A Study of the Mind of the Religious Leadership and the Revolutionary Guard, and How Ideology, Memory, Media, and Fear Are Transformed into Decisions, War, and Society

Prepared and analyzed by | Strategic Media Department – BETH Agency
Supervised by: Abdullah Al-Omairah

Introduction

No scientific study can enter the mind of a political regime and directly read what is taking place inside it.

It is possible, however, to approach its way of thinking through four sources:

The texts upon which the regime was founded.

The structure through which decisions are made.

The discourse repeatedly used by leaders and the media.

And the behavior displayed during wars, crises, and negotiations.

From the outset, it is essential to distinguish between three circles that must not be grouped under a single label:

The ruling religious leadership.

The Revolutionary Guard, as its military, security, and ideological arm.

And the Iranian people, with all their differences: those who believe in the regime, those influenced by its discourse, those who benefit from it, those subjected to it, and those afraid to oppose it.

There is no single “Iranian mindset,” and the entire population must not be made responsible for the regime’s way of thinking or the Guard’s actions.

Yet a discourse repeated for more than four decades through schools, pulpits, radio, television, the military establishment, and public occasions cannot pass without influencing part of society.

The question, therefore, is not limited to:

How does the Revolutionary Guard think?

It extends to deeper questions:

How did the Guardianship of the Jurist shape the regime’s mind?

How were religion and history reinterpreted to serve the authorities?

How does the Guard view the world and the minds of its adversaries?

Does it merely use ideology, or is it genuinely influenced by it?

When does faith become political mythology?

How much of the population believes the discourse, and how much only pretends to believe it out of fear?

Engineering the Regime

The Guard Protects the Revolution

Iran has a president, a government, a parliament, elections, and civilian institutions, but the highest center of power lies outside all of them.

The Supreme Leader sets the general policies, holds supreme command of the armed forces, possesses the authority to declare war and peace, and appoints the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, senior military commanders, and the head of the state broadcasting authority.

The constitution does not define the Revolutionary Guard merely as an army that protects the borders, but as an institution tasked with “guarding the revolution and its achievements.” The Iranian Constitution

The preamble to the Iranian Constitution presents the regime as a just Islamic project seeking to build the human being and support the oppressed. It later moves, however, from building the state to tasking it with continuing the revolution inside and outside Iran, while assigning the Revolutionary Guard the mission of protecting it and expanding its influence.

Here, the contradiction emerges between an ethical discourse that promises justice and a revolutionary structure that turns ideology into a tool for intervention and expansion. Much of the duality within the Guard and the administration of the regime arose from this separation between declared principles and actual practice.

This creates a fundamental distinction.

A conventional army protects the state regardless of who governs it.

The Guard, by contrast, protects the state as defined by the revolution, the regime that represents it, and the political ideology from which it derives legitimacy.

The dividing line between the homeland, the regime, and religion consequently weakens.

A threat to the regime becomes a threat to the revolution, then a threat to the state, and may ultimately be presented as a threat to Islam itself.

When these meanings merge, a political opponent is no longer a competitor over how the country should be governed. He may instead become an enemy of the state, ideology, and history.

A Revolution That Is Not Allowed to End

States generally treat a revolution as a founding moment, after which the period of destruction ends and the state begins building stable institutions.

The Islamic Republic, under its current system, has instead kept the revolution in a permanent state.

The regime does not present itself as a state founded in 1979 whose revolutionary mission has ended, but as a project that continues to confront “arrogance,” “sedition,” “infiltration,” “hidden warfare,” and foreign conspiracies.

The continuation of the revolution gives the Guard a permanent function.

If the threats ended, society reconciled with the world, and Iran’s relations with its surroundings stabilized, a sensitive internal question would emerge:

What need would remain for a vast military, security, and economic institution whose original mission was to protect the revolution from its enemies?

This does not mean that the Guard deliberately creates every crisis.

It does mean, however, that a tense environment strengthens its position, expands its resources, justifies its powers, and makes opposition to it appear closer to opposition to the country’s security.

Here, ideology and institutional interest overlap.

The Guard may genuinely believe that the revolution is under threat, while also benefiting from the continuation of that threat.

Within ideological institutions, belief and interest are not always contradictory; each may protect the other.

Who Makes the Decision?

