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Iran

The Mullahs have brought Iran to the brink of disaster. Their theocratic Islamic anti-Israeli, anti-American crusading state has sown the seeds which its people are now reaping.

The string of proxies which comprised Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” has collapsed. Syria’s President Assad has fled to Moscow. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis have been militarily and politically castrated. Defense experts believe that the regime has already fired half of its ballistic missiles.

Whether or not the regime’s enriched uranium was rescued from Trump’s “bunker-busting bombs” is irrelevant. The important point is that Israel now controls Iranian airspace and American bombers could attack unmolested.

The first responsibility of any government is to provide protection against attack. The Mullahs have signally failed in that primary task.

On top of that economic sanctions have brought the country to its financial knees and women and young people have refused to accept the strict codes of Sharia law. Their rebellion against imposed social norms is demonstrated by the fact that Iran is one of the world’s major consumers of pop culture.

The country is therefore ripe for regime change. In fact, it has been headed gradually in that direction for years as successive elections have seen “progressive” candidates garner an increasing share of the vote. A good example was last year’s victory in presidential elections of Masoud Pezeshkian over the Islamic candidate.

Exactly what might replace the clerics is unknown. The Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, has offered himself as a transitional leader until democratic elections can be held. The exiled women’s rights leader Masih Alinejad has also been mentioned as well as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. Other possibilities are leading technocrats from the Katami or Rouhani Administration and, of course, any military leader who has not been assassinated by the Israelis.

Opportunity awaits all of above—and more.

Iranian regime change would be disastrous for the cause of global Jihad. It would also be very bad news for Russia and China.

Vladimir Putin already suffered one Middle East setback with the collapse of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. A collapse of the Mullahs would be even worse as Russia shares a maritime border (the Caspian Sea) with Iran and has a long history of involvement in Persian affairs.

The Russians have been carefully cultivating relations with Israel for decades. Moscow advised Tehran are how to evade Western sanctions and the two countries have been beefing up their respective infrastructures to improve north-south trade through Eurasia.

After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Iran became a major supplier to Moscow of Shahed drones which are now being produced under license in Russia. In January of this year the two countries signed a major security partnership which included the sharing of intelligence and military technology. It, however, stopped well short of a military alliance.

Iran is essential to China’s policy in the Middle East. To demonstrate this, Beijing in 2021 signed a 25-year strategic partnership with Tehran and agreed to invest $400 billion in the country.

China is almost totally dependent on oil from the Gulf for its oil and gas energy needs. To guarantee the flow of oil it must diversify away from the pro-American suppliers of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. Iran enables them to do this. As a result, China ignores western sanctions and imports 20 percent of its oil and gas requirement from Iran.

Iran is also the Middle East link in China’s ambitious Belt/Road trade network.

Its staunch anti-Americanism is also useful to Beijing at international forums such as the UN. China reckons that Iran could be important in re-shaping international institutions so that they have a pro-China bias instead of the current pro-Western bias.

Finally, China’s brokering of a diplomatic rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia has allowed Beijing to protect itself as a peaceful player in the region in contrast to America’s military-based power.

An upset in New York