What is the link between the war in the Middle East and a collapse of the Iranian regime?

By Sara Nouri*

The weakening of Hezbollah, and by extension of the network of proxies of the Iranian regime in the Middle East, fuels the most optimistic analyses about a possible imminent collapse of the Islamic Republic. A wind of hope is blowing, in fact, among analysts in favor of change, as the so-called "axis of resistance" camp sinks into despair. Is this optimism justified or is it just an illusion? After all, why would the collapse of a paramilitary organization in Lebanon, or the blows dealt to the Houthis in Yemen, or to Hamas in Gaza, lead to the fall of the powerful mentor in Tehran? To understand the reality of the situation, it is necessary to look at the historical nature of the power in place in Iran since 1979.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, which is a republic in name only, is in reality an absolute power exercised by the clergy. This is an anachronistic regime, which could not reasonably hope to survive the 20th century, much less to stretch into the 21st. Since then, the world has observed the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the massacres in Iran and the wars in the region, the state terrorism that is based with the drug mafia traffickers in Europe and Latin America.

From the coup against Mossadegh to the creation of Khomeini

Without any exaggeration, this is indeed a monster engendered by the dictatorship of the Shah. In the 1950s, this despotic monarch, supported by the CIA and the British, put an end to the democratic experiment of Prime Minister Mossadegh with the complicity of the clergy. He thus diverted the course of the history of the Middle East. He then, with the help of his political police (SAVAK), executed the best elements of the dissidents of Persia, imposing a single party and leaving such a political vacuum that, at the opportune moment, the obscurantist mullahs were able to easily take advantage and seize the popular anti-monarchical revolution.

In 1979, when Khomeini landed in Iran on an Air France plane, it was already too late. This theocracy, which succeeded in imposing in people's minds the mask of a saint on the face of a cunning and cruel old man, could not survive without eliminating all dissident voices. The Iranian people, who had already risen up during the constitutional revolution of 1906 against the dark alliance of the despots of the Royal Palace and the mullahs who had emerged from the Middle Ages, would not have been long in revolting again to march towards the light. It was therefore necessary to keep this people in the dark at all costs.

At the root of the proxies, the export of the Revolution

This is why the two pillars of the maintenance of the regime were internal repression and above all, the export of the revolution. To ensure its survival, this last pillar was included in the new Constitution. The armed wing of this strategy was the "Corps of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution", more commonly called Sepah (Army Corps) or Pasdaran (Guardians). In the official name of the Pasdaran, the word "Iran" is absent, because its mission goes beyond the Iranian borders to extend to the entire Muslim world, or even beyond. Without this strategy of exporting the revolution or fundamentalism, and without its main tool, the regime would never have been able to endure the popular revolt.

The Westerners who tolerated Khomeini's return to Iran as a lesser evil did not understand, 45 years ago, that they were accepting the establishment of a "Caliphate" that would serve as a reference for others and transform the face of the Middle East, and through it, that of the entire world. Contrary to some orientalists who make a fundamental distinction between Shiite and Sunni deviations, this Shiite Caliphate in Tehran served as a model and inspiration to all extremists in the region, including Sunnis. The behavior and bowing of the Westerners towards the mullahs of Tehran strongly encouraged other movements to use this model and form their own "Islamic State". Thus, after the establishment of the mullahs in Tehran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan unintentionally favored the emergence of the Taliban (Sunnis), while the American invasion of Iraq led to the rise of Daesh (Sunnis) as well as Shiite militias. The Zaydi Houthis (who are not Twelver Shiites like the majority of Iranians) were vassalized by the Pasdaran, and the Assad regime, of Alawite confession, was able to maintain its dictatorship thanks to the help of the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, at the cost of numerous massacres. In Lebanon, the country of cedars fell into an impasse, dragged down by Hezbollah, a pure product of Ali Khamenei, the current supreme guide in Tehran who sponsored it. The Palestinians were not spared. The Khomeini regime deployed all its forces to weaken Arafat's PLO and Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority, while promoting the emergence of Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Tehran thus contributed in part to the rise of Hamas (Sunni). Without the existence of the Tehran Caliphate, the course of history in each of these countries would have been quite different and probably less tragic. The Shah gave birth to Khomeini, and Khomeini "Daesh-ized" the Near and Middle East, convincing more than one that in the face of the West's aggressiveness, there exists a force capable of cruelty, to the point that the West is forced to respect it. When this Caliphate begins to manufacture an atomic bomb, all the powers of the world invite it to sit down with them to negotiate on an equal footing. This is why the model of Tehran's Islamist theocracy has served as an example to others. While the head of the snake is in Tehran, its tentacles and ramifications extend everywhere, in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, and even in the Sahel and Nigeria.

The purpose of this analysis is not to look into the heavy responsibility of the Western powers, who have led for four decades a policy of appeasement, tinged with cowardice, towards the mullahs of Iran, on the issues of hostages, terrorism, the military nuclear program, the manufacture of ballistic missiles, drug trafficking and especially on the violations of human rights in this country. The fact of having been duped by Tehran's "political proxies" through certain researchers and think tanks, who have influenced the chancelleries, is certainly not a good excuse. This withdrawal of the West and Europe from their responsibilities must be addressed separately.

