Every morning you wake up and Trump has posted something new about Iran. A threat, a deal, a declaration of victory. Then just a few hours later, Tehran releases a calm formal statement confirming exactly the opposite. And it’s hard to keep track. And honestly, that’s the point because underneath all the noise sits a very simple question. Who in Tehran actually has the authority to close a deal? Because something has shifted in this war. Israel and the United States have done something no one has managed to do in decades. They’ve knocked the Islamic Republic off its axis. The Supreme Leader is dead. His top commanders are also dead. The nuclear program has been set back years. The pressure from outside has never been greater. But here’s the paradox, and it’s a real one. The more pressure you apply to a system like this, the harder it becomes to understand what’s actually happening inside it. Who do you call to make a deal? Who has the authority to say yes? Who has the authority to say no? And we think the Iranian people deserve to be part of this conversation. That’s why we’ve invited Dr. Thamar Gindin, one of Israel’s leading experts on Iran, Persian language, and Iranian society. Welcome Thamar. Thamar has spent her career not just studying Iran from a distance, but listening closely to the language, the culture, the history, and most importantly right now to the street. Because what Iranians are saying to each other is very different from what their government is saying to the world. So Thamar, first of all, it’s good to see you again.
“Good to be with you again. Good to be with you again.”
“Let’s start with the people in Iran. Uh I think there are very few people that I’ve met in the past that really understand like the the feelings, the emotions, the conversation that’s taking place in Iran. What are people in Iran saying right now? It’s been months of this ongoing war of attrition with the military strikes and the financial pressure. And just before that, the waves of demonstrations. What is the feeling on the street right now in Iran?”
“In late December and early January 2026, um was millions of people and on January 8th, it was millions of people following the crown prince’s call for everyone to be on the street. and they went on the street. They burnt mosques. They uh shouted slogans in favor of uh of the crown prince. They shouted long live the king. They shouted this is the last battle is returning. They burnt mosques uh because these mosques even religious people said it’s okay because these mosques are not houses of God but houses of oppression and they mentioned that uh Muhammad the prophet also burned a mosque when there was uh activity that did not match the values of Islam going on in it and the it’s not really true that nothing happened after that that night after the internet shutdown was lifted about 5 days later. 30 to 70,000 people slaughtered by militia soldiers that came to the help of the Islamic Republic is not nothing. There was a great massacre that the West sort of overlooked. Maybe because when brown people kill brown people, we don’t know who’s the bad guy. None of them are Western. Uh maybe there were even protests in favor of the Islamic Republic and against the protesters in in in the west. There were Iranians were and Israelis were demonstrating in favor of the protesters and but locals and uh Bahrainis, Pakistanis, other Muslims who are not Iranian were demonstrating for the regime. Um maybe because they said, ‘Well, they’re burning mosques, so they must be Islamophobic, and Islamophobia is bad.’ So, so what if 30 to 70,000 people were killed that night? The West just didn’t know how to how to treat this uh this thing. When the US kills someone or uh uh in the woman life freedom protests, there there was more reaction outside Iran even though there were less people killed. because it was women who were killed. So, we know who’s the bad guy here.”
“But is there possibly another element where where the Iranian regime just became more efficient at hiding the the events? I’m like thinking back, it feels like it was half a lifetime ago. We knew about the numbers. We knew about them in a delay. And you’re right. I mean, the response was much lesser than I remember in the past. It sort of sort of just went over most people’s heads. You know, it happened. Moving on kind of kind of thing with life.”
“Mass media hardly reported it. It took them a lot of time to report it. It wasn’t front it wasn’t headlines. It wasn’t front page. Uh in Israel, it was um in Iranian media abroad, it was front lines and uh front pages and headlines, but uh on on CNN, on BBC, not Farsi, on uh the regular BBC, it it just uh it wasn’t that important. We don’t know if it’s because uh Iranians don’t have as much uh as much media power because uh for the people of Gaza, we saw that there was there were a lot of headlines, there were a lot of protests. Um and for the people of Iran, there was hardly anything. Europe and the West. There were some demonstrations for the Islamic Republic, for example, by the um Communist Party of Germany with all sorts of students saying, ‘Well, we don’t know that uh that all these thousands of people were killed, but we do know they burnt mosques.'”
