Ayatollah Khamenei is long gone. It’s the Islamic Clerics that he established during the ’79 revolution is running the country, even if they have a president and an assembly to speak of. These clerics are the ones that promotes Islamic republic throughout Mideast and elsewhere. But they themselves are divided firstly between sunni and shiite, hard core and moderate who loves capitalism like Malaysia and Indonesia for they realize the importance of free trade and democracy.
In short Iran can be cornered and make them realize that a free capitalistic state is better than a dictatorial regime based on religion. America could always freeze their assets anytime of the day, any day of the week , twice on Sundays even.