What lessons will Iran’s new leadership draw from the 110-day war?

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, signs a memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran aimed at ending the war. Photograph: Iranian Presidency Office/AP View image in fullscreen Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, signs a memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran aimed at ending the war. Photograph: Iranian Presidency Office/AP What lessons will Iran’s new leadership draw from the 110-day war? Now fighting is over, the question is how Iran’s government will behave. Early clues point to more authoritarianism and prioritising relations with China T he precise ideological lessons that Iran’s new leadership draws from the 110-day war may prove to be the overriding factor in determining whether negotiations with the US culminate in an agreement that verifiably prevents the country from developing a nuclear weapon – an outcome that could usher in a new era for the Iranian economy while also reshaping the Middle East. Does this rapidly assembled leadership team, forged in the fire of war, still represent an Islamic ideological crusade – a description coined by Henry Kissinger – or does the acceptance of the memorandum of understanding, in the words of JD Vance, denote a desire for pragmatism? The vacuum created by the invisibility of Iran’s injured supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei , makes this moment something of an interregnum. On Thursday, Khamenei published a letter saying he opposed the deal in principle but had deferred to the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, after being given undertakings that if the US demanded too much, he would not accept. The rights of the country and the axis of resistance had to be protected, Khamenei said. Like his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, he has put himself in the enviable position of ensuring absolution from blame if the elected politicians get burnt dealing with the west. View image in fullscreen An Iranian man walks past a banner depicting Mojtaba Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, at Valiasr Square in Tehran. Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images His public intervention, on the eve of now-cancelled talks in Switzerland, may yet influence the balance of a charged debate inside the US administration as to the nature of Iran’s new, younger leadership. On Friday last week, Donald Trump seemed to land on one side when he accused the Iranian leadership of being “very dishonourable people who don’t deal in good faith”. That assessment appeared to chime with the views of John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, who warned his president that a significant gap separated the positions publicly expressed by Iranian officials from what they were saying privately. “Intelligence indicates that Iranian intentions do not align with the commitments made in the agreement,” Ratcliffe concluded, a source close to the discussions told Axios. The hint was that Iran’s leadership team would either stall on a nuclear agreement or, worse, conclude they must secretly assemble a weapon since the strait o