All Policy Analysis by Saeid Golkar

The debate over making Saturday the official second day of the weekend nationwide instead of Thursday has become a hot topic in Iran in recent months, highlighting the clash between the the regime’s ideology and the country’s economic reality.

The regime’s preference for ideological commitment over expertise has compromised its bureaucratic hiring processes and led to massive institutional decay, making it unlikely that the new president will be able to fulfill his campaign promises or otherwise govern effectively.

Three experts discuss the domestic and foreign implications of Masoud Pezeshkian’s presidential election victory—including the need to temper any expectations that he is able or willing to pursue substantial change.

The latest election cycle offers further proof that the regime is counting on centralization and open repression as its main tools of control, with elected bodies becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Understanding the mistakes that led to the Russian invasion offers critical lessons for future Iran policy.

President Raisi is accelerating Ayatollah Khamenei’s plan to Islamize the university system, with apparently little regard for how previous campaigns sent Iran plummeting down the regional rankings for higher education.

MOIS and other agencies have been surveilling, abducting, and murdering dissidents for nearly four decades now, brazenly conducting operations in foreign countries under hardline and “pragmatic” Iranian governments alike.

Since its formation in 1979, the Islamic Republic has seen multiple cycles of unrest, from ethnic movements in the early 1980s to urban riots in the early 1990s, student protests spanning 1999-2003, the Green Movement response to the 2009 election, and the December 2017-January 2018 upheaval in smaller cities and

In 2008, the IRGC established a new branch that remains little known or studied today: the Provincial Guard. Operating in all of Iran's thirty-one provinces plus Tehran city, the IRGC-PG carries out the regime's revolutionary aims at the local level, inculcating conservative religious values, shaping educational curricula, and even sponsoring

From establishing new provincial headquarters to deploying hundreds of thousands of troops and militia personnel on emergency duty, the Guards are seemingly using the crisis as an opportunity to expand their power at the local level.

As the Islamic Republic of Iran turns forty, the dream of a unified theocratic state remains elusive. The national leadership faces three converging threats: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's uncertain health and the prospect of a destabilizing succession process; domestic dissatisfaction, manifested in daily protests across the country; and economic struggles brought

The widening rift between religious traditionalists and "hybrid-postmodernists" could undermine the regime's guiding principle of Islamism.

A closer look at the structure and tactics of the many-headed internal security network that the Islamic Republic has deployed to crack down on protestors nationwide.

On June 7, 2013, Saeid Golkar and Mehdi Khalaji addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Mr. Golkar is a fellow at the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University and author of the new Institute report The Islamic Republic's Art of Survival. Mr. Khalaji

Over the past three decades, the Iranian regime has managed to survive numerous internal and external crises. From coup attempts to war and, most recently, mass uprisings and nuclear sanctions, the Islamic Republic has been able to neutralize threats at home and on its borders while avoiding foreign intervention. In