The Collapse Of Tehran’s Strategic Depth – OpEd

The political balance of power in the Middle East has dramatically shifted against Iran’s regime. Continuous blows to the regime’s proxy forces have created an unprecedented situation for the regime, one that it has never experienced before. These changes are happening at a time when the regime neither has the capacity to respond to these challenges nor can it afford to sit idly by. In both cases, the outcome spells defeat for the regime.

For more than three decades, the regime survived through its proxy forces, trying to expand its influence and operational reach. But now, these forces are constantly under pressure and are being damaged. This situation has created serious challenges for the regime, directly impacting on its internal stability and security. The regime is more aware than anyone of the simmering unrest at home, and in fact, all its recent provocations have been aimed at diverting attention away from Iran’s internal problems.

Democratic or even semi-democratic governments derive their survival and legitimacy from the votes of their citizens. These governments step aside after their term of power ends. They either exit the political stage or retreat into the background, waiting for the next cycle. However, in dictatorial regimes, there are no fundamental changes. The tyrant remains at the top of the hierarchy and rules as long as possible. The so-called elected officials only serve the purposes of the unelected leaders.

In such dictatorships, the regime’s stability and survival depend on factors outside the people’s will.

For the mullahs’ regime, the motivating factor for its forces and agents is embodied in “exporting terrorism and warmongering.” This is why regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei considers Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and Palestine as his regime’s “strategic depth” and uses this as a pretext to mobilize his Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and Basij forces. He needs to show his power in tangible ways to keep the repressive forces and criminals around him to defend his regime. As a result, he constantly boasted that he had control over four Arab capitals, and he ordered his proxies to publicly declare his support for them at every platform.

In other words, Khamenei has kept the IRGC, Basij, and plainclothes agents active for all these years by inflating the role of his proxy forces. The propaganda surrounding Hezbollah’s 150,000 missiles ready to launch was part of this strategy. He knew that if he stopped terrorism and warmongering through his proxies, as the regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini put it, the “spirit of Supreme Leader” would deflate. He knew that the criminals who keep his regime in power are all slaves to power. If they sense that their Supreme Leader is politically and militarily powerless, they will disintegrate quickly.

It is due to the collapse of this strategic depth and the disintegration of its proxies that fear has engulfed the regime.

With the regime losing its regional power, no one has hope for tomorrow anymore. In a speech to the regime’s loyal base, Majlis (Parliament) speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf repeatedly used the phrase “let’s not be afraid!”

At the same time, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has resorted to trips in the region, pleading with various countries to mediate and prevent the outbreak of war.

A country like Lebanon, which was once under the regime’s control, is now packing up its relationship with the regime and summoning its ambassador for every misstep.

Even Syria is no longer showing a friendly face to the regime and is quietly distancing itself from the regime and its so-called “Resistance Axis.”

One of the regime’s experts expressed fear on television, saying: “Today the situation is more dangerous than last year. The U.S. has brought it refueling planes to the region, and the B-52 bomber has entered the area!” (Source: Regime TV – October 17)

The regime’s Friday prayer leaders are also lamenting the wave of defections and “hopelessness” among the regime’s loyal forces, complaining that “some of these analyses come from cowardly people and are driven by enemy threats and exaggerations… These analyses lead to hopelessness, negativity, and the weakening of officials, and sometimes even our most loyal forces fall into the trap of these analyses.”

Thus, the regime’s strongholds in the Middle East are collapsing one after another, and this is the same “strategic defeat” that the Iranian Resistance predicted a year ago at the beginning of Khamenei’s warmongering.

Now, with protests flaring up and the people’s anger exploding in this volatile society, we will witness even more waves of fear, hopelessness, demotivation, and defections within the regime’s internal forces.