Iran is not governed by the decision of one individual in every detail, but neither is it a state of independent civilian institutions in the conventional sense.

The Supreme Leader sets the broad direction and holds constitutional authority over the armed forces.

The Supreme National Security Council includes government and military officials as well as representatives of the Supreme Leader, and plays a central role in approving strategic decisions.

The Revolutionary Guard wields greater influence over military and regional affairs, while the government and Foreign Ministry have more room in diplomacy and the economy, within the boundaries drawn by the regime. The Structure of National Security Decision-Making

The regime does not apply this separation as it appears in formal texts. The government and Foreign Ministry may outwardly manage diplomacy and the economy, but they operate within limits drawn by the Supreme Leader and imposed by the security institutions.

The Revolutionary Guard’s influence extends beyond military and regional affairs into politics, the economy, and negotiations. Actual power therefore differs from the formal distribution of responsibilities: the state speaks through the government, but the regime decides through the Supreme Leader and the Guard.

This overlap gives the regime the ability to distribute roles.

The diplomat speaks the language of agreement.

The military commander issues threats.

The militia escalates.

The official denies responsibility.

Negotiations then begin over the result.

At times, this may constitute a deliberate division of functions within a single strategy.

In other cases, it may reflect genuine competition among institutions with differing interests and assessments.

The problem is that the world cannot always determine which of the two situations it is facing until the results become visible.

The Memory That Governs the Present

The Revolutionary Guard’s mindset cannot be understood without returning to the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988. Yet the war does not explain its project as merely a defensive reaction; the Guard turned it into a founding narrative that grants legitimacy to expansion.

It invested the memory of siege and sacrifice in building a deliberate offensive doctrine based on transferring confrontation to the territories of others, establishing armed proxies, exhausting adversaries without assuming responsibility for direct war, and then presenting this expansion as “forward defense.”

Because of its location, composition, and religious and social connections, Iraq became the most important gateway for carrying the project of “exporting the revolution” into the wider region, although it was not its starting point. Iranian proxies had already existed in Lebanon and other arenas.

The 2003 United States invasion, however, removed Iran’s strongest regional adversary, dismantled Iraqi state institutions, and created a vacuum that Tehran filled with political parties, militias, and security influence.

Without adequately assessing the consequences, Washington thus opened the door through which the Guard had long planned to pass. Iraq was transformed from a barrier to the Iranian project into a center for its regional expansion.

The war was therefore no longer a wound the Guard feared, but a model it repeatedly reproduced, because it justified its authority, weapons, and influence. It allowed the Guard to merge the regime’s survival with Iran’s security and portray every external expansion as protection of the homeland.

The experience of the Iran–Iraq War drove the regime to build its deterrent capacity through missiles, drones, asymmetric warfare, and proxies, rather than attempt to compete with the United States and its allies using the same conventional weapons.

The regime uses “Sacred Defense” as the official name for the war, rather than as a neutral historical description. Through this designation, it blended religious ideology with a political narrative, invoking the symbols of Karbala, martyrdom, and sacrifice, then surrounding its military decisions with propaganda exaggerations and metaphysical claims that cannot be verified.

Ideology consequently became intertwined with political mythology: ideology gives patience and sacrifice their meaning within faith, while mythology exploits that faith to sanctify the regime’s decisions, turn losses into moral victories, and prevent the leadership from being held accountable for the war’s cost and consequences.

From this combination emerged a central element of the Guard’s mindset: weapons are not merely military instruments, and war is not simply a conflict of interests. It is presented as an extension of a religious mandate.

Opposition to the Guard’s strategy can consequently be portrayed as weakness in faith or betrayal of the blood of the “martyrs,” rather than a legitimate disagreement over state security and the future of its people.

The World as the Regime Sees It

The regime and the Guard view the world through overlapping circles of danger.

In their perception, the United States does not seek merely to change Iran’s behavior, but to overthrow the regime.

Israel is not a political adversary with whom a settlement might be reached, but a permanent threat to the Iranian project.

Some states may cooperate with Tehran today, but remain vulnerable to United States influence tomorrow.

Open media is not viewed as a natural space for communication, but as a possible entry point for “soft warfare.”

Domestic protest is not always interpreted as a consequence of unemployment, inflation, or repression. It may instead be reinterpreted as part of a foreign project.