“You you know the joke, are we the baddies? Like, are we the bad guys in history? And I feel like European countries have had several instances in recent months where like if they honestly look themselves in the in the mirror, I think they’d have trouble like not acknowledging that they’re the bad guys in the story. Like they I find it bizarre and you’re making a valid point. How are they supporting the this radical violent murderous regime and saying, ‘Well, we’re not entirely sure of the facts.'”
“Well, usually you’re not concerned with the facts. Here you know what the facts are. You’ve seen images of them. Suddenly now it’s, ‘Oh, we don’t. It’s Islamophobia.’ You know what? There was a headline today or maybe it was yesterday that I think it was a a university in Canada that um that cancelled an event where a ISIS survivor fe a young female was supposed to give her testimony on campus and they cancelled it because they said that her talking about the violence, the rape, the killing uh that she saw there would uh come across Islamophobic or hateful of Islam and they don’t want to tolerate that kind of behavior. And you look at those kind of things and say, ‘What what is going on with the world we live in?’ I mean, h how are you not seeing this? I I’d ask you again, you’re so connected to what’s going on in Iran. Do they are the Iranian people aware of this of like the the discrepancy and how they’re treated versus others or how the event is treated versus other events?”
“Of course, they are they’re aware of the fact that they’re the only support they get in the world is from Israelis. I’m not sure how good it is for international PR, but they are saying Europe, where are you? Why were you shouting for Gaza but disregarding us? Where are all of the world leaders? Where are all the students? What why is why are people ignoring our pain? And I think it’s mostly because uh no westerner is involved, so it’s not as interesting. Um, and also maybe because there’s no uh Qatari money involved.”
To understand who’s in control today, you have to understand what Iran was supposed to be. What it actually became. The Islamic Republic was built on one idea. God rules. Not a president, not a general, a supreme religious leader, a jurist, a cleric who governs on behalf of God himself. That’s the founding principle. It’s called Velayat-e Faqih. The guardianship of the Islamic jurist invented it. Ran with it. The supreme leader was supposed to be the highest moral and religious authority in the land and everything. The military, the courts, the parliament answered to him. That was a theory at least. The reality is that over 40 years, the Islamic Republic quietly handed more and more of its actual power to the IRGC, the revolutionary guards. Why did they do that? Because the guards were loyal. Because they were effective. Because every time Iran faced a crisis, protest, sanctions, war, it was the guards who held the line. Religious authority gave the system its legitimacy. Military muscle gave it its survival. Mojtaba’s father always referred to the IRGC as a main pillar of the revolution. He actively divested authority to them to tighten his own grip on power. And it worked until it didn’t because what you’ve created now is a military organization that has the guns, the money, the intelligence networks, and the institutional muscle and a religious leadership that has the titles. Now the father’s dead. The titles are shaky and the guns are still very much there. Analysts say the IRGC is no longer operating behind the scenes. It’s openly emerging as the dominant force in Tehran. For ordinary Iranians, that shift matters enormously. The Islamic Republic at least claimed to be acting in the name of God and a revolution, a higher cause, however oppressive. What the IRGC offers instead is simple and colder control, survival, the continuation of power for its own sake. Literally today, as I’m preparing for this interview, you know, you see these reports coming out of who knows where that are saying that the Iranians have restored most of their ballistic missile capability, not the manufacturing, but the tunnels, the cave systems, whatever still exists. And I ask myself, how far is what is being reported to us, let’s call it in western mainstream media compared to what is really happening in Iran on the ground, what the regime is really saying to itself, what it’s really communicating uh to its people. How much of a gap is there? And I’m thinking of the education of our audience of of understanding how different the reality perception actually is between what I know and what someone in the regime in Iran knows, what a guy on the street in Iran knows.
