I'd recommend Vali Nasr and Payam Mohseni's works.
But frankly, Iran as it stands today is structurally similar to pre-1976 PRC, and requires an Iranian "Deng Xiaoping", but the only reason Deng even got as far as he did was because the Sino-Soviet Split made the PRC an attractive partner against the USSR and because it took someone with the stature of Mao to host a "Nixon in China" moment, which made partnering with America politically palatable.
The key economic and political institutions in Iran (Army, IRGC, Bonyads) would need to be incentivized to flip to being pro-EU and pro-America in order to sustain the semblance of democracy and secularism because frankly, Russia, China, India, portions of the Gulf, and much of ASEAN is fine working with Iran as it stands today because it is a critical regional power.
Turkiye, the UAE, Qatar, KSA, and Pakistan are probably the best regional players to push a gradual re-opening of Iran.
But frankly, Iran as it stands today is structurally similar to pre-1976 PRC, and requires an Iranian "Deng Xiaoping", but the only reason Deng even got as far as he did was because the Sino-Soviet Split made the PRC an attractive partner against the USSR and because it took someone with the stature of Mao to host a "Nixon in China" moment, which made partnering with America politically palatable.
The key economic and political institutions in Iran (Army, IRGC, Bonyads) would need to be incentivized to flip to being pro-EU and pro-America in order to sustain the semblance of democracy and secularism because frankly, Russia, China, India, portions of the Gulf, and much of ASEAN is fine working with Iran as it stands today because it is a critical regional power.
Turkiye, the UAE, Qatar, KSA, and Pakistan are probably the best regional players to push a gradual re-opening of Iran.