Iran International
Even as Tehran engages in hardheaded diplomatic maneuvering with Washington, it is advancing a parliamentary proposal offering a €50 million reward for President Trump’s killing.
The ruling establishment, they argue, is trying to project strength after weeks of military and political pressure while using the prospect of talks not as a concession but as another arena of confrontation.
“The Iranian regime is trying to, in their own mind, basically say that we are on par,” Dr. Shahram Kholdi, a Middle East historian, told Iran International. “Even if you're not on par with Trump, we are actually beating him at all levels.”
The proposed bounty, he said, should be read partly as psychological warfare against Trump.
“This award to be passed as a piece of legislation by the Islamic Republic Parliament is effectively part of that psychological war that the Islamic Republic thinks it has to unleash upon Trump,” Kholdi said.
But the rhetoric is unfolding alongside more concrete threats. Tehran has also signaled it could disrupt navigation through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, while pro-government voices have floated attacks on satellite infrastructure, including systems such as Starlink.
'Not rational'
That combination of assassination rhetoric, military pressure and possible diplomacy may appear irrational from the outside. Kholdi argues the problem is that Washington is not dealing with a conventional negotiating actor.
“The problem with these people is that they think … if they behave sanely and rationally, that's insane and irrational,” he said. “That’s the kind of actor Trump is dealing with … The art of the deal does not work with an irrational actor.”
Dr. Eric Mandel, founder of the Middle East Political Information Network (MEPIN), framed the issue as a clash of political cultures and timelines. Western governments may look at the damage inflicted on Iran’s military and industrial infrastructure and conclude Tehran should be searching for a way out. The regime may see the same moment very differently.
“This is a perfect opportunity to realize they don't think like us,” Mandel said.
From Tehran’s perspective, he argued, the fact that the regime has survived is itself a form of victory.
“The Iranians think we have survived. We have survived and that means we are victorious,” he said. “We could outlast the Americans and eventually they're going to have to acquiesce to us.”
The time factor
That survival-first mindset helps explain why Tehran may threaten Trump while still leaving room for talks. In Mandel’s view, negotiations, ceasefires and delays all serve a purpose: they buy time.
“The Iranians got a ceasefire. They rebuilt, they rearm, they dug out missiles that were buried because they know that the longer they can either prolong negotiations, the longer they have ceasefires, that they believe that time will eventually make them the winner here,” he said.
This is why the apparent contradiction may not be a contradiction at all. The threats signal defiance. The talks buy time. The survival narrative sustains the regime internally.
Former State Department appointee Shayan Samii said Tehran’s assassination rhetoric may also backfire by strengthening Washington’s case for escalation.
“These numbskulls in Tehran don't understand that by the mere fact of just saying we want to assassinate the President of the United States—mind you, the sitting President of the United States—we're not talking about a national security threat anymore,” Samii said. “We're talking about a government apparatus coming under attack.”
That, he said, could allow the United States to frame any military response not simply as regional intervention, but as self-defense.
“They can tell the world these guys wanted to assassinate our president, we're not going to sit by,” Samii said.
'Military readiness'
Samii also rejected the idea that Trump’s latest delay should be read mainly as a response to pressure from Persian Gulf Arab states. He said the timing was more likely tied to military planning and target selection.
“It has nothing to do with the request of the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf region,” he said. “It has everything to do with machinations and military readiness and coming up with a solution for the targets that they want to hit.”
The danger, analysts say, is that both sides may be using time for very different purposes. Trump may be waiting for better military and economic conditions. Tehran may be trying to stretch the crisis into a war of attrition.
“They think that they are going to run the United States out of the stamina,” Kholdi said.
For Mandel, that gap in thinking is central to the crisis. American politics operates on elections, markets and public pressure. The Islamic Republic, he said, operates with a far longer and harsher sense of time.
“We're dealing with, trying to say from so many different angles, the calculus that they're making is so different than what ours is,” he said.
That difference may be what makes the current moment especially volatile. Tehran appears to believe threats increase leverage. Washington increasingly risks viewing those same threats as proof diplomacy cannot work.
