resistance

Almost fifty years after the revolution in 1979 that changed the political landscape of Iran, Iran is at the crossroads of its history, which is defined by economic pressures, social pressure, and the changing geopolitical environment. The Islamic Republic was constructed as a combination of revolutionary ideology, anti-Western response, and promise of social justice. In the present day, although the ideological framework is still maintained, the sustainability of that framework is being strained increasingly by the structural economic pressures of the day, generational shifts, and changing regional hegemony.

On the economic front, Iran is continually constrained by global sanctions and inefficiency in its structure. Withdrawal by the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the reimposition of massive sanctions in 2018 have cut off much of the oil exports of Iranian oil, banking, and foreign investment flows. The country works well under its economic potential despite the fact that Tehran has been able to sustain limited oil sales, especially through discounted sales to China and through surrogate routes. The inflation rate has been above 40 percent during the recent years, the Iranian rial is falling drastically, and unemployment among the youth is also a burning issue. It is the middle and lower classes that are directly impacted by these economic pressures and that pose a legitimacy challenge that cannot be solved only through rhetorical means of revolution.

The internal landscape is a manifestation of long-term frustration. Frequent demonstrations regarding fuel prices, the state of the economy, and social liberation indicate the growing disparity between state discourses of resistance and the realities that the citizens encounter. The newer generation born after the revolution has lost any connection with the revolutionary memory of 1979 and perceives governance less as ideologically symbolic and more based on economic performance and individual opportunity. The policy employed by the state has been based on the repressed handling of dissent, which consists of the limitation of the mobilization of protests and the prevention of the collapse of the system. Although this is a way of maintaining short-term stability, it does not deal with structural issues like brain drain, capital flight, falling purchasing power, and diminished faith in long-term economic potential.

The main political quandary is consequently a legitimacy transformation quandary. In the past, the Islamic Republic gained legitimacy through revolutionary mobilization, religious control, and confrontation with the external hostilities, especially the United States and Israel. Nevertheless, the contemporary politics demands more and more performance-based legitimacy—providing economic growth, stability, and material changes in the quality of life. The conflict between ideological stability and realistic adjustment is the characteristic of the contemporary crossroads of Iran.

Iran is geopolitically a country that exists in the complex web of pressures. The United States is still the main external agent, which affects the Tehran strategic calculations. The policy of Washington is alternating between the engagement of diplomacy and coercion, yet the ultimate goal is the same as it is: avoiding the possibility of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons competence and reducing its impact in the region. In Tehran, it will need negotiations that will help soften sanctions and stabilize the economy, but any deal will not collapse under the perception of submission over matters of sovereignty, ballistic missile potential, and relations with the region.

Meanwhile, the nuclear and missile programs in Iran are considered to be existential threats to Israel. The shadow struggle that has been there for a long time, including cyber attacks, precision attacks, espionage, and proxy wars, has heightened strategic mistrust. The intensity of this rivalry is shown by the fact that Israel has been carrying out its operations within Iran and against Iran-related targets in Syria. Any intensification would attract Gulf states and disrupt world energy supply, especially through the Strait of Hormuz, which is a choke point in the oil markets of the world. Even minor confrontations will have a global economic impact, as Iran is strategically placed in the important maritime paths.

The regional policy of Iran has focused on the establishment of strategic depth by alliance and coalition with non-state actors and supportive governments within Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. This system becomes a deterrence and leverage factor, making it difficult to engage in a direct military strike on the territory of Iran. Geostrategically, this doctrine of forward defense has enhanced the bargaining power of Iran. But it is likewise causing tension with the other Arab countries and creating the impression of destabilization in the region. The recent diplomatic thaw between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which was facilitated by China, shows that both sides noticed that continued confrontation is expensive in terms of both economics and strategy.

Iran is geographically at one of the most strategic points of Eurasia. It connects the Persian Gulf with Central Asia, the Caucasus, and South Asia. The International North-South Transport Corridor is one of the major trade routes that can make Iran a major transit route between India and Russia and Europe. This geo-economic location, in theory, has colossal prospects of being rolled into new multipolar trade systems. Sanctions and political isolation in reality prevent full access to the global markets. The latter can be said to be strategic convergence, as Iran was brought closer to Russia, especially after the war in Ukraine, as a result of Western pressure. But such convergence also subjects Tehran to secondary sanctions and makes it less flexible in its East-West balancing.

