The Eclipse of the Islamic Republic
Regardless of the result of the war, Iran will never be the same again.
By: Hilal Khashan
For the Iranians, this condition – as well as Trump’s initial support for a Kurdish intrusion into Iran from Iraq – evoked memories of historical indignities that shaped their national psyche.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian responded by saying that Iran will never surrender to the United States and Israel.
Trump justified his decision to wage war on Iran by saying there were imminent threats to the American people, but there are those who don’t support this view.
Through Omani mediation, Iran made unprecedented concessions, including reducing uranium enrichment to below 3.67 percent, allowing the return of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to inspect nuclear facilities and not stockpiling enriched uranium.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, views the conflict as an opportunity to establish Israel’s power in the Middle East.
It is clear, then, that Trump and Netanyahu are seeking not only to restrict Iran’s nuclear program but also to overthrow the regime itself.
Inside Iran, the public has had mixed reactions.
Despite having a core base of public support, the regime is not popular among much of the population, especially in urban centers.
Though Iranians do not generally accept the motives for launching a war on their country, they are torn between their aversion to the regime and their lack of faith in Trump’s and Netanyahu’s motives.
Most Iranians view what is happening today as Trump’s attempt to dominate their country’s resources and neutralize China’s rising economic and technological power.
Even if the regime in Tehran survives this war, Iran will be fundamentally changed, and its road to recovery will likely be long and turbulent.
Legacy of Humiliation
The Iranian people view what is happening to their country today through the lens of the historical humiliation they suffered through repeated incursions by greater powers over centuries.
The rise of Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century coincided with an unprecedented political, social, economic and military weakness in Persia.
The Sasanian Empire exhausted its material and human resources after decades of war against the Byzantine Empire.
The internal political situation of the Sasanian state deteriorated rapidly after the execution of Shah Khosrow II in 628.
In 633, Muslim Arabs began to attack Sasanian lands and took control of Persia following the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah in 636 and especially the Battle of Nahavand in 642.
The Persian people rejected the Arab invasion.
Persian intellectuals partly blamed Islam for their country’s backwardness and Bedouins for destroying Persian civilization.
Persian nationalist thinker Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani (1854-1897) called Islam a strange religion imposed on the noble Aryan nation by a handful of barefoot, desert-dwelling lizard-eaters.
Iranian policy since the 1979 revolution, including efforts to spread chaos in the region and destabilize Arab states, has partly been rooted in this sense of superiority over others.
In 1828, following its defeat by Tsarist Russia in the Russo-Persian War, the Qajar state (present-day Iran) signed the Treaty of Turkmenchay.
As a result, it was forced to cede the regions of Yerevan and Nakhchivan to Russia, pay reparations, grant Russia numerous economic and customs privileges and rights, and fix the border between Russia and Persia at the Aras River.
In 1856, British forces occupied Kharg Island and the port of Bushehr on the Persian Gulf as part of a military campaign against the government of Shah Naser al-Din in response to his occupation of the city of Herat in Afghanistan.
The operation ended with the Iranians’ defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The humiliation continued with the CIA-sponsored coup in 1953 that overthrew the government of Mohammed Mosaddegh and reinstated the shah in Operation Ajax.
Trump’s comments on the war last week followed in this tradition.
In an impromptu statement, he said he would welcome an incursion of Kurdish forces from Iraq into Iran, clearly unaware of the broader implications of this suggestion.
Trump later walked back his comments, saying he did not want “to see the Kurds get hurt or killed.”
Complex Political System
Trump and Netanyahu have misread the nature of the Iranian regime and its capacity for survival.
In an address to the Iranian people, Netanyahu explicitly called on them to seize what he described as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, hoping that internal forces could help overthrow the regime.
The U.S. and Israel presented the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the removal of the architect of regional destabilization.
For Israel, the operation was the culmination of a long-standing objective: to strike at the ideological heart of the Islamic Republic.
The U.S. portrayed it as a necessary step to prevent further escalation and protect its forces.
However, the U.S. and Israel failed to take into account Iran’s ability to withstand severe pressure.
In its 47 years of existence, the Iranian regime has dealt with wars, blockades, economic sanctions and internal discontent, all of which have given it the ability to adapt and endure.
The country’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, established an institutional system based on a network of interconnected security, religious and military institutions, aimed at increasing resilience and durability.
The deliberate complexity of Iran’s political system grants its officials considerable room for maneuver, allowing them to forge compromise and preserve the gains of various factions within the power structure.
It appears that the political establishment will attempt to repair the system and minimize, as much as possible, the damage inflicted by the U.S.-Israeli attack.
However, many government bodies are now concerned about being able to direct and manage power.
From the Guardian Council to the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Discernment Council, the authorities of many bodies appear to overlap, which could cause friction in the future.
The first two are tasked with overseeing the constitutionality of parliament’s actions and selecting the supreme leader.
The Expediency Discernment Council, meanwhile, is tasked with resolving any disagreements that may arise between parliament and the Guardian Council.
Whither the Islamic Republic
Even before the U.S.-Israeli operation began, Iran was under immense pressure.
Sanctions have drained its economy, Israeli operations have weakened its regional network of proxies, and internal unrest, particularly among young people and women, has undermined the image of stability cultivated by the regime.
Strategically isolated and economically burdened, Tehran has faced unprecedented internal pressures since 1979.
The Iranian leadership refused to reform the political system, fearing it could suffer a similar fate to that of the Soviet Union following Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt to restructure the political and economic system there.