An opinion piece published by Etemad newspaper on Tuesday described widespread frustration among students, parents and teachers over the poor performance of the government-backed Shad platform, which authorities rely on for remote education during emergencies.
Schools across Iran have remained closed since the US-Israeli strikes, forcing students back into virtual classrooms years after the country’s first large-scale experiment with online education during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The article argued that many of the same problems identified during the pandemic – including low speed, weak server capacity and repeated outages – remain unresolved despite years of experience with remote learning.
Iran launched the Shad network during the coronavirus outbreak to create a unified national education system after schools shut down nationwide. But users quickly reported technical shortcomings, leading many schools and teachers to rely on alternative messaging and video applications to continue classes.
Although in-person education resumed after the pandemic, the report said authorities failed to significantly improve the platform’s infrastructure despite repeated school disruptions caused by weather conditions, air pollution and energy shortages in recent years.
Internet restrictions deepen problems
The recent conflict and tensions have added new pressure because restrictions on international internet access have reduced the availability of foreign platforms previously used as alternatives during outages.
Domestic applications have also struggled under the surge in traffic from millions of users attempting to access online classes simultaneously, leaving many lessons interrupted or inaccessible.
Teachers have continued trying to keep classes running despite the limitations, often reducing instruction to brief reviews or postponing major lessons until normal schooling resumes.
The mounting complaints recently prompted Iran’s State Inspectorate Organization to warn the government that the Shad platform requires updated and sufficient infrastructure to secure public satisfaction.
The oversight body said Shad remains the only widely accepted national platform for virtual education among teachers, students and parents, making its reliability critical during emergencies.
The article argued that online education cannot replace face-to-face teaching, particularly in deprived and remote regions where internet access and digital devices remain uneven.
University students face separate pressures
The disruptions have also extended into higher education. While universities have said to continue courses online, the closure of student dormitories has created financial and logistical difficulties for working students who must remain in their university cities.
Students displaced from dormitories have increasingly turned to low-cost temporary accommodation, raising safety and financial concerns for families.
The report concluded that repeated national emergencies have shown Iran still lacks a reliable and accessible virtual education system capable of sustaining learning during prolonged disruptions.
On May 19, 2024, a helicopter carrying Raisi disappeared in the mountains of Iran’s East Azarbaijan province. The final Iranian inquiry blamed bad weather, dense fog and atmospheric conditions, not sabotage.
But the image was too powerful to ignore: a leadership convoy moving through poor visibility, losing sight of itself, then trying to project a state still in control.
That is the better way to read Raisi’s death – as metaphor, not conspiracy.
The crash did not change Iran because Raisi ruled Iran. He did not. Real power sat above him, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Revolutionary Guard, the security state and the regional networks Tehran had built over decades.
Raisi mattered because he showed how continuity was supposed to look. He was loyal, hardline, severe and predictable; a figure once widely discussed as a possible successor to Khamenei.
Raisi was not the Islamic Republic’s future. He was its rehearsal for a future that never arrived.
In May 2024, the system still seemed to have a succession plan, a regional shield and the patience to wait out its enemies. Two years later, almost every pillar that made Tehran look untouchable has been tested or broken.
The countdown had already begun on October 7, 2023.
Hamas’s attack on Israel opened a war that pulled Iran’s wider network into motion: Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen. For years, this was Tehran’s doctrine of strategic depth.
After October 7, that depth became a target map.
By April 2024, Iran and Israel had moved from shadow war into direct confrontation. Then, one month later, Raisi’s helicopter fell out of the fog.
The state answered with the familiar theater of mourning: coffins, black flags, portraits, clerics and commanders. The message was continuity.
But after Raisi, the funerals began to tell another story. One by one, they marked not continuity, but exposure: a system losing the people, places and networks that had made it feel protected.
His death forced a snap election. Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist in tone, won the presidency after a first round marked by record-low turnout. The system gained a softer face, but not a new center of power.
Then came the first great humiliation of the post-Raisi era.
Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, came to Tehran for Pezeshkian’s inauguration. Hours later, he was killed in the Iranian capital.
This was not only the killing of a Hamas leader. It was a message that even the patron’s capital was no sanctuary.
That became the sentence for what followed.
In September 2024, Hezbollah’s pagers and radios exploded across Lebanon and Syria, turning the group’s own communications into weapons against it. Days later, Hassan Nasrallah was killed in Beirut.
A movement built on secrecy and underground command had been pierced from inside and struck from above.
Then Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar was killed. Hamas remained, Hezbollah remained, the slogans remained. But the axis was bleeding leaders, territory, routes and confidence.
The deeper break came in Syria.
Bashar al-Assad’s fall in December 2024 was not just the loss of another Islamic Republic's ally. It damaged the geography of Iranian power: the route to Hezbollah, the Mediterranean opening, and the Qasem Soleimani-era claim that weak states could be turned into Iranian depth.
By June 2025, the war had moved to Iran itself.
Israel struck Iranian nuclear and military sites during the 12-Day War. The United States then hit the most fortified parts of the nuclear program.
For years, nuclear ambiguity had been Tehran’s shield. In 2025, it became a battlefield.
Outside pressure then met the inside front.
The protests that erupted in late 2025 and early 2026 were driven by economic collapse, repression and the old demand for a different political order. By January 8 and 9, the state answered with mass violence and an internet shutdown.
The Islamic Republic could still shoot, jail and terrify. But it could no longer persuade enough of its own people that it had a future.
Even shocks beyond the Middle East began to feel part of the same weather. The US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January 2026 mattered less as an Iran story than as an atmosphere: another anti-American ruler, once protected by sovereignty and distance, suddenly exposed.
Then, on February 28, 2026, the war reached the institution at the heart of the Islamic Republic’s power: the supreme leadership.
Ali Khamenei was killed in US-Israeli strikes. For a state built around velayat-e faqih, this was not only the death of a ruler. It was the breaking of an aura.
Mojtaba Khamenei was named Supreme Leader days later. The appointment was meant to project continuity. Instead, it made the Islamic Republic look smaller, more closed and more dynastic.
The revolution born against monarchy had passed its highest office from father to son in wartime.
And then came the strangest funeral of all: the one that could not settle itself.
Iran postponed Khamenei’s state funeral. Months later, even his burial remained unclear. For a Shiite revolutionary state that has always known how to turn death into power, the delay was astonishing.
The republic of funerals had lost command of its most important ritual.
The old model had four layers. At home, fear contained society. In politics, elections gave the state a civilian mask. In the region, proxies kept enemies away from Iran’s borders. At the strategic level, missiles, nuclear ambiguity and the Strait of Hormuz made the cost of attack seem unknowable.
Since Raisi’s crash, every layer has been damaged.
Fear has produced revolt. Elections have exposed emptiness more than legitimacy. Regional depth has been penetrated. Syria has fallen away. Hezbollah and Hamas have been battered. The supreme leader’s office has lost its aura of untouchability.
Hormuz remains Iran’s strongest card. But it also shows the trap. The strait gives Tehran leverage over oil, shipping and global markets; it also keeps Iran at the center of a crisis it cannot easily end.
This is not the story of a regime that has already fallen. The Islamic Republic still has prisons, missiles, commanders and a long memory for survival.
But it is also not the story Tehran wants to tell.
Two years ago, Raisi’s death was wrapped in the language of martyrdom and continuity. The state said nothing vital had been lost.
Yet what followed revealed how little room the Islamic Republic had left for error.
The crash did not start the chain. October 7 had already started the clocks. But Raisi’s death gave the years after it their image: fog, poor visibility, a convoy losing contact, and a state insisting the road ahead was clear.
Two years later, Iran is still falling through that fog.
The question is no longer whether the Islamic Republic can survive another crisis. It has survived many.
The question is whether it can survive the loss of the things that made survival possible: distance, fear, succession, sanctuary and the belief that time was on its side.
