Following Israel’s attack on Iran and the activation of the snapback mechanism, Iran’s political and economic conditions have deteriorated day by day. According to official World Bank statistics, 36 percent of Iran’s population (approximately 30 million people) now live below the poverty line, though, In the latest figures, it reaches 40 million, about 47 percent. Moreover, Point-to-point inflation reached 50 percent in December 2025. Meanwhile, the Iranian rial continues to lose value on a daily basis. The average monthly wage of a worker in Iran is about $138.
These dire economic conditions have led some analysts to propose the idea of “Iranian Deng Xiaoping”. But is such an idea truly plausible in Iran?
Shortly after the end of the 12-day war between Israel and the Islamic Republic, The National Interest published an article on July 11 titled “Why Iran Needs Its Own Deng Xiaoping to Survive“. The National Interest article argues that Iran needs a “Deng Xiaoping” to open up economically, reduce regional interventions, and align more closely with the West. The article emphasizes that the recent 12-day war was related to Iran’s nuclear program, and asserts that in order to save its economy, Iran must abandon its nuclear ambitions and cease hostility toward Israel and the United States. Similarly, an Economist piece emphasizes the potential economic and political gains if Iran follows a comparable path. The piece emphasizes that owing to the failure of its regional policies and the resulting economic collapse, Iranians want their own “Deng Xiaoping.
In critiquing these articles, the articles construct a simplified causal chain. Politics and development do not have linear causal relationships. Foreign investment is the result of stable domestic institutions and unity among key internal organs in pursuit of development, not merely a turn toward the West or friendship with the United States.
Without considering the conditions from which Deng himself emerged, or even Iran’s domestic conditions, the idea reduces Deng to a pragmatic, pro-Western figure. Deng did not become friendly with the US; rather, he managed tensions. Clearly, foreign policy is part of the internal balance of power. Power in Iran, unlike China in the 1970s, is not derived from a single unified party. More importantly, hostility toward Israel is not merely a matter of the IR’s foreign policy that can be easily altered; it constitutes a significant part of the IR’s identity and the structure of the regime itself. Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has previously said: “Confronting Zionism and its supporters is one of the fundamental pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s strategic policies.” As such, these sources of conflict cannot be resolved simply by the rise of a single individual, nor in the short term. These hostilities form an important component of the IR’s definition of regional security and its geopolitical strategy.
It is evident that the scenario envisioned by the authors bears little relation to the institutional complexities and political realities of power in Iran. The first article attributes Israel’s attack on Iran to the nuclear program, whereas it is widely acknowledged among Middle East analysts that the attack stemmed from strategic and geopolitical causes. In fact, the attack was largely due to breaking of the rules of the game it had previously been established by IR. The attack also functioned as a message to the region. The 12-day war should be understood in relation to regional hegemony, not the nuclear program, as the article claims. A clear indication of this can be seen in Israel’s strikes on sites that were neither nuclear facilities nor missile launchers, but rather ordinary military and training bases. Most of these criticisms also apply to The Economist’s article.
As is evident, the core of this idea is likewise more a form of advocacy and wishful thinking than an analysis grounded in reality. The claim that Iranians desire their own Deng Xiaoping represents an emotional projection of the views of a minority of political analysts based outside Iran, rather than an assessment grounded in reliable field data from Iranian society. This perspective possesses greater media appeal than analytical clarity regarding Iranian public opinion.
More strikingly, both articles emphasize that in order to reduce tensions and lift sanctions, the IR should revise its nuclear policies as a precondition for Western orientation and economic growth. As far as Iran is concerned, the core issue for the US is Iran’s uncontainability and its position outside the framework of the Western order. The concern of the US and the West is the regional role and position of the IR, something Israel cannot tolerate, not its nuclear program.
Ideas of the “Iranian Deng Xiaoping” often draw their appeal from the power of analogy. The world of politics is not one of neat comparisons; ideas only carry meaning when they align with the realities of power, interests, and constraints. Such analogies often rest less on the foundations of actual political dynamics and more on their theoretical elegance or rhetorical allure.
