Brian M Downing
Regime strengthened
The entente’s efforts to weaken the Iranian government may have the reverse effect, especially if more aggressive actions are taken. The importance attached to urban middle classes is overestimated owing to their parallels to westernized people and an attendant faith that they must represent Iran’s future. Urban middle classes figure highly in foreign reporting, but they are hardly a majority.
Not far from universities and middle-class districts are working-class neighborhoods where the leadership is respected as defenders of the Iranian nation and the Shia faith. Military service is honored, ties to IRGC militias substantial, and a firm hand expected. And of course Iran has a vast rural population where piety and regime support are strong, the attraction of democracy less so.
Iran has seen considerable discontent in the last year. Crowds protest involvement in the Syrian and Yemeni wars and demand better government and services. The country seems on the verge of a jarring upheaval. Iranians want foreign powers to nudge the country toward revolution and democracy.
Or so it seems from afar. Popular protests may have more modest goals of greater opportunity, lower inflation, less corruption, and better services. Such complaints are heard in many countries but only a mind overly guided by ideology sees them as portents of impending revolution.
Greater hardships brought on by the entente may well have the unintended consequence of increasing regime support. Iranians in cities and villages believe they’ve abided by the JCPOA but nonetheless are accused of violations. They know their views are shared by the EU, UN, IAEA, and even some Israeli generals.
Iranians believe it’s the US that’s reneged on the JCPOA. Washington’s claims of wanting to help them ring hollow. The US is now in concert with Saudi Arabia and Israel to weaken, humiliate, and perhaps even destroy their country. Saudi Arabia supported Iraq in the devastating war of the 1980s, which took several hundred thousand Iranian lives. The US played both sides but is regarded as having helped Saddam far more. Israel, once a strong ally, even in the Khomeini years, has now opportunistically aligned with its own longtime enemy in Riyadh. Israel and Saudi Arabia are behind MEK assassinations and bombings over the last decade or so.
Entente efforts are all the more likely to increase regime support if they go beyond economic pressures to include renewed MEK attacks, more support for Kurdish and Baloch insurgents, and naval and air clashes in the Gulf. Unfortunately, Washington, Riyadh, and Jerusalem have thus far displayed little adroitness or restraint toward Iran.
Regime repression
If external pressure does indeed bring substantial turmoil, the mullahs and generals may impose a harsh crackdown. They have the ideological justifications and probably the resources as well.
Iran’s leaders see themselves as guided by timeless principles established in sacred writings. Democracy decays religious and martial virtues. It was the mullahs and generals who defended the nation when Sunni forces invaded in 1980 and it must be they who guide it through the present crisis. Advocates of reform are ill-informed egotists at best, treasonous dupes at worst. Such is the reasoning in Tehran’s high councils.
There are no signs of disloyalty in the IRGC or regular army. The former has taken high casualties in Syria relative to the number of troops deployed, but the force as a whole is neither depleted nor disloyal. They are not akin to the embittered, war-weary militaries that disintegrated and mutinied late in World War One and brought down the Hohenzollerns and Romanovs. They are intact, motivated, and confident in their leaders.
The regime can also call upon the IRGC’s popular militias (Basij) which comprise urban working-class toughs who support the mullahs and generals and receive stipends from them. They helped suppress protests following the 2009 election and they are in waiting today.
The IRGC trained tens of thousands of fighters recruited from Shia populations across the region. Presently deployed in the waning Syrian war, they can be brought to Iran, if need be.
Iranian leaders supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt as the movement opposes monarchy in general and Saudi Arabia in particular. They were disappointed to see the Brotherhood ousted in 2013 but probably noted the process by which it happened. Cairo toughs, armed by the military, shot down several hundred protesters, and security forces clamped down on the movement. The ancien regime returned.
Syria is another instructive case. The army and militias stalemated the rebellion and have all but defeated it with pitiless airstrikes and chemical weapons. Should Iranian rebels seize cities, they will face the same wrath.
The mullahs and generals may judge that quick, harsh repression will preempt serious challenge from below. It will preclude the protracted war and foreign intervention that Syria endured. It will also keep them in power.
Copyright 2018 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks to Susan Ganosellis.