The Iranian regime's shield has fallen

By focusing on the Iranian mullahs' regime, we realize that the establishment of the proxy domino served to establish the shields necessary for the regime's survival in its balance of power with, first, the Iranian people, then the rest of the world. The scarecrow of foreign militias made the Iranian people understand that it was better not to challenge the Caliphate, which presents itself as the master of the Middle East. The more the risk of an uprising in Iran was felt, the more the regime needed wars and to show its muscles in the region to impress the interior of the country. Ali Khamenei explains it better than anyone: "If our defenders did not confront the enemy in Iraq or Syria, then we had to fight the enemy in Kermanshah, Hamedan or in other provinces of Iran." The enemy in question is indeed the Iranian people.

The QodsForce of the Revolutionary Guards was tasked with supervising these militias in order to establish the "Iron Dome" of the Islamic Republic, by establishing an asymmetrical war strategy. The Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq, composed of a nebula of groups, the Ansarollah in Yemen, the Syrian al-Baqir Brigades, the Afghan Fatemiyoun, the Pakistani Zainabiyoun deployed in Syria, Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza… But the centerpiece of this house of cards is Hezbollah. Founded by the Revolutionary Guards, Khomeini entrusted responsibility and paternity to Khamenei himself while he was President of the Republic. In reality, Hezbollah was the diamond in this proxy project. Founded by the Revolutionary Guards in the 1980s, for about thirty years, it is Hezbollah that has sponsored and supervised the Houthis; it is Hezbollah that trained the Shiite militias created after the American invasion of Iraq; it is Hezbollah that was decisive in keeping Assad in power in Syria; it is Hezbollah that has the last word in Lebanon. Before being Lebanese, Hezbollah is the essential part of the Revolutionary Guards.

The Caliph is weakened

A year ago, Khamenei undoubtedly provoked and encouraged the attack of October 7. But he took care to stir up a war that would be limited outside the borders of Iran. After the blows dealt to Hamas and Islamic Jihad during the Israeli bombings, which tragically led to tens of thousands of deaths among Palestinian civilians, the blows dealt to Hezbollah in Lebanon over the past month have brought down the main shield of the Tehran Caliphate. Forty years of Tehran's investment have disappeared in the person of Hassan Nasrollah, the leader of Hezbollah, who weighed as heavily as Khamenei himself. However, if the Tehran regime remains in place, it is obvious that Hezbollah will get back on its feet. But that will take a lot of time. And time is not Tehran's trump card today.

This is why the religious dictatorship in Iran, which was shaken in 2022 by a major uprising, which showed the ineffectiveness of its array of missiles and drones, whose proxy network is collapsing one by one and whose centerpiece is currently neutralized, is revealing its weakness and fragility in broad daylight. The whole world remembers from recent episodes that this Caliphate is weakened and concludes that the regime will collapse.

Let's follow the reasoning. This regime has lost the jewel of its revolution export apparatus. It will most likely suffer painful strikes from Israel. However, this does not mean an inevitable collapse. Let us remember that during the first Persian Gulf War, the attacks of the American allies failed to overthrow the Iraqi government. It took the ground invasion of 2003 and the involvement of American soldiers on the ground to put an end to this regime. We know the dramatic consequences. An invasion of Iran would not only be chimerical and counterproductive, especially after the bitter memory of the Iraqi experience, but it also seems impossible, to the point that no one is thinking about it, neither the Americans nor the Israelis. Thus, the stakes are limited to medium or large-scale strikes. In both cases, those who imagine that the mullahs' regime will be overthrown from "heaven" are seriously mistaken. Above all, those who think they can dominate the destiny of Iran by arriving on Israeli or American tanks, as those nostalgic for the Shah's dictatorship would have us believe, are in a chimerical illusion. Incidentally, the gesticulations of the Shah's son, heir to the dictator, who is begging for an invasion to restore the monarchy, are the laughing stock of the Iranians, who will not let themselves be robbed of the fruit of their revolution again. Iranians want to get rid of the mullahs, but they do not want to live under another form of dictatorship.

The spearhead of the overthrow is the structured force in Iran

Khamenei knows this better than anyone: what he fears most is an uprising of the people from within Iran, because it is the only way to overthrow this regime. The absence of a structured force during the Arab Spring has often been praised. But the Arab Spring failed because in countries like Syria, Iraq or elsewhere, there was no independent democratic alternative, an organized, structured force, with a program and capable of planning the stages of the transition, while having an implantation on the ground. On the contrary, in Iran, this force exists. The great mistake of the West was to ignore it, to imagine as solutions: the impossible invasion of Iran or the acceptance of the status quo by bowing to the mullahs. However, this status quo has become untenable. The world is therefore forced to take into consideration the determining factor in the Iranian equation: the Iranian resistance. For four decades, the opposition coalition formed by the National Council of Resistance of Iran has stood up to the ayatollahs, demonstrating extraordinary resilience. The resistance units inside Iran, formed by the PMOI, have become the bête noire of the Revolutionary Guards. The existence of an alternative working for the establishment of a democratic and secular republic, in favor of the abolition of the death penalty, gender equality and a non-nuclear Iran, makes it possible to avoid chaos in the event of the overthrow of the regime. On the contrary, the course of history that was once diverted by the coup d'état against the democratic government of Mossadegh, and later favored the rise of religious fundamentalism in the region, will return to its natural course. Finally, the peoples of the region will perhaps be able to envisage living in peace.

*Sara Nouri is a lawyer at the Paris Bar and an analyst with the Foundation for Middle East Studies (FEMO)