The Iranian regime has chosen suicide. It is true that it will take some time for the logical conclusion of the fatal and probably irreversible action of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to materialize. Like a pre-AI automaton incapable of adapting to new information, the BBC will continue to chatter about Iran’s capacity for “strategic patience” and the risks of Israel “driving” the United States in a regional war.
But one thing seems clear: the Iranian theocracy has now entered a death loop. Unless Israel throws it a lifeline, it is increasingly likely that Tehran will face either a Soviet-style collapse in the middle of a regional war it cannot afford, or a shift of a bloody regime while the revolution is devoured by its children.
By directly attacking Israel from its own soil, Iran has launched a brinkmanship that it cannot possibly win. Some would say that it was Israel that tore up the strategy manual when an Iranian general was killed in Syria in an airstrike that hit parts of Tehran’s “consulate.” Yet Jerusalem’s new red lines are now perfectly obvious to any sane person.
Israel knows it cannot afford to let the Iranian attack go unanswered. He also knows that Tehran – perhaps soon nuclear-armed – is likely to intensify coordinated displays of aggression from Syria to the east and Hezbollah in Lebanon to the north. And while the West whispers that a pivot to Asia is looming, Israel may well have decided it is now or never.
Today, it can count on American support in the event of a large-scale regional war; this may no longer be the case in a few years. In other words, Jerusalem is unlikely to move backwards.
But while a regional war would test Israel, it would destroy Iran, for the simple reason that Tehran cannot afford to confront its adversary. To raise the billions needed to finance its nuclear program and support Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, it has already increased taxes to sky-high levels and devalued its currency to dangerous levels.
The situation may have reached a critical point where Iran cannot increase its spending to meet the demands of military escalation without effectively bankrupting itself or presiding over an economic collapse that could spark a popular revolt.
However, it seems equally unlikely that Tehran will be able to back down without losing a lot of face. Its credibility among the new generation of Islamists who support the regime would surely be destroyed. Khamenei would find it difficult to return to his earlier strategy of channeling his warlike energies into a domestic war against the headscarf rebels.
With the theocracy rife with infighting, it is hardly impossible that its detractors could take advantage of the regime’s temporary weakness to attempt an uprising. No matter who prevails in the resulting power struggle, the elders of the 1979 revolution could be destroyed, dismissed by some as incompetent and by others as crazy.
So why on earth did Khamenei’s entourage engage in this line of action? Has the regime gone mad? Khamenei himself, the Middle East’s second-longest-serving leader, may no longer be acting rationally.
Supporters of the Iran nuclear deal have naively pushed to interpret the Supreme Leader as a “tactician” and a “pragmatist.” There is a growing body of evidence pointing in the opposite direction.
As with Putin, Western analysts have struggled to appreciate the deeper meaning of Khamenei’s destiny, oscillating on that fine line between illusion and apocalypticism.
Unlike his predecessor Ayatollah Khomenei, who feared being corrupted by French decadence while living in exile, Khamenei is said to be obsessed with the perceived depravities of Western civilization. He devours the novels which expose his cruel underbelly (Wretched And Grapes of Wrath are known to be among his favorites) and is said to have personally translated into Persian the treatises on the “clash of civilizations” of the Islamist scholar Sayyid Qutb, cited as a source of inspiration for Osama bin Laden.
Khamenei’s dangerous messianism may also have been underestimated. He is to his predecessor Khomeini what Stalin was to Lenin. Ambitious and yet cripplingly insecure, he sought to create a cult of personality around himself. Since the brief rise of rival reformist cleric Mohammed Khatami, moderates have been purged, while a hardline loyalist faction has emerged.
Have Khamenei’s illusions of grandeur transformed into real disorder? His televised vomits against the “evil Zionist regime”, or American “arrogance”, are so formulaic and circular that – just like the speeches of Soviet apparatchiks – they can actually be read from top to bottom or bottom to top (this which gives an idea). illusion perhaps of stability and immutable truth in a society characterized by chaos). While his people eat out of trash cans, and despite official claims that they live a modest lifestyle, they are believed to spend their time snooping around the Shah’s restored palaces. He recently raised eyebrows by proclaiming that God speaks through him.
In a country where 60 percent of the population lives in poverty and where refusal to wear the headscarf has become a powerful symbol of resistance, its strategy appears to have shifted from religious populism to survival. The goal no longer appears to be to convince Iranians to keep faith in the revolutionary cause but to consolidate support from a narrow base of loyalists who can protect him from overthrow. It is, of course, likely that it is this faction that is dead set on war, having radicalized to the point where it is incapable of geopolitical realism or cost-benefit calculations.
The regime’s illness extends to the entire country. Pathological self-deception has come to oil the theocratic machine as much as black gold. Clerics grant men one-hour marriages with prostitutes, and young women routinely undergo hymenoplasties before marriage.
All of this may seem like an unimportant detail, but after creating a virtual reality in which black is white, perversion is modesty, and Iran can defeat the Little Satan, the regime may be unable to escape the suicidal conclusions of his radicalism, even if he wanted to. Showing restraint at this crucial moment risks dismantling the complex universe of lies that holds the system together.
This creates a deadly geopolitical situation. World powers may well call for calm, as if it were a simple game of chicken. But the terrifying reality is that Iran may simply have gone mad.
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