US sanctions against Iran are harsh, but nobody really knows what will happen if they sink Tehran’s regime

Even as the US raises tensions with Iran to an unprecedented level, there appears to be no readily available plan for what to do in case its scheme actually succeeds, says Borzou Daragahi

If only one out of 20 of the fervent regime supporters take up arms, that’s a potential pool of 600,000 men willing to fight and die for the system for years to come (AFP/Getty)

Somewhere deep within the bowels of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or perhaps in a vault in one the offices of the Defence Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, there might lie a thick three-ring binder assessing what it would mean in case there is massive, cataclysmic regime change in Iran.

In it, possibly, are prognostications of how the collapse of the clerical regime would play out among Iran’s ethnic, ideological, or class groups; how it would impact capital markets and oil prices, refugee flows from the Middle East or the balance of power in Eurasia. Appendices of the study might include sage wisdom from top analysts about what the United States should do in each scenario.

But it’s also possible no such study exists at all. “I have asked several key people in the administration and it’s pretty clear they have no idea,” says Ali Vaez, Iran researcher at the International Crisis Group.

Even as the US raises tensions with Iran to an unprecedented level, hitting it with sanctions and pressuring other nations to treat it as a pariah, there appears to be no readily available plan for what to do in case its scheme actually collapses the Tehran regime it so despises.

“If such a study will be anywhere it will be from an intelligence agency,” said one Middle East security specialist, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are privy to sensitive information. “They are interested in this topic. For people in the intelligence community, these are the things that they have to worry about.”

Nearly a dozen top former security and intelligence officials The Independent reached out to could not cite such a study, noting that even if they had been privy to such an assessment they would not be able to discuss it publicly, where its findings could be scrutinised by independent scholars and experts.

“It is concerning that there is a limited comprehensive, rigorous analysis of what would come after the Islamic Republic,” said Dalia Dassa Kaye, a Middle East expert at the Rand Corporation. “The debate is so focused on whether the Islamic Republic will fall, there’s nothing about what comes the day after. Most of us have not seen anything comprehensive and systematic looking at the factors that would come into play.”

Given the dysfunction of US foreign policy under President Donald Trump, it’s uncertain in any case that any recommendations would be heeded, or risks factored into decision-making. The mammoth Iraq study put together by American diplomats and regional specialists before the disastrous 2003 US invasion of Iraq was arrogantly dismissed – by the same clique of Beltway ideologues now pushing for confrontation with Iran.

“Even if the US has thought this through, which I don’t believe it has, it is not clear it would have any basis in reality,” says Vaez. “The US tends to misread Iran’s internal dynamics.”

The Trump administration publicly insists its efforts to provoke, isolate, intimidate, and bury Iran with sanctions, threats, military moves and support for its enemies is only meant to pressure Tehran into modifying its behaviour. But with strident Iran hawks such as National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has reportedly said he believes the government will collapse with “one little kick”, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and even Defence Secretary James Mattis in key US national security positions, few independent observers believe them.

The possibility that Trump’s policy could work can’t be discounted (AFP/Getty)

“The US’s plot is to create problems, conflict and internal war inside our country by means of sanctions and security-disturbing measures. They have done their utmost,” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said in a speech on 12 December. “Earlier this year, the US claimed that Iran was to have a hard summer and that the revolution wouldn’t see its 40th anniversary. To their dismay, this summer was one of the best summers; and the Iranian nation will magnificently celebrate the 40th anniversary of the revolution.”

Still, the possibility that Trump’s policy could work can’t be discounted.

Historians will remember the deposed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi celebrated 2,500 years of the monarchy with spectacular fanfare a few years before protests against his rule began. Even the most astute scholars of Iran have failed to predict key historic events, including the 1978-1979 revolution that gave birth to the Islamic Republic, the rise of the reformist movement in the late 1990s, the resurgence of hardliners in the Noughties, and the 2013 election of pragmatists under President Hassan Rouhani, and the signing of the nuclear deal in 2015.

Former security officials speaking to The Independent quickly cast aside rosy scenarios about the consequences of regime change. The regional track record is bleak.

