How Iran’s Obsession With Destroying Israel Has Undermined Its Own Hold On Power

-Analysis-

From its very inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran based its foreign policy on hostility toward Israel and the creation of proxy militias in the Middle East. Marked by loud promises to destroy Israel and conquer Jerusalem, this policy has over four decades become a crucial component of its entire regional strategy.

The regime has spent billions that otherwise could have been invested inside Iran on those militias, notably Hezbollah and Hamas, to extend the regime’s regional influence with constant pressure on Israel to fight and die on its behalf.

Israel’s air strikes inside Iran early Saturday are the latest step in a steady escalation over the years between the two nations that has been accelerated with the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

The regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly said Iran will not negotiate with the United States, presenting the slogan of “Neither War, Nor Negotiations” as the Islamic Republic’s chief approach to interacting with the United States.

Thus there were no formal, direct talks with U.S. representatives ahead of the 2015 nuclear pact (which the United States under Donald Trump pulled out of in 2019), with Russia acting as go-between and messenger.

In short, this was a policy that worked to a degree, and for a while, after the 1979 revolution. But it is now at a dead end.

Isolation and weakness

Today, the regime’s proxy militias — which at times wielded inordinate power in the region using Tehran’s resources — are disintegrating, as the Iranian regime sinks further into isolation and weakness.

Perhaps the greatest sign of the failure of this “proxy” policy is the pace of Hezbollah’s degradation in Lebanon, when just five years back it acted as Tehran’s feared tentacle with a far-reaching international clout. In recent years, even before the present onslaught, it began losing its operational capabilities as Israel repeatedly struck its arms trafficking links and routes through Iraq and Syria.

The latest, is that Israel was directly targeting Hezbollah’s banking system. This will gravely impede its ability to finance its military activities, though it is of course a euphemism to call this regional racket’s cash till a banking system.

Alongside Hezbollah’s withering finances, Iran’s own economy is in critical condition, for a combination of Western sanctions, domestic mismanagement and structural corruption. But while the regime may now be channelling far less money to the proxies, this will barely console the millions of impoverished Iranians who must suffer as the state looks for trouble abroad.

There has been a litany of protests there in recent years, big and small, both in the capital and in remote and impoverished districts, over demands that have ranged from unpaid wages, threadbare pensions and environmental mismanagement, to the brazen violation of people’s rights. The regime that shouted out its popular vocation in 1979 has clearly become unpopular and suspicious of its own people, and must devote another part of Iranian public resources to surveillance and repression.

More signs of Iran’s isolation

It is also more isolated than ever in the international community. Its relations with most regional countries, notably the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, are less than satisfactory. A sign of Iran’s isolation and possible desperation for regional goodwill, is its foreign minister’s recent trip to Bahrain, a state with which it does not even maintain official ties. It seems neither Bahrain nor the other states have given its chief diplomat a positive response that might have buoyed the regime’s morale.

Given all this, we might say the Islamic Republic’s entire foreign policy is approaching its end.

The regional militias’ military and financial capabilities have shrunk, Iran’s economy is stressed and the regime can barely give its would-be “Axis of Resistance” a helping hand.

Indeed, Tehran’s sudden and belated interest in negotiations is itself a sign of the dismal fruits of its own brand of diplomacy. The Islamic Republic may have reached a juncture its supreme leader never envisaged: Khamenei’s “Neither War nor Negotiations” mantra has turned into the specter of an imminent war, and Iran desperately seeking negotiations. It has even suggested talking to the West again.

Once convinced that it would lead the march into Jerusalem, the Iranian regime is now trying to escape from crises of its own making, from hiring proxies to fight its wars to desperately trying to figure out any way to avoid war on its own territory.