A More Normal Iran?

In 2021, Iran’s hard-line elites were triumphant. Their chosen candidate, Ebrahim Raisi, had won the country’s carefully staged election with more than 70 percent of the vote. Conservatives were in control of the Iranian parliament, and they had the full attention of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Their goal—controlling all of the country’s levers of power in order to make Islamist revolutionary fervor its perpetual mainstay—was within reach.