When a government faces simultaneous pressure from foreign military threats, crippling sanctions, and internal legitimacy crises, it tends to reach for its most seasoned survivor. For the Islamic Republic of Iran, that figure is Ali Larijani, the former parliamentary speaker and long-time security chief who has quietly positioned himself as the regime's principal strategist at one of its most dangerous junctures.
According to reporting by the Sydney Morning Herald, Larijani has effectively become the operational centre of Iran's foreign and security policy, tasked with keeping the regime alive as it weighs two radically different futures: a diplomatic deal that could lift sanctions and stabilise the economy, or a confrontation with Israel and the United States that could threaten the government's survival itself.
The description of Larijani as a "Putin whisperer" is telling. He maintains one of Tehran's closest personal relationships with Moscow, a connection that has grown strategically vital as Russia and Iran have deepened their military and economic ties in the wake of Western sanctions on both countries. That relationship gives Iran a degree of geopolitical insulation, but it also complicates any Western diplomatic overture. Canberra may not have noticed, but Perth certainly did when Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade updated its Iran travel advisory last year, reflecting just how volatile the region has become.
Larijani's career spans four decades of Islamic Republic politics. He has served as head of state broadcasting, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and speaker of parliament. He is not an ideological firebrand. He is, by most serious assessments, a pragmatist operating within a deeply ideological system, which makes him both effective and difficult for Western governments to read.
That pragmatism cuts both ways. On one hand, it makes him the kind of interlocutor with whom diplomatic progress is at least conceivable. On the other, it makes him an enabler of the regime's harder edges, willing to manage repression when the alternative is instability. His record on human rights is not a clean one, and any analysis that frames him simply as a moderate reformer deserves scepticism.
The broader context is a regime under extraordinary strain. Iran's economy has been battered by successive rounds of sanctions, its regional proxy network has suffered significant losses, and domestic protests have repeatedly tested the government's grip on power. The International Atomic Energy Agency has continued to raise concerns about Iran's nuclear programme, with enrichment levels that have narrowed the technical gap to weapons-grade material. That reality is not lost on Israel or Washington.
From a centre-right perspective, the instinct here is straightforward: Iran's nuclear ambitions represent a genuine proliferation risk, and any deal must come with rigorous, verifiable constraints rather than diplomatic goodwill. The Abraham Accords reshaped the Gulf's strategic geometry, and a nuclear-armed Iran would unravel much of that progress. Sanctions, critics of engagement argue, should be maintained as leverage until concrete, monitored compliance is demonstrated.
The counterargument, and it deserves a fair hearing, is that decades of maximum pressure have not stopped Iran's nuclear advances. They have accelerated them. Analysts aligned with engagement strategies point out that the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, whatever its limitations, did impose measurable constraints that collapsed when the United States withdrew unilaterally in 2018. The United Nations and European signatories largely concurred that Iran had been complying at the time of withdrawal. The lesson drawn by some is that coercive diplomacy without a credible off-ramp simply hardens the regime's internal politics and strengthens figures like Larijani who argue that only self-reliance guarantees survival.
For Australia, this is not an abstract geopolitical puzzle. The Reserve Bank of Australia and Treasury have both flagged Middle East instability as a material risk to global oil prices and, by extension, domestic inflation. WA's export economy, which ships iron ore and LNG through sea lanes that pass within the region's zone of tension, has a direct stake in whether Iranian brinkmanship tips into open conflict.
What the national coverage sometimes misses is that a military escalation involving Iranian-linked forces in the Strait of Hormuz would hit WA's resource sector harder and faster than anywhere else in the country. The political calculus shifts significantly when you factor in that WA generates a disproportionate share of Australia's export revenue and that any supply-chain shock travels west before it hits the east coast news cycle.
The honest assessment is this: Larijani is neither a saviour nor a villain. He is a regime operator whose interests align with the Islamic Republic's survival rather than with any particular ideology or foreign preference. Whether he can broker a deal that satisfies enough of Washington, Tel Aviv, and Tehran's internal hardliners simultaneously is an open question. The evidence from past negotiations suggests it is extraordinarily difficult. The evidence from the alternative, continued escalation with a near-nuclear state, suggests it may be worth attempting anyway. Reasonable governments can disagree on the method; the urgency is harder to dispute. Australia's interest lies in a stable resolution, and DFAT's Iran policy should reflect that complexity rather than defaulting to either uncritical alignment with Washington or reflexive multilateralism.