Iran’s Anti-Western ‘Blueprint’ for the Next 50 Years

Khamenei’s latest guidelines for Iranian culture and governance focus on resisting any efforts to reform the regime’s decision-making tendencies, writes Mehdi Khalaji for the Washington Institute. 

On October 14, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei released a draft of the “Islamic-Iranian Blueprint for Progress,” a document that outlines his vision for the next half century. The final version of this blueprint is not expected to be released for months, so publicizing a draft now may be an attempt to address some of Tehran’s current difficulties, including increased U.S. pressure, consecutive economic shocks, and mounting public suspicion about the regime’s durability and legitimacy.

At their core, the document’s prescriptions reveal Khamenei’s two-pronged vision for achieving regional, even global, supremacy: first, total Islamization of all facets of life, which means continuing to resist Western notions of international order, politics, and culture; second, the use of advanced scientific achievements to become technologically self-reliant. In short, the regime seems to be placing its bets on an even deeper marriage of fundamentalist ideology and modern technology.

Read the full article from the Washington Institute