Not all of this is imaginary.

Iran has genuinely faced war, sanctions, threats, covert operations, and attempts at isolation.

The problem begins when the existence of real conspiracies is transformed into a belief that every event is a conspiracy, every opponent an instrument, and every failure the result of an external enemy.

The security mind does not err because it always sees a conspiracy where none exists, but because it makes conspiracy its first explanation before testing other possibilities.

The Mind of the Revolutionary Guard

Rational Means, Ideological Ends

Describing the Revolutionary Guard as a mad or irrational force driven solely by ideology is not scientific.

The evidence demonstrates its ability to wait, maneuver, change tactics, use intermediaries, retreat when necessary, and accept temporary truces and agreements.

It can also escalate on one front while de-escalating on another, and use the diplomat, the militia, and the media within the same crisis.

Studies of Iranian strategic culture describe the regime’s leadership as ideological in its objectives, pragmatic in selecting its means, and tactically adept at exploiting opportunities. Iranian Strategic Culture

Ideology determines the objective: protecting the regime and expanding the revolution’s influence.

Pragmatism allows negotiation, retreat, or temporary cooperation with adversaries when doing so serves that objective.

Tactics involve changing instruments, timing, and arenas without abandoning the goal.

The regime may therefore bargain over a step today, only to return to it tomorrow through a different method. It maneuvers along the road, but remains more consistent in its destination.

The opposing party must therefore not interpret a tactical concession as a strategic transformation. It should base its position on measurable behavior rather than statements and link any agreement to implementation mechanisms, verification, and a clear cost for violations.

Confronting maneuvering does not require rejecting negotiation; it requires preventing negotiations from becoming free time in which power can be rebuilt.

More precisely:

The Guard is rational in choosing its means, but ideological in determining its ends.

It knows how to maneuver, but does so within an almost fixed intellectual map.

It may adjust its timing and instruments, but finds it difficult to reconsider the founding idea that the conflict with the revolution’s adversaries is a long one, and that ideological concession would threaten the legitimacy of the regime itself.

This is more complicated than irrational behavior.

A mad actor is difficult to predict.

Much of the Guard’s decision-making, by contrast, can be understood once its objectives, interests, and definition of existential loss are known.

How Does It View the Minds of Its Adversaries?

The Guard does not merely construct an image of itself. It also builds a mental model of how its adversaries think.

It believes Western societies are highly sensitive to human losses.

Democratic governments think in short election cycles, while the Iranian regime can wait.

Western media will pressure governments to stop a war when costs rise.

The global economy cannot withstand disruptions to energy supplies and maritime routes.

The United States and Israel possess military superiority but lack strategic patience.

Arab states will prefer stability to confrontation and can be pressured without being driven into war.

From this emerges an equation the Guard believes:

I do not need to defeat the adversary militarily; I need only make the cost of continuing the confrontation higher than the cost of withdrawal.

This idea explains the use of missiles, drones, mines, maritime routes, proxies, and limited strikes.

The Guard’s model of its adversaries’ minds may, however, lead it into serious errors.

Caution may be read as weakness.

A restrained response may be interpreted as incapacity.

Mediation may be viewed as fear of confrontation.

Division within democracies may be mistaken for a collapse of resolve.

The Guard may fail to understand that repeated attacks can transform a state seeking de-escalation into one that leads deterrence, or unite otherwise divided adversaries against it.

How Does It Think During a Crisis?

The Guard’s recurring pattern of thought can be summarized in seven stages:

First, interpret pressure as a threat to the regime, rather than a limited disagreement over a particular behavior.

Second, avoid competing with the adversary in the field where it holds the advantage.

Third, shift toward missiles, drones, maritime routes, and proxies.

Fourth, expand the geography of danger so the war does not remain inside Iran.

Fifth, carry out calculated strikes believed to remain below the threshold of total war.

Sixth, use the media to transform endurance into victory, even amid material losses.

Seventh, enter negotiations after creating bargaining assets that can be exchanged for reduced pressure.

This model does not always succeed, but it explains why the Guard escalates and then negotiates, threatens maritime routes, distributes attacks among proxies, and describes tactical retreat as strategic victory.

Religion Within the Political Project

The Past That Was Reshaped

The regime did not revive religious beliefs that had completely disappeared.

