Ayatollah Khamenei’s Strategies for Political Engagement with the “Gray Stratum” in the Realization of Islamic Governance

In people-based political systems, a strategic and persistent challenge is engaging a segment of society known in political discourse as the “gray stratum.” This stratum comprises citizens who neither possess full ideological loyalty to the ruling structure nor belong to the ranks of radical opponents; rather, they adjust their political and social positioning at various junctures on the basis of rational assessment and cost–benefit calculation. In the Islamic Republic of Iran—whose legitimacy rests on a dynamic bond between state and people—the gray stratum plays a decisive role in political developments, electoral participation, and the balance of forces at critical moments. Despite this group’s importance, there exists a notable gap in precise knowledge of strategies for engaging it, especially within the framework of Islamic governance. Four decades of Ayatollah Khamenei’s leadership show that, to preserve the bond with this stratum, he has employed patterns beyond traditional mobilization and one-way propaganda, proceeding on the basis of dialogue-oriented rationality. The central problem of this research is to identify the components of these strategies, trace how they have evolved within the country’s social and political transformations, and assess their impact on the continuity of legitimacy and the effectiveness of Islamic governance. The main objective is to identify, classify, and explain Ayatollah Khamenei’s strategies for political engagement with the gray stratum and to analyze their role in realizing Islamic governance. This objective is pursued along four subsidiary axes: redefining the concept of the gray stratum within the context of the Islamic Republic’s social and discursive transformations; examining the trajectory of the Leader’s strategies from the 1990s to the 2020s in response to changes within this stratum; extracting overarching principles and patterns of engagement—including features such as gradual persuasion, soft boundary-drawing, and dialogue with diverse groups; and, finally, evaluating the capacity of this pattern to serve as an indigenous model in comparative studies of religious governance in plural societies. The method is descriptive–analytical, employing Jürgen Habermas’s framework of “communicative action,” which rests on
the logic of understanding, communicative rationality, and the legitimacy of political discourse. Data were collected through library research by studying Ayatollah Khamenei’s statements, speeches, stances, and communicative practices from 1989 to 2023. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used to probe semantic layers and to reveal communicative mechanisms, clarifying how these strategies have been formed and evolved at discursive, institutional, symbolic, and behavioral levels. During analysis, time periods were delineated according to major political and social shifts (such as the end of the war, the reform era, the rise of cyberspace, and post-2021 developments), and each period was examined with indicators such as mode of societal communication, message-delivery tools, and the level of public participation. The results show the following trajectory of strategic evolution: in the 1990s—a transition from rhetorical mobilization to rational persuasion, as the growing middle class and changing social expectations prompted a shift from affective/ideological mobilization to rational dialogue that interpreted political and religious concepts in terms accessible to the hesitant; in the 2000s—managing cleavages and preserving a space for mutual understanding amid polarization, with emphasis on national unity, rearticulation of foundational revolutionary concepts, and creating venues for dialogue among diverse currents so that boundary-drawing would not bar critics from participation; in the 2010s—responding to the transformations of cyberspace by re-creating the message in digital environments, promoting media literacy, and practicing multilayer persuasion; and in the 2020s—rebuilding social capital at the micro scale by prioritizing face-to-face dialogues with elites, youth, and small social groups over macro-oriented approaches amid declining political participation and public trust. Ultimately, the study identifies six overarching strategies as the foundation of the Leader’s thought in Islamic governance: (1) gradual persuasion and staged interpretation of political concepts—adjusting the meaning and narrative of key notions (such as independence, progress, and resistance) to social conditions and mental horizons to preserve value-based linkage; (2) soft boundary-drawing and minimal exclusion—distinguishing critique from subversion to preserve the broadest possible circle of belonging and to prevent the exclusion of the hesitant; (3) attention to audience agency—recognizing the gray stratum as analytical and meaning-making,
to be addressed with a language of respect and reasoning; (4) conceptual flexibility—reproducing concepts commensurate with socio-political transformations without departing from foundational principles; (5) message management in a plural media environment—using diverse tools and formats to convey meaning effectively; and (6) maximal inclusion and minimal rejection in line with the moral-political logic of the ʿAlawī tradition—emphasizing engagement, listening, and mutual understanding as the basis of legitimacy-building. Comparative examination indicates that these are not temporary tactics but elements of a systematic communicative logic for reconstructing a shared language with Iran’s multilayered, evolving society—a logic that locates the continuity of legitimacy and social stability in meaningful, dialogue-centered engagement with the gray stratum and offers a model with potential for indigenization in other plural Islamic societies.