consolidated front against it.

Iraq: on the mend but shaky

In Iraq, the aftermath of the recent elections and the government’s brief attempt to designate Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthis as terrorist organisations—followed by a rapid reversal—highlight a deeper struggle over sovereignty.

An emergent bloc of political, clerical and institutional actors is pushing for greater state consolidation, while Iran-backed networks seek to preserve the hybrid armed–political order entrenched since the fight against Islamic State in 2014.

Senior clerics linked to the orbit of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have repeatedly warned that the continued power of militias is eroding national unity and hollowing out state authority.

At the same time, developments inside Iraq are complicating Tehran’s position. Efforts to expand domestic gas production, reduce reliance on Iranian imports and attract Western investment after the withdrawal of sanctioned Russian firms are slowly reshaping the economic outlook.

Improved, if fragile, coordination between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government on revenue sharing and border controls has also narrowed institutional fissures Iran has long exploited.

These shifts are incremental and uneven, and their durability remains uncertain. Yet together they form the first pillar of a broader regional realignment rooted less in ideology than in state capacity and economic necessity.

Iraq may also prove the weakest link: its politics remain volatile, and Iran-aligned actors retain deep organizational and financial networks. Still, even limited consolidation across security, energy and governance would tilt the strategic balance of the Levant in ways long thought unattainable.

Syria: stabilizing but weak

The fall of Bashar al-Assad a year ago, and the rise of a Salafi-leaning transitional authority have opened a period of uncertainty, marked by serious risks but also new constraints on external actors.

Syria is unlikely to join the Abraham Accords or pursue formal normalisation with Israel soon. Nevertheless, quiet contacts involving Damascus, Israel and Qatar—aimed at limiting spillover, restraining militias and establishing narrow de facto understandings—point to the emergence of a pragmatic, if tentative, security framework.

Events beyond Syria’s borders have sharpened regional sensitivities.

Israel’s attempted attack against Hamas leaders in Qatar which failed to kill their intended targets unsettled several US Arab partners and may have influenced strategic thinking even where public positions remained measured.

More significant is the regional effect of a Syria no longer fully aligned with Iran’s strategic priorities. A stabilizing Syrian state, broadly aligned with Iraq and Jordan, would sharply restrict the land and air corridors Iran has long used to supply Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Recent interceptions of Iranian weapons shipments across Syrian and Jordanian territory by Israel and Jordan underscore that Iran may still see Syria as a transit point for its weapons.

A pattern emerging

This informal Baghdad–Damascus alignment intersects with the logic of the Abraham Accords, which the Trump administration’s November 2025 National Security Strategy identifies as the US priority to build up security in the region.

The document frames Arab and Muslin normalization with Israel not as a legacy achievement but as a functional framework for missile defence, maritime security as well as intelligence and regional burden-sharing.

While Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait remain outside the Accords formally, growing patterns of de facto cooperation—through air-defence coordination, early-warning integration, maritime security arrangements and intelligence exchanges—suggest the Accords already function as an organising principle for states reluctant to make public commitments.

The spine is formal, but the supporting structures are increasingly informal, sustaining the framework without requiring every participant to commit publicly.

The restrained language of the 2025 strategy reflects a broader shift in Washington’s approach. Rather than relying primarily on American primacy, the United States now appears focused on containing Iran by reinforcing regional structures anchored in the Accords and complemented by emerging alignments in Iraq and Syria.

Across the region, a discernible pattern is taking shape.

Iraq’s uneven institutional recovery, Syria’s cautious stabilisation, Jordan’s intensified border security, the Persian Gulf states’ expanding coordination and Israel’s sustained security posture together form the outlines of the most coherent countervailing structure the region has seen in more than a decade.

The contest, however, remains unresolved. Iran retains significant capacity, adaptive networks and a proven ability to rebuild and readjust.

The Baghdad–Damascus arc nonetheless represents a challenge to Tehran’s regional strategy rooted not in declarations or grand bargains, but in overlapping state interests and practical constraints—an alignment shaped by necessity rather than design.