Shiism, the memory of Karbala and Ashura, and belief in the awaited Mahdi remained present in Iranian society before and after the revolution.

What the clerical regime did was select elements from religious memory, reinterpret them politically, and then integrate them into the project of the state and the Revolutionary Guard.

In official discourse, Karbala was no longer solely a religious and ethical memory, but a permanent model for political conflict.

Martyrdom did not remain sacrifice in the service of justice, but became a means of mobilizing society and justifying the continuation of war.

Belief in the awaited Mahdi did not remain solely an article of faith; some of its symbols were linked to obedience to the Supreme Leader and the survival of the revolutionary project.

Disagreement over the administration of the state could be transformed into a confrontation between the “front of truth” and the “front of falsehood.”

The “Guardianship of the Jurist” is also not the only political interpretation of Shiism, particularly Twelver Shiism. It is a political and jurisprudential theory disputed among Shiite scholars themselves, and must not be presented as representative of all Shiites or as an inevitable consequence of the doctrine.

The regime, however, presented its political interpretation of the doctrine as representing Islam itself. This is a fundamental conflation: Islam is broader than any single denomination, and a denomination is broader than any one political interpretation.

The authorities then used state institutions to entrench this interpretation, transforming it from a contested opinion into a ruling ideology against which the legitimacy of individuals and positions is measured.

The regime did not therefore summon the past as it was.

It reconstructed the past, selected from it what grants legitimacy to the regime in the present, and excluded what contradicts its narrative.

Karbala in the Decision Room

Within Shiite consciousness, Karbala carries profound values connected to resistance against oppression, sacrifice, and refusal to submit. These values must not be held responsible for the conduct of a political regime.

The Guard, however, selected the event of Karbala and repurposed its symbolism within its political, military, and social discourse, presenting the regime’s conflicts and decisions as a permanent extension of the battle between truth and falsehood.

The conflict is sometimes presented as a confrontation between the camp of truth and the camp of falsehood.

The adversary becomes an extension of Yazid.

Retreat may appear as abandonment of Hussein.

Material loss does not mean defeat as long as the “resistance” continues.

The dead become martyrs, martyrs become symbols, and symbols become instruments for mobilizing another generation.

Studies indicate that the commemoration of martyrdom has become part of the public identity and civil piety sponsored by the regime.

This grants the Guard an important ability:

To transform pain from evidence of the cost of a decision into evidence of the truth of the cause.

Herein lies the danger.

In strategic thinking, losses should drive a leader to review a decision.

When loss is sanctified, however, it may be reinterpreted as a reason to continue the same decision.

Yet the glorification of martyrdom does not mean that the Guard’s leaders seek the death of the state or act without fear of loss.

The discourse glorifies sacrifice, while behavior reveals a strong determination to preserve the regime, protect the leadership, distribute the cost among proxies, and avoid direct confrontation when its cost becomes existential.

Here lies the paradox:

Martyrdom is demanded from the base, while the safety of the leadership is managed through precise calculations of reality.

When Does Faith Become Political Mythology?

Faith in the unseen is an authentic part of religion and cannot be described as superstition merely because it is not subject to material measurement.

Political mythology begins, however, when claims that cannot be tested are used to eliminate information, reality, and accountability.

It appears when a ruler claims that his decision has divine approval that cannot be verified.

Or when obedience to him becomes a condition for the validity of faith.

Or when the failure of his project is presented as a divine test requiring still greater obedience.

Or when prophecies, symbols, and visions become substitutes for assessing power, the economy, and society.

In such a case, the regime does not use religion to guide ethics, but to prevent questions.

If it wins, it is said that God supported it.

If it loses, it is said that God is testing the believers.

If people die, the loss becomes martyrdom.

If they object, their objection becomes weakness in faith or service to the enemy.

The decision consequently remains correct regardless of the result.

This is not strength of faith, but political immunity manufactured by the ruler in the name of faith.

There is insufficient scientific evidence to say that the Guard’s daily military decisions are based on metaphysical prophecies or a direct belief in the imminent appearance of the Mahdi.

The regime, however, uses Mahdist and martyrdom symbolism in political and media socialization, particularly when addressing younger generations and linking them to the Supreme Leader, the Guard, and Qassem Soleimani.

