From Ideology to Influence: The Islamic Republic Beyond Its Borders

Recent crises have exposed a dividing line among declared opponents of the Islamic Republic. Some, while retaining their criticisms, adopted positions converging with those of the regime. How should this convergence be understood? No single explanation is sufficient: ideological affinities, political calculations and relationships of interest operate differently.

One explanation concerns shared reference points: hostility to the West, anti-imperialism, opposition to Israel or Zionism, and distrust of parts of the Enlightenment tradition. During a crisis, these affinities may bring together actors separated by other disputes. Their actual positions must nevertheless be examined. Opposition to military intervention does not, by itself, mean support for the Iranian regime.

Hannah Arendt’s analysis of ideological systems directs attention beyond physical coercion. A worldview can generate loyalties and identities that outlast tactical disagreements. This perspective illuminates a possible convergence; it does not establish collaboration in an individual case.

Other alignments may concern economic, professional or social ties. Working in Iran, accessing particular markets or maintaining institutional relationships can create dependencies. But travel, relatives and ordinary contacts with the country are not evidence of activity on the regime’s behalf.

These distinctions are essential. Without them, analysis of an influence strategy can become a general accusation against the diaspora. Benefits, obligations and actions must be identified; political loyalty cannot be inferred simply from a connection to Iran.

The political economy of relationships

Ideology cannot account for every alignment. Commercial opportunities, administrative privileges, restricted access and financial networks may encourage behaviour favourable to those in power. Their significance differs across sectors and individuals.

The issue is therefore the political economy of influence: how do lasting interests shape choices of speech and action? A political preference can be sincere while also serving an interest. Serious analysis should neither presume a hidden transaction nor rule out the examination of dependencies.

Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power explains the role of cultural appeal and legitimacy in international influence. It does not encompass every material incentive: payment and coercion differ from attraction. A state can combine these instruments without making them identical.

Media and the formation of the public sphere

Persian-language media outside Iran are a major arena of this competition. They reach audiences the regime does not directly control. Possible channels of influence include recruitment, guest selection, editorial priorities and the circulation of narratives. The extent and success of attempts must be established case by case.

Topic selection can matter as much as explicit commentary. Repeatedly foregrounding opposition quarrels, minimising mobilisation or portraying alternatives as inconceivable changes the horizon of debate. But an outcome favourable to the regime does not itself prove that the regime commissioned it.

Habermas’s account of the public sphere helps explain why information and discussion are matters of power. Media do more than transmit events. They contribute to deciding what deserves common attention and whose voice appears legitimate.

Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge offer ways of examining competing or oppositional public spheres. A political force’s own means of communication can matter as much as its criticism of an adversary’s media. The struggle concerns the capacity to organise collective experience and make it visible.

Digital platforms are changing this balance. Telegram, X, Instagram and YouTube allow individuals and groups to reach audiences without passing through traditional newsrooms. Established intermediaries retain influence but no longer possess the same distribution monopoly.

Manuel Castells’s work on networks and communication illuminates this development. Opposition actors can build direct relationships with audiences and bypass some constraints of established media. That possibility does not remove algorithms, surveillance, disinformation or inequalities of access.

An increasing part of the competition consequently takes place beyond television studios. Digital presence does not replace political organisation, but it changes the conditions of visibility and mobilisation.

Preventing an organised alternative

The central argument of this article is that several of the regime’s external policies seek to prevent an organised alternative from emerging. Rather than controlling every member of a large, dispersed diaspora, this strategy would concentrate on potential centres of organisation and figures capable of mobilisation.

Estimates of Iranians abroad differ substantially depending on whether they count Iranian-born residents, nationality or descendants. An uncertain demographic total is unnecessary to the argument. What matters is the community’s dispersion and the networks that might connect it politically.

The assassination of officials and opponents abroad is a longstanding dimension of repression. Shapour Bakhtiar, Kurdish leaders and the Mykonos restaurant case are important examples. Other deaths, including that of Fereydoun Farrokhzad, raise attribution questions that do not have the same level of judicial determination.

The judgment delivered in Berlin on 10 April 1997 in the Mykonos case was a turning point. It connected the decision behind the operation to the highest levels of Iranian leadership. The diplomatic consequences brought the assassination of exiled opponents directly into relations between states.

That turning point increased the political costs of certain operations. It does not establish that violence subsequently disappeared. Intimidation, pressure on families, surveillance and indirect operations can coexist with lethal methods.

Infiltration, division and attacks on credibility are other possible instruments. The strategic hypothesis is that an opposition unable to cooperate poses less danger than a structured one. The existence of this logic establishes neither universal infiltration nor the success of every attempt.

