Arash Azizi

What they are is basically pragmatists.

It's a pragmatism born out of the actual situation, because they understand, okay, we can't fight and destroy the United States.

You can write articles about doing that, but you can't actually do it, right?

So as a result, we need to negotiate, obviously, we need to get a deal.

But important point also, on domestic issues, a lot of them are,

Also, what I would say, liberalizers, not in a political sense, but in the religious sense.

They understand that you can't enforce, you know, the most important part of it is the mandatory hijab, the mandatory veiling.

They understand you can't enforce it.

They kind of know you have to give up on the whole Islamist puritan society.

So they're authoritarian, can be pretty brutal.

but they are amenable to deals with the West and to social liberalization.

And when I say they, you know, Bahr al-Ghalib, the Speaker of the Parliament, an old IRGC guy, is an embodiment of this attitude.

He's right now kind of the strongest man in Iran.

I mean, it appears that he's medically unwell, basically.

Like, he's not doing so well.

But here's what I think about the state of the play.

I think the way it works at this point is that he is basically not being hands-on.

He lets Alibov and the National Security Council run things.

And for very important things, including this deal, they'll probably want to go get his signature.

But he probably is amenable, from what I understand, to...