War remade Iran, reshaped Middle East balance

new US-Iran – A new peace agreement between the US and Iran arrives amid unresolved questions over Iran’s nuclear program, the future status of the Strait of Hormuz, and whether Israel’s war in Lebanon could yet disrupt the deal. In an interview with Today, Explained, Iran

A new peace agreement between the United States and Iran is being billed as a reset. But the war that preceded it has already changed something harder to negotiate than borders: Iran’s internal posture and the Middle East’s power balance.

In recent remarks by Iran experts Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr, the central point is blunt. Instead of breaking Iran, the crucible of war transformed it in ways they describe as unanticipated. “To survive and establish new strategic advantages. the Islamic Republic had to adapt and innovate. ” they wrote recently for a forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. adding that the Islamic Republic changed how it waged war. ran the state. and managed society.

In an excerpt from a conversation Bajoghli recently recorded with Today. Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram. edited for length and clarity. the discussion returned again and again to a question Americans were left with early on: what. exactly. was the war for?. The expert said the aims were sold in incompatible ways—at times to prevent Iran from securing a nuclear weapon. at other times framed as a death blow to the Islamic Republic. and at still other moments as a project of “freedom for the Iranian people.”.

The result, she said, was that the public never received a clear through-line. “Part of the problem is that we didn’t really ever know what this war was about. ” Bajoghli said in the conversation. She pointed to early decapitation strikes across Iran in the first days of the war. describing them as taking out the “founding generation of the revolution” and prompting a belief that the Islamic Republic was nearing collapse.

But the timeline she lays out runs in the opposite direction. “Now. in June 2026. three and a half months after this war started. ” she said. Iran has a “completely new and younger generation” in charge—one she describes as bolder and “not as afraid of the United States.” She also connected the shift to the Strait of Hormuz. saying that the strait was not necessarily under this kind of Iranian control before. but now is.

In that sense. the war’s outcomes are measured not only in what changed inside Iran. but in what Iran could now demand. Bajoghli said that Iran has been putting its will forward—specifically arguing Israel should pull back from Lebanon. Those conditions, she said, could not have been made in February 2026.

The peace agreement may be new, but the unresolved questions are not small. The conversation is occurring against the backdrop of what the experts describe as lingering uncertainty over Iran’s nuclear program. the future status of the Strait of Hormuz. and whether Israel’s war in Lebanon could still scuttle progress.

Bajoghli’s view of the new Iranian government starts with a correction to an American habit of simplifying Iran to one person at the top. She said people tend to treat Iran as a dictatorship run by a single leader. and that belief helped shape expectations that eliminating Ali Khamenei would cause the system to crumble. “You do have the leader at the top. ” she said. “but you have a lot of discussion and debate all throughout the political system and throughout society in Iran.”.

What she describes now is a generational shift that she says has been embodied in leadership. She said Moshtaba Khamenei—the son of the former leader—is now in charge. but what she says matters most is what he represents: “a whole-scale generational shift.” She argued that the younger generation in Iran grew up after the revolution had already happened and had a different confidence about power.

In the account she gave, that confidence wasn’t theoretical. She said the generation fought the United States and Israel in Iraq. in Syria. and in Lebanon. and that. based on their battlefield experience. they believed they “won in those theaters.” She also said they learned how they could push back U.S. military operations—for example, from Iraq—so confrontation no longer carries the same fear.

Bajoghli contrasted that with what she called her description of the previous generation’s psychology. Their fathers. she said. came about in the 1960s and 1970s. were anti-imperialist. and fought against the shah and U.S. involvement in Iran’s affairs—but still carried “a level of respect for what US power meant” and “psychologically a sort of inferiority complex.”.

In her framing, the change in age cohorts has practical consequences. She said what has happened in Iran now is “Gen Xers and elder millennials now running the show. ” and she pointed to Iranian propaganda methods as evidence of their comfort with modern culture. When Rameswaram brought up “Lego AI videos” that she described as funny and framed as youth-oriented. Bajoghli responded that she sees the output as not contrived.

Her explanation was that Iran’s leadership is drawing from a generation that grew up online. She said there is a shift in who is shaping the country: leaders she describes as formed for the 21st century. rather than shaped in the 20th century. That distinction, she argued, feeds into how the regime plans to run the state.

Asked whether this new generation is more interested in advancing the revolution or governing, she said they are not interested in advancing the revolution in the way older leadership might have. “The revolution happened, it’s a fact,” she said. “Now they’re interested in governing a state.”

The war, in her view, put a spotlight on a younger technocratic class. She said this class was able to execute the war efficiently and in a way people could understand. She then cited what Iranians told her about the experience of living through it: “besides the sounds of the bombs. we didn’t feel like we were in war. There was no shortage of anything.”.

That, she said, is now the template the new generation is trying to apply—using the kind of technocratic competence that managed military affairs to run the country itself. The question she leaves hanging is whether they can deliver.

The war’s impact, Bajoghli argued, also reaches outward to the region’s security architecture. She said the United States began building its security posture in the Middle East starting with the first Gulf War. establishing permanent military bases in Arab Gulf regions and promising that U.S. bases would guarantee safety and draw Gulf states into the American fold with business opportunities and money.

What she says Gulf Arab governments learned after that is that American bases could become a liability when the United States starts a war without consulting them. She argued that the U.S. was not able to protect Gulf countries and their economies.

She emphasized the geographic reality that she says Americans overlook: Iran is “the size of Western Europe. ” and it is also “massive” in population. Gulf countries. she said. have to find a way to live with Iran. and that is no longer something they can count on being fixed by big-brother U.S. protection.

In her telling, Gulf states have started to adjust. She said they are making payments to Iran and finding ways to “co-live” with Iran without isolating it as in the past. In that view. the Persian Gulf region is transformed into a place where the Americans can’t “do whatever they want. ” and where Iran can reassert hegemony.

Bajoghli said Iran sees itself as having won the war. And because the generation she described is bolder, she said it is unlikely to retreat. “We’re not going to budge,” she said the new leadership acts as if it is saying. “If that means your economy is going to hurt more. fine.” She added that she frames the posture as a response to decades of economic pressure: “you’ve been hurting our economy for 47 years. We’re going to play a game of chicken and see who blinks first.”.

The peace agreement may open a formal channel between Washington and Tehran, but the experts’ account makes the stakes clear. The war did not simply rearrange tactics; it reshaped leadership. hardened regional bargaining power. and left multiple critical questions—especially around the nuclear program. the Strait of Hormuz. and the fallout risks from Israel’s war in Lebanon—still unresolved.

US-Iran peace agreement Iran nuclear program Strait of Hormuz Lebanon war Moshtaba Khamenei Ali Khamenei Middle East power balance Today Explained Narges Bajoghli Vali Nasr