Iran would hate to have to pretend to shoot at US troops again, but they will if push comes to shove.
I want to be clear on something because I think a lot of readers are duped from time to time by IRGC fireworks displays: At no point this decade has Iran itself seriously attempted to kill, or even injure, large numbers of American military personnel in a missile attack on regional US bases.
Yes, Iran’s proxies killed and maimed scores of US servicemembers during the Iraq occupation. And yes, those Quds-sponsored militia were still engaged in low-intensity conflict with American troops until 2024.
But no, the IRGC wasn’t trying to kill anybody when they lobbed missiles at the al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq on January 8, 2020, ostensibly to avenge the newly-dead Qassem Soleimani. (They did accidentally kill 176 people aboard a passenger jet flying out of Tehran that day, though.)
Nor was the June 23, 2025 “attack” on the al Udeid Airbase in Qatar an act of genuine aggression. Both were merely face-saving exercises for the regime conducted with the tacit approval of the US military, which was notified ahead of time.
That’s the context for Iran’s latest threats against US military installations in the Mideast, some of which saw staff withdrawals on Wednesday, possibly in anticipation of a new round of American airstrikes against the regime.
According to a trio of diplomats who spoke to Reuters, “some” personnel were told leave al Udeid, but “there were no immediate signs of a large-scale evacuation of troops” like that seen prior to the June incident mentioned above.
Apparently, the measures were merely precautionary, and they came as senior Iranian officials told their counterparts across the Arab world that they’d have no choice to but to fire some missiles if the regime’s attacked again.
The same linked Reuters piece indicated that Mossad believes Trump made up his mind to intervene on behalf of the Iranian protesters, nearly 2,500 of whom have been killed in a worsening government crackdown, according to the US-based HRANA, a rights group.
If that figure’s accurate, it represents a dramatic increase in the death toll which stood at fewer than 150 just a week ago. Nearly 20,000 people have been arrested. Fatalities among the regime’s security personnel are approaching 150, the same data indicates.
Trump stepped up his rhetoric this week, urging protesters to keep at it and promising that US help’s “on the way.” The regime’s internet blackout remains in place, and as far as anyone’s aware, they’re still curbing domestic phone connectivity too, a bid to thwart demonstrators’ organizational capacity.
And yet, images from the melee continue to leak out. They show a lot of fire, a lot of traffic and, unfortunately, a lot of dead bodies. The New York Times summed it up. “Eyewitnesses say government forces have begun opening fire, apparently with automatic weapons and at times seemingly indiscriminately, on unarmed protesters,” a piece published Tuesday read. “Despite the communications blockade, a recurring image has made its way out of Iran: Rows and rows of body bags.”
The same article quotes an unnamed senior Iranian health official, who confirmed that in fact, the death toll stands at about 3,000, including “hundreds” of police and security personnel. The protests are only 18 days old. So, more than 150 people are dying every day, on average.
I’m now very confident in assessing that the regime as it stands today won’t ultimately survive. This time’s different. This government’s a failure and everyone knows it. It squandered hundreds of billions of dollars over the years on deterrence via Soleimani’s proxy armies and the nuclear program, only to get humiliated when war finally came.
Hezbollah’s done, Hamas too and the militias in Iraq are by now just independent contractors. The nuclear program’s been forced even further underground, and meanwhile, the economy’s on the verge of collapse.
Very few Iranians derive any benefit from the existing state of affairs, and it’s worth noting that besides the big man himself, the clergy doesn’t have any real power anymore. This is a government defined entirely by a symbiotic arrangement between one guy (Ali Khamenei) and the military.
If I were the IRGC, I’d cut Khamenei loose, because i) he’s an 86-year-old liability with no viable succession plan that doesn’t involve selling the revolution down the river by instituting a de facto hereditary monarchy via his second-oldest son, Mojtaba, and ii) we’ve just learned that Trump’s highly amenable to a deal that trades a dictator for an arrangement that allows for the continuation of autocratic rule.
Unfortunately for the IRGC, it’s probably too late for that, and even if it isn’t, they’d have to decide who’s going to chair the junta at a time when their ranks are decimated.
Also, part and parcel of the arrangement with Khamenei entailed IRGC commanders playin’ the hits, so to speak, at every public speaking engagement, which is to say this is a bunch who’ve spent their entire lives parroting the revolutionary line in the shrillest of terms. How’s it going to look if, all of a sudden, they say, “Well, that didn’t work, so now we’re secular nationalists”?