Research on transnational repression documents the means governments use to pursue critics beyond their borders: threats, surveillance, assaults, abductions and coercion against relatives. Such repression must be distinguished from persuasion and ordinary diplomacy.

Universities, expertise and the authority of knowledge

Influence may also concern narratives circulating through Western media. Their professional and legal structures differ from those of diaspora media. Assessments of vulnerability must consider their procedures, internal differences and independence.

Researchers and Iran specialists regularly act as analytical sources. Their authority draws on the recognition of a discipline and an institution. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital helps explain how that recognition can have effects beyond academia.

Research may require visas, archives, fieldwork and relationships with Iranian institutions. Fear of losing access can encourage excessive caution or self-censorship. It does not prove that a scholar is an influence agent. Practices and constraints need to be examined rather than presumed.

Foucault’s analysis of knowledge and power encourages scrutiny of those conditions. It does not mean that all knowledge is false or all expertise purchased. Scientific autonomy is built through explicit methods, comparison of sources and openness to criticism.

States, newsrooms and other institutions seek these skills. Iranian authorities may also find it useful to maintain exchanges with particular scholarly circles. That pathway can explain how narratives travel; it is not a general proof that universities are controlled.

The task is to make the conditions of analysis intelligible: funding, access, partnerships, methodology and limits of knowledge. Criticism is stronger when it documents these conditions than when it suspects an entire profession.

Diplomatic representation and indirect operations

Embassies and consulates normally maintain political, cultural and economic relationships. States use their representations to understand their surroundings and defend their interests. Diplomatic contacts alone do not establish a clandestine operation.

In the Iranian case, investigations and official decisions have nevertheless documented or attributed activities beyond that framework to regime bodies. Representations and their networks should be examined when specific connections can be established, without confusing consular services, influence and repression.

The British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee report, published on 10 July 2025, describes a persistent threat particularly affecting dissidents and opponents. It draws on an inquiry and evidence gathered over several years. Its information should not all be presented as collected in 2025.

British authorities examine the use of third parties and intermediaries among these mechanisms. They can increase the distance between an alleged sponsor and an operation, complicate investigations and facilitate denial. Official attribution still differs from a judicial decision about the individuals involved.

The European Union has likewise made transnational repression central to certain decisions. These documents provide concrete foundations for analysis. They do not establish that every Iranian cultural or diplomatic network pursues the same objective.

Crime, informal networks and detention

Criminal intermediaries constitute a separate issue. On 15 July 2025, the Council of the European Union sanctioned individuals and the Zindashti Network, linking it to Iran’s intelligence ministry and operations against dissidents. This must be reported as the Council’s attribution within its own legal framework.

Third parties can provide skills, contacts and deniability. Mark Galeotti’s work on the political use of non-state actors helps interpret this practice. It cannot, by itself, establish responsibility in an individual case.

The clandestine economies of regional allies also deserve analysis. Research on captagon in the Levant examines production and distribution networks whose participants and responsibilities need to be distinguished. Strategic proximity to Tehran does not establish its direction of every trafficking operation.

The detention of foreign and dual nationals is another possible instrument of pressure. Some releases have been negotiated alongside exchanges, political arrangements or the unblocking of funds. The term hostage diplomacy refers to the use of detained individuals as bargaining instruments.

Cases must remain precise. Not every detention can be classified identically without examination. Nevertheless, the arbitrary character of several cases and their political exploitation have been documented and condemned. The people concerned must not disappear behind strategic terminology.

Competition over the capacity to organise

Opposition weaknesses cannot be explained solely through the regime’s actions. Historical disagreements, personal rivalries, inadequate organisation and the absence of a common programme also matter. Attributing every failure to infiltration would remove the actors’ own responsibility.

Conversely, ignoring documented operations would underestimate obstacles to cooperation. The question is how different instruments—ideology, interests, narratives, intimidation and violence—can contribute to preventing an alternative from forming.

These instruments need not constitute a perfectly coordinated apparatus. They may overlap, compete and produce uneven effects. We should resist the image of an omniscient regime capable of explaining every development in the diaspora.

Yet the struggle concerns more than territory and institutions. It also concerns the conditions under which a voice becomes credible, an experience becomes shared and a group becomes capable of action. Public spheres, communication networks and narrative production therefore have decisive political significance.

Understanding that significance requires two commitments together: document repression and influence, and preserve the possibility of independent disagreement. An opposition that answers narrative control with indiscriminate suspicion risks destroying the trust its own organisation needs.