Who'll rule Iran if the ayatollahs are ousted?

Times

5 hours ago

Back in 2014 the US security expert Matthew Kroenig set out the difference between an Israeli and an American bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities. A US strike would, he said, impose at least a five-year delay in Iran's nuclear progress while an 'Israeli strike would only buy us two to three years'. His conclusion: let the US handle the problem.
The difference between the two predicted outcomes is still politically crucial. Putting Iran's nuclear ambitions on ice for five years could coincide with a shift in thinking in the country's defence establishment, a recalculation of the value of the goal of nuclear status. A shorter delay, bought by the flattening that Israel is inflicting on Iran's enrichment centres, might merely radicalise Tehran's nuclear lobby.
The calculus has changed a little since Kroenig first set out his stall in his book A Time to Attack. Iran's proxy armies have grown and then withered, the nuclear diplomacy led by Barack Obama has run its course and Iran, creaking under the weight of western sanctions, does not look much like a regional leader any more. But the principles remain the same: a US attack changes the whole Middle East order while a solo Israeli assault keeps Iran, with Russian and Chinese backing, still in contention, a wounded big beast. This is where Binyamin Netanyahu's repeated, broad hints about accelerating regime change come into play. In the absence of a US military campaign against Tehran, Israel's best bet is the installation of a credible, even partially legitimate government in Iran that decides nuclear weapons are not essential for its status in the world. More important for Iranians is the country's reintegration into the world, sensible relations with neighbours and open-minded non-corrupt government.
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Netanyahu describes this not as a war aim but rather as a desirable by-product of a short war. Donald Trump meanwhile knows how resistant America is to a revival of neocon, impose-democracy-by-force arguments but is open to the idea that Iran's rulers can change their mind. Hence his sudden return from the G7 summit this week, his warning to residents of Tehran to flee the city and the repositioning of forces that suggest he might after all order a bunker-busting raid on Iran's mountain enrichment plant. The point: to present Iran with an existential choice between a humiliating end to the nuclear dream or a negotiated face-saving exit while the ruling establishment is still intact enough to govern.
Both options on offer from the US actually point to regime change even while loudly denying it. Despite all their intelligence savviness, the CIA and Mossad cannot predict how the next few weeks will play out. But one useful template is provided by Syria, once a close ally of Tehran which bankrolled the country in return for allowing the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to establish bases and arms depots there in order to build weapons supply routes to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Assads ruled Syria from the 1970s by building corrupt networks and using the secret police to muzzle the nation. But this year, in a helter-skelter fortnight, their regime was toppled by an ex-jihadist, backed and groomed (new suits, a shorter beard) by Turkish intelligence, and Bashar al-Assad disappeared under cover of darkness to a luxury apartment in Moscow. Could the ayatollahs be toppled with such surgical precision? They too have been in power since the 1970s; they too have kept control by playing one group off against another and have, through a series of missteps, near-bankrupted their country and alienated their young people.
Ahmed al-Sharaa's rise in Syria was dizzying. In November his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took over Aleppo and Hama and cut off Damascus from Assad's Alawite strongholds on the coast. By December he was sitting in Assad's palace.
Last month President Sharaa had a meeting with Trump ('he's a young, attractive tough guy'). He has now started a normalisation process with Israel, made peace with the Kurds, expelled foreign militias, kept Islamic State at bay, got some western sanctions lifted and gained access to global credit markets. Not bad for someone who in his youth had been interned by the US in Iraq, in Camp Bucca where hardened jihadists from Islamic State and al-Qaeda ignored the American guards and ran their own sharia courts. In Camp Bucca, it used to be said, you entered as a nationalist and you left as a jihadist. Now Syria's new leader has become a nationalist again, albeit a religiously observant one.
Does Trump think that a similar transition can be made in Iran? It would require an intelligence-spotting operation capable of finding a strong communicator who could unite the diverse pockets of resistance: the workers in the factories, the farmers who feel cheated, the students who chafe at the intellectual closing of Iran. Traditionally in this situation a figure can emerge from prison like Nelson Mandela, or from daily persecution and bureaucratic exclusion like Lech Walesa. Iran needs not only a rallying figure but one who has the flexibility to work with non-dogmatic elements of the ancien régime; a leader could even, some suggest, emerge from modernisers within the hated IRGC, providing that they retain a sense of honour, fairness and a sensitivity to what ordinary Iranians really need and want.
One thing is clear: clerical rule, backed by an iron-fisted police state machinery, has failed Iran. The old guard protects only its own interests and hidden fortunes. Every day of this exhausting gallop of a war has demonstrated they cannot defend, inspire or mobilise Iranians. The country is on the brink of implosion.