Iran: The Onion State

by May 2026

Understanding Iran requires moving beyond conventional analytical frameworks, which have too often led to strategic misreadings of the country’s complex system. In this in-depth analysis published in the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, Iranian-French author and filmmaker Raghu Kondori offers a powerful metaphor: that of an “onion state,” made up of successive layers of power, in which visible institutions represent only one part of a far deeper architecture.

Rahgu Kondori
Rahgu Kondori is an Iranian-French author and president of the Shahvand Think Tank. He is the author of The End of Political Islam, Iran’s Ethical Renaissance, The Circle Methodology, and Triadic Dialectic. His work focuses on Iran, democratic transition, political culture, and geopolitics across the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia. He currently resides in Taiwan, where he researches the cultural and civilizational foundations of democracy.