An April 2023 satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC showing construction on an underground facility in the tangled mountains somewhere near Iran’s Natanz nuclear site which has been targeted by Israeli sabotage attacks multiple times
Iran’s Islamic revolution is in transition
My one-week visit to Tehran to observe the presidential election last June came as an eye-opener. I could sense beyond doubt that Iran was on the cusp of profound changes. The country, which I had known professionally for decades ever since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, was heaving with high expectations of a radical change of course.
The surest sign of it was the tacit encouragement from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei for the reformist candidacy of Masoud Pezeshkian. One of the colossal failures of the Western policy toward Iran has been all along its stereo-typed notions about Iran which is most evident in the reluctance to acknowledge Khamenei’s role. Khamenei realises that the country is crying out for change. The point is, Iran is on the one hand all but in the league of big powers in its indigenously developed military technology testifying to its mastery in technology, research and innovation and industrial scale production capability but with an economy, on the other hand, in dire straits.
Khamenei deduced that time has come for a peaceful orderly transition within the Islamic system, which required national unity. In Pezeshkian, Khamenei saw a politician with an unblemished record of probity in public life and of strong convictions. Hailing from an Azeri-Kurdish family, Pezeshkian’s understanding of the alchemy that is needed in governance to create unity in diversity in a plural society like Iran is unrivalled.
Above all, he is a deeply religious man, a teacher of the Quran, and a reciter of the Nahj al-balagha, a key text for Shia Muslims, who is committed to the Islamic system of Velayat-e faqih, based on the principle of guardianship of Islamic jurists. Khamenei saw in him a rare politician who can bridge the gap between reformists and conservatives and therefore as the best hope for energising the Islamic system and renewing its support base. (See my column titled Reading tea leaves in Iran’s election, Deccan Herald, June 26, 2024)
Late night chat shows on television are hugely popular in Iran and particularly so through an animated election campaign, as they brought out the plurality of political opinion surfacing — to which I was invited to participate every day. The main streams of thinking in front runner Pezeshkian’s electoral platform could be summarised as follows:
- The topmost priority is to improve the economy, which is best achieved through the lifting of western sanctions.
- A prerequisite in such a direction requires the resolution of the nuclear issue through negotiations with the US, which is feasible now that Iran is a “threshold nuclear power” with a formidable missile capability that already acts as deterrent against foreign aggression.
- Ensuing from the above, Iran needs to engage with the West by recalibrating the foreign policy directions and national strategy to enhance mutual confidence.
- A Donald Trump presidency would be the “X” factor but, nonetheless, his priorities could be different this time around, and at any rate Iran should be willing to negotiate with the US.
- The nation desires social reforms and controversies such as mandatory hijab are best avoided, since they created tensions and divides in society that opened the door to foreign interference, through tolerance and patience in the fulness of time while the excessive state control to impose social norms is unwise.
- Economic revival requires switch to market economy and for fostering trade and encouraging foreign investment, an overall opening up is needed in such areas as the Internet, visa system, etc.
- Late president Ebrahim Raisi’s accent on the Persian Gulf countries being Iran’s First Circle in foreign policies was a fundamentally forward-looking move and needs to be followed through — in particular, the criticality of consolidating the impetus from the rapprochement with Saudi Arabia that also happens to be in sync with the historic shift in the Saudi regional strategies encapsulated in the so-called Vision 2030 anchored on a thriving economy, turning its back on using extremist jihadi groups as geopolitical tool in West Asia and undertaking social reforms of a historic nature to modernise the nation.
The last point is hugely important in the present context, as Tehran is sincerely committed to the rapprochement with Saudi Arabia which was brokered by China. It has not only reduced the bilateral tensions and erased the conflict of interests, the latest examples being Tehran’s acquiescence with the changes in the power structure in Syria and Lebanon where a palpable Sunni ascendancy is under way.
In strategic terms, Iran is gaining insofar as the locus of Saudi regional policies has shifted and decades-old US-Israeli strategy to isolate Tehran is no longer working. The Persian Gulf states have sought to reassure Iran of their neutrality in any conflict with Israel. Again, Iran’s normalisation with Egypt testifies to its growing acceptability as a regional partner (here and here)
The regional amity in the Persian Gulf and the growing difficulty to rally the Sunni Arab states against Iran has no doubt unnerved the Biden Administration and Netanyahu. On January 2, Axios broke the sensational story that the outgoing White House National Security advisor Jake Sullivan recently presented President Joe Biden at a secret meeting with options for potential American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites before the inauguration of Donald Trump later this month.
The Axios cited sources admitting that “the meeting was not sparked by new intelligence” and Biden was yet to make a “final decision”. Axios’ source called the meeting as part of “prudent scenario planning.” That is to say, there was no intelligence input or emergent situation to justify an attack on Iran and Biden was, characteristically enough, apparently hesitant to test the waters — as he often did on such crucial issues — more for purposes of record even after green lighting the policy shift, such as, for example, giving Ukraine F-16 fighter jets or ATACMS missiles or approval for hitting Russian territory.
In this case, in particular, there is no daylight between Biden and his team which is packed with arch neocons — Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in particular, the two super hawks responsible for giving full-throttle American support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pursue his horrific West Asian war, encompassing Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
Netanyahu has been dreaming for a very long time about an attack on Iran to destroy that country’s rise as a regional power and rival Israel’s military capability, but that remained a pipe dream without direct US involvement. It is entirely conceivable that Sullivan who eats out of Netanyahu’s hands acted on the latter’s behest and Biden was likely aware of that.
At any rate, in another follow-up report on January 6, Axios revisited the topic hyping up that a military option against Iran has become “a real possibility”. Curiously, the report claimed that after a meeting with Trump in November, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, a close confidante of Netanyahu, the latter “came away thinking there was a high likelihood Trump would either support an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities — something the Israelis are seriously considering — or even order a US strike.”
Israelis are great hustlers and such an attribution to Trump was factually unwarranted, given his known aversion to wars. Plainly put, it was a white lie and crude “psywar” acmes at creating misconceptions regionally. In fact, Axios noted as a corrective in its report that there is a “flip side” to all this, as “others close to Trump expect that he’ll seek a deal before considering a strike” (against Iran).