Will Tehran be next? Iran's myth of power has been shattered

As late as this January, when an Iranian drone killed three American soldiers in Jordan, there was no US retaliation against the Islamic Republic. Israel, too, was subject to Obama’s rule. On 13 April, Iran launched 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles against the Jewish State. Jake Sullivan, the US National Security Advisor and a former Obama official, was frantic as he acted to prevent any Israeli counterattack, implicitly threatening the loss of US military aid if Israel retaliated. A bewildered Pentagon official wondered if Sullivan had close relatives living in Tehran.

Yet no amount of US pressure could stop Israel’s final crushing of Hezbollah. It started on 27 September, with the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, alongside his entire high command. Iran’s response, a few days later, was massive: over 190 ballistic missiles, each the size of a fuel tanker truck, which might have killed thousands were it not for Israel’s unique Arrow interception system.

Once again, Sullivan tried to stop Israel’s retaliation, but this time he failed. On 25 October, Israel launched air strikes that revealed the extent of Iran’s weakness. IDF planes attacked Iranian targets at will, including a key missile production unit in the top-secret Parchin base, just 19 miles from Tehran. That was enough to prove to Iran’s enemies that there was no real strength behind its façade of strategic superiority. All the country had left were the Revolutionary Guards.

It fell to Mohammed al-Jawlani, head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, one of the several Syrian anti-regime groups, to test Iran’s residual power. He chose as his target Aleppo, historically Syria’s most important city and second in population only to the capital Damascus.

Al-Jawlani’s variegated fighters, in light trucks and jeeps, could have been stopped by a few hundred well-trained soldiers. But neither Hezbollah nor Iran’s own Revolutionary Guards could react. Hezbollah no longer has any large units capable of crossing the border to fight rebels in Syria, as they had done so many times before. As for the Revolutionary Guards, they were commandeering civilian airliners to fly troops into Damascus Airport to support Assad. But then Israel made clear that it would not allow Iran’s troops so close to its border, and Iran no longer had credible counter-threats.

That left Iran with no quick-reaction options at all: there was no other airport securely held by Assad’s collapsing forces. Nor could Iran risk trucking troops into Syria overland across Iraq. Not even its own Shi’a militias, with tens of thousands of armed men, could have secured their passage across Kurdish controlled north-east Syria.

Now Iran’s population is discovering that it has spent decades in poverty to pay for the massive build-up of the Revolutionary Guards and all their militias. And for what? They have elaborate bases and showy headquarters, but their expensive ballistic missiles can only be used against defenceless Arabs, not Israel with its Arrow interceptors. As for Hezbollah, clearly they cannot even defend themselves, let alone Iran’s remaining allies in the region. Perhaps, in short, the dictatorship will finally be challenged in the streets of Iran’s cities, at scale and in earnest.

If that happens, Iran’s long-forgotten regular armed forces, denied modern weapons and reduced to playing second fiddle behind the Revolutionary Guards, might also make their move. That would certainly decide the fate of the regime: if a sizeable part of their 350,000 men were to act. Nobody can know if regular Iranian officers and men are less inclined to support the dictatorship than the Revolutionary Guards, but Iran recently had elections in which the hard-line candidate was squarely defeated. Nor is there much evidence that Iran’s soldiers, sailors and airmen are enthusiasts for the regime that leaves them without any modern aircraft, land weapons or warships.

The fall of Iran’s dictatorship, which for so long has combined intense repression at home with aggression abroad, would not solve the Middle East’s problems overnight. But it would certainly liberate many Iranians, and finally end Iran’s support for murderous Shi’a militias from Iraq to Yemen. Syria, in short, could just be the start.

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Professor Edward Luttwak is a strategist and historian known for his works on grand strategy, geoeconomics, military history, and international relations.

ELuttwak