In a April 17, 2026 "Beyond the Ideological" Substack post, "The IRGC's Eschatological Gamble and the Arab World's Verdict," Zineb Riboua explains some important realities about how the Iranian regime's leadership – clerical and Revolutionary Guards – or what's left of them think about the world and their role in it.

As U.S. negotiators head back to talks in Islamabad, Pakistan to engage yet again with their Iranian counterparts in what are likely the waning hours of a ceasefire agreement, it's critical they understand that those sitting across the table (or the hallway?) from them don't think as we do.

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Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish Muslim imam scholar who headed the Gulen Movement for decades, is no longer with us, having passed away at the age of 83 in October 2024 – but his extensive network of Islamic charter schools remains and looks to be expanding across the United States (U.S.).

Gulen was born in April 1941 in Turkey and rose to prominence as an imam and teacher in the jihadist Sufi neo-Ottoman tradition, closely aligned with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. Gulen taught from the perspective of the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, deriving much of that perspective from the teachings of another Sunni Muslim scholar, Said Nursi.

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Mostly unnoticed in the recent flurry of world events, from the lightning fast seizure and extradition of Venezuelan dictator, Nicolas Maduro, by the United States (U.S.) in a 2-3 January 2026 overnight raid to the ongoing U.S. and Israeli takedown of the Iranian regime, was an important meeting in Istanbul, Turkey of leadership figures, branches, and networks associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

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Mostly unnoticed in the recent flurry of world events, from the people's uprising in the streets of Iran to the lightning fast seizure and extradition of Venezuelan dictator, Nicolas Maduro, by the United States (U.S.) in a 2-3 January 2026 overnight raid, was an important meeting in Istanbul, Turkey of leadership figures, branches, and networks associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of these representatives came from Brotherhood groups in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, but others also represented Brotherhood chapters based in Europe.

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Iran has been convulsed with popular revolts since the 1979 overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as the Iranian people realized their drastic mistake in replacing a monarchy with a brutal theocratic dictatorship.

It's now been 47 years since the Ayatollah Khomeini flew back to Tehran to impose his Velayat-e Faqih vision for governance that flung a modern, Westward-looking population backward to the 7th century.

What followed has been a sequence of popular uprisings: the 2009 Green Movement, fuel protests in 2019, and the women-led hijab protests of the Women, Life, Freedom that began with the bludgeoning murder in police custody of Mahsa Amini in 2022.

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