MADRID – In the weeks since the United States and Israel launched their coordinated and illegal military campaign against Iran, a familiar cast of figures has reappeared across Western media platforms and policy institutes. They arrive as analysts, senior fellows, Iran specialists. Their titles confer the aura of scholarly detachment. They speak about escalation thresholds, deterrence calculations and government survival dynamics. Their tone is measured. Their language is technical. Their authority appears unquestionable.

In nearly every instance they share another credential. Before becoming scholars of Iran, they were officers in military intelligence.

This trajectory has become one of the defining features of contemporary knowledge production on Iran. Danny Citrinowicz spent twenty-five years in Israeli Defense Intelligence, including a period as head of the Iran branch. Today he holds positions at the Institute for National Security Studies and publishes analyses of Iranian strategy in Western outlets. Raz Zimmt, another veteran of Israeli military intelligence, directs the Iran program at the same institute and appears regularly in academic forums where his assessments circulate as authoritative expertise.

Their professional evolution follows a well-established pattern. The movement runs from the military bureaucracy to the research institute, from operational targeting to policy analysis, from the apparatus of violence to the production of knowledge about those upon whom that violence is exercised.

The figure of the soldier-turned-scholar performs an essential function within the contemporary architecture of strategic discourse. He transforms participation in conflict into epistemic authority over the society that conflict targets. The question is not whether these individuals possess expertise. Many of them have spent decades studying Iranian institutions, military capabilities and internal political dynamics. The question concerns the structure within which that expertise circulates and the silences that structure produces.

The soldier-scholar does not simply analyse Iran. He participates in a discursive system that renders permanent confrontation both intelligible and necessary.

The institutional ecology of positional superiority

The Institute for National Security Studies provides a revealing example of the institutional environment that sustains the soldier-scholar. Based in Tel Aviv and affiliated with Tel Aviv University, the institute produces policy-relevant research on regional security with particular emphasis on Iran and what it describes as the “Shiite axis.” Its researchers include former intelligence officials, retired generals and veterans of Israel’s security apparatus. Its reports circulate among policymakers in Jerusalem and Washington and help shape the frameworks through which Iran is interpreted in Western policy debates.

This arrangement reflects more than proximity to power. It reveals a deeper epistemic asymmetry. There is no Iranian research institute dedicated to analysing Israeli strategic doctrine with comparable institutional access to Western decision-making circles. No Iranian scholar appears regularly in American policy forums to interpret the factional politics of the Israeli security establishment. No theologian from Qom publishes widely cited analyses of Israeli nuclear policy.

The asymmetry is so complete that it often passes without comment.

Edward Said described a similar configuration in his analysis of Orientalism. The West could constitute the Orient as an object of knowledge because it occupied a position of unquestioned interpretive superiority. The Orient did not analyse the West in return. The relationship was structured as observation in one direction.

The soldier-scholar inhabits this positional advantage with particular clarity. He interprets Iranian strategy, yet Iranian scholars are rarely invited to interpret the institutions he once served. He speaks about Iranian intentions, yet Iranian perspectives remain largely absent from the policy conversations that determine how Iran is confronted.

This asymmetry shapes not only who speaks but also what counts as knowledge. When Western media seek explanations of Iranian behaviour during crises, they turn to former intelligence officers who once planned operations against the country they now analyse. Iranian scholars appear in a different role. They are asked about public mood, social attitudes or street-level reactions. They provide context rather than analysis.

The division of intellectual labour mirrors the division of geopolitical power. Some interpret strategy. Others are interpreted.

The performance of nuance

The authority of the soldier-scholar does not depend on overt advocacy. It emerges through the performance of analytical moderation. The language of contemporary strategic analysis emphasises balance, caution and complexity. Analysts warn against overconfidence, recognise unintended consequences and acknowledge that military pressure can produce outcomes opposite to those intended.

This tone creates the impression of distance from political agendas. Yet the framework within which analysis unfolds remains largely fixed.

Iran appears as a structural threat whose containment is taken for granted. The central questions concern tactics. How should pressure be applied. Which instruments of coercion might prove more effective. How escalation can be managed without triggering uncontrolled war.

The underlying premise that Iran must be confronted militarily rarely becomes the subject of inquiry.

This is how nuance functions as a stabilising mechanism within strategic discourse. Critiques remain internal to the system they examine. Analysts may argue that specific policies are ineffective or poorly designed, yet the broader architecture of confrontation remains intact.

