After Assad In Syria, Will Iran’s Regime Be The Next To Fall?

-Analysis-

History testifies to the fact that no tyrant can impose himself on his people for ever. Repression, violence and deceit may hold the fort for a while, but regimes based on injustice are eventually bound to collapse. The fall of Syria’s murderous ruler, Bashar al-Assad, is one more confirmation of that principle, which also bears a message for other, brutal regimes.

That message is most certainly being heard right now in the Islamic Republic of Iran: a political system bereft of legitimacy cannot withstand the will of the people.

When Assad became president in 2000 after the death of his father Hafez al-Assad, he initially offered the impression of a modernizing, reformist figure. It wasn’t long though before his administration resumed his father’s repressive policies and managed, by refining its domestic intelligence and propaganda, to silence all dissent.

A turning point came in 2011, when protests erupted in the context of the Arab Spring burgeoning in countries across the region. In Syria, early, peaceful demonstrations provoked fierce repression that pushed the country toward a civil war in which the regime used its full repertoire of terror tactics including mass arrests and torture, use of chemical weapons and aerial bombing of cities, courtesy of its ally Russia.

Indeed, backing from Russia and Iran were crucial to the regime’s survival for a decade. The Tehran regime sent in elements of the Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah and other militias, while Russia’s intervention was direct and merciless. Both spent enormous sums to consolidate power in its client state.

But the message here is that foreign backing and intervention cannot restore a government’s legitimacy, once lost. And that’s the message for the regime led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which may expect a similar fate to Assad’s seeing as it too has based its survival on foreign ties, repression and ethnic or religious discrimination.

At home and abroad

At home, the Revolutionary Guards, members of the Basij (‘mobilization’) militia and intelligence agencies, notably the Guards’ own secret service, are used, not against foreign enemies but ordinary citizens, while use of force against protests, mass arrests, summary trials, torture and executions appear to be favored tools in dealing with a restive citizenry.

Abroad, the regime has helped put together a network of proxy militias that are linked to its own survival. Militias like Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis or the Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq were not only meant to tighten the Iranian regime’s grip on parts of the region, but are strongly suspected to have helped suppress protests in Iran in the past decade.

Both Assad and Tehran have pursued a policy of ethnic and religious divide-and-rule.

They failed in any case to bolster its regional position, reaping instead Western hostility, more sanctions, Arab distrust and diplomatic isolation. All this has intensified the economic pressures on an already struggling population.

Never-ending divide

Both Assad and the Tehran regime have pursued a policy of ethnic and religious divide-and-rule. Assad, a member of the Shia-affiliated Alawite religious minority, discriminated against the country’s majority Sunnis; while the ayatollahs of Tehran rarely let up on the pressures they pile on the Sunni Kurds and Baluchis, perhaps hoping most Iranians will come to perceive them as resentful, dangerous separatists. With weaker minorities like the Bahais, the persecution is systematic for all to see.

Iranian society has shown it is seething.

Yet the ultimate effect of the regime’s behavior has been to widen an already gaping divide between itself and millions of Iranians disgusted by their rulers’ venality, corruption and cynicism.

In the course of several bouts of protests, the latest of which was in 2022, Iranian society has shown it is seething. In 2022, with the slogan Woman, Life, Freedom, Iranians made it clear they were no longer pushing socio-economic demands or waiting for partial reforms — or the regime’s “moderation show” — but wanted profound changes beginning with the end of the Islamic Republic.

The regime, like Assad and his preposterous propaganda, continues to indulge in bluster and will pretend nothing is amiss to the very end, but it must have noticed — when practically nobody votes anymore — that Iranians are no longer playing along. It has time left to consider a lesson from the Assad débacle: how long can a regime go on when people reject it and its fair-weather friends could leave it in the lurch at a moment’s notice?

Dictatorship: the result

Another lesson — for the wider world — concerns the harm done to peoples or an entire region when foreign powers decide to back dictators. We’re familiar with the oft-cited pretext, that it is for stability’s sake, but in the case of Western powers, they now have a duty to back the Iranian people, sanction the regime and push for the prosecution of its worst offenders. Shutting down a tyranny’s business and diplomatic options is one way of helping people take action, by weakening the regime. No need then for the folly of armed intervention..

Dictatorships may fall suddenly.

How will Iranians implement the political transition they seek? Will Iran slip into a decade-long civil war like Syria or can its past and heritage provide a simpler and more peaceful solution? That will depend on the level of unity among Iranians, the role played by its socio-cultural elites and the support of the international community.

Dictatorships may fall suddenly, but their end is ultimately conditioned by a longer process of socio-political evolution. That part has already happened in Iran, which finds itself at the stage of a conscious nation facing a recalcitrant and violent, but discredited regime.

Syria has shown that the struggle of nations for freedom is more resilient than any dictator. It is a reality that may take time to unfold, but is inevitable — even for Iran.