“It’s not only what they know, it’s also their interpretation. We’re western. Trump is western. We don’t think like Shiites. Uh for a Shiite, losing the battle is winning the spiritual war. If you’re killed, you become Shahid. You know, that’s Ali still tweets once in a while. Uh and Ali who was also killed on February 28th tweeted on March 1st saying I’m still alive with a verse from the Quran that says which means those who died uh in the way of Allah are not considered dead but alive and God provides for them. So they are not dead. They’re just now fighting on the spiritual level. And if Iran is destroyed, if the whole country is in in havoc and is destroyed and the the economy um is is collapsing, it just means that the hidden imam, the hidden Imam is most more or less the equivalent of the 12th Shia to the Messiah. And before he comes there will be a huge mess in the world. So this is it. It’s coming. Uh and they’re very resolute. They will not give up. They are um they they don’t have this word. Uh they can’t lose a battle. They will win it. Um they win spiritually one way or another.”
“But on the spiritual side on the spiritual side I understand. Thamar, just to clarify the spiritual language um a few days ago the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was interviewed. He had a press conference and there was an Afghan um an Afghan reporter said the US is a superpower and it pretty much crushed Iran. Why won’t you compromise? Why won’t you concede?”
“And he said we’re also a superpower. Um, I don’t know how much of it they really believe and how much of it is propaganda. Um, my son just heard a video this week. My son here listens to videos of geopolitics. He’s 12. A friend. Um, and do you know what the first words of Saddam Hussein were when the American soldiers pulled him out of that pit?”
“I have no idea.”
“He said, ‘I’m Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq, and I’m willing to negotiate.'”
“What a genius. A maniacal one, but what a genius.”
“Yeah. So, I I don’t know if they believe their own propaganda or if they’re doing it in order to give the people hope, what they think is hope, because the real hope for most of the people is for the regime to collapse. Um or if it’s something they just show on the outside. The regime the reg regime situation right now is dog eat dog just a lot of different power groups different interest groups fighting each other. We’re not even sure who the people are. Okay. Uh when Trump said he wants to negotiate with Ghalibaf and I said who gave them the mandate? What mandate do they have? Uh when they left Iran for the talks in Pakistan, they were met with a demonstration by the IRGC um saying no it’s time for revenge negotiations are haram. They’re forbidden.”
“So interesting.”
“And and and after Ghalibaf there were reports or leaks about Ghalibaf agreeing to some points uh there was a tweet that was immediately deleted but it screenshot went viral all over the internet um that said that Ghalibaf is he’s making a coup d’état um because of his concessions and if the leader really agrees to these concessions let him uh go out with a video or voice message to say that he agrees and then we will obey. But where’s the leader?”
“That that I was just going to say that that’s very tricky. The the leader might be in several different places at the same time by what reports that we’ve heard.”
So the guards are in charge. But here’s what makes it complicated. They’re not unified. This isn’t a single man with a plan. It’s a collection of powerful factions all competing for power. The parliament speaker and the foreign minister, the men actually sitting across the table in negotiations, reportedly cannot make a single major decision without IRGC approval. The elected president blocked from key decisions. Can’t even get a meeting with the Supreme Leader. Inside the IRGC itself, there are rival factions competing for access, for authority, for control of what Iran looks like after this war. What has emerged is not a single leader running the country. It’s a hardened network, more collective, more difficult to coerce, and deliberately less visible. For Israel and the United States, that’s actually a significant strategic challenge. You can’t decapitate a system that doesn’t have one head. You can’t negotiate a final deal when no one on the other side has the full authority to sign it. Pretty late in in this in the war that started on October 7th. Until um until April 14th, 2024, the Islamic Republic was not directly involved in the war against Israel, only by proxy. He was very careful with this. Even the first two attacks were I think uh designed to not do too much harm but only show that they are not a country to mess with or to take to be taken lightly. He didn’t imagine the the escalation that would follow. But uh the the message was don’t mess with us but it was mild enough uh so as not to start a war.
