Uncertainty in Iran

Posted: March 9th, 2017

By Suzanne Maloney

Suzanne Maloney is deputy director of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution and a senior fellow in the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy and Energy Security and Climate Initiative, where her research focuses on Iran and Persian Gulf energy. She is the editor of Markaz, a blog on politics in and policy toward the Middle East published by the Brookings Institution. Maloney previously served as an external advisor to senior State Department officials on long-term issues related to Iran. Before joining Brookings, she served on the secretary of state's policy planning staff, as Middle East advisor for ExxonMobil Corporation, and director of the 2004 Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S. policy toward Iran, chaired by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. She holds a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

In the perennial effort to deduce the likely evolution of the tumultuous relationship between the United States and Iran, all eyes today seem to be trained on Washington. This is understandable; after all, the election of Donald Trump appears to be generating a marked shift away from the Obama Administration’s eight years of seeking to engage with the Islamic Republic, in favor of a more confrontational approach.

However, a more important – and perhaps less predictable – change is underway within Iran, where an extraordinary process of leadership transition is beginning to assume a more public and impending phase. As the generation of revolutionary Iran’s founding fathers passes from the scene, its leaders are seeking to reinforce their control over their legacy even as a competition for primacy among their heirs and rivals has already begun. This shadowboxing among regime elites will shape the future of Iran, and the prospects for escalation or resolution in its four-decade estrangement with Washington.

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