- Middle East
- International Affairs
- US Foreign Policy
- Determining America's Role in the World
Since October 7, 2023, Iran’s theocracy has watched its entire westward foreign policy crash, disabled by an Israeli counterattack and its shockwaves. The Islamic Republic’s proxy-based imperialism, which had given Tehran a relatively inexpensive means to intervene in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, the Gulf, Gaza, and, most consequentially, in Syria, hasn’t been deconstructed—more hamstrung by losses in the Levant. This situation won’t change, especially if the Israelis “mow the lawn,” that is, launch frequent attacks against the command and supplies of its enemies.
Yemen’s Houthis, relatively unscathed, are still allied with the clerical regime, but they have always been more an annoyance and an embarrassment, not a serious threat, to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, global shipping, and the United States’ Navy. Iran’s sway in Iraq, though still sometimes decisive, has proven of little use in the battle against Israel and America. Since October 7, 2023, Iraq hasn’t become an Iranian missile platform and Iraq’s democracy keeps on ticking, producing alliances and a domestic press that have eaten away at Iran’s hegemonic ambitions.
Tehran has so far been unable to turn Iraq into a new Lebanon, where Iranian-backed militias reliably execute its agenda inside the country and, more importantly, abroad. The Iraqi Shia just haven’t proven as malleable as the Lebanese Shia; they don’t view themselves as a besieged minority and the Iraqi clergy, led by the last great transnational cleric, the Iranian-born Ali al-Sistani, has kept its distance from Tehran. Israel’s demolition of the Hezbollah leadership and the earlier deaths of Qasem Soleimani, the dark lord of the Revolutionary Guards’ expeditionary Qods force, and his Iraqi ally, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, by an American missile in 2020, continues to reverberate among Iraqis. The Islamic Republic has never had a deep bench of talent; knowing how to deal with independent-minded Arabs isn’t a Persian strong-suit. The trajectory in Iraq for Tehran, even if its allies can gain more political clout, isn’t great.
For Tehran, nothing makes up for the losses in the Levant. The late Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander in Syria, Brigadier General Hossein Hamadani, who died in the battle of Aleppo in 2015, saw Syria as the fulcrum of the Islamic Republic’s Middle Eastern ambitions and even key to the survival of the revolution at home. Lose Syria, and widespread Shiite dissent, fracturing, and even rollback in Lebanon and in Iraq become possible. Hamadani, who had a big hand in crushing the pro-democracy Green Movement in 2009, believed that the regime’s esprit—its sense of itself as a victorious revolutionary movement—depended on its success in Syria.
Always aimed at the United States, its Zionist subsidiary, and Muslim states aligned with America, the Islamic Republic invested massively in the Arabs—primarily in the “Shiite arc” once it became apparent in the 1980s and 1990s that the clerical regime had insufficient traction among Sunni Arabs to make a difference. For the theocracy, Syria and Lebanon were inextricable since Syria offered a land route to Hezbollah, the linchpin of Tehran’s anti-Zionist ambitions. Radicalized Lebanese Shia, who’d created their own version of militant Shiism before the Islamic revolution and who were later nourished by their far stronger Iranian brethren, have been the indispensable foot-soldiers for Iran’s theocracy, an advance guard that made Arab Shiite cooperation with Persians operationally much easier.
Elsewhere, Tehran just couldn’t tilt Sunni fundamentalism away from its Gulf sponsors towards a militancy that created Tehran-guided militias of use against Israel and the United States. Hating America just wasn’t enough for most holy-warrior Sunnis, who saw Shiites as the original deviants. Al-Qa’ida and Iran could certainly come to an understanding. But the clerical regime saw itself as much more than a transit hub for dozens of death-wish believers who wanted to kill Americans.
Tehran could successfully piggy-back on pre-existing “national” hatreds, most effectively among the Palestinians, who loathe Jews far more than they loathe Shiites. The Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas both found friends and patronage within the Islamic Republic’s ruling elite. But the PLO’s anti-Americanism faded when the group got ejected from Lebanon in 1982 and, more consequentially, when its Soviet and communist Eastern European patrons collapsed. By the 1990s, Hamas became the most effective Sunni outfit that Tehran bestowed its cash and violent ambitions upon—even though these Palestinian Islamists hadn’t targeted Americans outside of Israel. Killing Jews in Israel was good enough.
