The Hard Confrontation: The Logic of Zero and One

(Why One Cannot “Do Politics” with a Parasitic Oligarchy)

1. The Problem: When Politics Turns from “Managing Difference” into “Choosing Survival”

In the previous two articles, we looked at a house that has collapsed and turned into a crime scene, and at a society that, in a soft gas chamber, has developed a survival syndrome. This article addresses the next question: in such a situation, is “politics” in its usual sense even possible? Or is the relationship with the ruling structure in Iran of a different kind — one that can only be understood through a binary, zero‑or‑one logic?

Here, two intellectual frameworks enter the scene:

• Carl Schmitt, who defines politics as the distinction between “friend” and “enemy”.
• John Mearsheimer, who in “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics” ties the logic of survival to the “redistribution of hard power.”

The combination of these two helps us understand why, in confronting a parasitic oligarchy, the language of compromise and reform sooner or later reaches a dead end — and why confrontation is elevated from a mere tactic to a condition of survival.

2. Politics as Friend/Enemy: Schmitt and Recognizing the Nature of the Adversary

For Schmitt, politics, before it is a set of institutions and procedures, is a level of discernment: the essence of politics is the distinction between “friend” and “enemy” — not in the sense of personal hatred, but in the sense of recognizing a force that challenges the very possibility of your being. The political enemy is someone who, if they gain the upper hand, will deprive you not merely of power, but of the possibility of continuing your collective existence.

Regarding the Islamic regime in Iran, if we are honest, we must ask: how does this structure see the people? In the eyes of this ruler, is the citizen a “counterparty with whom one can talk,” a “subject of management,” or a “potential threat”?

When every minimal demand — from the right to choose one’s clothing to the right to protest — is coded as a “war against the foundations of the system,” the message is clear: the structure does not see society as a friend; it sees it as an “enemy,” an existential enemy that, if given a chance, would endanger the very existence of this parasitic oligarchy.

It is within this logic of enmity that:

• Every protest is interpreted not as a signal for reform but as a sign of “sedition”;
• Every attempt at participation, at the decisive moment, turns into an instrument for conferring legitimacy;
• And every small concession is withdrawn at the first wave of danger.

When, in the eyes of the ruler, you are an “enemy” at the existential level, any political language that defines itself on the basis of being a “critical partner” will sooner or later be left hanging in the air.

3. When the “Enemy” Has Already Defined You as the Enemy

One of the common illusions of the reformist era was that the relationship between the people and the Islamic regime in Iran could be understood as a relationship between “two rival political sides”: a state that is susceptible to pressure and a society that can force it to retreat. This conception was built on the assumption that, at the top, there is someone who, even if suspicious, still understands society as a part of itself.

But over time, reality revealed something else:

• Any independent organization was turned into a security threat;
• Every distinct and effective voice was either eliminated, bought off, or pushed into a powerless margin;
• And every official channel of change was blocked at the moment of seriousness.

This means that the ruler does not see society as a “partner,” but as a potentially hostile environment that must be continuously controlled, engineered, and — if necessary — cleansed. In such a relationship, asking “Should we consider the regime our enemy or not?” is somewhat late; it has long assumed you to be an enemy at the existential level.

In Schmittian logic, this situation turns politics into a zero‑or‑one choice:

• Either accepting the position of “a population managed through fear and drop‑by‑drop concessions”;
• Or entering a state of confrontation as a subject that says: “If you consider my survival an existential threat, then I no longer see you as part of the political game, but as an obstacle to the very possibility of politics.”

4. The Tragedy of Power: When Survival Is Tied to the Distribution of Hard Power

Mearsheimer, at the level of states, shows that in an anarchic environment, powers are compelled to seek an increase in their relative power in order to survive. Any power that can, tries to gain the upper hand, because only then can it free itself from the threat of complete elimination.

If we bring this logic down to the level of the relationship between Iranian society and the Islamic regime in Iran, a bitter picture emerges:

• To survive, the ruler must either seize or destroy every independent source of power (organization, wealth, narrative, social network);
• Society, if it wants to move beyond the role of a “managed population,” is compelled, in some way, to alter the balance of hard power as well — it cannot change the equation merely through the language of “rights” and “symbolic resistance.”

Here, “hard power” is not necessarily just tanks and guns; it includes:

• The capacity for real collective organization;
• The creation of networks that lie outside the regime’s full control;
• External supports that constrain the machinery of repression;
• And any instrument that can shift the cost of maintaining the status quo for the parasitic oligarchy from a tolerable level to an intolerable one.

