Why is it so hard for the Iranian regime to admit the failure of its regional project, when it is all but at war with the world and not only with its neighbors, directly or through proxies? I believe the answer lies in the fact that we are dealing with a power that has given its political conception a sacred character, and then asked its own people, and other societies, to bear the cost of realizing that impossible project.
Retreating from that policy thus touches the legitimacy of those who run it, and a review of its results becomes an objection to the doctrine of government. That is a dilemma no ceasefire agreement or protracted negotiation can resolve, however necessary they may be. Its solution has to be sought outside the box.
Freeing thought from the tutelage of the ecclesiastical establishment was one of the foundations of the West's progress. The confrontation with the Church did not by itself produce the West's renaissance: trade, education, and political change contributed, and believers took part in advancing knowledge. But winning the right to criticize the clergy's interpretations opened a wide field for change in the world. It became possible to test an idea coming from a man of religion and to refute it if it contradicted evidence, reason, and the public interest. It was no longer accepted that the holder of religious office possessed the final answer on the affairs of society, of nature, and of international relations.
This did not come easily. Galileo was forced to recant his defense of the earth's motion and spent the rest of his life under house arrest after his trial in 1633. He paid the price for challenging an interpretation adopted by a powerful religious authority. The value of this example is that knowledge needed courage to defend the right to ask questions. Objecting to the prevailing interpretation threatened the position of the institution that monopolized it, and exposed the fact that its influence did not necessarily make its judgments correct.
In Iran today, we face, despite differing times, the problem of granting human jurisprudence religious immunity. The regime is based on the Guardianship of the Jurist (Velayat-e Faqih), and its ambition extends beyond state administration to influencing neighboring societies under various banners. Consequently, choices related to peace and war become surrounded by a doctrinal discourse that makes it difficult for a believer to accept holding them accountable. Thus, anyone who questions the feasibility of the project is forced to defend their loyalty and their life.
I believe it is impossible for this project to produce an acceptable stability among diverse societies if it requires subjecting their decision-making to an authority outside their own homelands. This is what is happening in Yemen and Lebanon; it may impose influence through arms, and it may find local supporters, but it cannot convert that into national consensus. A person in Lebanon or Yemen wants a state that protects their rights, while retaining the right to oppose it.
In Lebanon the impasse is plain. Hezbollah tied its weapons and its position to the Iranian project, and the debate over the decision of war became bound up with calculations beyond Lebanon's interest. Society pays the cost of this attachment in its security, while the question of responsibility remains a matter of accusation. Israeli aggression is to be condemned, but condemning it does not exempt a Lebanese organization from accountability. Whoever decides to expose his country to war must answer to his fellow citizens for that harmful decision.
In Yemen, the Houthi movement is another version of Hezbollah. It has, of course, its local calculations, but it found in Iranian support a means of expanding its military capacity and its influence. The problem is that Yemenis are asked to bear the results of regional choices placed ahead of their need to rebuild their state. How does threatening the neighbors or disrupting world trade become a path to improving the life of a Yemeni family? That is a practical question slogans do not answer.
What the two cases share is placing the group's project ahead of society's right to determine its own fate. That does not mean holding the Iranian people responsible for their leadership's choices, nor reducing Lebanon's Shiites to a party or Yemenis to an armed group. Within these societies there are different interests and opinions. But the party and the movement confiscate that diversity, then present their narrative abroad as its only voice.
Why does the project persist despite its cost? Because admitting its failure opens files that go beyond the present moment. Its authors would be asked about the money spent, the opportunities lost, and the justifications for putting confrontation ahead of development. Around them are beneficiaries who fear that a review would cost them their positions. So doctrine intertwines with interest, and every loss is interpreted in a way that absolves the leadership of responsibility. The organization's survival is enough for it to be called success, even as society's capacity to live declines.
Here lies the responsibility of the intellectual. What is needed is to dismantle the claim that politics derives its validity from religious cover, by measuring results against what has been achieved for people. There is no need to copy Europe's history, nor to quarrel with individuals' faith. We need the courage that made the review of ideas a right, and protection for those who exercise it. A society that fears questions cannot correct its mistakes, and leaves it to those in power to decide what it may know about its own fate.
Negotiations may succeed in averting a new war, or a destructive war may break out and widen. But a stable peace requires reviewing the project that calls for intervention in other people's homelands. Tehran must accept that its ambition does not give it the right of guardianship, and that Lebanon, Yemen, and others are homelands for their own people. Acknowledging this truth would allow the Iran to come, whether by negotiation or by war, to return to being a normal state that exchanges interests with its neighbors, and would give the region's peoples a chance to leave a confrontation they did not choose. That requires accepting plurality within the homeland, submitting to its institutions, and ceasing to arm a group to impose its will on others.
Last word: the sanctity of a claim does not cancel its failure.
