The Revolution’s Last Stand

SO LET US start with a quick overview of where we are—which is somewhere few expected us to be a couple of years ago. Back then, any­one who had described the current chaos and violence in the Middle East would have seemed very pessimistic indeed. Since then we have seen three outright wars, the fall of a 50-year-old dynasty, a host of more minor conflicts, and much else. Quite where we will be in a week or so, let alone a month or two or three, is not difficult to predict; which is in itself a sign of the times. There is little optimism these days.

Last Friday, June 13, Israel launched an air offensive against Iran aimed at the destruc­tion or at least a significant impairment of its nuclear programme—among other objec­tives. Since then, several hundred Iranians may have died, although it is very difficult to confirm an exact total. It seems certain howev­er that a significant number of high-ranking officials of the Iranian revolutionary regime and some very senior nuclear scientists are among them. More recently, Israeli warplanes’ targeting criteria have broadened to include fuel dumps, dual-use factories, missile launch facilities, a state-run TV network, and much else. Overall, the continuing airstrikes, ini­tially at least supplemented by drone attacks launched from within Iran by Mossad opera­tives, appear to have inflicted severe damage but perhaps not the killer blow that Israel may have been hoping for.

In response, Iran has launched almost daily barrages of ballistic missiles at Israel. These are less accurate weapons by some considerable margin than those deployed by Israel and have come up against Israeli air defences, which are perhaps the best in the world. So far they have killed at least 24 Israelis nonetheless and injured some 600. Life in Israel is entirely paralysed and there is a genuine sense everywhere that the country is involved in an existential struggle. The land borders are busy as people try to flee.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, claimed that the offensive against Iran was precipitated by intelligence reveal­ing Iranian scientists were not just close to being able to build multiple nuclear devices but were working on a trigger system that would allow them to weaponise that new capability in the very short future. Other assessments, by the US intelligence com­munity for example, differ substantially. It is up to you which you believe. No one outside a very few people in Iran itself, even those privy to the most classified analyses of Western or other powers, has exact information. The progress or otherwise of the Iranian nuclear programme has always been one of those questions that, if posed to anyone who does know anything about it, elicits the response “I don’t know”, and provokes a flood of speculation if posed to someone who does not.

Throughout his many years in power, Netanyahu has sworn that he will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon and has frequently said that an Iranian bomb was an imminent prospect. The Israeli military has been preparing for an attack on Iran for as long as a consequence. This means that they have not only devel­oped the tactics that will allow them to penetrate Iranian airspace but, more importantly, have intelligence files built up through comprehensive penetration of key Iranian institutions. It is this that allows them to successfully target very senior members of the Iranian regime, particularly in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its beating activist heart, as well as nuclear and other vital infrastructure. Israeli intelligence services will now be looking to find new targets for strikes in the days that come. Experience over recent months and years suggest that they will be able to do this, though the necessary information is likely to come sporadically rather than in a steady flow, so expect lulls between assassinations during which warplanes range widely.

Not only did Netanyahu believe that, with Trump in the White House, he has a diplomatic opening to launch his attack but he also believed that, following Israel’s previous airstrikes against Iran over the last 15 months or so, he has a military opening to do so given the now degraded state of Iranian air defence systems. This is impor­tant. Netanyahu was motivated to launch these attacks by genuine FOMO. If not now, then never is the reasoning.

The Israeli prime minister has other reasons to attack now. One very significant factor is the weakness of the coalition of proxies Iran has built in recent decades. The most potent member of this “Axis of Resistance” is—or at least was—Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Islamic militant movement that was cofounded by Iran back in the early 1980s. It was Hezbollah’s massive stockpile of ballistic and other missiles that was supposed to deter Israel from any strike against Iran’s nuclear programme and so act as a shield, at a very limited financial and diplomatic cost, for the Islamic Republic.

But the threat Hezbollah posed to Israel was summarily dis­posed of in Israel’s intense, ruthless air offensive and ground invasion last autumn. Again, Mossad played a key part with a spectacular operation to sabotage thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies. The Israeli military, and particularly its air force, then proved more than capable of taking apart the organisa­tion, killing almost the entire leadership and achieving almost all the aims set by the political leadership of Israel, with almost no loss to Israel.

Other members of the Axis of Resistance are also no longer in any position to threaten Israel. Hamas is just about hanging on in Gaza, surrounded by twisted concrete, destroyed tunnels and corpses. But the Sunni militant organisation is not going to be attacking Israel again in the near future. It was never that close to Tehran anyway.

