A Middle East Paradox: All Those Iranians Looking To Israel As Last, Best Hope

-OpEd-

While some in the West worry openly about the risk of an all-out war in the Middle East sparked by the Israel-Iran showdown, others see their tit-for-tat actions so far as being restricted and symbolic — not unlike trash-talking with gunfire.

They believe there will be no real war between the sides in spite of engrained, ideological differences, if war is taken to be the “conventional” devastation we’re seeing in Ukraine or the 1980-88 war between Iran and Iraq.

Yet some finer points should be considered.

While the barrage of missiles Iran recently fired at Israel produced very little damage, those inclined to dismiss the likelihood of war did not imagine the Tehran regime could ever be as brazen as it became on April 14. A U.S. official was cited on ABC News as admitting the administration was startled by the orders of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as it had perceived him as a cautious, calculating man.

Revolutionary guards, Shia doctrine

The ayatollahs and Israel have been waging, or almost waging, a “shadow war” since the Iranian regime’s inception in 1979. This shadow war gained intensity in two particular phases over the past decades: first, with the Syrian civil war that led to Iranian intervention through the Revolutionary Guards and subsequent Israeli reactions; and secondly, with the Hamas attack on Israel in October 7, 2023. The physical distance between Iran and Israel, some 1,200 kilometers, may thus have been crucial to impeding a clash of armies so far.

Iran’s army has had very little involvement in the actions undertaken against Israel in the past four decades, these being entrusted either to the Revolutionary Guards -— an essentially ideological force — and to proxy militias across the Middle East.

These are the forces tasked, and trusted, with pursuing Iran’s “asymmetrical,” non-conventional and ideological war against Israel and the West. It was never a job for ordinary soldiers, for reasons discernible in the declarations of regime personalities. One senior cleric, Ayatollah Hussein Nuri-Hamedani has said, “the Lord of the Age (or awaited messiah or Mahdi) will not arise until the Jew is destroyed,” and the “destruction of Israel” was the best preparation for his reemergence.

This is a war that must go on, one way or another, until Israel is “wiped off the map.”

Another cleric, Ayatollah Fazil Lankarani, stresses that the “destruction of Israel is one of the ideals of the Islamic Republic.”

A retired Guards general now a military adviser to the supreme leader, Yahya Rahim-Safavi, has in turn qualified Jews as “barely human.” Clearly the issue is not a strategic threat from Israel nor could it be resolved with “talks” if the Jews are an obstacle to the Shia imam’s yearned-for return.

This is a war that must go on, one way or another, until Israel is “wiped off the map.” And for this the regime needed forces like Hezbollah, the Quds brigade and the Revolutionary guards themselves, where virulent anti-semitism is a systematic part of personnel training.

War of attrition

It is inevitably a war of attrition, as neither Hezbollah nor the Quds force or any of Iran’s mercenaries could destroy Israel, like the Arab armies failed to in the 20th century. It has been designed to keep its destructive costs down, for Iran. As senior Guards officers have pointed out in recent years, with the end of the war with Iraq, the Revolutionary Guards revamped their structures around the idea of asymmetrical warfare whose parameters included distance.

That meant turning Syria, Iraq and the Mediterranean coast into Iran’s “strategic depth,” with the idea of keeping war at bay. The regime may have made a mistake here as the Guards may not have the resources and field know-how needed to successfully run a low-level war for decades and at a distance. That is especially the case when they have stretched themselves further by pursuing endeavors ranging from running businesses and making armaments to protecting the state and crushing protests inside Iran.

Waging a war vaguely intended to hasten the end of history is not a practical proposition.

In mundane terms, waging a war vaguely intended to hasten the end of history by destroying a state as a prelude to the Mahdi’s return, is not a practical proposition. It is one more reason why this cockamamy project was a job for an army of hotheads, not a professional army. Today its eager partisans in Iran are second and third-generation regime supporters putting their elders to shame with their revolutionary zeal and the martyr’s contempt for common sense.

Iranians divided

What about the millions of other Iranians, many of whom are Shias who do not hate Israel or the Jews, and are attached, on the contrary, to a historic friendship between Iranians and Jews dating back to the monarch Cyrus. How far is Israel exploiting this divide between the national sentiment and Shia internationalism? Are Iranian regime hands aware of the meager sympathies they enjoy among a good many — though unquantifiable — Iranians, every time Israel strikes at the Revolutionary Guards?

Today Israel has become an ally — and perhaps even the only ally — Iranians might count on in their quest for freedom. If certain polls are to be believed, only 32% of Iranians describe themselves as Shia, which is a measure of the harm the regime has done to the branch of the Islamic religion that found a home in Iran over 1,000 years ago.

And just as the Israelis insist their war is strictly with the regime, so Iranians send them messages of peace, online or through exiled representatives like the former crown prince Reza Pahlavi, or the fugitive former soccer star Ali Karimi.

And this pact will persist as long as Iranians feel the leaders of Israel are on their side.