The United States’ attempts to bolster friendly governments in the region has resulted in failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan and generated instabilities that allowed terrorist groups to thrive

Abdelillah Bendaoudi, journalist

Recall that Lebanon was once considered the Switzerland of the Middle East before its sectarian factions fought each other and various invading forces for 15 years.

Iraqi advocates of the 2003 US invasion assured their patrons in Washington that their country would become an engine for prosperity and democracy, just before the country descended into years of ongoing bloodshed.

Syrians used to tut-tut the brutality of their Iraqi and Lebanese neighbours before their own sectarian mosaic became a landscape of horror that has left hundreds of thousands dead.

Hopes for revolutionary change in Libya and Yemen have died, and both are mired in war, chaos and foreign meddling.

“The United States’ attempts to bolster friendly governments in the region has resulted in failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan and generated instabilities that allowed terrorist groups to thrive,” wrote Abdelillah Bendaoudi, a US-based freelance writer with a particular focus on counterterrorism.

Advocates of Iran’s regime change might argue that with its relatively prosperous and educated middle class, Iran more resembles Tunisia, the only relative success story of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. But in Tunisia, members of the country’s elite gently showed Zein al-Abedine Ben Ali the door while taking up the reins of power, along with thriving civil society, long-established political parties and labour unions.

In fact, a Tunisia scenario is exactly what supporters of reformists like Mohammad Khatami, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have long advocated. A period of transition led by moderates of the ancient regime is the best-case scenario for a change of government. But it’s also not what Washington is talking about, and the reformists are widely derided as traitors by the exiled opposition groups feted by Pompeo and Bolton.

In any case, such a soft transition is highly unlikely. Iran’s current rulers have proven willing and adept at deploying violence and would likely try to prevent such a scenario, several former US and Western security officials said.

During waves of recent small protests that began a year ago, the regime seemingly experimented with using minimal violence to quell the uprising even addressing the protesters complaints head-on in order to defuse anger. But if the regime felt truly threatened, it has a deep arsenal of security options – including the deployment of fanatical citizen militias and or the importation of battle-hardened foreign fighters from Lebanon and Iraq – that could easily prevent a gentle transition.

“They understand that failure to use force could lead to unintended consequences and have a record of being willing to use force,” said one former western security official. “And there’s no hesitation to use lethal force against civilians.”

Iran experts and scholars estimate that diehard supporters of the Iranian system constitute perhaps 15 per cent of the country’s 82 million people. If only one out of 20 of the fervent regime supporters take up arms, that’s a potential pool of 600,000 men – organised in Basiji or Ansar Hezbollah citizen militias or through the Revolutionary Guard, or even the regular army – willing to fight and die for the system of velayat al-faqih (Islamic government) for years following a cataclysmic threat to the regime.

The US’s plot is to create problems, conflict and internal war inside our country by means of sanctions and security-disturbing measures. They have done their utmost

Supreme Leader Ali, 12 December 2018

“The most important question is what happens to the military organisations, both the military and the Revolutionary Guard, and the networks the Supreme Leader has formed to stay in power,” said one former CIA official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he continues to work on sensitive matters. “What happens to those institutions in the aftermath?”

Filling the power vacuum after a regime collapse will also be a vexing issue. Unlike Tunisia or even many of the eastern European countries that transitioned from communist dictatorship following the Cold War, Iran’s regime has strangled any kind of real domestic opposition. Not only are socialists, liberals, nationalists, leftists and monarchists brutally barred from organising – even reformist mainstays of the regime have been cast out of the increasingly tiny circle of elite power.

Iran’s ethnic minorities tend to be some of the best organised and mobilised opponents of the clerical regime. They also tend to be grouped near sensitive borders, and have ties with brethren in neighbouring lands, raising the possibility of either outside interference or destabilisation of other countries in case a collapse of state authority.