“And but you’re raising a problematic question to if if there all these different factions and I think we’ve asked this question often is how do you negotiate when behind the scenes there’s government members that publicly say don’t listen to our foreign minister don’t listen to you know to to to the head of the parliament. Don’t don’t listen to these people. They don’t know what they’re talking about. We’re the ones who are deciding. So what do you do?”
“I don’t I don’t know why Trump wants to negotiate. I don’t think that this, you know, I could be wrong. I’m not a prophet, but it doesn’t seem like uh this conflict can be negotiated. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do because it’s a murderous regime uh that kills its own people, targets its own people and kills tens of thousands from its own people, and negotiating with them gives them legitimacy. I don’t think they should be negotiated with and because they’re Shiite, they will not flinch. They will not surrender and if one wants to concede to make some concessions, the other will say he’s so the reason the reason they sent 80 people to the negotiations is not because they sent a lot of experts and they’re serious, but because no one power group trusts the other. So they all sent representatives.”
“Um I don’t think it What do you do? I mean I don’t think it will be surrender. I think it should it should really be you know um I I think the best thing would be to now use the real power which is the Iranian people. But for that they need to uh acknowledge the the crown prince as their leader. I changed my assessment of him after the January protests, but not enough uh advisers to the pres to the president changed their uh assessment of him following things that happened in reality, which is a problem.”
And then there’s the man who’s technically at the top of all of this. Mojtaba, supreme leader, son of Ali Khamenei, was killed in the February 28th strikes. Those who know him describe Mojtaba as his father on steroids, raised inside the revolution, shaped by militant ideology from birth, deeply embedded in IRGC networks his entire life. He fought in the Iran-Iraq war. He built relationships inside the security apparatus for decades. And by all accounts, he is harder, more ideological, and less interested in diplomacy than his father ever was. He was rushed into the position days later, pushed through by the IRGC hardliners who wanted a familiar face they could work with. The problem, he’s been completely invisible for over 3 months. No authentic photos, no video, no public appearances, only written statements and images that US intelligence is now working to verify of some appearing to have been AI generated. He was apparently injured in a subsequent strike that also killed his wife. An official from his own office confirmed injuries to his knee, back, and head. The Pentagon described him as wounded and likely disfigured. But there’s another reason he won’t show his face. Israel has made clear he is now at the top of its target list. Iran’s top leaders are reportedly all living like wanted men, moving between safe houses, avoiding any digital communication because the moment you appear, Mossad knows where you are. So, is he actually running the country? US intelligence says there is no indication he is actually giving orders on any ongoing basis, but nothing proving he isn’t. One analyst put it plainly. Mojtaba is missing in action and attributed statements to him are simply becoming a useful cover, giving Iranian negotiators something to hide behind when they need to deflect criticism. He may be alive, injured, hiding, and largely symbolic or something worse. Nobody knows. And that includes the people sitting across the table from Iran right now.
“You pivot and you say, ‘Well, look, you know, I made a mistake. Let’s try to do something else.’ What is going on in their mind? What is in their ideology galvanizing them in one direction instead of allowing them to change to pivot to to confess to to need the change? What’s actually going on there?”
“Some of the part of the of uh the regime’s indoctrination is is this indoctrination and brainwashing. Uh the IRGC was created as an as a parallel army. It has everything that the army has. Navy, air force in, uh on the in the IRGC it’s aerospace, uh land, ground forces, uh air defense and the IRGC also has Quds force which is the external wing and Basij which is the voluntary body and intelligence. Uh and the IRGC doesn’t have Iran in the name. It’s the Islamic Revolution Guardian Corps. Um and they protect the Islamic revolution which is the regime against outside threats that’s Quds force and also against the Iranian people. So the ones making the decisions the ones with most power among all these power groups are the IRGC. Ask me who the people are. I’m not sure. The commander is Vahidi but he was only appointed on February 28th. Before that it was Pakpur for less than a year because he was promoted to Shahid after his predecessor was promoted to Shahid. So we don’t really know who the who are these people who are in the circle or in charge. Exactly. They claim that they have access to the leader who has not been seen and there are contradicting reports of his condition. Um so there’s the leader as an excuse. There’s the circle around him and those in control are probably the IRGC. Now the father was a hardliner but he was he was more rational. Okay. When um I I don’t think he would have wanted the of course we do want the hidden Imam to come back but because there will be a great mess in the world a great havoc in the world before he reappears we don’t want it now.”