A recent study of political anthems directed at children and young people demonstrated the use of religious symbols and music to strengthen loyalty to the Guardianship of the Jurist and the revolutionary project. Music, Ideology, and Youth

This does not constitute superstition in the direct sense, nor a complete alteration of the original structure of religion. It is instead a deliberate attempt to reshape its understanding: authentic religious symbols are selected and then linked to the Supreme Leader, the Guard, and the regime until political loyalty appears to be part of faith and opposition to authority appears to be a departure from religion.

Political mythology is formed here not by inventing the sacred, but by monopolizing it, blending doctrine with a disputed political interpretation, and presenting that interpretation to new generations as religion itself.

The issue is therefore not simply that the Guard “believes in superstition.”

More precisely, the regime creates an environment in which it becomes difficult to distinguish between the commander’s decision and a religious mandate, or between military assessment and ideological promise.

When ideology becomes immunity for a decision, the most important question weakens:

Was the chosen means correct?

Proxies and Iran’s Moving Borders

Defense Beyond the Borders

The Guard built a doctrine of “forward defense” based on confronting threats outside Iranian territory before they reach the interior.

It consequently supported armed groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere, with varying degrees of weapons, funding, training, and direction.

These groups do not operate in the same way.

Some are closely connected to the Guard.

Some possess local constituencies and interests.

Others receive strategic direction while choosing the operational details.

Open-source studies nevertheless confirm that the Quds Force plays a central role in recruiting, training, equipping, coordinating, and advising these forces. Iran’s Threat Network

The network succeeded tactically in granting Iran broad influence at a lower cost and without direct confrontation. It enabled Tehran to penetrate state institutions and weaken their sovereignty.

This success, however, carried its own opposite: as the militias’ connections to Tehran became clearer, Iranian influence shifted from an instrument of domination into a source of anger and hostility within the societies where they operated.

The network cannot be dismantled merely by striking its leaders and warehouses. It requires cutting funding, weapons, and communications; exposing the relationship between decision-making and Tehran; controlling borders; strengthening state institutions; and offering a political and economic alternative that draws communities away from militias.

The network survives through weapons, but expands through vacuums.

Through this tactic, the Guard’s proxies achieved several objectives:

Moving the arenas of confrontation away from Iran.

Expanding the directions adversaries must defend.

Reducing Iranian human losses.

Testing weapons and tactics in actual theaters.

Keeping escalation below the threshold of direct war.

And forcing other groups and states to bear a significant portion of the cost of confrontation.

The plan lost one of its most important sources of strength, however, when the links of command, financing, and armament to Tehran were exposed and its arenas began to face pressure and dismantlement one after another.

What was designed to protect the regime from direct confrontation began leading its adversaries toward the sources of the threat themselves, placing the proxy network on a path toward retreat and perhaps its end.

Do the Militias Conceal Iran?

Proxies should not be treated as a screen behind which Iran has successfully hidden.

The world knows who built, armed, and financed this network, even when the final operational order cannot be proven in every attack.

A militia may select the timing of an attack or some of its operational details, but that does not erase the responsibility of the party that created its capability, identified its adversaries, and supplied it with weapons.

Limited operational autonomy does not mean the project or its objectives are independent.

Tehran does not necessarily rely on convincing the world that these groups are independent from it. Evidence of financing, weapons, and coordination has become too extensive to be concealed through denial.

If it believes denial can still deceive its adversaries, it is not so much insulting the world’s intelligence as revealing its own misreading of the way others think.

Repeating the same method makes its behavior more visible and gives others a greater ability to anticipate and confront it in this and other matters.

It is betting instead on distributing the cost of war, complicating legal responsibility, delaying retaliation, and provoking disagreement over the extent of its connection to each operation.

A proxy, however, is not a button that can always be pressed with the same precision.

Over time, each group develops its own leadership, interests, and local economy, and may carry out an operation that serves its own influence more than Tehran’s timing.

The instrument may then shift from a source of strength into a source of entanglement.

Any agreement that stops the fighting with Iran while leaving its proxies capable of continuing their mission does not end the war.

It transfers the war from the state that created the network to the militias created by that state.

The Media That Manufactures Reality

Media as Part of Security

The Iranian regime does not view the media merely as a means of conveying news, but as part of national security.