Without some form of change in the distribution of hard power, a “request for change” resembles a prisoner’s request to the jailer to “lock the doors a little more loosely.”

5. Why One Cannot “Do Politics” with a Parasitic Oligarchy

“Politics,” in the soft liberal sense, is the art of managing conflicting interests within a shared framework: elections, parliament, media, lobbying, bargaining, compromise. All of these are built on the assumption that:

• The parties, at an existential level, recognize each other;
• No one seeks the complete annihilation of the other side;
• And everyone is, at least in words, committed to some common rules.

But with a parasitic oligarchy, we face something else:

• A structure whose survival is tied to the continued weakness of society;
• An order that, if the people became strong, independent, organized, and demanding, would logically have to either be transformed or collapse;
• A system that has structurally tied the “healthy life of the political community” to its own “death.”

In this situation, every “political” mechanism that appears to be active — from elections to dialogue — at the crucial moment turns into an instrument for neutralizing confrontation rather than an instrument for change:

• Elections are tolerated only so long as their outcome does not threaten the hard core;
• Parliament is permitted only so long as it does not cross the main red lines;
• The media are “free” only so long as they do not question the central narrative.

The moment any of these seeks to actually do something, it is translated from the political into the security realm and then rapidly shut down. The result is that “politics,” in the soft sense, exists at a theatrical level, but real decision‑making happens elsewhere. Classical political practice is no longer sufficient; the issue is not resolving disputes between citizens and the state, but resolving a contradiction between a political community and the oligarchy that has mounted itself upon it.

6. The Logic of Zero and One: To Be or Not to Be, Not This or That Way of Being

Once we reach this point, the logic of confrontation inevitably moves toward zero and one:

• Either this parasitic oligarchy is truly separated from the body of the political community (through collapse, deep structural transformation, or any other scenario);
• Or the political community continues to live in the soft gas chamber, with all the consequences described in the second article.

Here, the question is not “Which public policy is better?” or “Who should be the head of the executive branch?” The question is: should the structure that has turned Iran into a crime scene remain in place? Or must it be removed at an existential level so that the return of politics, in the real sense, becomes possible?

This is precisely the point at which any “reformist” project that refuses to confront this zero‑or‑one question becomes, structurally, part of the management of making the gas chamber more bearable: a bit more ventilation, without opening the window.

7. Hard Confrontation without Illusion: Managing the Risk, Not Denying It

Accepting a zero‑or‑one logic does not mean romanticizing violence and war. The risks of any hard confrontation are truly great:

• The risk of uncontrolled collapse;
• The risk of civil war;
• The risk of turning society into a playground for foreign powers.

But denying these risks does not eliminate another risk: the risk of the continuation of the current situation. If we are to be honest, we must weigh two kinds of death against each other:

• The possible death in a hard but limited confrontation;
• And the almost certain death in a gradual process of suffocation.

Rational hard confrontation means striving for:

• Maximum organization and minimum blind spontaneity;
• Maximum independence of decision‑making, along with a minimal but realistic use of external conflicts;
• And maximum clarity of goals: separating the parasitic oligarchy from the body of the political community — not blind vengeance, not replacing one oligarchy with another.

This article does not lay out the practical blueprint for such a confrontation; its task is to say this: if the structure has defined you as an “existential enemy,” and if its survival is tied to the continuation of your weakness, then continuing to use the language of soft politics without backing it with a change in the balance of power resembles reciting prayers in the prison corridor, not planning an escape.

8. Passage to the Fourth Article: The Ethics of Pulling the Trigger versus Cowardly Pacifism

The first two articles described the situation: a house that has become a crime scene, and a society in a soft gas chamber, afflicted with a survival syndrome. The third article showed that in such a situation, classical politics hits a structural wall, and that confrontation sooner or later escalates to the level of hard conflict, where the question is more “to be or not to be” than “to be this way or that way.”

The fourth article must move to an even more sensitive point:

• If hard confrontation is inescapable;
• If some kind of shock is necessary to get out of the gas chamber;
• Then how are the ethics of pulling the trigger to be defined?
• Where is the line between necessary intervention and irresponsible warmongering?
• What kind of pacifism, in practice, turns into complicity with the parasitic oligarchy?
• And how can one move beyond the language of “No to war” without falling into the trap of “Yes to any war”?

These are the questions that the rebellious spirit of Hitchens can help us articulate — precisely where the discussion of “pulling the trigger” is no longer about a personal desire for violence, but about the cost of postponing liberation.

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