Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, I have watched and listened to nearly every piece of news coverage and analysis from U.S. policymakers, pundits, and the media. What continues to puzzle me is how often the Islamic Republic is treated as a rational government operating under conventional norms. The Islamic Republic is a cult, not a predictable government.
We hear constant talk of engaging or “negotiating” with its current leadership, distinguishing between “moderates” and “hardliners,” using intermediaries such as Pakistan, and sending American negotiators to Islamabad to meet with representatives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The problem is that much of this analysis misunderstands the worldview of those who actually wield power in Iran.
I learned something about that worldview during the nearly six years (2018 – 2023) I spent as an American hostage in Iran.
The lesson began almost immediately. At around 2:00 a.m. one morning, after agents of the IRGC Intelligence Organization dragged me from my bed, I was taken to the office of a friend, a place I had visited many times. The agents began ransacking it.
At one point, I asked to use the bathroom. Two armed guards accompanied me. I used a urinal, and they escorted me back to the office. A few minutes later, I overheard one of them telling another agent, with apparent astonishment: “These guys piss in a sink against the wall!” An intelligence officer of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had apparently never seen a urinal.
It was a small, almost comical moment in what was otherwise a terrifying first night of what turned out to be 1975 nights of torture, fear, and uncertainty. But it stayed with me because it was my first indication that the men holding me inhabited a world very different not only from mine but also from those of the West.
During my imprisonment in Evin, I encountered regime insiders, arrested by the very regime they had helped bring to power and sustain, who gave me further insight into the skewed world they inhabited and the prism through which they viewed the rest of the world.
In Section 2A, the IRGC’s maximum interrogation facility, we sometimes used newspapers as makeshift placemats to eat our meals on the floor. A cellmate of mine, a former IRGC Quds Force member imprisoned on alleged espionage charges, warned me that eating off a newspaper could unintentionally constitute blasphemy. Somewhere in that edition, he explained, the word “Allah” might be printed. By placing food on the paper, I could unknowingly desecrate the name of God.
Another cellmate offered an even more revealing window into this worldview. He was the former head of security at the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a real insider in the regime. Haji, as they all want to be called, explained to me that the universe consisted of seven floors. The seventh and highest floor, he said, was where God placed his prophets, their closest disciples, and those who had lived truly pious lives. Haji was an interesting messenger for this particular theology. He had also served as a corrupt facilitator for a “businessman” who obtained a €500 million unsecured loan from Iran’s Central Bank and then wired nearly all of the money overseas—with Haji’s assistance. Now Haji was my cellmate in Section 2A.
Out of curiosity and partly because I wanted to understand how far Haji’s worldview extended, I asked him, “On which floor would someone like Alexander Fleming end up?” Haji looked at me blankly. “Who is he?” I explained that Fleming discovered penicillin, one of the most consequential medical discoveries in human history, and that his work had saved countless lives around the world—including countless Muslims.
Haji did not hesitate. “He would go to Hell,” he said. “He was not a Muslim.”
His answer gave me vertigo. Here was a man who believed deeply in a moral universe divided into seven levels, with eternal salvation reserved for the properly devout, yet who had himself been a corrupt conduit in a massive financial theft from the people of Iran. And in his moral accounting, a man whose discovery had saved millions was nevertheless condemned to eternal damnation because he belonged to the wrong faith.
These experiences may sound anecdotal, even bizarre. But they matter because ideology is not an abstraction in the Islamic Republic. It shapes how the regime’s insiders understand morality, diplomacy, legitimacy, the West—and even the value of human life. And it is what makes the regime a cult rather than a traditional government.
Now consider the people who have risen—and continue to rise—through this system. One of the most important is Mohsen Rezaee, whose career spans virtually the entire history of the Islamic Republic. Rezaee joined the newly created Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after the 1979 revolution. In 1981, at just 27, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the IRGC. When Rezaee finally left command of the IRGC in 1997, he did not leave the regime’s inner circle. He became secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, a powerful institution that advises the Supreme Leader and arbitrates disputes within the Islamic Republic.
And now Rezaee is back at the very center of power. A few weeks ago, he was appointed secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and named Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s representative on that body. The council sits at the heart of Iranian decision-making on national security, war, and foreign policy.
His appointment matters because Rezaee has never been particularly shy about sharing his views with the world. In 2015, while discussing the possibility of an American military attack on Iran, Rezaee proposed an extraordinary solution to Iran’s economic problems: take at least 1,000 Americans hostage and demand billions of dollars for their release. Years later, in 2021, while running for president, he again spoke openly about taking Americans hostage.
