It’s probably time to start gaming out post-Khamenei scenarios for Iran.
Joe Biden’s (possibly errant) allusion to prospective Israeli airstrikes on the country’s oil infrastructure indicated that, at the very least, Benjamin Netanyahu has broached the subject with the White House, and very likely the possibility of hitting Iranian nuclear sites too.
Asked earlier this week if he’d support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program, Biden said “the answer’s no,” but on Thursday, when pressed on whether the US would countenance military action against oil facilities, he said “we’re discussing that.” “I think that’d be a little –” then he trailed off.
The administration’s coordinating with the rest of the G7 on a new sanctions package targeting Khamenei. The idea is to avert a (wider) war, but Netanyahu — to say nothing of the Israeli hardliners to whom he’s partially beholden politically — isn’t going to be satisfied with any sanctions. Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel this week in retaliation for the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and Ismail Haniyeh. Provoked or not, intercepted or no, that attack won’t go unanswered. Israel’s going to respond, just like they did in April only probably not. Probably not “just like they did in April,” because the situation’s immeasurably more tense now and more importantly, Israel’s got Hezbollah on the ropes in Lebanon. Iran’s deterrent is beaten bloody and may not make it.
The Jihad Council — Hezbollah’s military command — exists only in name after its triumvirs, their deputies and their deputies’ deputies, were all killed in succession by Israeli warplanes. Nobody knows where Hashem Safieddine and Naim Qassem are, but Mossad will find them. And when they do, there won’t be anything left of the Shura Council either, which is to say “organization” will cease to describe Hezbollah.
Just four weeks ago, Hezbollah still counted as the single-most capable, well-organized politico-militant outfit the modern world’s ever known. Now it’s a glorified guerrilla formation. If it were a public company, Hezbollah would’ve issued a going concern notice. I doubt anyone’s calling up Tehran with bids, although it could probably be had for less than cash at this point given the multifarious “risk factors” any buyer would be taking on. (“We’re not sure how familiar you are with our operations, but there are some things you should know right off the bat…”)
That’s not to suggest the group isn’t still capable of killing people. As I put indelicately here on Monday after the IDF invaded southern Lebanon, “severely degraded though it is, Hezbollah… will send dozens (hundreds, probably) of Israeli troops home in bags.” Since then, at least eight Israeli soldiers are dead. That toll will rise, likely by a lot. But it won’t get anywhere near the death toll among Hezbollah’s ranks and sadly, civilian casualties in Lebanon will be quite high. The IDF hit Beirut several times on Thursday, killing… I don’t know, why count at this point? Killing a lot. The IDF killed a lot of people today, and yesterday and a lot of people who’re alive today in Lebanon and Gaza won’t be tomorrow.
Hezbollah may be able to kill enough Israeli soldiers to turn public opinion in Israel against the ground operation in Lebanon, but it won’t matter. They (Hezbollah) are finished, not as a force to be reckoned with, but as a force that looks anything like it did before 3:30 PM local time on September 17, when Mossad started paging Nasrallah. Can it reconstitute such that it one day regains the operational capacity and organizational structure Nasrallah spent decades building? More importantly, can it reestablish the deterrent capability that its sponsors in Tehran depended on to ward off the kind of IDF strikes Israel’s apparently “discussing” with Biden? Maybe. But not for a very long time, and certainly not in time to spare Khamenei whatever’s coming.
If Israel strikes Iran’s oil infrastructure or its nuclear program with anything like the kind of force Netanyahu probably wants to employ, the regime will find itself in an existential pickle. The Guards will want to respond, hardliners will demand it and Khamenei will know that one way or another, the end’s nigh.
Anything more than what Iran threw at Israel this week would be met with an immediate IDF counterstrike on the IRGC and that counterstrike would be crippling if not devastating. In a scenario where Iranian missiles kill more than a few Israeli Jews, it’s not inconceivable that the US, and maybe even the UK, would conduct limited strikes on the Guards too. If, as some rumors suggest, Iran threatens Abqaiq and Khurais (again), they’ll likewise risk US strikes on the Guards. There’s no scenario in which this White House — to say nothing of a Trump White House — will let another attack on Saudi oil go unpunished. In no scenario will the IRGC last beyond two serious back-and-forth exchanges, where “serious” means both sides are trying to inflict real damage. If by some miracle they were able to keep firing and refused to stop… well, let’s just say that Iran simply doesn’t possess the operational wherewithal to go to war with America and Israel. And nobody’s coming to help them.
If, on the other hand, Israel strikes the oil (or the mountain nuclear labs) and Khamenei decides it’s better to risk a domestic legitimacy crisis than a war he can’t win, he’ll be at the mercy of the Iranian people, who’ll know the emperor has no clothes. Remember: Every day’s existential when you’re a dictator. You’re strong until you’re not. There’s nothing in-between. If the people call your bluff, it’s over. Overnight. And if you don’t think Mossad has some assets on the ground just waiting to stoke the flames of a popular uprising, I’ve got a “safe” guest house for you to stay at in Tehran.
