Ever More, Iran's Regime Is A House Of Cards

Israel's decimation of Iran's proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and now events in Syria, have shown the Tehran regime is far weaker than it had wanted the world and its neighbors to believe. The Supreme Leader is now scrambling to rationalize it all, as the Islamic Republic clings to power.

By Hamed Mohammadi

In any military confrontation, if either side's bluster and threats or propaganda exceed their strength on the ground, the message conveyed becomes one of weakness. That, precisely, is what we have between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The relentless pursuit of Israeli operations against Hamas and Hezbollah after the October 7 attack on southern Israel were not just hammer blows to these groups as Iran's regional 'power tools,' but became an outright humiliation of the Iranian regime. This was compounded by the recent overthrow of another key partner, Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.

Most people, including the regime's own supporters, can see how Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that scourge of the ayatollahs, is implementing his threats one step at a time, whereas the Tehran regime is all talk and, well, very little action.

Iran's paramount leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had said in a speech in Tehran way back in January 2020, addressing Israel and the United States, that "the days of the slap in the face are over. Strike and you'll be struck."

In another more recent speech, last Wednesday, he explained why Tehran could not help its protégé Assad, saying Iran was ready to help but "Israel and America had closed off the skies and it wasn't possible."

For years now, regime hands have insisted Iran was the region's ranking power, yet Khamenei's recent explanations clearly show there was a whole lot of bluffing going on.

Indeed, his excuses will have disappointed his supporters and revolutionary forces, like the militiamen the regime systematically fires up ahead of some almighty war, even readying them for martyrdom! Faced with Israel's brazen challenge, they expected Khamenei to have the upper hand.

Axis of resistance

Iran's universities, think-tanks and mass media have kept citing the Axis of Resistance — that motley lot of regional proxies and gunmen Tehran has been financing since the 1980s — as the nation's forward defense and rampart.

These were said to be fighting to keep the Shia heartland safe from the Salafis and their brand of Sunni fanaticism.

And this, it was claimed, was based on "Imam Khamenei's defensive doctrine," as an article in Tehran termed it.

The Supreme Leader would cite the Axis of Resistance in his speeches as "Iran's defensive belt." But the sanitary cordon is now in tatters.

In another 2020 speech, Khamenei said, as he often has in past years, that the regime's "strategic policy is America's expulsion from the region." This clearly hasn't happened if Israel and the U.S. sealed the skies to prevent the regime from sending Assad help. Today, he is not just conveying weakness but also fear.

In his speech last week, Khamenei also attacked anyone predicting that Assad's fall would lead to the end of the regime in Iran. Such analysts were "foolish and ignorant" folk, for thinking that "because the Resistance has been weakened, Islamic Iran will also be weakened." He chided those he said were "working to discourage the people.

This mustn't happen. They do it abroad [through] foreign television and radio broadcasters, foreign papers speaking to people in Persian. They're depicting events in such a way as to frighten people, and lower their morale... we have to deal with them another way, but inside the country, nobody should do this."

This, he warned, was an "offense to be prosecuted."

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets with visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Tehran, Iran, on February 25, 2019. Khamenei.Ir/Xinhua/ZUMA

Speaking for "the people"

Khamenei is used to ascribing his own opinions to "the people." When he says analysts and speakers in Iran shouldn't demoralize the people, he means himself and his supporters.

Because the chain of setbacks and continued degradation of the Resistance is likely to further divide those partisans, and swell the ranks of former supporters who have parted ways with the regime in dismay. Nor is it just a matter of morale: many are now afraid the domino effect is about to reach the Islamic Republic.

Can Khamenei's words inspire his followers when his predictions keep being disproven? He said in February 2021 that U.S. President Donald Trump had been "dumped into history's trash bin for good."

Khamenei mocked then a "first-class idiot" who had vowed to "hold their January celebrations for 2019 in Tehran," adding, "he's joined the trash bin of history, and his boss was kicked out of the White House in disgrace, whereas the Islamic Republic is standing tall." The idiot, who wasn't named, was presumably a member of the first Trump administration.

How are the torturers inside Iran processing the fate of Syria, or the "strategic depth" as regime hands called the country under Assad? There must be nothing worse than hearing their leader blame events in Syria on "a joint Israeli-American plan." For many in Iran — now at the end of their tether — Assad's overthrow must be a prelude to similar events in Tehran.

Surely, with rampant dysfunctionality across so many fields, runaway inflation, paltry wages and fuel shortages, all capped by countless, unjustified jailings and hangings, it must be but a matter of time.