Iran: It’s the Constitution!
Abstract
Should military action succeed in significantly degrading Iran’s defenses and a naval blockade further constrain its economic and industrial capacity, Iran – with a talented and highly educated population and an abundance of oil, natural gas, and mineral resources – can be expected to re-emerge as a regional power in the not-so-distant future following the conclusion of any conflict. While the United States and Israel have their thumbs on the scale in the kinetic dimension of the conflict, there is another dimension of this conflict that supersedes psychological profiling the actors seated in the musical chairs of Iranian leadership: the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Introduction
Article 110 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran specifies that the responsibilities of its Supreme Leader include determining the suitability of candidates for the presidency and exercising ultimate responsibility for declaring war and mobilizing Iran’s armed forces. The Supreme Leader is also charged with the appointment and dismissal of the chief commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the supreme commanders of the armed forces, the leadership of Iran’s radio and television networks, and oversight of other key areas. How should the constitutionally grounded concentration of absolute authority in the Supreme Leader factor into the calculus for peace with Iran? While President Trump is correct in saying that a de facto regime change has occurred because of targeted assassinations, the Constitution delegating ultimate authority to the Supreme Leader remains in place.
How Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Changed Iranian Shi’ism
Twelver Shi’ism, the faith of more than 90% of Iranians , has been the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1501. Twelver Shi’ism predicates its future vision on the prophesized return of the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who in A.D. 874 withdrew from society in what is known as the “Occultation” – a divinely ordained withdrawal from the visible world. According to longstanding tradition, the Occultation marks a period during which Allah has no visible deputy on earth.
In 1970, while in exile as an outspoken critic of the Shah, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini challenged that tradition in a series of lectures delivered in Najaf, Iraq. Khomeini introduced “velayat-e faqih” or “governance of the jurist,” arguing that in the absence of the Twelfth Imam, ultimate authority over both spiritual and political life should reside with the “faqihs” – Islamic jurists acknowledged within the Shia scholarly tradition as experts in Islamic law. Khomeini advocated in favor of one of them being designated to serve as Supreme Leader by what would be known as the Assembly of Experts in the 1979 Iranian Constitution. Khomeini taught that the person in the role of Supreme Leader would serve as institutional placeholder for the hidden Twelfth Imam until his return. He would be entrusted with the same authorities that the Prophet Mohammed and the Imāms who followed after the Prophet had been entitled to exercise. The 1989 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran reinforced this doctrine, stipulating that the Supreme Leader commands an “ideological army,” that can wage “Holy War (Jihad)” to “extend the supremacy of God’s Law in the world.”
The survival of Iran under the governance of the faqih is thus not a political interest for the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guard who serve him – it is a sacred obligation. The classical Shia principle of taqiyya – prudent concealment of one’s faith in the face of threat – has been extended by the Islamic Republic since the rise of the first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to apply to statecraft, permitting misrepresentation in diplomacy when the regime’s survival is at stake. Western negotiators have learned this at great cost. As Donald Trump put it: the Iranians are lousy fighters but they are great negotiators.”
Opposition to the Khomeinist Model of Governance
Velayat-e Faqih or “governance by the Faqih” has sustained opposition from within Iran since soon after the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini as the first Supreme Leader.” Those opponents have endured exile, prison, torture and execution. When Abolhassan Banisadr, Iran’s first post-revolutionary president, dared to expose the poor electoral performance of the pro-Khomeini religious party in 1981, he was forced to flee to Paris to save his and his family’s lives. Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, another early Khomeini supporter who served as Iran’s foreign minister, made the fatal mistake of remaining in Iran after criticizing the regime and was executed on Khomeini’s orders in 1982. The Green Movement of 2009 brought millions into the streets, followed by a severe crackdown and show trials for its principals.
Opposition ran deep within the regime’s own ranks. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani – president of Iran from 1989 to 1997 – indicated through his son his intention, if re-elected in 2005, to relegate the Supreme Leader to a ceremonial role akin to “the King of England.” That ambition cost him the election and possibly his life – Rafsanjani died in 2017 under circumstances many regarded as suspicious.
In late 2025 and early 2026, the world again witnessed massive demonstrations across Iran at enormous personal cost. The most recent demonstrations shared a common adversary with those who preceded them: velayat-e faqih or the governance of the Supreme Leader.
The velayat-e faqih doctrine, introduced by Khomeini, was not a revival of traditional Shia political, it was a novel invention without parallel in 14 centuries of Shia jurisprudence and preserved under Khomeini’s successor Ali Khamenei. Ali Khamenei served as president of Iran from 1981 to 1989 before assuming the role of Supreme Leader, after Ayatollah Khomeini’s death on June 3, 1989. After the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by Israeli and American military forces on February 26, 2026, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba is thought to have assumed this role following his selection as Supreme Leader by Iran’s Council of Experts on March 8, 2026.