Iran—Concerns about the nuclear problem continue to be the major pivot of the external affairs. Tehran maintains that its nuclear program is nonviolent and has indicated that it is free for verification. But the Western governments require more guarantees and wider negotiations, which can feature missile capabilities and regional operations. It is possible that a strictly limited nuclear deal will minimize the risks of immediate proliferation and alleviate the economic pressure, which might make the Iranian internal situation more stable. Nonetheless, such a deal may not help solve any underlying rivalries between the region but could simply freeze the situation unless there are larger regional de-escalation mechanisms. On the other hand, the inability to find any solution will lead to the further worsening of the economy and the possible military clash.

In a more geo-strategically global understanding, the balance of power between the Middle East and the rest of the world will be influenced by the course of Iran. In case Tehran manages to negotiate the lifting of sanctions and turns in the direction of economic integration with the Gulf states, it will be able to shift from the resistance-focused model to the development-oriented state step by step. This would strengthen the stability of the region, safeguard the energy security, and minimize the motivation to intervene. It would also make the regional rivalry be based more on economic rivalry rather than military rivalry, especially in terms of infrastructure rivalry, trade corridor rivalry, and energy market rivalry.

Nevertheless, should the negotiations fail and the confrontation escalate, Iran might apply the asymmetric deterrence further, increasing the range of its missiles and extending proxy bases. That way would strengthen the preemptive stance of Israel and increase the presence of the US military in the Gulf. The escalation would disorient shipping routes, exert more volatility on oil prices, and disintegrate the security infrastructure in the region. To the surrounding Arab nations, which require diversifying and changing their economies, new warfare would destroy investment conditions and long-term strategies.

On the domestic front, economic resilience is what will sustain the strategic position of Iran. The political principle of endurance can only be stretched so far as inflation undermines the wages and the depreciation of currency undermines savings. This needs structural changes: enhancing transparency, welcoming foreign investment, and a non-hydrocarbon economy, and empowering the business sector. Foreign policy victories cannot entirely offset its dissatisfaction at home without economic change.

After all, the crossroads of Iran is not only ideological but also structural. The state has to strike a compromise between sovereignty and economic need, deterrence and diplomacy, and ideological identity and practical governance. Its strategic location means that its decisions will have a far-reaching impact, not only across its frontiers, but also on the energy markets of the world, the great-power politics, and the new security order of the Middle East. The future of Iran becoming a development-oriented regional power with full membership in multipolar networks or being a sanction-bound resistance state under continuous pressure will not only dictate the internal stability of the country but also the geopolitical orientation of a long-time conflict-ridden and strategically divided region.

If you’re reading this review of Gore Verbinski’s maniacal farce “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” in newsprint, congratulations on being a Luddite.

But if you’re reading it on a smartphone, then you’re one of the suckers that Sam Rockwell is hoping to reach when his unnamed time traveler barges into a late-night Los Angeles diner screaming, “I am from the future and all of this goes horribly wrong!” The patrons pause scrolling to glance at this unhinged, unwashed man wearing a crown of computer wires wrapped around his head like an IT messiah. Then they get a good look at his shoes when he stomps on their tables, kicking cheeseburgers as he tries to make these regular folks engage with the tech-pocalypse he swears is coming.

It’s a sermon we’ve heard plenty of times before and possibly even delivered ourselves. Coming from the ever-charismatic Rockwell, a lecture to stop wasting our lives online sounds no more insurmountable, only more immediate.

Half of the world will die, he foretells. The other half will be too distracted to notice. That is, unless a handful of strangers join him right now, right this moment, to fight for humanity’s cerebral freedom. Unsurprisingly, volunteers don’t raise their hands. (The one eager guy who does has failed him too often in other scenarios.) But Rockwell’s time traveler — he really is one — is used to a firewall of resistance. He’s given this speech at this diner 117 times. Some combination of the 47 people in it is fated to succeed.

That opening scene sounds as if an AI merged “The Terminator” with “Groundhog Day.” True, Matthew Robinson’s funny, savage and surprising script doesn’t downplay its inspirations. (He even lets Rockwell rip off Indiana Jones’ line about snakes.) But the screenplay gets so intricate and angry — and so shamelessly ambitious — you can’t believe someone in today’s Hollywood was willing to put up the money to get it made. Even helmed by proven hitmaker Verbinski of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, it’s a feat akin to convincing someone to fund a skyscraper-sized cuckoo clock that has a bird that pops out and heckles the crowd.

