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Iran’s long history of revolution, defiance and outside interference

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Iran’s long history of revolution, defiance and outside interference – and why its future is so uncertain

Amin Saikal, Victoria University

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone beyond his initial aim of destroying Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons. He has called on the Iranian people to rise up against their dictatorial Islamic regime and ostensibly transform Iran along the lines of Israeli interests.

United States President Donald Trump is now weighing possible military action in support of Netanyahu’s goal and asked for Iran’s total surrender.

If the US does get involved, it wouldn’t be the first time it’s tried to instigate regime change by military means in the Middle East. The US invaded Iraq in 2003 and backed a NATO operation in Libya in 2011, toppling the regimes of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, respectively.

In both cases, the interventions backfired, causing long-term instability in both countries and in the broader region.

Could the same thing happen in Iran if the regime is overthrown?

As I describe in my book, Iran Rising: The Survival and Future of the Islamic Republic, Iran is a pluralist society with a complex history of rival groups trying to assert their authority. A democratic transition would be difficult to achieve.

The overthrow of the shah

The Iranian Islamic regime assumed power in the wake of the pro-democracy popular uprising of 1978–79, which toppled Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s pro-Western monarchy.

Until this moment, Iran had a long history of monarchical rule dating back 2,500 years. Mohammad Reza, the last shah, was the head of the Pahlavi dynasty, which came to power in 1925.

In 1953, the shah was forced into exile under the radical nationalist and reformist impulse of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. He was shortly returned to his throne through a CIA-orchestrated coup.

Despite all his nationalist, pro-Western, modernising efforts, the shah could not shake off the indignity of having been re-throned with the help of a foreign power.

The revolution against him 25 years later was spearheaded by pro-democracy elements. But it was made up of many groups, including liberalists, communists and Islamists, with no uniting leader.

The Shia clerical group (ruhaniyat), led by the Shah’s religious and political opponent, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, proved to be best organised and capable of providing leadership to the revolution. Khomeini had been in exile from the early 1960s (at first in Iraq and later in France), yet he and his followers held considerable sway over the population, especially in traditional rural areas.

When US President Jimmy Carter’s administration found it could no longer support the shah, he left the country and went into exile in January 1979. This enabled Khomeini to return to Iran to a tumultuous welcome.

Birth of the Islamic Republic

In the wake of the uprising, Khomeini and his supporters, including the current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, abolished the monarchy and transformed Iran to a cleric-dominated Islamic Republic, with anti-US and anti-Israel postures. He ruled the country according to his unique vision of Islam.

Khomeini denounced the US as a “Great Satan” and Israel as an illegal usurper of the Palestinian lands – Jerusalem, in particular. He also declared a foreign policy of “neither east, nor west” but pro-Islamic, and called for the spread of the Iranian revolution in the region.

Khomeini not only changed Iran, but also challenged the US as the dominant force in shaping the regional order. And the US lost one of the most important pillars of its influence in the oil-rich and strategically important Persian Gulf region.

Fear of hostile American or Israeli (or combined) actions against the Islamic Republic became the focus of Iran’s domestic and foreign policy behaviour.

A new supreme leader takes power

Khomeini died in 1989. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ruled Iran largely in the same jihadi (combative) and ijtihadi (pragmatic) ways, steering the country through many domestic and foreign policy challenges.

Khamenei fortified the regime with an emphasis on self-sufficiency, a stronger defence capability and a tilt towards the east – Russia and China – to counter the US and its allies. He has stood firm in opposition to the US and its allies – Israel, in particular. And he has shown flexibility when necessary to ensure the survival and continuity of the regime.

Khamenei wields enormous constitutional power and spiritual authority.

He has presided over the building of many rule-enforcing instruments of state power, including the expansion of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its paramilitary wing, the Basij, revolutionary committees, and Shia religious networks.

The Shia concept of martyrdom and loyalty to Iran as a continuous sovereign country for centuries goes to the heart of his actions, as well as his followers.

Khamenei and his rule enforcers, along with an elected president and National Assembly, are fully cognisant that if the regime goes down, they will face the same fate. As such, they cannot be expected to hoist the white flag and surrender to Israel and the US easily.

However, in the event of the regime falling under the weight of a combined internal uprising and external pressure, it raises the question: what is the alternative?

The return of the shah?

Many Iranians are discontented with the regime, but there is no organised opposition under a nationally unifying leader.

The son of the former shah, the crown prince Reza Pahlavi, has been gaining some popularity. He has been speaking out on X in the last few days, telling his fellow Iranians:

The end of the Islamic Republic is the end of its 46-year war against the Iranian nation. The regime’s apparatus of repression is falling apart. All it takes now is a nationwide uprising to put an end to this nightmare once and for all.

