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
Zohran Mamdani’s election upset in the Democratic primary for New York’s mayor has exposed an age and policy gap in America’s opposition party.
At 33, Mamdani is a representative of millennials and GenZ voters who are disillusioned with the party establishment which was represented in the primary by 67-year-old former governor Andrew Cuomo.
But age was not the only factor. Mamdani is also clearly charismatic and refuses to apologise for being a Muslim immigrant, two facts which would have ruled him out for public office in other parts of the country.
A state Assemblyman with little political experience, Mamdani describes himself as a Democratic Socialist and espouses the policies that prove it: free childcare, free bus rides, more public housing, subsidised city-run grocery shops and a rent freeze.
All of these policies have piqued the interest of one of America’s youngest populations living in the country’s most expensive city.
New York is a Democratic stronghold which means that Mamdani is a near-certainty to win the New York general election in November. And because of the city’s population (8.5 million, 19 million in wider metropolitan area), the mayoral elections are seen as a leading indicator of the direction of Democratic Party politics.
The Democratic Party therefore could be swinging to the left at the same time as the Republicans under Trump have staked out the far-right.
This would appear to leave a vacuum in the centre ground. But wait, Democratic primaries for the governorship have produced victories for centrist politicians in New Jersey (Mikie Sherrill) and Virginia (Abigail Spanberger). Those two states are also regarded as party barometers. Looks like a split.
Kenya
Kenya erupted in one of its periodic bouts of violence this week. The spark was nothing new. It was something old—the first anniversary of riots which killed 60 people.
Those disturbances were called the GenZ riots because they were organised by a leaderless tech-savvy youth group calling themselves Generation Z.
The spark for the violence was the Kenya Finance Bill which proposed steep tax rises on essentials such as food, fuel and bank transfers. The rioters were also unhappy about Kenya’s mounting national debt and inflation. Demonstrations reached their peak on 25 June last year when protestors stormed the parliament building. The government ordered the police to open fire and 60 people were killed.
The end result was that President Ruto withdrew the increased taxes, dissolved his cabinet and temporarily withdrew the bill. Over the past year the government has reduced inflation but its debt problem means that it remains at risk of default. The current crop of GenZ rioters are still angry about economic hardship and have added corruption and police brutality to their list of grievances.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".
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15 Comments
Tom presents a very pro-Western view with his call for regime change in Iran. This hasn’t worked out too well for western interests in the past. In 1953, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup d’état orchestrated by MI6 and the CIA, known as Operation AJAX. The Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was installed as head of State. The rest, as they say, is history.
So it does seem rather crass to mention the name of another Reza Pahlavi.
He may well have offered himself as a “transitional” leader until democratic elections can be held. Some of us are cynical enough to think that the son might have a rather longer transitional time in mind than he is letting on!
Zohran Mamdani is about as much a socialist as David Cameron. This doesn’t stop his different poliicies from being interesting and exciting. He will need to rouse the young voters in New York in great numbers if he is to win because Cuomo will almost certainly run as an independent with the tacit support of the Democrat establishment who don’t want a radical change at all. That Cuomo, forced to resign because of a sex scandal, should even be considered a suitable candidate is beyond me. A cynical post on Blue Sky said that half the democrats are cheering Mamdani on whilst the other half would cheer his deportation, already called for by some republicans.
On other LDV threads people have wondered about campaigning to increase taxes. Mamdani is doing just that. It will be interesting to see how that goes down.
Of course, anyone vaguely to the left of GhengisKhan is regarded as a communist in the USA. Beats actually understanding different politics.
Western governments attempting to effect regime change have a very bad record but I did not read a call for that. Believing that “The country is ripe for regime change” is not the same. If progressive forces within Iran gain control that is undoubtedly a good thing.
Netanyahu’s claim to be “defeating Jihadism” while he is in fact crushing Palestinian resistance in Gaza and the West Bank, in the hope that the world community will turn a blind eye to annexation, has been hugely assisted by Khamenei’s belligerent rhetoric. For a long while it seemed vaguely credible that Iran might be capable of annihilating Israel, but now we know that is nonsense.
No doubt we will now see Netanyahu both basking in the glory of how easily the mighty IDF conquered its enemy, and at the same time having to pretend that Iran is still a major threat. If regime change had happened he would have had an even more difficult task convincing the world he was defeating terrorism on behalf of us all, not simply ethnically cleansing Palestine.
