Donald Trump’s comments Monday that the war with Iran is “very complete, pretty much” and could be over “very soon” badly misjudges the nature of the sanguinary Iranian regime and how it will respond going forward.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of senior leaders in Iran have been killed over the last ten days of strikes, raising questions about who is really in charge and what they will do next. Trump’s hope that Iran’s new leaders will be cowed by the bombing campaign and come meekly to the negotiation table seems wildly implausible.
The choice of Mujtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader – his first name means “Chosen” – is a stark signal that the Iranian regime intends to continue fighting, regardless of the impact on its population and the region.
The replacements now running Iran are also all of the same mind – hardliners who genuinely believe in “death to America” and “double death to Israel”. Kill any of them and you just get more of the same.
Cynical and corrupt they may be, but they are also religious fanatics who dream of spilling blood.
There are genuine fears about how the rest of the war will play out and what Iran could do next. The Iranian regime has planned for this moment – the killing of former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has long been a possibility – and will know how to inflict the most damage on its enemies. If it goes down, everyone goes down.
After the initial shock has worn off, we can expect a strong response and some form of revenge to be meted out. This might not involve conventional weapons or even targets in the region.
Supporters of Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei and his late father Ali Khamenei, hold pictures of the pair in Tehran during a demonstration (Photo: Majid Saeedi/Getty)Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has had an idiosyncratic form of government. One part is like any other state, with an army, ministries and intelligence services all headed by an elected president. But real power lies with something more akin to the Vatican, except there is an all-powerful Supreme Leader and interlocking clerical councils that vet all officeholders and members of the elected parliament.
These clerics control enormous wealth through charitable foundations originally established to assist widows and orphans from the devastating 1980s war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Ali Khamenei was assassinated in the first wave of US-Israeli air strikes on 28 February, along with his wife and other family members. His successor is his 56-year-old son and former chief adviser.
The Supreme Leader commands not only the regular armed forces but also the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a military force created because the regime in 1979 did not trust the deposed Shah’s armed forces, especially the air force, where his son Reza Pahlavi was an officer. About 120,000 strong, the IRGC has all the usual combat arms, as well as an external expeditionary force that liaises with regional “proxies” – Hamas, Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis – and controls around a third of Iran’s economy.
Trump’s hope that Iran’s new leaders will be cowed by the bombing campaign and come meekly to the negotiation table seems wildly implausible (Photo: Kaveh Kazemi/Getty)The IRGC, headed by Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi after his predecessor was assassinated a week ago, pushed for the rapid elevation of Mujtaba Khamenei, not least because, as a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, he is one of their own.
Mujtaba Khamenei has limited theological expertise and is not yet an ayatollah – unlike Alireza Arafi, one of the temporary ruling triumvirate briefly installed last week.
The rapid election of Mujtaba Khamenei was helped by Israel’s bombing of Qom, the epicentre of Iranian clericalism, which meant the Assembly of Experts reportedly could not meet and had to vote online. At least eight clerics stayed away, as they disapproved of the Supreme Leadership becoming a hereditary post. Tellingly, the “moderate” alternative was Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the first supreme leader.
Survival will be uppermost in the minds of Mujtaba Khamenei and Vahidi, as will be the case with Ali Larijani, the highly experienced Secretary of the National Security Council who is effectively head of Iran’s war cabinet.
In the short term, they will have to decide whether to use Iran’s depleting stocks of ballistic missiles and drones to pressure their Gulf neighbours and the rest of the world, by causing havoc to oil and gas supplies and the global economy.
Iran’s rulers may choose to dangle enough concessions to Trump so that he detaches himself from the designs of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is waging what some have dubbed the “Sheldon Adelson Memorial War” after the hawkish late Las Vegas casino billionaire. Netanyahu is another fanatic who, as we have seen in recent years, also does not mind spilling a lot of blood.
A destroyed fuel tanker following an overnight airstrike on the Shahran oil refinery in north west Tehran (Photo: AFP/Getty)So far, Iran has regionalised its response to US and Israeli aggression, hoping that worsening oil prices would persuade Trump to turn his attention elsewhere. It has also had only limited help from its once-feared proxies.
While Hezbollah has fired a small number of missiles into Israel from Lebanon, triggering retaliations, the Houthis in Yemen have not yet joined the fray, despite mourning Ali Khamenei’s death and claiming their fingers are on the trigger.
Either the Houthis are being cautious, fearing a US-Israeli response, or they are waiting for Tehran to play them as its last trump card, setting off attacks on the Red Sea that could badly impact Saudi Arabia’s piped oil exports and shipping through the Suez Canal.
Were the Houthis to launch missiles against Israel after it has expended its stocks of American-made missile interceptors, it could prove damaging.
At the same time, Israel’s elite is divided on Netanyahu’s maximalist aim of toppling the Islamic regime and splitting up the country, or whether to settle for a weakened but intact Iran.
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Parts of Trump’s Maga base are also joining Democrats in opposing this war of choice on Israel’s behalf. This is what can happen when you don’t have a plan in place for after the war you’ve launched is done. That is perhaps why Trump is trying to claim victory before he stops his attacks.
Iran could still have the last laugh. Meanwhile, sober voices around Trump will point to the fact that China and Russia would welcome another costly and draining US conflict in the Middle East, distracting it further from Ukraine and Taiwan.
Michael Burleigh is Senior Fellow at LSE Ideas, a leading foreign affairs think tank
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