For years, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader and ultimate powerbroker, has been insisting to his people that there would be no war with the United States or Israel. That claim was shattered when more than 1,000 Iranians were killed in June’s 12-day war. Now he warns against the country sliding into a “state of ‘no war, no peace.’” The diagnosis isn’t wrong—but refusing to confront hard choices is vintage Khamenei.

Rather than signal a strategic rethink, his latest reshuffles merely paper over factional rivalries. And instead of pushing harder for a diplomatic breakthrough while talks still sputter along, many officials in Tehran are clinging to the illusion that China and Russia will rescue Iran from Western pressure. That is hope, not strategy. And it leaves Iran’s fate in the hands of powers that have repeatedly shown they will never risk much on Tehran’s behalf.

For years, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader and ultimate powerbroker, has been insisting to his people that there would be no war with the United States or Israel. That claim was shattered when more than 1,000 Iranians were killed in June’s 12-day war. Now he warns against the country sliding into a “state of ‘no war, no peace.’” The diagnosis isn’t wrong—but refusing to confront hard choices is vintage Khamenei.

Rather than signal a strategic rethink, his latest reshuffles merely paper over factional rivalries. And instead of pushing harder for a diplomatic breakthrough while talks still sputter along, many officials in Tehran are clinging to the illusion that China and Russia will rescue Iran from Western pressure. That is hope, not strategy. And it leaves Iran’s fate in the hands of powers that have repeatedly shown they will never risk much on Tehran’s behalf.

The 12-day war with Israel and the United States should have been a wake-up call. Israeli—and later U.S.—strikes exposed glaring weaknesses in Iran’s air defenses and damaged parts of its nuclear infrastructure. The regime has not looked so fragile since 1979. Yet Tehran still insists on its sovereign right to enrich uranium; rejects limits on its missile program; and shows no intent to roll back proxy interventions in Lebanon, Yemen, or elsewhere that the United States, Israel, and Arab countries deem destabilizing. Amid crisis at home, President Masoud Pezeshkian is preparing to address the United Nations General Assembly this month. Supporters insist his visit cannot be another symbolic performance. What will it take for Tehran to embrace a much-needed strategic pivot?

Already judged by many as the weakest president in the Islamic Republic’s history, Pezeshkian is denounced by hard-liners as naive for calling for accommodation with Iran’s enemies. Although there is widespread appetite for change both in society at large and in the political elite around Pezeshkian, Khamenei keeps him on a short leash, and his calls for reform keep hitting walls. Yet Pezeshkian is not alone; figures........

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