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Kian Tajbakhsh, a scholar who survived Iran’s notorious Evin prison, recently argued that Iran may be more prepared for a post-Islamist transition than many in the West assume. His view—carried in a widely published July 2025 column—rests on the claim that decades of local councils and a functioning bureaucracy create a scaffold that could be repurposed in a moment of rupture.
Tajbakhsh points to the thousands of elected municipal councils and a vertically integrated administrative system as tangible assets that reformers could use to rebuild civic life if the regime ever crumbles. That kind of technocratic plumbing matters more than the pundit class gives it credit for, and it’s exactly the sort of detail that makes his argument worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as naïve wishful thinking.
Nobody should forget, though, that Tajbakhsh’s credibility comes from more than academic theory—he earned it by living it, twice detained and enduring real punishment for his work inside Iran, and today he teaches and writes from positions at Columbia and Project Syndicate. His experience gives his warnings and hopes weight, but it does not erase the hard reality that Iran’s ruling cliques still have enormous capacities for repression.
That reality is why conservatives must read Tajbakhsh with a skeptical pen in hand: regime collapse does not automatically yield freedom, and cheerleading for sudden change without a plan for stability invites disaster. We saw the cost of wholesale regime engineering in Iraq and Afghanistan, where good intentions met sectarian violence and state failure; any honest assessment must reckon with the very real danger that a toppled Tehran could produce chaos that radical elements would happily exploit.
At the same time, we owe it to the brave Iranian men and women who protest in the streets to support their yearning for liberty in ways that strengthen them without turning American taxpayers into nation-builders. Soft power, targeted sanctions on regime elites, support for independent media and secure channels for dissidents, and a clear posture of deterrence against foreign proxies are conservative tools that promote freedom while protecting our own national interest.
Tajbakhsh’s argument that Iran’s “dual-use” institutions could be repurposed for democratic governance should not be an excuse for naïve interventionism, but it should give policymakers a sober, practical menu of options if the regime’s hold ever weakens. Smart conservatives will therefore combine moral clarity—standing unequivocally with Iranian dissidents—with strategic restraint that prioritizes American security and avoids open-ended commitments.
In short, let us recognize the nuance in Tajbakhsh’s case: Iran’s people deserve our admiration and support, and their country may indeed hide the bones of a future democracy, but freedom will not arrive on autopilot. Patriots who love liberty must back the Iranian people, insist on accountability for any violent actors, and demand a foreign policy that is firm, clear-eyed, and unwilling to gamble American blood on fantasies.