Since the deposition of his father, he has lived in exile in the US. As such, he has been tainted by his close association with Washington and Jerusalem, especially Netanyahu.

If he were to return to power – likely through the assistance of the US – he would face the same problem of political legitimacy as his father did.

What does the future hold?

Iran has never had a long tradition of democracy. It experienced brief instances of liberalism in the first half of the 20th century, but every attempt at making it durable resulted in disarray and a return to authoritarian rule.

Also, the country has rarely been free of outside interventionism, given its vast hydrocarbon riches and strategic location. It’s also been prone to internal fragmentation, given its ethnic and religious mix.

The Shia Persians make up more than half of the population, but the country has a number of Sunni ethnic minorities, such as Kurds, Azaris, Balochis and Arabs. They have all had separatist tendencies.

Iran has historically been held together by centralisation rather than diffusion of power.

Should the Islamic regime disintegrate in one form or another, it would be an mistake to expect a smooth transfer of power or transition to democratisation within a unified national framework.

At the same time, the Iranian people are highly cultured and creative, with a very rich and proud history of achievements and civilisation.

They are perfectly capable of charting their own destiny as long as there aren’t self-seeking foreign hands in the process – something they have rarely experienced.

Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University; and Vice Chancellor’s Strategic Fellow, Victoria University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Israel and Hamas agree ceasefire deal – what we know so far

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Scott Lucas, University College Dublin

After two years of violence and the deaths of 68,000 Palestinians and more than 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, it has been reported that Hamas and the Netanyahu government will sign a phase 1 ceasefire agreement.

This is the first part of a 20-point plan promoted by the US president, Donald Trump, and supported by the major Arab power brokers in the region.

What we know so far is that Israel will cease its military assault in Gaza. Hamas, meanwhile, has agreed to free the remaining 20 Israeli hostages still alive in Gaza.

The Conversation’s international affairs editor Jonathan Este spoke with Scott Lucas, a Middle East expert at University College Dublin, who addressed several key issues.

How is this different to previous ceasefire agreements?

Until we have details, this agreement is similar to the phase 1 60-day ceasefire at the start of 2025. There is a pause in the killing, particularly from the Israeli side, but lasting arrangements remain to be confirmed.

The key difference is that Hamas released only some hostages and bodies in the previous ceasefire. This time they are freeing all hostages and the bodies which can be collected, in return for a still unannounced number of Palestinian detainees released from Israeli prisons.

That gives up Hamas’s main leverage against not only Israeli attacks but also the Netanyahu government’s occupation and veto on aid to Gaza.

So key elements of a lasting deal – the extent of the Israeli military’s withdrawal, the restoration of aid, the establishment of governance and security in the Strip – will rest on guarantees and who provides them.

What are the possible sticking points for the rest of the deal?

The immediate “sticking points” are whether central provisions will be agreed in further discussions.

The Israelis will demand complete disarmament by Hamas and possibly the expulsion of some of its officials. Hamas is likely to respond with rejection of any forced removals and its retention of “defensive” weapons.

The make-up of the international “board” overseeing the strip is vague beyond Donald Trump declaring himself the chair and no provision for any Palestinian representation. Hamas will probably seek some Palestinian membership.

At this point, the International Stabilization Force for the Strip is a wish rather than a plan. Israeli agreement to a force replacing its military in Gaza is far from assured, especially as it is not clear who will contribute personnel. The Italian foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, has offered to send troops to contribute to the force.

The plan for a day-to-day government to administer the Strip is equally sketchy. While the presence of Palestinian technocrats is mentioned in Trump’s “plan”, we do not know who these will be. We know that Hamas is excluded. Israel is also likely to veto the Palestinian Authority in the short-term. And the release from imprisonment of potential Palestinian leaders – such as Marwan Barghouti, who has been held by Israel for more than 20 years – is not confirmed.

And before consideration of all of these, there is the question of the far-right in the Netanyahu cabinet. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, have yet to comment on the latest news, but have previously opposed any deal short of the “total” defeat of Hamas and a long-term Israeli occupation. Neither have threatened to block the agreement – so far – but they have expressed opposition.

How much of this is due to pressure from Arab states?

While many headlines are likely to give the credit to Trump and his envoys, son-in-law Jared Kushner and real estate developer Steve Witkoff, the role of Arab states has been vital.

A month after Israel shattered Qatar’s sovereignty with the airstrike trying to assassinate Hamas’s negotiators, the Gulf state and Egypt were the brokers of this Phase 1 agreement. Behind the scenes, other Arab states and Turkey were urging Hamas to accept the Trump “plan” in principle and to reach a deal to release the hostages.

