Battered by war, Tehran responds with repression and paranoia

France 24

5 hours ago

The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not appeared in public since the start of the conflict with Israel on June 12, delivering only recorded video messages to his countrymen and giving the impression of a man sheltering for safety in his bunker.
In a new recorded video on Thursday, Khamenei claimed victory over Israel and the United States, his first official statement since the start of the ceasefire on June 24.
Until a few days ago, communications with the supreme leader were very complicated. In hiding with his family and protected by the Vali-ye Amr special forces unit of the Revolutionary Guards, Khamenei spoke to his commanders only through a close aide, suspending electronic communications for fear of giving away his location.
In the aftermath of Sunday's US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, sources told the IranWire website that several Iranian political figures – including former president Hassan Rouhani, former speaker of Iran's parliament Ali Larijani and former head of the judiciary Sadiq Larijani – had tried in vain to contact Khamenei to ask him to open direct negotiations with the United States.
Shock theory
But the ceasefire does not mean the Iranian supreme leader and his regime are now safe. Since the Hamas attack on Israel of October 7, 2023, any "ceasefires in the region have not held", says Jonathan Piron, a historian specialising in Iran at the Etopia think tank in Namur, Belgium.
"Sporadic strikes have been carried out, often by Israel – as in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip – where every truce has failed."
Such a scenario could be repeated with Iran, which is now "very weakened" and has "little room for manoeuvre in confronting Israel, which is now dominant in the region", he says. The Israeli military could continue to target strategic Iranian installations.
"We are witnessing a form of 'stability within instability', which is likely to last,' Piron says. It remains to be seen how the Iranian regime will choose to react.
Under the circumstances, the regime itself will 'tend to stick together to avoid seeing elements of dissent emerge in the population or in reform movements", says Piron. Even if certain political factions "are sometimes in opposition or even hate each other", they "stand together' in the face of the external threats because "their common interest takes precedence over their divisions".
He notes that "authoritarian regimes faced with instability" are even less open to compromise and often harden their positions.
In a sign of the regime's precarious situation, Khamenei has named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him if he is killed, according to the New York Times, citing three Iranian officials. The supreme leader is the head of state, appointed for life by a clerical body called the Assembly of Experts.
Normally, the process of appointing a new supreme leader would take several months, with the Assembly of Experts choosing from their own list of names.
But according to officials interviewed by the New York Times, Khamenei 'wants to ensure a quick, orderly transition and to preserve his legacy' and has made the unusual decision to instruct the Assembly of Experts 'to choose his successor swiftly from the three names he has provided'.
Ayatollah Khamenei's son Mojtaba, also a cleric, with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, was once considered the favourite. But he is not among the candidates to succeed his father, officials told the New York Times. Mojtaba Khamenei's views echo those of his father on all the important issues, from the repression of opponents of the regime to the adoption of a hard line with foreign enemies.
'Some people put forward a 'shock theory': if Khamenei dies, it could undermine the regime," says Clément Therme, author of the book " Idées reçues sur l'Iran" ("Preconceived Ideas about Iran') to be published in August.
Spy hunt
Since Israel's surprise attack on Iran, fears of infiltration by Mossad at the highest levels of the security and intelligence apparatus have shaken the Iranian leadership.
"The hard core of the regime is entering a phase of acute paranoia," says Piron. The Israeli strikes of the first few days of the offensive, which "decapitated the command of the Revolutionary Guards" and hit strategic nuclear sites, revealed "the deep infiltration of Israeli intelligence services into the heart of Iranian power".
The current climate of extreme suspicion could push the regime to withdraw even further from the population.
"The leader could begin to make appearances only in very controlled stage-managed events," says Piron, adding that this paranoia could also be "turned against the population, perceived as an internal enemy to be monitored, or even repressed".
A large part of the Revolutionary Guards staff has been decimated, including members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force, and those who have stepped in to fill vacant roles have yet to establish their legitimacy.
"We still don't really know much about those who have been promoted, even though they seem to have worked with the people who have been eliminated. So we're not dealing with novices," says Piron. "It remains to be seen whether those newly promoted can gain each other's trust – and, above all, gain the trust of the Supreme Guide."
Among the new leaders, the few names that have been made public are from the generation that lived through the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) – former 'brothers in arms', which gives them 'common references", Piron observes.
"The assassinations by Israel have accelerated the process of generational renewal" within the IRGC, says Therme.
"This will perhaps give rise to a new organisation within the system. But we shouldn't think that a young radical will be 'better' than an old radical. In fact, everyone is ideological. The Islamic Republic is an ideocracy."
The Guardians' oil windfall
Even weakened by war – with a shaky security apparatus, a damaged military, a shattered nuclear infrastructure and facing regional isolation following the strike on a US base in Qatar – the Iranian regime still has the capacity to replace those who have been eliminated and rebuild what has been destroyed.
It can survive "as long as it has oil revenues and no one is prepared to send in ground forces to defeat them - even if it is not safe from a Kurdish revolt", says Therme.
The Israeli strikes spared Kharg Island, site of the oil terminal that handles over 90 percent of Iranian crude oil exports.
In a remarkable Truth Social post on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump seemed to signal a complete reversal of US sanctions on Iran's oil exports, saying that, 'China can now continue to purchase oil from Iran.' A senior White House official later said the longstanding sanctions would remain, Bloomberg reported.
The Iranian regime 'is indeed in a very weak position. But it has not been defeated", says Piron. There is a risk that in its damaged state the Iranian authorities will fall back on a time-honoured strategy of cracking down, he adds.
Faced with a population already suffering from the war and a social and economic crisis, the regime could step up the pressure to prevent any dissent: The hundreds of arrests and the recent increase of executions are the first signs of this. By using a pre-emptive strategy, the regime is aiming to discourage protests within the country.
A popular uprising remains a possibility, Piron says, although there is no way of predicting it.
"All it would take is a symbolic event to rekindle protest," says Piron. Popular resistance to the regime was not at all in evidence while the war was going on, 'But it may be possible now that the conflict is over.'