The Shia Iran-aligned militia in Iraq have no interest in picking a fight with what is fast becoming the evident regional military superpower and hegemon either; while the Houthis in Yemen have proved that, despite their bloodcurdling war cry of “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse be upon the Jews, Victory to Islam”, their ability to harm Israel is minimal. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria, staunch long-term Iranian allies, has weakened Tehran and its proxies further as well as opening previously inaccessible airspace to the Israelis.

Then there are the domestic considerations. Netanyahu is currently being cross- examined in a sordid corruption trial that could see him behind bars if he loses power. The day before he launched the attack on Iran, Orthodox Jewish parties came close to dissolving parliament and collapsing the ruling coalition. This would have precipitated early elections. Polls have to be held be­fore autumn 2026 and Netanyahu could form another govern­ment if he can secure what appears to be a decisive victory over Iran before Israelis vote. A win over the Ayatollah’s regime at least will distract them from the apparently never-ending war in Gaza and the higher cost-of-living in Israel.

Given all of this, it seems extraordinary that the Iranian re­gime was not better prepared. Many of the senior officials killed in the first wave of Israel attacks died in their homes, some with their families. Not only did this reveal the opulent décor of the North Tehran apartments, exposed to the elements by the blast of Israeli missiles, but an astonishing complacency or at least miscal­culation by otherwise very wary and quite formidable veterans of decades of clandestine warfare.

There are many reasons for this but one must be that the Ira­nians simply did not think the Israelis would attack until the indirect talks between the US and Iran to limit the country’s nuclear programme in return for lifting sanctions were still be­ing discussed. Whether Donald Trump knew what the Israelis were planning is unclear. The signals sent from the Oval Office have been typically contradictory. This raises two possibilities. One is that the US knew exactly what the Israelis were planning and was happy to continue the negotiations as part of a campaign to deceive the Iranians, something that would make Washington fully complicit in Netanyahu’s plans. The second is that Trump and his administration had absolutely no idea of what was going to happen and the US president’s earlier hints of disapproval for an attack on Iran by Israel were simply ignored by Netanyahu.

Neither scenario is very encouraging. In the former, Americans, still considered the only people by some considerable margin with any capacity to restrain the most far-right administration Israel has ever known, were duplicitous and willing to allow the now supremely confident and bellicose leader of Israel as much freedom of action as he wants. Some will say this has always been the case, and not just under Trump but during pretty much every adminis­tration since perhaps Ronald Reagan or even Kennedy. In the latter scenario, the US was laughably inept and incapable of influencing anyone in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem even if they wanted to. Again, some may say this has been the case for a very long time.

This has great relevance now, with the discussion turning to whether Trump will decide to involve the US military in the war Netanyahu has started. Without the massive ‘bunker buster’ bomb developed by the US and carried only by its B2 bomber, the Iranian nuclear plant at Fordo cannot be destroyed. As of Thurs­day, June 19, Trump was still sending conflicting signals about his intentions. It is likely he simply has not made up his mind, as personally divided as his MAGA base is over the prospect of US airmen in the skies over Iran.

What does appear certain is that this conflict will not stop any­time soon. The leaders of Iran and Israel both have far too much at stake. If Netanyahu would be risking his political survival if he declared an end to the conflict without an apparent victory, the same is true for the regime in Iran.

Very early after the Israeli strikes, when Iran’s vulnerability was made limpidly clear, senior Iranian officials suggested pub­licly that they would be prepared to cease firing of massive bar­rages of missiles into Israel in return for a general ceasefire. They have reportedly reached out to the White House since. Iranians are currently in a difficult place. Not only has the defeat of so many of the proxies, particularly Hezbollah, deprived them of defence, but it has also deprived them of a means to hit back. The whole strategy of investing in a regional coalition of assorted Islamic militant militias now looks utterly misguided. This would be embarrassing if it were not so serious and so is only one threat to the legitimacy of the Islamic republic. Authoritar­ian regimes cannot afford to make big mistakes in public. As the Shah found out in the late 1970s, they have no one else to blame.

For, failures abroad can quickly be matched by failures at home. There is undoubtedly a rallying effect as Iranians wake up every morning to reports of casualties inflicted by an already reviled external enemy. Decades of anti-Israel propaganda have an impact, even on those who detest their own regime. And being scared makes you angry.

