Why war may be the best chance to kick out the Iranian regime

The brutal theocracy in Tehran knows that conflict could unite Iranians or dangerously split them. Roland Oliphant and David Child profile the factions jockeying for power

For decades, Iran and Israel have prepared for the unthinkable, and diligently avoided allowing it to happen. A full-scale showdown between the Middle East’s superpowers would be devastating for both, and plunge the entire region into all-out war. Now, finally, that war may be breaking out. Early yesterday morning, Israel reportedly carried out its first ever overt strike against Iranian territory, on an airbase in Isfahan, a clear retaliation for Iran’s own first ever direct missile strike against Israel on April 14.

Will this cycle of tit-for-tat violence escalate into direct, all-out fighting? Or, like duelists who have both fired their pistols, will both sides accept that honour has been satisfied?

Just hours before yesterday’s strike, Iran’s foreign minister had warned of a “decisive, definitive, and regretful” response if the Israelis hit Iranian assets.

The ball is now in Iran’s court. Whatever happens, the pressure is on a brutal theocratic regime that has held power since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. It knows that war could unite Iranians or fatally split them, and that, as a result, it is facing a crisis that could define it or destroy it. Four factions are jockeying for influence. But only one man will decide what happens next.

The supreme leader

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been at the helm of the Islamic Republic since the death of its founder, Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989.

He turned 85 on Friday – some speculate the Israeli strike was timed as an unwelcome birthday present – but if Iran-watchers can agree on one thing, it is that the elderly cleric is still very much in charge.

Officially, Iranian foreign policy is set by the Supreme National Security Council, a consensus-based body that has representation from elected and unelected institutions in Iran and comes up with recommended courses of action.

President Ebrahim Raisi may implement the political elements of those steps, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) may take charge of the military response. But as Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and

North Africa programme at Chatham House, notes: “Everyone is beholden to the supreme leader, there are not separate facets of power.” As for his temperament, she adds: “Interestingly, the supreme leader is quite similar to [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu – both are quite risk-averse.”

Hence the contradictory elements of Iran’s April 14 missile and drone barrage against Israel – an unprecedentedly bold attack that could have done serious damage to Israel had it succeeded, but which was nonetheless transparently signalled in advance, killed no one and was described by Iranian diplomats as the end of the matter.

Khamenei’s apparent risk aversion has long been expressed in a doctrine of “strategic patience” – stitching together a coalition of allies or friendly militias around the region, in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Syria, known as the Axis of Resistance.

“The idea was that he is very patiently building these bodies and doesn’t get into any early confrontation,” explains Arash Azizi, a historian at Clemson University in the US. “While he is biding his time, [the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon] Hezbollah gets stronger and stronger and so on.

“Khamenei has predicted Israel is going to be destroyed by 2040. He knows he’s not going to be there by 2040,” Azizi adds. “If you’re in his seat, the idea is that you just want to hand off the Axis of Resistance to your successor in the best possible shape rather than risk a premature war.

“The problem [for him] is that, in a way, Israel has called his bluff [by] repeatedly killing IRGC commanders, just killing them right, front and centre” – most recently with an April 1 strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus.

Put bluntly, argues Mr Azizi, Khamenei is a “bit of a coward” when it comes to Israel and the West. And there comes a point when that becomes apparent even to his most loyal supporters. The Damascus attack, for example, saw nationalists joining Iran’s ultra-hardline anti-Zionists in clamouring for a more robust line against Israel over the war in Gaza. “There was [even] a hardliner student group which published an open letter to Khamenei which basically said: ‘Can you please tell us what your red line is? If attacking an Iranian consulate doesn’t make you do something, what will?’ That was a bit humiliating.”

Khamenei, in this reading, had to act to quell domestic outrage. But while the scale of Iran’s April 14 rocket strike on Israel took many observers by surprise, its objective is probably not to start a war.

Rather, say commentators, the supreme leader is hoping to change the ground rules in the standoff with Israel, so that strikes on top-level Iranian commanders now become off-limits. “The regime’s objectives are security and stability, maintaining its posture across the region and pressuring the United States and Israel while maintaining its position. [Direct confrontation with Israel] is a liability that they’re trying to sidestep,” said Dr Vakil.

But Mr Khamenei is old, and everyone around him knows it. He is also rumoured to be sick. When he dies, there will be a frantic race for power. Multiple factions are already jostling for pole position – and not all of them may be quite so patient about their strategy.

The Paydari front

The Front of Stability of the Islamic Revolution – the Paydari front in short – is the newest and most potent of the hardline factions.

Populated by a relatively young (by Iranian standards) generation of Shia religious and revolutionary purists, its doctrine is uncompromising adherence to the principles of the Islamic Revolution, including domestic repression and overseas aggression. That amounts to a rejection of the relative pragmatism of the older clerics and IRGC men who dominate the political establishment.

Their actual influence is debated. They did well in the parliamentary elections this year, and critics accuse Ebrahim Raisi, the 63-yearold president, of granting them undue influence in his government since taking power in 2021. Some also worry about its influence on the younger generation of commanders in the IRGC, who do not necessarily share the caution of those who remember the blood-soaked reality of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

“I don’t really see the Paydari Front as being so influential yet. They’re still up and coming,” says Dr Vakil. “Certainly they’ve been radicalised and support this more confrontational approach. [But] I don’t think that they have that [major] kind of influence within this system. They might become influential over time, but we’re not there yet.”

Yet the Paydaris do not have a monopoly on hardline politics. One of the other prominent figures is a man called Saeed Mohammad, an IRGC brigadier general not associated with the Paydari movement. And the Paydaris’ bête noir is Mohammad Ghalibaf, a former IRGC commander who is currently speaker of parliament.

A reliably conservative regime-loyalist with family links to Khamenei, he has previously served as mayor of Tehran and more than once taken a tilt at the presidency itself. He is, in short, the ultimate establishment figure. And for the Paydaris, that is exactly what is wrong with him.

“He is the swamp they want to drain,” says Mr Azizi. “I’ve known Ghalibaf for years. Of course he would love to be president, but he cares about Islam as much as I care about the Shinto religion of Japan. He is not an Islamist in many ways – he wants to be the big man in

Iran, the strong man, the leader of Iran. And he’s not alone.” The hope among Western onlookers is that Ghalibaf ’s kind of “pragmatism” might lead to a mellowing of Iran’s aggressive foreign policy once Khamenei leaves the stage.

Reformers

For years, discussion of Iranian politics made much of a division between hardliners and reformers.

If the former believed in aggression abroad and hardline suppression of opposition at home, the latter represented a pragmatic nationalism which favoured entrenching the rule of law, frowned on confrontation as a potentially dangerous distraction and thought the best way to protect Iran and its regime was regional integration and alliances.

The problem is, according to Dr Vakil, that “as of right now, reformers don’t have influence. They basically are in opposition, without being formally in opposition.”

Their highpoint came under Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s reformist president between 1997 and 2005, and they saw a revival under Hassan Rouhani, a conservative moderate, in office between 2013 and 2021.

It was president Rouhani and his foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who negotiated the 2015 deal that saw Iran put the brakes on its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. That could not have happened without Mr Khamenei’s buy-in, and sceptics have often scoffed at the supposed distinction between hardliners and reformers.

Either way, the 2021 presidential election, which saw the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic, was widely seen as the end of the reformist project. Many natural reformist voters stayed at home, their faith in the possibility of liberalising the regime from within irrevocably eroded, and the movement was seen to fade into irrelevance.

“If there is one thing that foreign officials need to grasp, it’s that the reformist movement