For someone who spent nearly six years as an American hostage of the Islamic Republic, I find such statements especially hard to dismiss as mere rhetoric. They reveal something fundamental and odious about the system. In most governments, suggesting that the kidnapping of anyone could become an instrument of economic or foreign policy might end a political career. In the Islamic Republic, it did not prevent Rezaee from continuing his ascent through the highest levels of the state. Today, the former IRGC commander who publicly entertained the idea of taking Americans hostage sits at the center of Iran’s national-security establishment.
Then there is Hossein Taeb, a hardline cleric and longtime intelligence operative whose career offers another revealing glimpse into how power actually works within the Islamic Republic. Taeb commanded the Basij paramilitary organization during the violent suppression of the 2009 Green Movement, when millions of Iranians took to the streets after the disputed presidential election. He was subsequently promoted to become the first head of the expanded IRGC Intelligence Organization, the most powerful intelligence apparatus operating alongside—and often in competition with—Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence. He remained in that position for nearly thirteen years.
But Taeb’s significance extends beyond the offices he has held. For decades, he has been closely associated with Mojtaba Khamenei. Their relationship dates to the Iran-Iraq War, when both served in the IRGC. Over the years, Taeb became a key figure in the security and intelligence network around Mojtaba, and their names repeatedly appeared together in accounts of the regime’s efforts to suppress internal opposition. Today, that relationship matters more than ever. Mojtaba Khamenei is now Supreme Leader, and Taeb has once again been placed in command of the Basij—the enormous paramilitary organization the Islamic Republic has long relied on to maintain internal control and suppress unrest.
This is not merely history to me. According to one of my interrogators, Taeb (AKA Haj Maysam) was present at two of my most brutal interrogation sessions in April 2018, including my mock execution. I remember him not as a name in an intelligence report or a photograph in a newspaper article, but as a man who stood within the machinery that held me hostage.
Today, both men are once again at the center of that machinery. Rezaee holds one of the Islamic Republic’s most important national-security posts. Taeb has returned to lead the Basij. Mojtaba Khamenei, with whom both men have longstanding ties, now sits at the apex of the system.
These are not rogue actors operating on the margins of the Islamic Republic. Nor are they relics of an earlier revolutionary era that Iran has gradually moved beyond. They are the system, and they are once again being entrusted with its protection.
Yet the clearest lesson I received about that system’s worldview came not from a senior official but from one of the men who interrogated me. Several months after my arrest, after I had endured hundreds of hours of brutal questioning, my lead interrogator had seemingly run out of questions, and I had run out of answers. We were both exhausted by the madness of it all. We sat in silence in the interrogation room. He pulled a phone from his pocket. On the screen was a photograph of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He swiped the image away, tapped the phone, and Koranic verses in Arabic began to play. He sat about a yard from me, across a small metal table that separated us. He was in his mid-thirties. By then, I had learned that he was married and had children.
Several minutes passed. Then I noticed tears sliding down his cheeks. For a moment, I wondered if something had happened to one of his kids. Finally, I asked if he was all right. He looked up at me and said: “I can’t wait to become a martyr.” I had no response and was completely dumbfounded. That moment has stayed with me ever since.
In Washington, it is tempting to dismiss rhetoric about martyrdom, religious purity, and the “Great Satan” as political theater—a vocabulary meant for domestic consumption while supposedly pragmatic men conduct the real business of diplomacy behind closed doors.
My experience taught me otherwise. That does not mean every Iranian official thinks the same way, nor does it mean diplomacy should never be attempted. It does mean that American policymakers should stop assuming that the men who dominate the Islamic Republic weigh costs and benefits, compromise, and survival exactly as Western officials do.
For decades, Washington has repeatedly sought the elusive Islamic Republic’s “moderates” who are supposed to transform the regime from within. Analysts construct elaborate theories about factions and personalities, sometimes overlooking the core ideology that binds the system together.
Rivalries certainly exist within the Islamic Republic. Disagreements over tactics, money, power, and personalities persist. But tactical disagreement should not be mistaken for fundamental ideological divisions or moderation. Nor should we assume that because a particular course of action appears irrational or self-destructive to us, the men making decisions in Tehran will necessarily see it the same way.
The Iranian people understand this distinction better than many outsiders. They have lived under this system for nearly half a century and have repeatedly risked their lives to challenge it. American policymakers should listen more carefully to them. They should also remember something else when sitting across the negotiating table from representatives of the Islamic Republic.
I once sat three feet from one of those men in a locked interrogation room in Section 2A of Evin prison. He had a wife. He had children. He had a career. He had a life waiting for him outside those walls. And what brought tears to his eyes was the joy of giving it all up. He could not wait to become a martyr.
Emad Shargi,
American Businessman
Hostage of the Islamic Republic (2018 – 2023)
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