The constitution places the leadership of official radio and television under the authority of the Supreme Leader, while other outlets operate within circles close to the Guard and its institutions.

The Iranian regime uses the concept of “soft warfare” in a way that differs from its commonly accepted definition. Soft warfare is originally an unarmed conflict that uses thought, culture, and media to influence the beliefs and behavior of societies and weaken their ability to resist without resorting to military force.

The regime conducts this conflict through media, culture, the arts, and digital platforms, but in a mobilizational manner that blends ideological messages and emotional symbols with selected information.

It attempts to support its discourse with scientific references that give it a rational appearance and a greater capacity to persuade. Iranian Media and “Soft Warfare”

Within the Iranian regime’s method, the media performs four interconnected functions:

Manufacturing a Permanent Enemy

Economic failure is linked to sanctions and conspiracies.

Protest is linked to foreign incitement.

Criticism is linked to infiltration.

Compromise is linked to submission.

The citizen consequently remains trapped inside a single story:

The regime does not merely make mistakes; it is constantly under attack.

Turning Loss into Victory

If an attack hits its target, it becomes evidence of strength.

If it fails, it becomes evidence of courage.

If the adversary responds, the response is presented as evidence of fear.

If the adversary does not respond, this is treated as evidence of incapacity.

The narrative thus becomes immune to testing because every outcome can be presented as a victory.

This is propagandistic behavior that constructs a closed narrative through circular reasoning protected from falsification. Every result, whether success or failure, is interpreted as new evidence of the regime’s victory.

The regime determines the conclusion before the event and then reinterprets every possibility in a way that confirms it. Reality does not test whether the narrative is true; reality is repeatedly bent to serve it.

In political media, this can also be described as the logic of “we win under all circumstances.” It temporarily protects the regime’s image, but gradually separates it from reading reality as it is.

Other parties can expose this to public opinion by identifying the regime’s declared objectives in advance, then comparing every claim with its actual outcome and cost to Iran and its people, using figures, images, and verifiable evidence.

This should be presented in Persian through independent sources and credible Iranian voices, in a simple and repeated formula:

What did the regime promise?

What happened?

Who paid the price?

Mockery and exaggeration should be avoided. The strongest means of demolishing a closed narrative is not counterpropaganda that resembles it, but calmly exposing the contradiction and allowing the facts to speak.

Managing Fear

Propaganda does not need to persuade everyone.

It is sufficient to make truth exhausting, multiply the narratives, and repeat denials until the citizen feels that certainty is impossible.

A study of Iran’s digital sphere during the Mahsa Amini protests showed that the regime used fabricated narratives, disguised accounts, and covert personas to disrupt the protest movement and suppress it informationally, rather than merely presenting a single official narrative. Information Repression in Iran

Remarkably, such studies reveal an extremely important aspect of the regime’s methods, but often pass without receiving attention commensurate with their value in Arab and international media.

Knowledge remains confined within research papers, while Iranian discourse continues reaching its audience without being dismantled.

The objective is not always to make citizens believe everything.

It is to make them doubt everything and then cease to act.

Redefining Truth

Truth is no longer what occurred, but what serves the regime’s survival.

Good news becomes what strengthens the internal front, rather than what accurately describes reality.

When information becomes a weapon, acknowledging a truth that might benefit the adversary becomes treason, even when that truth is essential for making a sound decision.

The People Between Influence and Fear

Five Circles

Ideological discourse does not remain confined within the minds of the regime and the Guard.

When it is repeated through education, the media, religious pulpits, public rituals, and state institutions, it influences how part of society views itself and the world.

Iranians, however, do not receive it in the same way.

Five circles can be distinguished:

Believers who regard the Guardianship of the Jurist and the Revolutionary Guard as extensions of religion and the revolution.

Those influenced by prolonged socialization who have not had sufficient access to knowledge beyond the official narrative.

Beneficiaries whose jobs, interests, and social positions are connected to the regime’s survival.

Adapters who repeat the discourse because it is the easiest path to education and employment and to avoiding trouble.

And the fearful, who conceal their rejection because expressing it may lead to arrest, dismissal, or social isolation.

The degree of society’s belief cannot therefore be measured by the size of a march, the strength of a chant, or the number of images of the leader displayed in public places.

In a society subjected to repression, the believer and the fearful may appear identical before a camera while becoming entirely different when the door closes.

