Vatanka Reports
News and Analysis on the Greater Middle East 
 

Thus, by mid-January, Gulf capitals were no longer questioning whether Oman should mediate — but whether Oman could prevent a conflict neither side may intend but both are dangerously capable of triggering.

Muscat’s facilitation of talks has helped the region more than once. Now Oman must act quickly to convince Iran to make meaningful concessions and prevent conflict.

People are not protesting because they suddenly discovered activism. They are protesting because the habits of coping and waiting for conditions to improve have finally stopped working.

The US can help — without another Middle East quagmire

The timing of the protests matters. After the 12-day war, many Iranians hoped the shock of confrontation would prompt a strategic reassessment at home. The logic was straightforward: External pressure had peaked, and national unity had been demonstrated, so perhaps now was the moment for internal recalibration.

An Iraqi parliament inclined to police those conduits under US pressure would tighten the vise; whereas, a parliament content to muddle through would keep Iran’s arteries open.

It was a rare moment of candor from someone who has stood near the center of power for four decades. Nateq-Nouri’s broader message was that the Islamic Republic’s missteps were not fate but choice — that the state’s permanent confrontation with the US was not inevitable but constructed and, therefore, could one day be reversed.

Iran’s nuclear trajectory is more like a cautious glide along a familiar route than a leap into the unknown, made up of tactical, reversible steps aimed at buying time rather than fundamentally changing the project.

For years, Khamenei has been insisting to his people that there would be no war with the United States or Israel. That claim was shattered when more than 1,000 Iranians were killed in June’s 12-day war. Now he warns against the country sliding into a “state of ‘no war, no peace.’” The diagnosis isn’t wrong—but refusing to confront hard choices is vintage Khamenei.

President Masoud Pezeshkian’s first year in office was defined by Iran’s familiar political structural constraints, external crises, and a moderate-reformist base forever frustrated with his cautious pragmatism and unfulfilled promises.

The regime has been pushed to the edge of strategic pivot.

In this leadership void and amid a crisis of direction, Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, has become the public voice of the regime. Is this a cosmetic change or does it reflect a deeper shift in power?