Mourners gather during a funeral procession in Tehran, Iran, on April 1, 2026, for Alireza Tangsiri, the head of IRGC Navy, and others killed in Israeli attacks in late March [Vahid Salemi/AP Photo]By Maziar MotamediPublished On 28 Apr 202628 Apr 2026
Tehran, Iran – Much has changed for Iranian authorities and more than 90 million people in the country since the United States and Israel launched the first strikes on Tehran two months ago.
Yet some elements of how Iran works and who controls key decisions have only become more entrenched.
The war appears far from the finish line, and there is no clear view of where things will stand at the end, but what has transpired so far may offer some clues.
US President Donald Trump has insisted multiple times that “regime change” has already materialised in Iran, since several layers of officials have been killed, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others at the top.
But the main institutions of the Islamic Republic remain in place, and his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was quickly elected by a clerical body as the successor.
Military, security, political and judicial authorities have renewed their pledge of allegiance to Khamenei’s office and the theocratic establishment, even though the new supreme leader has not been seen or heard from outside several written statements attributed to him.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), founded to safeguard the establishment after the 1979 revolution, continues to take the lead on military operations, wield significant economic power, particularly from managing Iran’s natural resources, and maintain armed control on the streets through the paramilitary Basij and other forces.
The new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, is among the IRGC old guard believed to be aligned with Ahmad Vahidi and Ali Abdollahi, the other generals appearing unwilling to grant major concessions to Washington. Zolghadr has replaced Ali Larijani, a veteran diplomat and ideologue, who was killed in a missile attack in March.
The judiciary, which announces near-daily executions and arrests of dissidents, and the hardline-dominated parliament were untouched during the war. State television and other media outlets remain directly controlled or influenced by the IRGC or factions like the hardline Front of Islamic Revolution Stability, or Paydari Front, and broadcast state messaging by any means possible, including through artificial intelligence-generated videos.
Relatively moderate Masoud Pezeshkian, who became president in 2024 in an election with a historically low turnout, just like the low turnout for parliamentary elections, is mostly relegated to domestic affairs and some diplomatic messaging.
The reformist and moderate politicians who backed his candidacy, like former Presidents Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Khatami and former chief diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif, are fiercely reviled by the hardliners.
State media reported this week that most factions released similarly-worded statements to proclaim unity and continuity to the office of the supreme leader and the state, in response to Trump repeatedly pointing to fractures within the system. Iranian authorities have also continued to support members of their “axis of resistance” of armed forces across the region, including in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
They have also brought some of the paramilitary fighters inside Iran to help them control the situation, with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) or Hashd al-Shaabi and other armed foreign groups proudly parading in the streets of Tehran and other cities since last month.
Iranian authorities have not reached a consensus to grant the concessions required by Trump, as most believe they amount to capitulation, something they would never engage in even if it meant more infrastructure attacks by the US and Israel.
They say the IRGC and the traditional army remain fully prepared to launch many more missiles and drones at regional countries, as well as US forces, if the US and Israel actually try to take Iran “back to the Stone Age”, as threatened by Trump, through more strikes against critical civilian infrastructure.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the relatively pragmatic parliament speaker who led Iran’s negotiating team during the first round of mediated negotiations with the US in Islamabad, Pakistan, earlier this month, has signalled he wants to turn “victories” on the battlefield into an agreement.
But under fire from hardliners, he has also cautioned that there will be no “surrender”.
In this vein, Iran’s latest proposal to the US is to postpone talking about the country’s nuclear programme, even though Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foremost public reasoning for starting the war was to make sure Iran would never have a nuclear weapon.
Tehran says it will never seek nuclear weapons, but will not ship out its stockpile of enriched material, or stop enrichment on Iranian soil, as the country has paid a huge price to obtain the technology, in the form of decades of sanctions and killings of its scientists.
The IRGC and state media emphasise that the main issue now is the Strait of Hormuz, and how to reliably reopen it and end the US blockade of Iranian ports.
Iranian armed forces and politicians stress that this must include establishing a system that leaves Iran in charge of managing the Strait of Hormuz with Oman, as the two countries are the only ones with territorial waters in the area.
They also wish to charge vessels for passing through, earning back some of the $270bn in damages the government says have been inflicted on the country. The parliament says it has drafted the outlines of legislation to legalise such a system, which goes against assertions by Trump, Europeans and others that the strait must be reopened to all without conditions to restore stability to weary international markets trying to dodge another recession.
The Iranian establishment faces a complex web of problems at home, many of which have only been compounded by the impact of intense bombardment from the strongest air forces in the world. The economy is in tatters, with one of the highest inflation rates in the world, and it would take years and large investments to fully rebuild the heavily bombed steel production lines, petrochemical plants and other facilities, while the country remains under harsh US and United Nations sanctions.
Millions of jobs have either been wiped out or put on pause as a result of the near-total state-imposed internet shutdown that is now in place for an unprecedented 60th day for purported wartime “security” reasons. In the face of growing frustration from the public, the state has adamantly said the internet will become less restricted only when the war ends, and is now gradually expanding a tiered system that has been opposed by the people for years.
The government’s economic focus has shifted to prioritising procurement of food and medicine through any means, and this week it reinstated a practice to allocate cheap currency for imports of essential goods, something it had eliminated in December since it bred systematic corruption.
The average Iranian is expected to get poorer over the coming months, as rampant inflation decimates households trying to keep their heads above water.
In addition to the arrests and executions, the judiciary repeatedly emphasises that anyone who engages in any form of dissent inside or outside the country could be eligible to have their entire assets confiscated to the benefit of the state.
Numerous “confessions” of Iranians have been aired on state television and affiliated media for security offences, which include alleged espionage, filming missile impacts from their homes or trying to connect to Starlink satellite internet, among other things.
After thousands were killed during nationwide protests in January, a heavy security atmosphere continues to dominate the streets of Tehran and cities across the country.
Heavy armoured vehicles, machineguns mounted on the back of pick-up trucks, daytime armed parades and night-time pro-state motorcades, masked soldiers and security forces, and armed checkpoints have become unavoidable common sights in the streets of the capital.
