The Question of Resistance Within Iran’s State, by Mina Khanlarzadeh – 22 July 2026

From Mina’s Substack

In “Why the Left Has So Little Traction in Iran,” I described how many Iranians who are critical of the Islamic Republic and seek a different social and political order experience its anti-imperialism as inseparable from the corruption and repression through which the state governs. For them, the Left’s tendency either to place anti-imperialism above all other struggles or to balance support for the state’s confrontation with imperial power against criticism of its domestic repression does not correspond to their lived experience of a single political order. This helps explain why many dissatisfied groups do not see the Left as relevant to their demands.

In this essay, I turn to recent debates within the state itself. They offer only a limited but telling snapshot of how different actors within its institutions understand resistance to the United States and Israel, national interest, and political survival. Do they share the coherent account of anti-imperialist resistance often attributed to the Islamic Republic from outside, or do their disagreements reveal competing judgments about what continued confrontation serves and whether it protects Iran or leaves it more vulnerable? The intensity of war does not create these divisions so much as make existing conflicts within the state more visible. What is often treated from outside as a coherent posture of resistance appears, within the state’s own debates, as a conflict over whether continued confrontation protects Iran’s national interests, preserves the power of particular factions, or produces outcomes that may ultimately benefit Israel.

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Mina Khanlarzadeh (Ph.D., Columbia University; B.Sc., Physics, Sharif University of Technology) is a historian whose interdisciplinary work engages global political thought, literary and translation studies, gender studies, and the history of science.

The Question of Resistance Within Iran’s State, by Mina Khanlarzadeh – 22 July 2026

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