Now that the nuclear-negotiation deadline of 30 June 2015 has passed, a battle is heating up between Iran and the P5+1 group, where both sides seek to finalise the technical details of the comprehensive agreement. In public statements, United States and Iranian leaders draw red lines seeking to advance their negotiating positions. While these lines are instrumental to the outcome, for Iran they also shed light on the central battle within the Islamic Republic. This conflict is not between hardliners and reformists. Rather, it is a battle between oligarchies, "integrationists" versus "interactionists": two groups with competing political visions and economic interests contending for the future of Iran.
To understand Iran and its forthcoming challenges, overused theocratic analogies should be discarded. Today, Iran most closely resembles post-Soviet Russia where a bankrupt political system, rampant corruption and economic mismanagement have given rise to greater access and opportunity for a divided political oligarchy. To keep the fracturing political elite together over the subsequent three decades, the establishment granted these groups economic privileges allowing them to benefit from their political connections by gaining access to the proceeds from privatisations, tax exemptions, and government contracts. In the process each developed a network of supporters and loyalists.
Despite such privileges, divisions emerged throughout the 1990s under the presidencies of Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-97) and Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), both of whom were early advocates of regional and economic integration. To counterbalance the emergence of these political groups, conservatives joined forces with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), thus laying the groundwork for the current oligarchical structure.
