In the third chapter, the authors discuss the origins and evolution of the Shia political Islam with a focus on the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the Ayatollahs’ revolutionary vision which aimed to export the Iranian political-religious model to other countries. This chapter gives an overview of the psycho-biographies of influential Shia leaders: Ali Khamenei, Hassan Rouhani, Ali al-Sistani, and Nouri al-Maliki. The authors discuss the operational code analysis results and deliberate on what kind of generic foreign policy behavior and strategies we should expect from Shia political Islamist leaders. The chapter also sheds light on what these results and strategies mean for the MENA politics and consider the implications of this analysis for Iran’s relations with the United States, the EU, and regional powers; Iraq’s foreign relations; and the future of Iraq as a viable power in regional politics. The authors conclude by discussing what these results mean for foreign policy decision-making and the international relations discipline.

Barack Obama entered the presidency with a clear plan for engaging Iran. Rather than building on past rhetoric and emphasizing Iran’s "misbehavior," he opted for a new approach. In a speech marking Iran’s new year, he praised Iran’s rich history, then reached out directly to the country's new president, Hassan Rouhani. The approach did not show immediate results, but the two countries, along with European powers, Russia, and China, began to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program – a key issue for the relationship since the 1990s. The P5+1 talks (and secret US–Iran meetings) slowly began to turn the tide. The JCPOA finally came into being, representing a significant diplomatic achievement. Through it would prove to be short-lived, the Iran deal demonstrated that progress could be achieved. After forty years of near-constant enmity, the two countries appeared to be on the verge of détente. When Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the deal, these hopes were again dashed. But lessons from the negotiations remain for future policymakers hoping to resolve this most confounding of global issues.

Chapter 5 examines the 2013 and 2017 presidential elections, which brought moderate candidate Hassan Rouhani to power. Rouhani entered the 2013 election on an electoral platform that aimed to bring Iran out of international isolation as a means to improve the country’s dire economic crisis. With the exception of conservative hardliner Saeed Jalili, who campaigned on a religious, ideological platform, none of the candidates campaigned on the values and ideals of the revolution. The electoral fault-lines were predominately shaped around the economy, effective nuclear diplomacy and the establishment of détente foreign policies. This chapter will then explore the 2017 election, which was perhaps the most secular election in the Islamic Republic’s forty-year history. What was astonishing in this election was not what was said, but what was not said. None of the candidates dared to employ early revolutionary slogans. Certain phrases and concepts were missing from candidate campaigns, such as the dispossessed and disenfranchised, martyrdom, claims of being a true follower of the Supreme Leader, anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. Through an exploration of these campaign discourses, this chapter will demonstrate that since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, electoral politics have tremendously evolved from Khomeini’s revolutionary religiosity to encompass liberal, secular values and ideals.

This concluding chapter compares and contrasts the Green Uprising with the Arab Spring revolts, underscoring connections between these historic events, and their strengths and weaknesses. Importantly, it also considers claims of the finality of the government’s defeat of the uprising on Revolution Day. For many, the uprising endures in one way or another. Long-term impacts on the government include shattered political taboos, issues of ideological legitimacy, and the subsequent conduct of the state. Despite claims of its failure by the state and more widely, the Green Movement continues to show signs of life. Once again, this uprising is situated in Iran’s genealogy of revolutionary upheaval—empowered by the past while also informing future protests. The book concludes, as it began, with a critique of the state’s preferred slogan that encapsulates its purposeful, one-dimensional understanding of the Iranian Revolution: “Independence, Freedom, Islamic Republic.”

As revealed by its title, Chapter 9 “Jihadi Culture and Management (2005–2017)” examines the cultural production surrounding the nostalgic, romanticized, and ambiguous concept of “jihadi culture and management” (farhang va mudīriyat-i jahādī), which has increasingly appeared in the discourse and activities of politicians, officials, bureaucrats, and activists. The concept did not simply emerge from RJ, but a deliberately constructed and carefully crafted image and narrative of it as an ideal-type revolutionary organization and its members as archetypal jihadists (jahādgarān). Former RJ members in the bureaucracy and society have promoted the concept in an effort to infuse the state and society with the exemplary attributes, norms, values, structures, and practices that RJ had allegedly possessed as a revolutionary organization. To the dismay of some former RJ members, the IRI’s factionalized elites have appropriated the concept in an attempt to mobilize and socialize voters and supporters during local and national elections.