Repression Does Not Always Create Believers

The authorities can force a person into silence, but they cannot be certain what he is thinking while silent.

Repression may produce three different conditions:

People who surrender to the narrative because access to alternative information is difficult.

People who perform loyalty in public while concealing rejection in private.

And people who lose trust in both the official narrative and every alternative narrative, withdrawing from public life.

This makes an authoritarian society appear more united than it really is.

Each individual sees the others remaining silent and assumes they are convinced, while many may be just as afraid as he is.

In sociology, this condition is known as “pluralistic ignorance”:

Large numbers of people privately reject an idea, while each person believes he stands alone against a majority that accepts it.

The regime does not therefore need to persuade the whole of society.

It need only prevent its opponents from learning how numerous they are.

A Society with Two Faces

A society that is influenced can be addressed through information and experience.

A society that is afraid may know the truth but remain unable to act upon it.

People then begin living with two faces:

A public language in which they repeat what the authorities want.

And a private language in which they say what they genuinely believe.

Over time, the authorities no longer know the extent of genuine support, the extent of genuine opposition, or the moment at which silence may turn into an explosion.

Repression consequently creates a problem for the regime itself.

It provides a spectacle of obedience but deprives the authorities of the honest information they need to understand society.

Patriots or Supporters of the Regime?

An Iranian may oppose his government while defending Iran if it is subjected to an external attack.

The rallying of some Iranians around their country during a war does not mean they have become supporters of the Guard or the Guardianship of the Jurist.

A person can reject the regime and defend his homeland at the same time.

Official media, however, merges the two.

It presents the defense of Iran as support for the regime and then uses patriotic feelings as evidence of the revolutionary project’s success.

This conflation may also produce an external error.

Anyone who attacks Iranian society as a whole may drive opponents of the regime to seek protection in the state.

Anyone who assumes that every patriot supports the Guard grants the Guard what it wants:

A monopoly over the definition of the homeland.

When Propaganda Returns to Its Maker

Does the Regime Believe Its Own Discourse?

Propaganda may begin as a message directed at the public, but can return to the decision-maker himself.

Closed regimes face a recurring problem:

The official is afraid to report bad news.

The mid-level commander reports what pleases the leadership.

The media repeats the narrative of success.

The security services measure public opinion within a frightened society.

A picture better than reality then reaches the top.

The question is no longer:

Is the regime lying?

But:

Does the regime know where propaganda ends and the intelligence report begins?

It cannot be said that the Guard’s commanders believe everything broadcast by their media. They possess intelligence agencies and classified reports.

The danger begins, however, when loyalty becomes the standard for promotion, objection becomes a sign of weakness, and information contradicting the narrative becomes grounds for punishment.

The institution may then know parts of the truth but fail to assemble them into a sound decision.

The Peace That Threatens the Guard

War threatens the Iranian state, but complete and lasting peace may threaten the function upon which the Guard built its influence.

Peace means a declining need for mobilization, weaker justification for military expenditure, a diminished function for proxies, and growing societal demands for the economy, services, and freedoms.

In short, it removes the practical justification for the strategy upon which the regime was founded: “exporting the revolution” and perpetuating conflict beyond the borders.

This does not mean that the Guard rejects every agreement. The regime has accepted understandings and truces when it needed them to protect its survival or rebuild its strength.

It prefers, however, temporary peace that manages the conflict, rather than stable peace that eliminates the need for its project.

The institution may prefer an agreement that stops the danger without ending the conflict that justifies its influence.

A truce that preserves the weapons.

Negotiations that do not dismantle the network.

Economic openness that does not open the political sphere.

And sanctions relief that does not end the economy of institutions affiliated with the Guard.

The most difficult agreement with Iran may therefore not be one that stops the shooting, but one that transforms permanent conflict into a normal relationship.

Where Does the Guard Go Wrong?

It Confuses Fear with Respect

A threat may command attention, but it does not create legitimacy, trust, or partnership.

It Interprets a Restrained Response as Weakness

An adversary may delay because it is gathering evidence, building a coalition, and selecting a target, not because it is incapable.

It Exaggerates Its Control over Its Proxies

The wider the network becomes, the greater the likelihood that one of its groups will carry out an operation that harms Tehran itself.