Those states will be needed for the next phase, particularly if Trump threatens to return to his previous position of a blank cheque for Israeli military operations and cut-off of aid.

Is there a future for Palestinian civilians in Gaza?

I hope so. The immediate issue is survival. The Israeli attacks have been paused. The urgent issue is getting essential aid into the Strip. Then it is a matter of being able to return to what is left of homes. The Trump administration has dropped its talk of displacement, stemming the demand of Netanyahu’s far-right ministers for the removal of many Gazans.

However, after two years of scorched-earth tactics by Israel, little is left of many of those homes. The majority of the health sector has been destroyed, as have many schools and other public buildings. Rafah has been razed, and Gaza City’s high rises have been blown apart.

Recovery cannot just focus on the profits to be made – including for Trump, Kushner, and Gulf state business interests – from the “development” of Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East”. It has to begin with day-to-day subsistence for the civilians who have paid the heaviest price in this mass killing.

Does Trump get his Nobel peace prize now?

I don’t care. Sometimes good things happen from a convergence of cynical and self-serving motives. Trump is desperate for the Nobel peace prize because Barack Obama received it in 2009. Kushner, whose investment fund is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and Gulf state entrepreneurs see the possibility of large profits. US-Gulf relations need to be repaired after the shock of Israel’s airstrike inside Qatar.

If that means lives are saved, fine. But those lives need to be saved not just for today or tomorrow. They need to be respected and supported with a lasting agreement for security and welfare.

And that would mean a two-state solution for both Palestinians and Israelis – something which the Netanyahu government and the Trump administration will not countenance. For Netanyahu and his ministers are devoted to expanding Israel’s illegal settlements, with the accompanying threat of violence, in the West Bank.

Celebrate phase 1 on the behalf of the Israeli hostages, their families, and Gaza’s civilians. And be clear about what is needed for phase 2, phase 3 and beyond.The Conversation

Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, Clinton Institute, University College Dublin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Supreme Court is headed toward a radically new vision of unlimited presidential power

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In a series of cases over the past 15 years, the Supreme Court has moved in a pro-presidential direction.
Geoff Livingston/Getty Images

Graham G. Dodds, Concordia University

President Donald Trump set the tone for his second term by issuing 26 executive orders, four proclamations and 12 memorandums on his first day back in office. The barrage of unilateral presidential actions has not yet let up.

These have included Trump’s efforts to remove thousands of government workers and fire several prominent officials, such as members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the chair of the Commission on Civil Rights. He has also attempted to shut down entire agencies, such as the Department of Education and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

For some scholars, these actions appear rooted in the psychology of an unrestrained politician with an overdeveloped ego.

But it’s more than that.

As a political science scholar who studies presidential power, I believe Trump’s recent actions mark the culmination of the unitary executive theory, which is perhaps the most contentious and consequential constitutional theory of the past several decades.

A prescription for a potent presidency

In 2017, Trump complained that the scope of his power as president was limited: “You know, the saddest thing is that because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved with the FBI, I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I’m very frustrated by it.”

The unitary executive theory suggests that such limits wrongly curtail the powers of the chief executive.

Formed by conservative legal theorists in the 1980s to help President Ronald Reagan roll back liberal policies, the unitary executive theory promises to radically expand presidential power.

There is no widely agreed upon definition of the theory. And even its proponents disagree about what it says and what it might justify. But in its most basic version, the unitary executive theory claims that whatever the federal government does that is executive in nature – from implementing and enforcing laws to managing most of what the federal government does – the president alone should personally control it.

This means the president should have total control over the entire executive branch, with its dozens of major governmental institutions and millions of employees. Put simply, the theory says the president should be able to issue orders to subordinates and to fire them at will.

President Donal Trump appears seated in the oval office.
President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office next to a poster displaying the Trump Gold Card on Sept. 19, 2025.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon

The president could boss around the FBI or order the U.S. attorney general to investigate his political opponents, as Trump has done. The president could issue signing statements – a written pronouncement – that reinterpret or ignore parts of the laws, like George W. Bush did in 2006 to circumvent a ban on torture. The president could control independent agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The president might be able to force the Federal Reserve to change interest rates, as Trump has suggested. And the president might possess inherent power to wage war as he sees fit without a formal authorization from Congress, as officials argued during Bush’s presidency.

A constitutionally questionable doctrine

A theory is one thing. But if it gains the official endorsement of the Supreme Court, it can become governing orthodoxy. It appears to many observers and scholars that Trump’s actions have intentionally invited court cases by which he hopes the judiciary will embrace the theory and thus permit him to do even more. And the current Supreme Court appears ready to grant that wish.