Eventually, a dubious crew enlists: public school teachers Mark and Janet (Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz), grouchy ride-share driver Scott (Asim Chaudhry), assistant Boy Scout leader Bob (Daniel Barnett), jittery mom Susan (Juno Temple) and forlorn Maria (Georgia Goodman), who keeps sighing that all she wanted was a slice of pie. Rockwell also impulsively yokes in Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a grungy girl in a princess dress, who seems to be on her own suicide mission. The actors are mostly just pegs in a complicated plot, but they snap into place well.

The man from the future doesn’t have a plan — and worse, he considers himself the only person who isn’t expendable. The others can die (and do). As the group shuffles toward catastrophe, Verbinski intercuts their mission with flashbacks to their civilian lives. Their ordinary days, the digital indignities they’ve borne, that’s where Verbinski really gets mean.

The film’s feints and twists are fabulous as they explore how the internet’s promise has soured. One plotline involves a corporate brainstorm to make people love and nurture their own talking adbot, essentially a human-sized Tamagotchi. In another, school shootings have become such an epidemic that when Temple’s Susan gets summoned to identify her ninth-grader’s corpse, the other grieving mothers at the station calmly chitchat about traffic until one glances over at her nonchalantly and says, “First time?”

At first, the not-so-original idea that phones have turned children into zombies is a Romero-style parody of brain rot. (The young actor Cassiel Eatock-Winnik has a great scene as a vicious teen who stares down one of her elders and says, “You’re 35? That’s, like, older than most trees.”) But Verbinski reveals an unexpected angle of attack: Here, society has groomed the next generation to behave like machines. We don’t know why, exactly, but we can imagine a few reasons.

Even coping mechanisms take fire. Susan meets more parents who’ve snapped under the strain and become nihilistic trolls raising their daughter to be toxic so it won’t matter as much if she dies. Another character is quick to insist that everything he’s looking at — the walls, the people — is a facade. A 20-something gig worker named Tim (Tom Taylor) wants to permanently live in a VR simulation. His story is a little rushed but we get the idea that Tim’s not a jerk, just an idealist who can’t handle the tawdriness of the 21st century. As he puts it, “Why would I choose this world over that one?”

Verbinski doesn’t say much outright about the creeping concern that we’re living in a highly surveilled, aggressive and unpredictable police state. He’s able to make that point without words when cops arrive and our heroes-slash-hostages, none of whom have yet done anything worse than skip out on their bill, all assume the itchy trigger finger of the law will shoot them on sight. (And they’re right.) He also makes an ominous refrain of “Thank you for your service.”

It’s easier to howl at a classic like “Dr. Strangelove,” which mocked the leaders giddyuping the planet’s destruction, than at a present-day satire where we ourselves are the joke. As with “Idiocracy” (and eventually “Eddington”), our ability to fully appreciate this merciless, furious comedy might take a decade of remove. Even then, though, I won’t like James Whitaker’s cinematography, which goes for a deliberate ugliness but just looks dishwater drab.

“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” anticipates the audience’s resistance. We do think for ourselves and so we scour the movie for flaws that will justify the urge to roll our eyes. For example: Why does Rockwell let some characters die and not others? Is the movie just as shallow as its j’accuse of us? Some quibbles get answered. Larger questions are left coyly unresolved so that we leave the theater uneasy.

There are so many overwhelming ideas in “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” that, at over two hours, it does have the sense of a dissociative doomscroll. There’s even a plot point involving an algorithmic overlord that creates randomly generated armies: “Ghostbusters” with AI slop. The normie survivors try to convince themselves it might send something good, like they’re thumbing TikTok hoping for a treasure worth the time. Rockwell assures them it won’t. Nothing good will ever come. And what does arrive is so hellacious that it makes the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man look sweet.

The film is too cynical to take itself that seriously; Verbinski would roll his eyes at any thoughts and prayers it could do much good. Yet, anyone born with “19” at the start of their birthyear still remembers how it felt to leave the house without a black rectangle in their hands. That makes us all time travelers of a sort, too, beacons of an increasingly distant era in which it was possible to be unplugged.

But it’s OK if you’re on your screen right now. Just sit before a bigger one to see this film.