Current Affairs

The commentator asked Jeremy Bowen – “What the war was about….?” I answered to myself – “I don’t know” – then laughed. There were no wry smiles, but there was a pause and then Bowen answered, “I think….”

But what did I know, or what did I predict, like everybody apart from Ayatollah Khamenei, I predicted the war would start last weekend, I also knew the head of state would be killed -(given the opportunity). But the question is why did the war start?

With the usual filibustering energy of court officials the Iranian negotiators gave concessions to the American negotiators in Geneva with caveats that there must be a change in the economic future of the Islamic Republic. Pezeshkian the prime minister in a televised interview argued that there was no higher authority than the supreme leader and “Khamenei had vowed the state would not build a nuclear bomb….”

As the Israelis pointed out – then why did the Iranians enrich uranium to sixty percent?

There was a report in the Financial Times that Iran was willing to make concessions to the Americans, the report argued the ‘Iranian state would open up their oil facilities to the US’, but whether the report was a ruse or was purposefully injected into the media is very much a question that must haunt the journalist who wrote the report. But the talks and concessions by the Iranians were bridged in by caveats that the state could not give any more concessions – was also a failure to understand the thinking behind the regime. (Anybody in the Middle East knows that when negotiating in the Middle East this is an opening gambit of the trader before the price plummets).

On Friday, the last words of the Iranian State was that if the war started then the whole Middle East would be on fire, they would target Israel, Jordan, the Emirates, Saudi’s, Oman, Qatar and Iranian proxies would open fronts across the Middle East. Rather than a caveat it was a proclamation and rather than a bluff it was an edict from the highest seat in Iran. If you like – ‘a last word and testament of the supreme leader,’ something that could not be challenged and like all edicts it was underpinned by orders passed down the line to the Revolutionary Guard and Army.

To understand why it was a proclamation – it was the attack on Oman – the Iranian state apologised to Oman and argued that they had not given an order to attack the state, but a rogue officer had ordered the firing of the missiles. So in tieing up the argument of the Iranians it was the last proclamation of the supreme leader and it is the failure of the supreme leader’s last edict to navigate a war with dexterity that alienated the countries that had in many ways supported the Iranian state by circumventing sanctions and a Chinese brokered agreement that opened doors in the Gulf.

In many ways the decree by Ayatollah Khamenie is a year zero Pol Pot decree from a man who had in his own mind protected the revolution throughout his tenure. But like all last edicts the hardliners of the state fed off the last words of Ayatollah Khamenei and rather than open a door to the US and go through another round of negotiations in Geneva, Laranjani took the state to a zero sum argument that would instil a hardline argument that divorces the state from the many sanction busting friends the state has had in the Gulf.

Rubio asked why the US attacked Iran, argued that “the Israelis were going to attack anyway, we had to support them.” Earlier Trump argued that the answers given by the Iranians on their ambitions to build nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles was a concern. On the Saturday after Ayatollah Khamenei was assassinated both Netanyahu and Trump told Iranians to stay inside until the bombing was over and then “rise up against the regime,” which has turned out to be wishful analysis by the US and Israeli analysts of the security mechanisms that control the Iranian state.

Though there were reported house parties and a few brave enough to brave the streets to celebrate the death of Ayatollah Khamenei, the Iranian states repressive mechanisms, the bombing of the state and the masses who attended the Ayatollahs funeral led to questions whether the Iranians who had taken part in the demonstrations could revolt against the mechanisms of the state once again.

The mechanisms of the state used to repress the masses -Revolutionary Guard and Basij- have become more identifiable to the citizens of the state through state TV reports of Basiji riding motorcycles draped in the Islamic Republics flag and circulating through the center of Tehran and other cities imposing a type of allegiance to the state by ensuring that the voices that want change cannot take to the streets. It is also a question of whether the layers of the Islamic Republic’s security mechanisms can be challenged, which is very much a question that must haunt the planners of this attack on the Iranian state. But it is also a question of whether the planners had understood how many layers there are to the mechanisms that repress the citizens arguing for change in the state, which should have been factored in by the US and Israeli intelligence strategists.

But it is the failure of the Islamic Republic in the past two years that has seen a shrinking of its influence after the 7^th October attack by Hamas, loss of Nasrallah, degrading of Hezbollah and failure to underpin Assad in Syria, which has led to the Iranian states determination to continue to build proxies and expensive military mechanisms to deter being attacked. But in many ways the arguments of the hardliners and Revolutionary Guard for these proxies and deterrents has led to the leaderships unpopularity, neglect of the environment, corruption and financial neglect of the states resources and citizens that led to devaluation of the currency due to the massive costs involved in building up its arsenal and rebuilding the proxies.

Traders, ordinary people and students came out onto the streets in January and demonstrated against the leadership. The demonstrators demanded change, but were repressed by murderous Basiji thugs who killed thousands and the failure of the state was its failure to see the demonstrations as a turning point for the regime and legitimacy as a government.

Further erosion of the states legitimacy had taken place before the demonstrations, and though the state made concessions to the people with the election of Pezeshkian last year, the turnout to the elections was awful (39 percent (Wikipedia)) and the entrenchment of the Revolutionary Guards, Mullahs and Basiji in the government meant that the liberalising government was in name only. It was the usual trap set by Ayatollah Khamenei to argue that the state was liberalising, but the conservatives held all the positions of power and their argument was that the liberalising government takes the fall for an economy that had to devalue its currency, which had been a known factor in the conservatives approach to ordinary citizens lives.

The fears of intelligence analysts in the West was that the Islamic Republics influence from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean would be long term and though the only tangible asset the Iranian Republic has now – is it exists. It is the failure of Laranjani and the council of ministers to manage a long term outlook that means the state will be further degraded economically and militarily.

Commentators like Jeremy Bowen argue “Laranjani’s strategy is to place pressure on the US by attacking Arab states [and] if the regime survives, it is a win.” But the strategy “is a counter productive move by the Iranians – pushing the Gulf states closer to the United States.”

Through the Iranian regimes inability to factor in the consequences of their actions in their widespread attacks by underpinning their argument on a zero sums argument, the Islamic state is further alienated from the region by its actions against Gulf states and the life blood of the Islamic regime (oil) has been cut off from its main benefactor. The states resources will be further eroded by this war and the outcome for the Islamic government is a slow realisation that the state does not have the assets, influence or ability to manage the decline in revenue.

The decision of the state not to open a point of dialogue is a failure of a hardline elite to realise that this is a war they can ill afford and cannot win, and as said the approach by the Iranian state is a zero sum gain. For an elite this is leading the state into a landscape where guarantees of the states survival are questionable, and the governing elite will be challenged in the long term by being minerally wealthy with a hardline government that is squandering its few remaining resources on an outcome of a war that has alienated the countries that could have made a difference …..