Until recently, the judiciary tended to indirectly address the claims that now appear more formally as the unitary executive theory.

During the country’s first two centuries, courts touched on aspects of the theory in cases such as Kendall v. U.S. in 1838, which limited presidential control of the postmaster general, and Myers v. U.S. in 1926, which held that the president could remove a postmaster in Oregon.

In 1935, in Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., the high court unanimously held that Congress could limit the president’s ability to fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. And in Morrison v. Olson the court in 1988 upheld the ability of Congress to limit the president’s ability to fire an independent counsel.

Some of those decisions aligned with some unitary executive claims, but others directly repudiated them.

Warming up to a unitary executive

In a series of cases over the past 15 years, the Supreme Court has moved in an unambiguously unitarian, pro-presidential direction. In these cases, the court has struck down statutory limits on the president’s ability to remove federal officials, enabling much greater presidential control.

These decisions clearly suggest that long-standing, anti-unitarian landmark decisions such as Humphrey’s are on increasingly thin ice. In fact, in Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2019 concurring opinion in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, where the court ruled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s leadership structure was unconstitutional, he articulated his desire to “repudiate” the “erroneous precedent” of Humphrey’s.

Several cases from the court’s emergency docket, or shadow docket, in recent months indicate that other justices share that desire. Such cases do not require full arguments but can indicate where the court is headed.

In Trump v. Wilcox, Trump v. Boyle and Trump v. Slaughter, all from 2025, the court upheld Trump’s firing of officials from the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.

Previously, these officials had appeared to be protected from political interference.

President George W. Bush appears with several soldiers.
President George W. Bush signed statements in 2006 to bypass a ban on torture.
AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File

Total control

Remarks by conservative justices in those cases indicated that the court will soon reassess anti-unitary precedents.

In Trump v. Boyle, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote, “whether this Court will narrow or overrule a precedent … there is at least a fair prospect (not certainty, but at least a reasonable prospect) that we will do so.” And in her dissent in Trump v. Slaughter, Justice Elena Kagan said the conservative majority was “raring” to overturn Humphrey’s and finally officially embrace the unitary executive.

In short, the writing is on the wall, and Humphrey’s may soon go the way of Roe v. Wade and other landmark decisions that had guided American life for decades.

As for what judicial endorsement of the unitary executive theory could mean in practice, Trump seems to hope it will mean total control and hence the ability to eradicate the so-called “deep state.” Other conservatives hope it will diminish the government’s regulatory role.

Kagan recently warned it could mean the end of administrative governance – the ways that the federal government provides services, oversees businesses and enforces the law – as we know it:

“Humphrey’s undergirds a significant feature of American governance: bipartisan administrative bodies carrying out expertise-based functions with a measure of independence from presidential control. Congress created them … out of one basic vision. It thought that in certain spheres of government, a group of knowledgeable people from both parties – none of whom a President could remove without cause – would make decisions likely to advance the long-term public good.”

If the Supreme Court officially makes the chief executive a unitary executive, the advancement of the public good may depend on little more than the whims of the president, a state of affairs normally more characteristic of dictatorship than democracy.The Conversation

Graham G. Dodds, Professor of Political Science, Concordia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Does AI pose an existential risk? We asked 5 experts

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Aaron J. Snoswell, Queensland University of Technology; Niusha Shafiabady, Australian Catholic University; Sarah Vivienne Bentley, CSIRO; Seyedali Mirjalili, Torrens University Australia, and Simon Coghlan, The University of Melbourne

There are many claims to sort through in the current era of ubiquitous artificial intelligence (AI) products, especially generative AI ones based on large language models or LLMs, such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and many, many others.

AI will change the world. AI will bring “astounding triumphs”. AI is overhyped, and the bubble is about to burst. AI will soon surpass human capabilities, and this “superintelligent” AI will kill us all.

If that last statement made you sit up and take notice, you’re not alone. The “godfather of AI”, computer scientist and Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, has said there’s a 10–20% chance AI will lead to human extinction within the next three decades. An unsettling thought – but there’s no consensus if and how that might happen.

So we asked five experts: does AI pose an existential risk?

Three out of five said no. Here are their detailed answers.

The Conversation

Aaron J. Snoswell, Senior Research Fellow in AI Accountability, Queensland University of Technology; Niusha Shafiabady, Associate Professor in Computational Intelligence, Australian Catholic University; Sarah Vivienne Bentley, Research Scientist, Responsible Innovation, Data61, CSIRO; Seyedali Mirjalili, Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Faculty of Business and Hospitality, Torrens University Australia, and Simon Coghlan, Senior Lecturer in Digital Ethics; Deputy Director, Centre for AI and Digital Ethics, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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