According to Karim Sadjadpour’s authoritative Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report on Ali Khamenei, the elder Khamenei intervened in Iran’s 2005 presidential elections at his son Mojtaba’s behest, signaling his support for hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rather than reform-minded Akbar Rafsanjani. Ahmadinejad gained notoriety during his tenure in office for repeated calls for the destruction of Israel and his characterization of the Holocaust as a myth.
The Fault Line Within Shia Islam
The most authoritative living critic of the Khomeinist velayat-e faqih model of governance resides not in Tehran but in Najaf, Iraq. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani – Iranian by birth and recognized by many as the highest Shi’a religious authority in the world – explicitly rejects velayat-e faqih. In the quietist Najaf tradition that al-Sistani continues to lead at age 95, senior clerics are called to support Islamic law and render social service, but never to seize absolute executive authority, as Khomeini did.
Iraq is not incidental to this argument – Iraq houses the holiest sites of Shia Islam. Najaf contains the tomb of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Imam. Karbala is the holy site where Husayn ibn Ali – grandson of the Prophet Muhammad – was martyred in A.D. 680. Samarra is the city where the Twelfth Imam is said to have entered occultation. The quietist tradition rooted in those holy sites endorses the spiritual and judicial custodianship of senior clerics but sharply opposes Khomeini’s claim to supreme political authority. The divergence between velayat-e faqih and the quietist tradition is not a peripheral disagreement. It is a rupture within Shia Islam that only traces back to Khomeini’s 1970 Najaf Lectures.
Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani on March 9, 2026 issued a fatwa in support of Iran at a time when it is under attack. The rationale for this position is subject to interpretation; however, it does not represent an endorsement of velayat-e faqih and a reversal of his previous views. Discreet engagement with Najaf-aligned quietist clerics, through Iraqi intermediaries if necessary, could shape the space in which Iranian constitutional reformers operate.
What Washington Can and Cannot Do
A parallel with Imperial Japan is instructive. Under the Meiji Constitution, the Emperor of Japan commanded both ultimate spiritual authority and executive political power and was the ultimate decision-maker in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and in Japan’s surrender. MacArthur’s postwar settlement required stripping those delegations of authority from the new constitution with the Emperor’s new role being largely ceremonial. Iran’s Supreme Leader, like the Showa Emperor until Japan’s surrender, holds an analogous fusion of religious and political authority –without addressing this constitutional fusion, any peace settlement will remain tenuous.
The Japanese post-World War II precedent points toward a structural reality: no Iranian war settlement will likely hold without recognizing the constitutional foundation that makes the Islamic Republic the repressive force that it is. The change that Rafsanjani envisioned in 2005 – subordinating the Supreme Leader to a ceremonial role – represents the minimum structural shift required. After nearly five decades, the concentration of absolute religious and political authority in a single office has demonstrably not served the Iranian people.
But Washington is justifiably sensitive about mission creep. The last time that the United States played an enabling role in the drafting of a new constitution was with Paul Bremer in Iraq. Iran has a population three times larger than Iraq. The heavy lifting of constitutional change must largely reside with the Iranians.
What Washington can do is structure any peace settlement to maximize the space in which Iranian civil society can operate. It also may need to heighten attention on the strategic importance of constitutional reform and the obstacles that need to be navigated in the process. According to Article 177 of the constitution, revisions must be initiated and dictated by the Supreme Leader. Article 59 of the constitution states that “in extremely important economic, political, social, and cultural matters, the functions of the legislature may be exercised through direct recourse to popular vote through a referendum; however, Article 177 specifically states that Article 59 does not apply in the case of revisions in the constitution. Article 177 is designed to perpetuate rule by the Supreme Leader. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), accountable only to the Supreme Leader, according to the Constitution, would remain in place to enforce and assure the status quo, preventing Iran’s suppressed civil society from expunging velayat-e faqih from the constitutional order.
The settlement terms of this conflict with Iran should circumvent any arrangement that legitimizes velayat-e faqih, which would foreclose the space needed for Iranian civil society to press constitutional revision. Steps to monitor this need to be in place in a negotiated settlement. Ideally, they should include conditioning the lifting of sanctions and other forms of relief on verifiable constitutional benchmarks that open the path to retiring velayat-e faqih. Tens of thousands of young Iranians lost their lives challenging the Supreme Leader’s grip on power in the months preceding the US-Israeli offensive. Washington should signal to reform-minded Iranian actors – inside and outside the country – that constitutional change is the indispensable condition for Iran’s reintegration into the international community and for sustainable peace in the region.
