Iran has ordered its proxy forces across the Middle East to exercise caution as the Islamic Republic fears an existential threat following Donald Trump’s return to the White House, The Telegraph has learned.Officials have told commanders of Iran-backed militias to avoid provocative actions that could escalate regional tensions.Commanders have also been instructed to maintain defensive positions while avoiding any actions that could be interpreted as aggressive by US forces or regional allies. . . .“Forces and allies in the region have been instructed to act with caution as [the regime] feels an existential threat with Trump’s return,” one senior Iranian official told The Telegraph from Tehran.“In Iraq and Yemen, forces have been told not to target any American assets, and if they do, they are explicitly warned against using Iranian weapons,” the official added.“They have been told to keep defensive positions for a while and to avoid any actions that might provoke the Americans.” [Emphasis added.]

Asghar Jahangir, a spokesman for Iran’s judiciary, separately told Iranian state television that the shooter had been an “infiltrator,” suggesting he had worked at the courthouse where the killings took place.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 85-year-old supreme leader, even appeared to be wearing a flak jacket at the funeral of two judges who were gunned down in Tehran last weekend — reportedly over fear of attacks.With his robes bulging at unusual angles, Khamenei was pictured this week standing over the coffins of the men said to have been assassinated inside the supreme court by an “infiltrator”.“The fall of Assad has intensified fears [in the regime],” the official said. “There are now fears they may not be able to hold onto the country after witnessing what happened to Assad, which no one here expected.”“A large-scale operation is underway to identify and arrest Israeli spies and infiltrators and there are concerns that they may have infiltrated high-ranking offices.”

Iran and that regime is at its weakest point in recent memory, maybe ever. Their air defenses have been badly damaged. Their Shia crescent that they were trying to create has been badly damaged in Lebanon and Syria where they’ve been basically forced and driven out. Their economy is in shambles. They now are on some days having 6, 8, 12, 9-hour blackouts. They are on the verge of potentially, if not having done so already, having to pull back on the energy subsidies that they provide people in that country that are incredibly popular, and it would be unpopular to reverse. So, they’re in a lot of trouble. And now what we need to be wise about is the following. I imagine that within that regime, and I’m just saying this because of common sense, there are two schools of thought.There’s one group that’s saying now is the time where we need to find ourselves an off-ramp. Not that we’re going to turn into really nice guys, but we’re really in trouble here. We need to find an off-ramp and buy ourselves some time. And then there’s another group that’s probably saying, now is the time to prove that we are a nuclear power or nuclear capable power enriched from 60 to 90 and press go. And that’s how we’re going to buy ourselves immunity from foreign action. And this is a tenuous moment in that regard, but it’s one we need to acknowledge. My view of it is that we should be open to any arrangement that allows us to have safety and stability in the region but one in which we’re clear-eyed.Any concessions we make to the Iranian regime, we should anticipate that they will use as they have used in the past to build their weapons systems and to try to restart their sponsorship of Hezbollah and other related entities around the region because they seek to become the dominant regional power. That’s their stated goal, and it’s been clear by the actions that they’ve taken.

And let us not forget that this is a group, these are individuals that have spent the last five years actively and openly plotting the assassination of the president-elect and of multiple members of previous administrations. Think about this for a moment. When is the last time you heard that a foreign government is actively, openly and admittedly seeking to assassinate the former Secretary of State, the former and soon-to-be once again President of the United States and others? And that people have been arrested for plotting that.

 Trump occupied a grip on the collective psyche of the power players gathered here, since his second administration looms over all of the discussions and fireside chats. Their decision-making ultimately depends on what he does in office. As one billionaire and CEO in his 70s said with a bit of awe, Trump was “the most powerful person” he’d ever seen in his life.

It seems to see nothing suspicious in Beijing’s refusal to turn over data or fully cooperate with international investigations. The fact that Beijing lied to the world for the first three to six weeks of this pandemic, insisting that the virus was not contagious when it obviously was, does not influence our intelligence agencies’ analysis at all. It does not see any signs or indications of a coverup, despite the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s yanking large swaths of data offline shortly before the start of the pandemic.And the agencies seem to explicitly reject Occam’s Razor, the principle that of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred. As far as we can tell from this report, the U.S. intelligence community does not find it strange or unusual that a random Chinese person, with no connection to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, could have a spectacularly unlucky run-in with a bat or other animal, and that that random Chinese person just happened to catch an exceptionally rare, naturally occurring animal virus that infects, sickens, and spreads among human beings like wildfire on the metaphorical doorstep of one of the three labs in the world doing gain-of-function research on novel coronaviruses found in bats. . . .The intelligence community also does not think it is significant that “three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care.” The brightest minds of U.S. intelligence have decreed that it is coincidental.