Understanding Iran – RAND
The more that political actors and observers in the United States talk about the Islamic Republic of Iran, the more apparent it becomes that little is known about this uniquely complex polity. And this lack of knowledge transcends partisan and ideological boundaries—all interested players, regardless of their political leanings or underlying motivations, suffer from America’s collective ignorance about Iran. In part we can attribute this lack of knowledge to the fact that most Americans are denied sustained access to Iran. So, too, can we attribute it to the no less important fact that the Iranian system is cumbersome, unwieldy, complex, and hard to understand—all of which constitute an attribute, not a flaw, of the system’s design. The Iranian system is intensely driven by personality and, at the same time, subsumes very weighty institutions, both formal elements of the state and equally important nonstate actors. Physical access to Iran is thus only one key essential for understanding it. The other essential key is access to and insight into the workings of the system itself