Can the Iranian Regime Survive?
A ground war is unlikely, but the U.S. and Israel have other ideas about how to bring the mullahs down.
By Walter Russell Mead
Can the Islamic Republic of Iran survive the waves of devastating attacks being launched around the clock by the Israelis and Americans?
Nobody knows.
Unlike Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya, Iran has a long record of success.
On Oct. 6, 2023, it appeared to be achieving its long-term goal of a durable hegemony in the Middle East.
Its proxies and allies dominated Iraq.
Bashar al-Assad seemed firmly in power in Syria.
Hezbollah held Lebanon’s destiny in its hands.
The Houthis had enough firepower to choke off navigation through the Red Sea, depriving Egypt of badly needed Suez Canal revenue and imposing costs on shipping and trade.
The mullahs were good at building alliances.
By supplying drones for Russia’s war on Ukraine, Iran gained close friends in Moscow.
Relations with China prospered.
Venezuela stood ready to assist with smuggling and gunrunning to support Iranian designs against the U.S. and its allies.
Most improbable, the Shiite theocracy of Iran had built strong relations with radical Sunni Islamists.
By taking advantage of their common desire to destroy Israel, the mullahs had become partners and patrons of Hamas, the Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Qatar, ideologically aligned with the brotherhood and diplomatically at odds with what it saw as an overbearing and threatening Saudi Arabia, was cooperating.
Every piece of this imposing structure was tenaciously and patiently constructed in the face of opposition from the Americans, Israelis and Saudis.
Alternately bamboozling, outmaneuvering, intimidating and sometimes simply murdering their opponents, the Iranian mullahs built a regional power network on the twin foundations of unbending rejection of Israel’s existence and unyielding opposition to American power.
The architects of this power system may not command our love, but they deserve our wary respect.
The perceptions of Western state bureaucracies, think tanks and pundits still reflect reluctant recognition of a quarter-century of Iranian advance under the theocratic regime.
Yet if the rise to peak Iranian power in 2023 was laborious, the descent from it has been swift.
Besotted with success, the mullahs overreached, and since Oct. 7 they have watched one stronghold after another fall to Israeli counterattacks boosted by American support.
Now the surviving mullahs and officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps cower in bunkers, afraid of their own cellphones.
The coalition against Iran, including Germany, Canada and even Qatar, reflects a high degree of international consensus that the mullahs belong back in the mosques.
The question that world leaders now need to examine is whether Iran’s war strategies reflect the subtle and effective blend of insight and ruthlessness that lifted the country to the heights of power, or the folly and delusion that brought it to its current low ebb.
The confusing answer, so far, is that they reflect a mix, and the fate of President Trump’s Gulf war depends on how the different elements work out.
Iran went into the war with two goals.
First, it hoped to spread enough devastation in the region to separate its neighbors from Washington and block Middle Eastern oil from world markets.
As stock markets swooned and allies defected, Iran hoped that the pressure would force Mr. Trump to back down.
So far, it isn’t working.
The missile and drone attacks on countries ranging from Cyprus and Turkey to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have broadened the American-led coalition.
The number of Iranian missiles launched every day is declining, and Iran’s rapidly shrinking navy is losing the ability to interfere with oil traffic.
Iran’s other goal is to force the U.S. to choose between allowing the regime to survive and waging a deeply unpopular and expensive ground war to overthrow it.
The mullahs believe that Mr. Trump will punt before he commits to a ground war—and that even if he does invade, the Americans will ultimately be defeated in Iran as they were in Afghanistan.
The Americans and Israelis so far seem to be trying three different approaches to frustrate the mullahs’ survival strategy.
First, thanks to precision weapons and deep intelligence penetration, they are doing their best to destroy the organizations, weapons and facilities that the regime loyalists need to crush their domestic opponents.
Second, they are encouraging ethnic minorities (Kurds in the north, the Baloch community in the east, conceivably Azeris should the war drag on) to rise against Tehran.
Armed support from Azerbaijan and Iraqi Kurdistan could make the challenge more formidable.
The idea is that threats to Iranian unity might compel the regime’s surviving leaders to come to satisfactory terms before the whole country dissolves.
Third, the allies seek to split the leadership and to identify Iranian equivalents of Delcy Rodríguez willing to work with the Americans rather than against them.
These plans all have drawbacks.
Attacks widespread enough to weaken Iranian security forces will inevitably hit civilian targets and infrastructure, potentially strengthening domestic support for the government.
Supporting minority rebellions could backfire badly among ethnic Persians and others who don’t want to see their country break into a collection of warring ministates.
And it’s far from clear that an Iranian Delcy Rodríguez would live long enough to implement any deal agreed with Mr. Trump.
As recently as October 2023, it looked as if Iran could do nothing wrong as it systematically laid the foundations for a new Persian Empire in the modern Middle East.
Since that time, almost everything the mullahs have tried ended in disaster.
Now they stand with their backs against the wall.
The next few weeks will likely decide Iran’s future.
Let us hope the mullahs choose a path that leads to peace.
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