Underneath all of this, the power struggle, the invisible leader, the ceasefire chaos, there are 90 million Iranians, and they are not waiting quietly. The protests that began in late 2025 became the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic since 1979. Millions poured into the streets across all 31 provinces. The crackdown was devastating. Tens of thousands killed. But what’s striking isn’t just the scale. It’s what people are chanting. ‘Women, life, freedom’ is still there. But it’s been joined by something new. ‘Javid Shah’, long live the king. ‘This is the final battle.’ ‘Pahlavi will return.’ Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah, 65 years old, living in exile in the United States, has become the most prominent face of the opposition. He’s called for a peaceful transition and a referendum on Iran’s future, and the diaspora has mobilized around him in numbers that haven’t been seen ever before. But is it really about the monarchy, or is something more raw? The desperate need for anything that isn’t this. Analysts say his actual support inside Iran is hard to measure and the opposition is divided. Some chant ‘Javid Shah’, others chant ‘neither Shah nor clergy’. What’s undeniable is that a generation of Iranians has decided the Islamic Republic can’t be fixed from within. The question of what comes next is still wide open.
“So to summarize what you’re saying on a practical note, one, you’re confirming what I think a lot of people have been thinking, which is there there is no one faction that’s willing to actually negotiate. They’re playing the usual Iranian game of wasting everyone’s time. Their favorite game that they they’ve been playing for decades or millennia, depending on how you count, but but specifically under this regime. And then looking forward, I don’t really see a military solution. I don’t really see at least not in the tools that the United States or the West is willing to use. They’re not really willing to negotiate in good favor. And you’re saying the solution is the people themselves. What does that practically mean?”
“They need support. The Islamic Republic also has support from the outside. It’s not Iranians who killed or mostly not Iranians who killed Iranians in January. It was Iraqi people, Afghani, Afghan, Pakistani, Sudani people uh who came from the outside to help the Islamic Republic uh massacre these uh Iranian citizens. Um I think that the West has better uh strategists than me certainly and I think probably better than what uh the crown prince has. There should be a the cooperation should include like exactly what to tell the Iranian people when you call them to the streets. So they they’re not just massacred again. Give them um tools, education on how to make either make weapons at home, you know, MacGyver style uh from things that are available at home. Um how to defend themselves, how to get internet. I think most of of these things maybe not all have solutions and also exactly what to do. How will victory look because in 1979 it was conquering the Shah’s palace. There are no more palaces left in Tehran to conquer. How how should it look? What exactly should be done? Not not just go to the streets. Um I and I I also think that during these 100 days he will need support but that’s an opportunity that would did not exist in the past of the whole nation or most of the nation united around one person and willing and still angry still grieving the January massacre and willing to go to the streets.”
“Well Dr. Gindin thank you very much. It’s always insightful and interesting and I’ll see you on the next time.”
There’s a phrase in Persian, ‘this too shall pass’. It’s meant as comfort. But right now in Iran, I think people are saying it differently. Not as reassurance, as a promise. What Israel and the United States have done is crack open a system that looked unbreakable for 47 years. Whether that crack becomes a collapse, whether the people get the country they’re chanting for, that’s not decided yet. It’s being decided right now in the streets, in the safe houses, in the negotiating rooms, and on the rooftops at night where people are still making noise. Well, keep watching and we will be back.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