Is it likely that you’re going to wake up one morning to headlines that Khamenei’s been deposed, the hardliners run out and the Guards either in disarray or else in on it with an eye towards replacing the theocracy with a junta? No. But at the same time, Israel has a very real opening, right now, to light the fire that could ultimately subsume the regime. That’s not lost on Netanyahu.
Just days before Nasrallah was killed, I said he was at the mercy of Israel. Israel showed no mercy. Now the same’s true, in a way, of Khamenei. The IDF might not bury him under a building with bombs, but they can tip his already wobbly Jenga tower. To spare him would be to conduct a limited strike inside Iran that doesn’t touch his oil or his nuclear program. That’d give him yet another face-saving out. A lot will depend on Biden and Kamala Harris.
“We are hopeful that with God’s help, and in collaboration with other nations, we will remove our enemies from the region,” Khamenei said Wednesday. For once, he and Netanyahu agree on something.
Excellent summary, I can’t see Netanyahu losing this advantage.
I think it’s more than he needs to press it (his advantage) now if he’s going to press it. Hezbollah’s beat at the command level, but not at the rank-and-file level and not at the localized political level either. The longer those Beirut strikes go on, the more furious the locals will be, and the longer the IDF sticks around in those border towns, the more Israeli soldiers will die. If he (Bibi) wants to do it, he needs to do it now. There’s no guarantee that Trump will win in November and the death toll for the IDF in Lebanon will be much higher by then. I’m (obviously) not promoting violence nor regime change, here. All I’m saying is that from where I’m sitting — which, thank God, is an ocean away — Israel’s best chance to topple the regime in Tehran is right now. This week.
And as you and some others here have posted, it’s not at all guaranteed that the next Iranian regime will be a peaceful pro-US, Saudi-friendly and Israel-tolerant line-up. As we saw under the shah.
That’s not as impossible as it may seem given Iran’s relatively well-educated and, amazingly, US-friendly populace, at least in the cities.
It’ll be interesting to see if their desire for liberalism will be able to overcome the national shame when Israel seeks to trigger regime change via humilating military strikes.
And as the hapless Houthis have shown us, it would not be easy to foil Iranian efforts to stymie oil traffic in the Persian Gulf. The US and Israel do not have an abundant supply of the $2.5 million missiles we use to repel drone attacks. I can remember the last episode there where sea mines disrupted things pretty well. (Iran claimed they had been placed by a “mysterious hand” as I recall.)
The more soldiers the IDF loses in Lebanon, the more pressure on the Ultra-Orthodox military service exemption too. (That situation is baffling to me: a group that won’t serve is pushing for more military action? I would love to understand that aspect of Israeli public/political views.)
Israel has to respond with a significant strike (or “lose” this facedown). There is some threshold that will cause Iran to launch another wave of missiles. Hard to imagine a “significant strike” doesn’t breach that threshold. After the next 200-missile attack, Israel’s response has to be much bigger. Curve goes up exponentially, you get to full-on war in just a couple moves. That is, assuming Israel is actually reacting vs carrying out an existing plan. A friend of mine told me “what you’re missing is that Israel started the war three weeks ago, they just didn’t tell anyone”. I am still unclear how Israel expects to change Iran’s regime by air-strikes alone. The US couldn’t do that in Germany, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. It has only been accomplished once in history – in Japan (!). Hence my wondering if Khamenei has a body double a la Putin, and how comfortable that poor fellow is right now.
On military service exemption, i recently read in Wikipedia: “In June 2024, Israel’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Haredi Jews were eligible for compulsory service, ending nearly eight decades of exemption. The army began drafting Haredi men the following month.”
read the fine print about the draft exemptions.
Israel just tried to kill Safieddine. Not sure if he’s alive.
Or riding the snake to the lake.
There’s a big factor missing from this discussion, and that’s Russia.
Iran is an important supplier of drones, short range missiles, and other military equipment to Russia essential for their ongoing war in Ukraine. Moreover, Russia is highly motivated to avoid sharing another long border with a Western-friendly country. They lived through that with the Shah, and would not like to go back.
Russia has a very long history in the region, and they have very strong opinions about that history (that their view is highly revisionist is neither here nor there). “The Great Game” is a fascinating book about the geostrategic maneuvering and conflict during the 18th and 19th century in Central Asia between the Russian and British empires. Seriously, much of it reads like if Indiana Jones were non-fiction, it’s a great history book. Russia will not quietly sit by while Iran falls into a failed state, nor abandon it to its fate in the event of a war with a combined Israel-US attack, nor fail to do anything they can to help Iran so long as it doesn’t conflict with their own best interests.
Obviously, Russia isn’t going to be putting boots on the ground in Iran. But they’ll do what they can to support their friends in Tehran. They stood by Assad all these years largely just to make a point about how they stand by their friends. It strikes a stark contrast, especially in that particular region of the world, with the United States which has an unfortunate and embarrassing history of abandoning our supposed allies and friends.
At the risk of over simplifying, U.S. foreign policy since 1947 could be summed up as: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and everybody else.
Now do the same over simplification, but for Russian foreign policy.
Tougher. But, how about: Maintain our status as a Great Power (UN Security Council), push Europe/NATO back in the West.