But this probably brief groundswell of solidarity cannot dis­guise the deep dissent and unrest and discontent within Iran, as well as its profound fragmentation. One reason Mossad has been able to recruit so extensively within the country is clearly dissatis­faction and alienation felt by many towards their rulers. It is telling that while Mossad finds informants who can reveal exactly where the commanders of the revolutionary guards are meeting, the Ira­nians have only been able to recruit a few marginals and fantasists who can do little more than deface portraits of Netanyahu.

ANOTHER FACTOR THAT is important and unclear is the level of remaining stocks of ballistic missiles held by Iran, and whether they have kept some of their most potent weapons back for use at the strategically most opportune moment. Many Israeli strikes are aimed at degrading those stocks or limiting launches and many expert observers are watching the scale and timing of the Iranian barrages in a bid to gauge how many missiles they have left. Once the stocks are exhausted, as they eventually will be, the Iranians are likely to turn to other per­haps less conventional weapons, such as a partial blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. A threat to throttle the world’s energy supplies might, they will hope, have an effect similar to the oil embargo and price hikes imposed by Arab powers in 1973, galvanising the US and the broad international community into pressuring Israel to end its offensive.

One obvious point about the senior Iranian officials who died last weekend was that almost all had begun their careers in the early years of revolutionary Iran. Most were veterans of the Iran-Iraq war, the crucible which formed the current regime and also, in many ways, contemporary Iran. All were profoundly ide­ological men, committed to the continued rule of the inheritors of the authority of Ayatollah Khomeini and the maintenance of his project. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old supreme leader, is a generation older than most of them but he is not alone in his fierce belief that the revolutionary torch needed to be car­ried forward, whatever the level of oppression required to do so.

These men, the Praetorian Guard of the Revolution, are now in the crosshairs of the Israeli air force and intelligence services. The IRGC has lost a dozen generals, including its commander-in-chief, Major General Hossein Salami. Simply in terms of its personnel, the regime is now being thinned out and this will continue for probably weeks to come. This means that whatever or whoever is in power in Iran at the end of this conflict is likely to be radically different from that which preceded the war. This could be a new version of the same regime, simply led by young­er men. It could be a descent into Syria-like chaos. The fractured nature of Iranian society would have important implications in any such scenario. And the regime may end with a whimper not a bang, and may be replaced with something equally unpleasant or worse. Netanyahu and his ilk clearly desire the elimination of the system that was created back in 1979 at the fall of the Shah. Contemplating what may possibly follow, some may whisper: Be careful what you wish for.

The only good news is that a regional conflagration of the kind that has so long been feared still looks unlikely. At the very beginning of the conflict, days after Hamas had launched its surprise attack into southern Israel in which militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250, there were widespread fears of an almost immediate descent into an anarchic and lethal free-for-all across the entire Middle East. Some of the conflicts widely foreseen back then have indeed come to pass: in Gaza, Syria, the West Bank, and Lebanon. But none turned out the way that was expected. There has been no invasion of north-eastern Israel by militia based in Syria, for example. The West Bank has seen appalling violence from set­tlers and the Israeli military but there has been no generalised uprising, as once thought likely. The war in Lebanon was nasty, brutish and short but caused little loss to Israel, contrary to most predictions. The war in Gaza, as we are all seeing every atrocious day, is nasty, brutish and very long. Warnings given in the begin­ning 2024 by hawkish Israeli former generals that it might take up to 12 months for Israel to achieve its war aim of crushing Hamas were then greeted with scepticism and alarm. We are now 20 months in and have seen 55,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza as well as almost the entire territory reduced to ruins and there is no end in sight yet.

If Iran attacks US shipping bases or embassies or anything similar in the region, then we will get a very one-sided, probably quite brief, battle pitting a regional superpower, Israel, allied to a global superpower, the US, against a minor geopolitical actor, Iran. Even if the Gulf states are somehow drawn in, it is difficult to see who would fight alongside Iran. China definitely won’t. Russia won’t either. Nor will North Korea send troops. It seems more likely that Iran’s leaders will continue to seek an off-ramp, gambling that they can somehow hold on to power even if their failings are now far too obvious for anyone to ignore. The big questions are more about what kind of negotiated end to the conflict might be acceptable to all parties—a problem we are familiar with from the lengthy war in Ukraine. Trump’s call for “unconditional surrender” may be typical bluster but does not augur well.

There is of course one certainty. It’s that, whatever we find on the other side of this conflict, the Middle East and so the world will have been changed forever. We will be living with the con­sequences of this latest war for many decades to come.

Ayatollah KhameneiBenjamin NetanyahuDonald TrumpIsrael-Iran conflictwar on Iran