The only possibly-viable option for preserving the regime that I can see — and this is a purely speculative long shot — is a scenario where long-time Soleimani friend and current Speaker of Parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf convinces everybody that the only hope is to let him run the country as a quasi-elected, military-aligned, non-clergy hardliner.
I don’t think that’s in the offing, I doubt seriously that Israel would accept it and it wouldn’t do much, if anything, to address the Iranian public’s long list of concerns, all of which center around the notion that the regime and more or less everybody to do with it, needs to go.
So, again, I think it’s a good bet that Iran will have a new government at least by this time next year. Or they’ll have chaos. Either way, it’s all over but the crying for Khamenei.
What is the afterparty for Iran, if the regime collapses? Is there any alternative leadership waiting in the wings, not descended from the Shah? Are there sectarian or other divisions that will pull the country into chaos or civil war? Will its near-fissile nuclear material be scattered and lost?
Bullish for oil in the short term, I’d think.
As far as I know, there is no real alternative leadership and the Pahlevis have no significant Iranian support. The Pahlevi Dynasty itself was nothing but a two generation British imposition without any “royal” or “noble” lineage (for those that ascribe to such things).
Chaos or civil war is likely. Iran is not ethnically homogenous and has 2-3 secession movements. The Kurds (who have started to join from Iraq), the Baluchis on the border with Pakistan and whatever is coming out of ISIS in Khorasan.
Hmm then maybe bullish for oil in the medium term. Not so bullish for nuclear non-proliferation.
I could very well be wrong but I’m not medium term bullish. The oil areas are in the Persian orbit and there’s an upcoming supply glut. I’m considering this situation as an exit opportunity before re-loading in ’27 but there’s a lot of moving parts in the world right now and oil is not going away.
The worst part about this situation is that Khamenei remained for way, way too long. He destroyed the country and the lives of most of its people.
I really don’t think oil prices are the main point here. You have a collapsing government murdering its own people in the streets, and the only “plan” seems to be for more violence and an ever growing humanitarian crisis. I mean, Iran is such a pariah state, what does foreign aid or assistance (perhaps “impulse” is a better term) even look like?
Iran has a very (very) long history of statehood, and its people are fully capable of intelligent self-government without, in my estimation, a lot of external help. They do have a civilian legislature, a civil service, an elite social class, academics and so on. The two biggest issues in my opinion are i) the lack of any coherent opposition / alternative to the regime, and ii) the unique nature of the IRGC.
On that latter point, the IRGC isn’t really something that can be molded into something it isn’t, let alone folded into a new, non-ideological, professionalized regular army. The IRGC is its own animal entirely and as noted in the article, it essentially is the government at this point. “Theocracy” doesn’t work as well as it used to to describe the regime. By now, it’s just Khamenei and the IRGC, and they’re locked in a kind of suicide pact in the event the populace rises up to overthrow them.
In the simplest terms, the IRGC is the military, yes, but first and foremost it’s… well, it’s the IRGC — it has its own unique identity separate and distinct from its identity as Iran’s military. I don’t see how you can erase that identity.
That doesn’t necessarily mean everyone in the IRGC wants to go down with the ship, but what it does mean is that in a new government that isn’t run by an IRGC strongman (i.e., in an entirely new setup where it’s not just a Maduro-style, “take the cannoli leave the regime,” scenario, to hijack, riff on and flip Clemenza’s most famous line), you’re going to have to build a new military from scratch, and figure out what to do with the missile arsenal and whatever’s left of the nuclear program. That’s going to be very challenging, to put it politely.
They are the corrupt descendants of the Revolutionay guard, right? As I recall, they “heroically” recruited tens of thousands of young men and boys to serve as canon fodder during the war with Iraq. Which was supported by the US back when Saddam Hussein was considered to be a srong ally of the US in the region.
I guess they claimed that their sacrifices were what protected the fledgling Islamic Republic, which continues to give them long-term legitmacy.
Thank you for expanding on the unique role of the IRGC in this situation. It will be very challenging indeed.
H-Man, I agree that regime change is in the cards. I am not optimistic about how long it will take in light of the fact the current regime has no problem in piling up the bodies. Can you imagine the toll on January 6 if the clerics were running the show?
The IRGC permeates every part of the Iranian economy, if you want a job or a contract you have to be in the IRGC. They farm out their thuggery to afghanis, Pakistanis etc who are probably doing the killing in Iran at the moment, I’m not sure how you separate IRGC from Iran. You don’t want an Iraqi situation where the Baath party was proscribed allowing Daesh to fill I the gaps. You have to think that the mullahs and IRGC have shipped out anything of any value so there has to be a very robust and earnest strategy to recover those stranded assets and return them.