Afshon Ostovar is a Robert A. Fox Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. He is author of “Vanguard of the Imam,” and is currently writing a book on strategic competition in the Middle East.
The height of Iran’s influence — at least as presently expressed through the IRGC — has probably passed. Whether we’ve entered a period of stasis or decline is as yet unclear, but the latter seems more probable.