It Turns Loss into a Narrative

The economy does not live inside speeches, facilities cannot be repaired with slogans, and citizens cannot buy their necessities with the language of endurance.

It Reads the World Through Its Own Media

When Iranian state media repeatedly says that an adversary is collapsing, propaganda directed at the public may become information believed by the decision-maker himself.

He then builds his plans around an imagined weakness, only to encounter an adversary different from the image manufactured by his own screens.

It Believes Pain Guarantees Loyalty

Iranian society may endure for a long time, but pain may separate the homeland from the regime. An Iranian may defend his country without defending the institution that weakened it.

It Sanctifies the Objective

When an objective is sanctified, acknowledging that the chosen means was wrong becomes more difficult, because review appears as retreat from the ideology rather than correction of a decision.

What Does the World Not Know?

The world knows the Revolutionary Guard’s missiles and proxies better than it knows the source of its fear.

The deepest fear is not always an invasion of Iran.

It is the collapse of the narrative that grants the Guard its necessity.

An institution founded to protect a continuing revolution requires a continuing enemy, or at least the permanent possibility that one exists.

If society becomes more open, the economy more connected, and relations with the world more stable, the Guard may find itself facing questions it cannot silence with missiles:

Why did the revolution remain above the state?

Why does the military institution hold such political and economic influence?

Why does society bear the cost of a conflict that never ends?

The Guard may therefore fear military defeat, but it may also fear a normal life in which it is no longer the center of everything.

How Should the World Deal with It?

Understanding the regime’s mind does not mean adopting its logic or rewarding it.

It means building a policy that does not give it the outcomes it expects.

First, distinguish between Iran as a state and a people, and the institution that monopolizes the definition of their interests.

Second, connect proxy operations to their sources of weapons, financing, and direction, and do not allow formal denials to erase the sponsor’s responsibility.

Third, establish clear red lines and enforceable consequences, because the Guard may interpret ambiguity as an opportunity for testing.

Fourth, preserve a political exit that protects Iran as a state without preserving the militias’ right to threaten others.

Fifth, build agreements on verification, not intentions and rhetoric.

Sixth, address Iranian society with respect and avoid turning the conflict with the regime into religious or ethnic hostility that validates its siege narrative.

Seventh, confront propaganda with verifiable information, not counterpropaganda that resembles it.

Eighth, measure the regime by what it does after an agreement, not what it says while signing it.

BETH Analysis | The Besieged Mind

The Iranian regime is neither a metaphysical power that cannot be understood nor a mad entity seeking destruction without calculation.

It is a regime shaped by revolution, war, ideology, fear, interests, and a memory reinterpreted into strategy.

The Guard thinks with two minds simultaneously:

An ideological mind that identifies the enemy and explains the continuation of conflict.

And a practical mind that selects the missile, the militia, the negotiator, or the media platform to achieve the objective at the lowest possible cost to the regime.

Its strength lies in combining ideology with flexibility.

Its weakness, however, exists in the same place.

The ideology that gives it patience may prevent it from admitting that the road is blocked.

The media that mobilizes its supporters may conceal reality from it.

The proxies that expand its influence may also expand its responsibility and the number of its adversaries.

The losses it transforms into symbols remain losses in the life and economy of society.

The people, meanwhile, do not stand in one place.

Some believe, some are influenced, some benefit, some adapt, and some know the truth but are afraid to express it.

The question therefore should not be:

Have Iranians believed the clerics’ discourse?

It should be:

Who believed it, who was influenced by it, who was forced to perform belief in it, and who knows it is untrue but fears being the first to say so?

The world should not ask only:

Does the Guard believe what it says?

But:

Which part believes, which part uses belief, and when does the propaganda it created for the public become a reality upon which it bases its own decisions?

There begins the most dangerous moment in the mind of any regime:

When it can no longer distinguish between the truth it knows, the political mythology it created, the fear it imposed, and the promise it wants to believe.

The Guard can manage a prolonged conflict.

The more difficult challenge is imagining a state that does not need war to prove that it remains a revolution.

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The Next Two Studies

Defeating the Throne, Not the Civilization

How Umar ibn al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him, brought down the state of the Khosrows while preserving society from collapsing with it.

When the Regime Represses Information

How Tehran used disguised accounts and fabricated narratives to disrupt protests and suppress them informationally