From an International Perspective, Deng Xiaoping’s reforms cannot be understood in isolation from the bipolar structure of the international system during the Cold War. These reforms emerged within a context in which the United States, as one of the two dominant poles of the international system, sought strategic alignment with China against the Soviet Union. Consequently, China’s economic opening not only faced no resistance from Washington but also aligned with U.S. geopolitical interests. The U.S benefited from Deng’s reforms insofar as they pulled China away from the Soviet bloc and altered the balance of power in favor of the West.
By contrast, Iran’s position in today’s international system is fundamentally different. Rather than functioning as a strategic counterweight to a larger rival, Iran itself is perceived as a challenge to the prevailing Western-led order. As a result, unlike China under Deng, economic reforms in Iran do not generate strategic value for the U.S and are instead largely framed within a policy of containment and constraint. This structural divergence renders comparisons between Deng Xiaoping and the prospect of replicating his model in Iran fundamentally misleading.
From an economic perspective, Iran’s economy has been damaged more by domestic financial and banking corruption, embezzlement, and rent-seeking structures than by sanctions. Thus, contrary to the claims of the aforementioned articles, sanctions are not an effective pressure tool but rather a source of wealth for many hardliners and influential decision-making beneficiaries, while economic transparency threatens their interests. With some caution, one might argue that Iran needs not the Western-preferred version of Deng Xiaoping, but rather an authoritarian modernizing leader with Bonapartist tendencies.
From a sociological standpoint, imagining Deng Xiaoping for Iran is somewhat simplistic. Iranian society today is vastly different from Chinese society in the 1970s. While Chinese society at that time was exhausted by the Cultural Revolution, it was nevertheless homogeneous and firmly under the control of the Communist Party. Iranian society today, by contrast, is pluralistic and multi-voiced (though not necessarily powerful or politically effective). Intellectuals and the middle class play a far more prominent role in Iran’s social, cultural, and even political spheres than they did in China at that time.
Politically, while centers of power in Iran may be centralized in decision-making, they are fragmented in the implementation and exercise of power. Multiple interpretations of central policies often emerge, and diverse voices exist inside and outside Iran regarding power and authority. In China, by contrast, all institutions and organs, including the military, were subordinate to a single, powerful party. Deng Xiaoping famously said:”it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or yellow, as long as it catches mice“. In Iran, however, the cat has been trained such that if it catches mice, it may be punished. Loyalty matters more than efficiency. The priority is survival and control, not problem-solving. This is precisely what proponents of an Iranian Deng Xiaoping overlook.
Having said that, the emergence of any Deng figure in Iran would face opposition from hardline groups. The rise of an Iranian Deng would not only threaten the interests of these groups but would also target the identity and nature of the IR’s political regime itself. This is because a significant portion of the regime’s identity is defined through opposition to the West and the US. It is not unreasonable to suggest that hardline groups have already preemptively neutralized any potential Deng. He represented the entire society and pursued reform to prevent the collapse of governance, as the party was the primary decision-maker. In Iran, however, reforms and economic opening would cause the principal decision-makers to lose, because their legitimacy is tied to hostility toward the West and the preservation of the status quo.
In conclusion, despite the insistence and emphasis of these analysts on reformism, there is no precise evidence or reliable field data demonstrating whether the Iranian public would accept such externally prescribed reforms. By reducing Iran’s crisis to an individual-centered and foreign-policy-centered issue, this idea fails to grasp the core problem: the IR resists change not because of a lack of economic pragmatism, but due to its logic of survival, institutional structure, and political identity. Within such a framework, meaningful economic reform is not a complement to political stability but a direct threat to power networks. Thus, imagining the emergence of a Deng Xiaoping who could simultaneously preserve the existing order while transforming its foundations contains an irreconcilable contradiction. Iran’s problem is not the absence of a Deng; it is a structure that renders any Deng impossible from the outset.