Israel recognized the Iranian regime’s rigidity early on, launching a broad campaign of covert and overt operations against it, including cyberattacks, sabotage of nuclear facilities, assassinations of scientists and security officials, and deep infiltration into the ranks of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Each operation sought to weaken Iran’s capabilities while also narrowing Washington’s room for maneuver.
Intelligence provided by the Israelis convinced the United States that diplomacy had reached a dead end and that resorting to military action was not only justified but inevitable.
The debate in Washington gradually shifted from whether to launch a strike to when and how to do so.
Iran answered the U.S.-Israeli military campaign with missile and drone strikes targeting multiple theaters of operation, including U.S. bases in Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf, as well as Israeli military installations.
Airspace across the Gulf region was closed on several occasions, energy markets experienced sharp fluctuations and insurance premiums for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz rose significantly.
The Gulf states now find themselves in the crosshairs of a confrontation they neither initiated nor desired.
The delicate regional balance they spent years creating, combining close security partnerships with Washington and cautious reopening of communication channels with Tehran, has collapsed.
The situation raises deep concern about the regional balance of power that resulted from Iran’s strategic collapse and the emergence of Israel as a dominant regional power.
The overthrow of the Iranian regime, if it were to happen, would not necessarily mean stability in Iran.
The best evidence of this is what happened in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria – countries in which the collapse of the state led to widespread chaos, cross-border violence, refugee flows and the spread of armed groups.
Iran, the most populous and strategically located of these states, has a population of more than 90 million and a complex ethnic and political makeup.
It is also situated at the crossroads of global energy, making unintended consequences to an attack highly likely.
Iran’s strategic weakness has opened the country not to political transformation but rather intensified competition for power and gaps through which internal and external forces can infiltrate.
The removal of the supreme leader, which the ruling elite had prepared for due to his advanced age, could accelerate the regime’s decline but will not lead to its immediate collapse.
There is no doubt that nationalism is a formidable force in Iran, especially when ignited by foreign aggression.
Furthermore, the IRGC remains cohesive, powerful and deeply entrenched in Iran’s political and economic structure.
While some segments of the population celebrated Khamenei’s death, others rallied around the flag.
What makes it difficult to predict how the situation will unfold, however, is the complete deadlock in both the economic and diplomatic spheres.
The collapse of the country’s currency triggered the recent protests, signaling that the economy could no longer withstand further pressure and that the government was incapable of managing the crises it was facing.
The security crackdown will be even more violent than what we saw earlier this year if the displays of jubilation over Khamenei’s death witnessed in some Iranian cities turn into an attempt to overthrow the regime.
The airstrikes targeting security headquarters and their leaders aim to weaken any attempt to revive the instruments of control and excessive coercion upon which the regime relied in previous decades.
However, striking the security apparatus with such ferocity is no guarantee that alternative instruments (supported by the paramilitary Basij or similar groups) will not emerge to keep the regime intact.
The regime will face tough tests of its ability to make concessions, abandon efforts to outsmart internal and external adversaries, and refrain from offering empty reform proposals that it knows are impossible to implement.
While airstrikes on the regime’s headquarters, communications hubs and control points continue unabated, it’s far from certain that the regime will fall by airstrikes alone.
The security breaches revealed by Khamenei’s assassination have not been adequately addressed.
But these breaches alone cannot topple a regime that has infiltrated the country’s social and economic institutions for the past five decades.
Its base of support in rural and poor areas remains strong, and it continues to manage regular state affairs.
The Iranian people’s reaction to the current conflict differs from their reaction to the 12-day war last June, when the majority of Iranians condemned the Israeli attacks and expressed some support for the political system.
This time around, supporters of the government have been gathering nightly in town squares for both spontaneous and planned rallies, backed by government-affiliated institutions.
The gatherings last about three hours, as they wave Iranian flags and chant slogans against the U.S. and Israel.
These meetings are countered by a segment of young people who insist that this war is directed against not the Iranian people but the regime.
They argue that the primary targets of the attacks are military and security sites and centers of forces involved in suppressing popular protests.
This segment of society has largely been unable to express its views due to internet shutdowns.
However, the messages and images that have gotten out have prompted security agencies to issue repeated warnings that anyone cooperating with opposition media outlets abroad will face repercussions.
These individuals are waiting for an opportune moment, when the security apparatus is severely weakened, to launch a second wave of street protests aimed at overthrowing the regime.
It appears that the regime senses this danger, hence its call for its supporters to take to the streets under the banner of mourning Khamenei and condemning the U.S.-Israeli attacks.
Its anxiety reached such a point that one member of parliament threatened that all protesters would be killed if anti-government demonstrations broke out during the war.
For this reason, nighttime checkpoints have been deployed in many Iranian cities.
Regime survival does not mean that Iran will be the same as it was before the war.
Iran needs to rediscover itself, and the Iranian people need to determine what they want the country to be.
Obsession with imperial revival has brought disaster to Iran and its people.
The 1979 revolution aspired to get rid of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s repressive regime, imperial thinking and desire to make Iran the policeman of the Gulf.
However, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini hijacked the revolution and established an Islamic Republic against the secular orientation of Iran’s staunchly nationalistic people.
For the ruling elite and its popular base, the regime’s survival, however fragile, will be a victory.
But survival will not last long because momentum has been lost.
Catchy slogans won’t be enough to subvert the Iranian people, who are eager for change, freedom and a dignified life.
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