Moderation Among Islamists: The Fiction Driving Western Failure in the Middle East

Peloni:  Below is an important exchange between the Hudson Institute’s Zineb Riboua and Dr. David Wurmser about the basis on which the IRGC is fractured (full text below my commentary).

Peloni

Recall that the best way to understand—or influence—anyone is to grasp the fundamental motivations that drive their actions. Much of the current discussion surrounding the fractures within Iran centers on the supposed divide between “moderates” and “radicals” inside the IRGC. Riboua and Wurmser, however, explain that that this characterization misses the point entirely. Rather than representing an ideological struggle, the competing factions within the IRGC are better understood as rival power centers operating within an organization that functions much like a mafia.

This distinction matters because it exposes the persistent gap between reality and the West’s enduring search for “moderates” among committed Islamist ideologues. That misconception has repeatedly produced failed Western policies. The most recent example of this misconception is Iran’s continued attacks on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz despite the fact that the reopening the Strait was the sole condition required from Iran for the implementation of Trump’s memorandum of understanding.

More broadly, the Western tendency to equate cooperation with moderation has repeatedly distorted its assessment of hostile actors. The result is that individuals with long records of supporting or directing violence are portrayed as “moderates” simply because they are viewed as more pragmatic than their rivals. Mohammad Ghalibaf, is one such example of the West seeking a moderate in the rough, as it were, as his willingness to pursue certain political or diplomatic approaches can not possibly be honestly assessed as reflecting an overnight ideological shift towards moderation in someone who has spent a lifelong pursuit of slaughter and mayhem. Rather, it should be understood that such opportunistic instantaneous transformations reflect the calculations of a faction seeking to survive an internal struggle for power so that it can continue advancing the same Jihadist ideological objectives in the future.  Recall the Islamic practice of taqiyya, which calls for the concealing one’s faith or religious identity to protect oneself from danger, actually better explains the move by Ghalibaf among other non moderate Islamists to adopt the pretense of being non radicalized to outmaneuver their Western adversaries.

Recognizing that such tactical flexibility is not the same as ideological change helps explain why Western policymakers have so often mischaracterized adversaries as potential partners. This pattern has contributed to policies built on the assumption that supposed “moderates” are motivated by fundamentally different beliefs than the “hardliners.” Yet, from this perspective, the ideology remains unchanged even while reaping the tactical rewards of taqiyya.

That dynamic also helps explain why Trump initially described a newer generation of Iranian negotiators as “very reasonable,” “much more rational,” and “non-radicalized.” Those descriptions reflected an assessment based on comparative behavior rather than a demonstrated ideological transformation. Trump later remarked that his understanding changed after he had come to “know them,” acknowledging that his earlier impressions had been mistaken. Yet even then, he continued describing the newer leadership as “much more rational” than its predecessors. That inexplicable juxtaposition perfectly illustrates how the search for relative pragmatism continues to blur the distinction between tactical behavior and ideological commitment.

The broader problem is the persistent Western expectation that engagement itself signals moderation. That expectation has shaped policy across the Middle East.  Indeed, the Western obsession of seeking pragmatism from those who have consistently demonstrated a lifelong conviction to their radicalized hopes of conquering the West is why the US still insists upon employing the terror cohorts of Fatah and the PA as peace makers in Gaza, it is why Trump is able to describe radical villains such as Turkey’s Erdogan and Qatar’s al-Thani as allies, and it is why Trump is still willing to negotiate with Iranians who are actively and publicly calling for his own execution.  Until the West fundamentally reassesses the assumptions underlying its approach to Islamist movements, we will continue to see Western policies collapse due to their being founded upon the misguided principle that claims yesterday’s radicals are today’s moderates and that such an ideological change in such life-long baddies, as it were, could ever possibly come about literally overnight.  

The costs of that misconception have been measured not only in failed policies but also in far too many lives lost due to this basic and consistent and still persistent need by the West to believe that radicals are no longer radicals simply because the radicals are engaging in dialogue with them while buying time to fulfill their ultimate dreams of Jihad.  Indeed, the radicals are still radicalized, they still want to dominate and conquer the West, and if the responsible parties in the West do not come to accept this fact as being the reality that must be addressed, the radicals they describe as moderates will one day succeed in seeing their Jihadi dreams of conquest of America and the West fulfilled.

 

Text of Tweets between Ziboua and Wurmser:

Zineb Riboua:

I don’t think the IRGC is meaningfully divided into “hardliners” and “pragmatists.” The more relevant divide is between those who want to get paid and have cash now and those willing to wait. That is the real fault line. It also helps explain the persistent push to weaponize the Strait of Hormuz as they see immediate escalation as the fastest path to extracting economic concessions (frozen funds). So far, it’s not working for them and the MOU negotiations of 60 days which can be extended to another 60 days with 0 guarantees of a final deal don’t work in their favor.

David Wurmser:

Zineb,

I think this is the proximate cause of fissures, but I think it is a reflection of something much deeper. The Iranian regime is essentially a collection of mafia dons each possessing their own posses, and it always has been. These posses, which have ideological differences, may be called bonyads, or are IRGC veterans and their followers , or the followers of a specific Ayatollah, but they are the posse of a mafia don vying for power, which is a struggle that if lost can easily cause the death not only of the don, but the execution and slaughter of his posse. It is extreme and high stakes.

That means when there is a leadership vacuum, as was inherently the result from the death of Khamenei, the dance of the scorpions around the musical chairs of government, and the stakes of the life or death struggle of their posses, began.

They couldn’t admit the vacuum, because then they need to fill it and nobody was ready yet for the Don/posse death match. There was so much destruction that dons could not even gauge how strong or how many survived of their posses in the war. So they hid behind the mystique yet again of a vanished/occulted/hidden leader to make lemonade out of lemons and tie the stature of the cardboard placeholder Khamenei to the founding myth of Twelver Shiism. Leaders don’t die, they are murdered or mysteriously disappear.

This dance to the death among contenders for power is the most dangerous fissure for that government, and it is severely exacerbated by pressure, which is why the cease-fire is problematic, but the war forced them into the pressure cooker that led to real potential for internecine conflict at the top.

In many ways, the application of pressure through a war of attrition, especially when organized around the way Israel struck which was to hit leadership command of control and IRGC/Basiji units and their posses, rather than hit Iranian society as a whole, is the most effective. Such pressure will trigger eventually a death match among the leaders which will spill over to popular violence, which then signals the final conflagration of the end of the regime.

So while western elites would erroneously view these fissures as hopeful to play off one moderate against a hardliner, a misperception the Iranians will deliberately encourage as disinformation warfare, to reach a deal, the real objective is to NOT reach a deal and instead lean on the regime kinetically and economically to the point that it forces these grizzly, sadistic, and highly violent mafia dons to start fighting each other. Pressure causes tension which causes internecine bloodletting.

July 11, 2026 | Comments »

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