What remains unexplored is the possibility that the framing of Iran as an existential threat may itself be part of a political construction sustained through decades of intelligence assessments, threat projections and strategic narratives.

The soldier-scholar operates within this construction even when he appears to critique it.

The effect is subtle but significant. Strategic discourse transforms the political ambitions of states into objective analytical problems. Military escalation becomes a question of optimisation rather than legitimacy. The use of force becomes a technical variable within a larger system of deterrence and counter-deterrence.

The analyst explains the conflict without interrogating the conditions that made the conflict possible.

The scholarship produced by soldier-scholars on Iran frequently reflects what some researchers describe as damage-centered knowledge production. Societies under study appear primarily through the lens of crisis, repression or internal dysfunction. Their political life becomes legible mainly through the weaknesses of the “regimes” that govern them.

Within this framework Iranian political agency becomes secondary to geopolitical utility. What disappears is the possibility of an autonomous Iranian political life not aligned with external intervention. These complexities struggle to find space within a discourse structured around strategic competition.

The current war has intensified this pattern. The killing of Iranian officials is frequently described in Western commentary as a blow “against authoritarianism.” The destruction of infrastructure becomes part of a broader narrative of pressure designed to produce political transformation.

In this narrative Iranian sovereignty rarely appears as a meaningful category. The violence itself becomes secondary to its presumed political consequences.

For the soldier-scholar, this framework also produces a form of epistemic blindness. When Iranian leaders emphasise deterrence as the central purpose of their missile and nuclear programs, this statement is often interpreted primarily as evidence of aggressive ambition. Yet the same doctrine can be understood as a rational response to decades of threats, assassinations and explicit calls for regime change.

The interpretation one adopts depends on the position from which the analysis is conducted.

Former intelligence officers who once planned operations against Iran are unlikely to view Iranian strategic doctrine through the lens of self-preservation. Their professional formation encourages a different perspective. Threats must be identified, categorised and neutralised. The possibility that those defined as threats might perceive themselves as defending national sovereignty remains largely absent from the analytic framework.

The colonial unconscious of strategic knowledge

The soldier-scholar phenomenon reflects a broader pattern within contemporary strategic studies. Military and intelligence officials frequently move into academic and policy institutions where their operational experience becomes the foundation of scholarly authority. This transition rarely requires a significant shift in intellectual orientation. The assumptions of the security state often travel intact into the realm of policy research.

This orientation contains a subtle colonial logic. The political future of Iran becomes a subject for strategic planning in institutions located thousands of kilometres away. Iranian actors appear within this planning primarily as variables rather than agents.

The soldier-scholar contributes to this logic through the production of knowledge that renders intervention conceivable. The knowledge produced is rarely false. It is selective. Certain questions become central while others disappear from the conversation.

Who decides the political future of a nation rarely appears among the strategic variables considered.

Wars eventually end. Military campaigns conclude, negotiations begin and diplomatic arrangements replace open confrontation. Yet the intellectual structures that made the war conceivable often persist long after the fighting stops.

The apparatus of expertise built around Iran will remain intact regardless of how the current conflict evolves. Policy institutes will continue to publish reports. Analysts will continue to appear in media discussions. The soldier-scholar will remain a central figure within this ecosystem of interpretation.

His authority will grow with each crisis.

What will likely remain unchanged is the asymmetry that defines the production of knowledge about Iran. Those who once planned military aggression against the country will continue to interpret its politics for Western audiences. Iranian scholars will continue to appear rarely in the institutional spaces where policy is debated.

The structure is durable because it reflects deeper relations of power. Expertise does not circulate in a neutral marketplace of ideas. It moves through institutions that determine which voices acquire legitimacy and which remain peripheral.

The result is an enduring architecture of erasure. The societies that experience war become objects of analysis rather than participants in the conversations that justify it.

To challenge this structure would require more than simply inviting Iranian voices into Western policy debates. It would demand a deeper transformation in the conditions under which knowledge about Iran is produced. Institutions would need to reconsider the criteria through which expertise is recognised and authority is granted.

Above all it would require acknowledging a simple principle. Those who live under the consequences of strategic decisions may possess forms of knowledge unavailable to those who design them.

Until that recognition occurs, the soldier-scholar will continue to occupy the centre of the conversation. He will interpret the societies his former institutions once targeted. His analysis will be praised for its sobriety and nuance. And the deeper asymmetry that gives his expertise its authority will remain largely invisible.