In both Iraq and Lebanon, where popular demonstrations against the government and only implicitly against Iranian influence have been ongoing for the last two years, Tehran has used its allies in government, parliament and on the streets, to drown the movement in violence and undermine its legitimacy.
In Syria, Hezbollah launched its fighters directly into the fray as of 2013 when the regime was seriously challenged by the opposition on the ground. It paid dearly to prevent Assad’s defeat because his downfall would have meant losing the main land route for the transit of strategic weapons sent from Iran. Once Assad’s power was stabilized, Syria, and more recently Iraq started to serve as trial grounds to test the range and accuracy of ballistic missiles, which in turn led Israel to expand the scope of its own raids to include Iraq, in addition to Lebanon and Syria.
Syria has been a precious learning arena for Shia fighters. As it became short of combatants, Iran also widened the scope of its recruitment to include Shia fighters from Afghanistan (many were refugees in Iran) and Pakistan. For their part, the Sunni jihadists were also expanding their recruitment, thus fueling a deadly spiral of two jihadisms feeding off each other. All of this has weakened the position of those within Iran who advocated appeasement, and strengthened the hand of the radical ideologues who believe that the original blame lies on the United States. "To those who ask why we went to Syria’, says a commander of the Revolutionary Guards in Damascus, ‘ask them who authorized the Americans to occupy countries,"
Bled white
With this relentless regional expansion, Iran is being bled white. No doubt the sanctions are partly responsible for the country’s difficulties, but the protesters’ slogans in 2017 were "leave Syria alone, think of us." The brain drain in Iran, a country endowed with considerable resources, is the highest in the world. When faced with the Covid-19 pandemic, the state proved unfit to handle the situation. Religious sites and places of worship became symbols of the pandemic, and doubts about the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic have started to affect the regime’s social base. The six powers trying to renegotiate the JCPOA in Vienna will likely be confronted with representatives of an Iranian regime which is domestically contested and on the defensive externally.
A new source of concern for the Islamic Republic has emerged with the United Arab Emirates’ signing of the so-called Abraham Accords. The agreement reached with Israel jeopardizes Iran’s efforts to gain strategic hegemony thanks to its regional military-sectarian shield. Israel has in effect gained a foothold in Iran’s immediate neighborhood, exposing it to high risks of espionage and infiltration.
The day after Joe Biden’s election, Saudi Arabia made an initial overture of appeasement toward Tehran. Whether this was out of a desire for detente, or out of fear that the Vienna negotiations would ultimately leave Riyadh unprotected is unclear. What we know for sure is that Saudi Arabia is eager to negotiate a withdrawal of its forces from Yemen without losing face, which for Iran is a sign that its policy of intimidation is bearing fruit. But Iran also has an important reason to cooperate: it needs to deter the Kingdom from normalizing relations with Israel, as the Emirates have done, or else its military-sectarian shield will be further obliterated.
The choices facing the West
Would Iran conditionally give up the considerable power it has acquired through its regional scheming? In the view of many Iranians and of Western experts, the Islamic Republic attaches greater strategic importance to the militias it has deployed throughout the region than to its nuclear, or even ballistic program.
If we assume that the nature of the regime and its obsession with survival are the reasons for its predatory behavior, what does that imply for the West in terms of managing relations with Iran? Should it continue the strategy of suffocation led by Donald Trump and assume that the regime is on the brink of collapse? Should it comfort itself with the idea that the Iranian regime is sowing the seeds of its own destruction? The fact is that no one, and certainly not the West, can produce the antidote that will end the rule of the doctrinarian clergymen.
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