Some neoconservatives have touted Iran’s large relatively prosperous Azeri-speaking minority, concentrated in the country’s northwest but also in the capital, as a potential ally in regime change. Many Azeris are fully integrated into elite power – including Khamenei. Still, there have been small protests in favour of language rights in Tabriz and other cities of the northwest. In a chaotic situation, Azerbaijan may be tempted to intervene, potentially triggering a response from its rival Armenia, a steadfast partner of Tehran.

Other ethnic groupings also pose risks.

An Arab separatist movement in the southwest – the scene of many small anti-government and labour protests in recent months – maintains ties with Persian Gulf states, which could also be tempted to intervene.

A Kurdish uprising in the country’s west could inspire Iraqi Kurds to come to their aid or trigger a nationalist wave against the government in Baghdad, already viewed as hostile by the regional government in Erbil.

Baluchi separatists in the southeast of the country maintain ties to ethnic brethren in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also hardline jihadi groups inspired by or linked to transnational terrorism.

Opposition groups abroad appear to have the ear of the White House. Bolton and Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani both spoke at a meeting of the Mujahedin Khalq, an unusual and well-financed political cult based in Paris. But the group, which sided with Saddam Hussein against Iran during the Iran-Iraq and appears to maintain strong ties with Saudi Arabia, is widely perceived as treacherous by Iranians and appears to have very little support on the ground.

Monarchists, many based in the US are loud and influential, and – buoyed by sympathetic foreign satellite television channels – seem to have some support among Iranians, who occasionally hold up portraits of Reza Pahlavi, son of the country’s last monarch, and chant slogans in his support. Vaez says US officials have been seeking to rally the exiled opposition around Pahlavi, now a middle-aged resident of the Washington suburbs.

But scholars and US intelligence officials caution that the monarchists may have even less organic connection to those in Tehran, Isfahan, or Bandar Abbas of today than Ahmed Chalabi, who told US officials his fellow Iraqi citizens back in Baghdad, Basra and Mosul would welcome American troops.

In a fantasy scenario, a coterie of Iranian reformists from the ancient regime, liberals and monarchists from abroad, and other democratically minded Iranians would establish a pluralistic system after the fall of the regime.

But given the strident and unrestrained nationalism and chauvinism that pervades Iranians in the diaspora and inside the country, there’s no guarantee the regional and international goals of the new regime would be any more liberal than those of the current rulers. Polls have shown broad support for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and Iranians both inside the country and outside have long voiced support for the Palestinian cause. Among the most popular figures in Iran, today is Qassem Suleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ foreign expeditionary force.

“We just don’t think there’s anything good out there among Iranian opposition,” says one US national security specialist. “The foreign policy under the next regime may not be so drastically different as it is now.”

The end of the Islamic Republic is the end of Khamenei and his ilk, not just their political careers but very likely, their lives

Vaez says that throughout Iran’s history, the power vacuums have been filled with the most powerful and best organised domestic force. “In today’s Iran, that is the Revolutionary Guard,” he says.

And even if a shiny democracy somehow gets a foothold, the remnants of the former regime will not go gently into that good night. Unlike Tunisian strongman Ben Ali, they have nowhere to flee or opposition party to start like East Germany’s communists, who reinvented themselves as one of their country’s largest political parties. The end of the Islamic Republic is the end of Khamenei and his ilk, not just their political careers but, very likely, their lives.

“They are not going to just melt away and change,” says the former western security official. “They’re going to stay and fight. They can’t go to Switzerland. They’ll take lethal risks that no one else in the mix will take.”

Any ensuing war for control of Iran, with supporters of a new regime – perhaps backed by US troops – battling those of the old one, and ethnic groups fighting for a stake, will have dire security consequences for the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and beyond.

Millions fled Afghanistan during the country’s decades of war, and are continuing to make their way abroad. Civil wars in Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria displaced millions and continue to generate violence and dislocation.

Already Iran’s most educated and talented regularly make their way abroad in search of liberty as well as the comforts of middle class life. In case of regime change and its aftermath, that same strata – vital for building the model democracy championed by Pompeo and Bolton – will likely flee to the west rather than stay and fight, just as it did during every major disruption in Iran during the last four decades.

“What I cannot see,” says the former western security official, “is anything good coming out of regime change.”