But the Islamic Republic’s larger ambition—to be the vanguard for all Muslims, especially for Arabs, Islam’s progenitors—dissolved in the bloodbath of the Syrian rebellion against the Iranian-allied Assad dictatorship. It also got severely wounded on the home-front. One of the big reasons why the theocracy has so far successfully thwarted internal rebellions is that it is well aware that the vast majority of Iranians despise it. The mullahs and the Revolutionary Guards plan accordingly. But like the Spartans, who always wanted to keep a large reserve at home to suppress rebellious helots, the theocracy just doesn’t have the Iranian manpower to amp up its malice against foreigners. The Iranian grand strategy of using proxies was in part born of this depressing reality.
And Iran’s theocracy isn’t going to rise like a phoenix. The Islamic Republic no longer possesses a vibrant, alluring creed, capable of energizing foreign Shiites, let alone Sunnis, who watched Iran slaughter Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria. There are some crimes for which there is no forgiveness. The Iranians may try to buy their way back into Syria, and Middle Eastern corruption should never be underestimated. But the dimensions of what is required to sustain Hezbollah against Israel, especially if Jerusalem continues to pummel the group, is probably just too large for corrupt commerce to satisfy.
And the Lebanese Shia justifiably now fear the concatenation of Sunni groups who now rule next door under the leadership of Ahmad al-Shar’aa. Some of these men are hardcore Sunni holy warriors who’ve bled for years fighting Alawis, the heretical Shiites from whom the Assads sprang, and Hezbollah. Imagining these men wandering into Lebanon to get even isn’t hard. The trajectory in the Levant, even if future Israeli actions in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank provoke more waves of anti-Zionist anger, is unlikely to escape the Islamic Republic’s past alliances.
What the clerical regime still possesses is a certain technical know-how with missiles, drones, and nuclear weapons. It’s capacity for terrorism—always a favorite default choice since it is low cost, sufficiently deniable, and provides a real frisson—is uncertain. The many instances of the regime contracting out its assassination and kidnap plots to mediocre criminals and novices doesn’t suggest that the theocracy has either a A- or B-Team ready to deploy. The regime’s technical prowess is a real concern for Israel, especially if the United States were to again lose interest in combatting the Islamic Republic. It’s unlikely that the clerical regime’s atomic ambitions are going to come to fruition any time soon: the Israeli and American attacks—and the threat of future raids—have probably revoked Tehran’s threshold status. Yet the regime’s continuing pursuit of a nuke and more long-range missiles gives the theocracy pride and self-confidence (and a bit of deterrence against Israel), without which the regime has zero chance of reviving its regional dreams.
But such mechanical savoir-faire will not compensate for weakness on the ground. It can compensate neither for the loss of Syria nor the evanescence of the revolution’s promise. A real revolutionary state, the Islamic Republic has never wanted to live through its rhetoric. Ali Khamenei and his men have always wanted to see results, sustained if incremental progress towards expelling the United States from the Middle East, undermining Arab rulers who have fortified their dominions with American support, and sapping the will of Israelis and killing them whenever practicable.
The ruling circle within Iran, however shrunk by the supreme leader’s paranoia, may be stronger now than before the most recent uprising and nationwide bloodletting. Surviving gives purpose and cohesion. Slaughtering your own countrymen who’ve fallen from the righteous path likely will intensify the theocracy’s determination, not collapse it into fearful pragmatism.
Yet the Iranian regime can’t turn back the clock. Islamic militancy in Iran is irreversibly in decline, gutted by its success. This may be true—or true enough—throughout the Near East, among both Sunnis and Shiites. Tehran’s earlier successes, when it looked like Khamenei had developed a brilliant proxy-based way to extend the regime’s awe and influence, were built on dead Sunni Arabs. With ironic and pivotal help from the Israelis, payback has been a bitch.
Tehran is going to have to work really hard to transfer effective weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas. Cash payments may help keep these militant organizations from fracturing. But such a survival is depressing. Iran’s theocracy has to figure out how to do more with a lot less, assuming it can survive popular insurrections. If past is prologue, it’s an ugly future.
Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