I totally oppose what the Israeli government is doing and support a two state solution. Never forget that it was Hamas who gave Netanyahu’s the excuse to go into Gaza when they raped, murdered and kidnapped mainly Israeli civilians in 2023. Why are they and the rest of the world surprised when the Israeli government does exactly what it always does, namely an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? They have gone far too far this time and it must stop.
One of the reasons I never join LibDem groups about the Middle East is because both sides have committed atrocities and both sides seek to wreck any move towards peace or a permanent ceasefire .
Tom – beware of voices calling for regime change in Iran.
Change will come because it is what the Iranian people want. We do not know when or how (although it might be possible within a constitutional framework, depending on what happens after Khameini eventually dies), but there has been no plausible or serious candidate suggested that could replace the current regime. The Shah’s son has no support and would look like a foreign puppet.
The great risk run by those who would ‘encourage’ regime change is that the current regime would be replaced by chaos and civil war. That would actually suit some of those voices calling for regime change quite well. An alternative scenario would be a military take over by the revolutionary guard – and I hope none of us want that.
Tom Arms….Opportunity awaits all of above—and more….
So, THIS TIME things will be different.. Have you learned nothing from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya?
N, B. “Hamas was discreetly supported by Israael.” (Wikipedia)
Might the U. S. A have an unstated empire of proxies held by debt?
https://michael-hudson.com/
Might the governments of both Iran and Israel both have significant theocratic facets and purposes?
Might this article be of interest/relevance?
https://anotherangryvoice.substack.com/
Jack Straw’s book ‘The English Job – Understanding Iran and why it distrusts Britain’ confirms my 54-year fascination with a proud country four times the size of Germany and an ancient history. In my book Hitchhiking to India in 1962 and subsequent play I witnessed the anger against the CIA and UK coup of 1953 when we ousted elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.
Tom’s article says: ‘The country is therefore ripe for regime change.’ Sounds like 1953 to me. Masoud Pezeshkian’s victory in last year’s presidential elections was based on his desire to rebuild Iran’s relationship with the West. The Israeli-US attack on Iran explains why Iran distrusts the West.
Please read Saturday’s Times article Iranian distrust of the British runs deep: ‘That is because suspicion of the UK as the “hidden hand” behind every plot and confrontation, is deeply embedded in Iran’s politic, language. rhetoric and self-image. Distrust and self-image are part of Iran’s cultural DNA.’
The article’s triumphalist tone re Iran may be misplaced.
Sure, Israel initially caught the Iranians off guard, successfully hacking air defence control systems and assassinating several senior commanders. But within little more than a day the hack was mostly defeated and new commanders appointed. Also, it seems that young Iranians have rallied to the flag.
It turns out that Iran has some very capable missiles the more modern of which Israel can’t stop. Most of our media takes a partisan view so we’re not informed about the outcome, but independent sources and experts report that Israel took a real battering.
Moreover, Iran is essential to China as a supplier of oil, as the doorkeeper of the key Strait of Hormuz and as a key link in its Belt & Road Initiative. In other words, China will supply Iran with all the military help and supplies it asks for.
For a more informed view, see the linked interview with Prof Mearsheimer, who famously and accurately predicted in 2014 that the West was leading Ukraine “down the primrose path” to ruin.
https://youtu.be/T3PpjVOCLsQ
“Tom’s article says: ‘The country is therefore ripe for regime change.’ Sounds like 1953 to me”
Seems a bit Orientalist. Presuming that regime change will only ever go that way in that region. I believe there were similar thoughts about Imperial Japan. It seemed they proved them wrong.
During World War II, the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran forced the abdication of Reza Shah and succession of his son Mohammad Reza Shah. During his reign, the British-owned oil industry was nationalized by the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had support from Iran’s national parliament to do so.
The Shah subsequently dismissed his prime-minister Mossagdeh in 1953 beforethe Iranian army (supported by the United States and the United Kingdom) coup aimed at reinstating the autocratic rule of the shah.
While both the UK and the USA wereintimately involved in undermining Mosaddegh’s government, it was still principally a domestic Iranian driven revolution The Coup Against Democracy That Wasn’t just as the 1979 overthrow of the Shah was and the next major regime change will be.