We are witnessing the “Syria-isation” of the regime in Iran. In the immediate term expect chaos and a domestic clampdown. In the medium to long-term, the prospect of Ayatollah Khamenei – the 86-year-old supreme leader – suffering the same fate as Bashar al-Assad, the deposed Syrian dictator, is now a genuine possibility.
Israel’s remarkable operation inside Iran since Friday has not only successfully targeted the Iranian regime’s nuclear facilities, scientists and the senior military leadership, but has also effectively dismantled the Iranian air defence systems.
Israeli air superiority over Iran means one thing: the IDF can attack whatever it wants, whenever it wants. This is perhaps the most consequential aspect of the conflict, thus far – and bares uncanny resemblance to the final years of the Assad regime.
From 2017 onwards, Israel had established full air superiority over the Baathist air defence systems, which were simply unable to deter the IDF’s consistent targeted strikes against key military and security commanders and infrastructure. Unable to fend off these strikes, the Syrian dictator responded by doubling-down on domestic suppression to consolidate himself internally, while stepping-up a campaign to export drugs globally in a perverse attempt to terrorise the outside world through narcotics jihad. In the end, this status quo – which had checkmated the Baathists – would eventually hollow out the regime from within and finally provide the space for opposition forces to topple Assad.
The “Syria-isation” of Iran’s regime has left Tehran with few options. And herein lies the problem for Khamenei: the military doctrine of the Iranian regime has become defunct. For decades, this doctrine had centred on three pillars: Islamist militias and proxies abroad, ballistic missiles (combined more recently with drones), and a nuclear weapons program.
Israel’s post-October 7 response, however, almost entirely decapitated Iran’s proxy pillar, not least Hezbollah in Lebanon, which was designed to act as a deterrent to an Israeli strike against Iran. Tehran’s remaining proxy assets either do not have the willingness to intervene – such as the Shia militias in Iraq – or the capabilities to cause significant damage, as is the case with the Houthis in Yemen. Likewise, the two direct IRGC attacks on Israeli territory last year surprisingly revealed the weaknesses of the Iranian ballistic and drone programmes against Israel’s air defence systems. And while the ongoing IRGC barrage against civilian populations in Israel has occasionally managed to penetrate Israel’s air defence system, its success rate still remains around six per cent. Finally, the IRGC has suffered a significant set-back in its pursuit to acquire nuclear weapons – the final pillar of its military doctrine. Israel’s strikes on key enrichment nuclear facilities and scientists have caused substantive damage to this pillar.
With its military doctrine in complete disarray and with Iran’s airspace exposed, the Ayatollah realistically only has two options left on the table: either accept President Trump’s zero-enrichment nuclear deal – akin to drinking from the "poisoned chalice," as his predecessor Khomeini claimed to have drunk in his reluctant deal to end the war with Saddam – or gamble on a dangerous path of escalation.
Thus far, the regime, marching to the beating drum of jihad, has chosen the latter.
But practically speaking, what escalatory levers remain in Tehran’s arsenal? Previous threats to close the Straits of Hormuz and target the Arab states in the Persian Gulf or attack the military assets of the West – including the U.S. and Britain – seem unlikely. This is, of course, unless Khamenei wants to trigger an international coalition against the Islamic Republic.
The only card then left in the regime’s pocket is a global campaign of terror against Israeli, Jewish and Western soft targets. Europe, which has consistently failed to take the threat of IRGC terrorism seriously, could be the chosen location to deploy this strategy. Not only has Khamenei’s regime already established infiltration networks across the continent – including in Britain – but the European governments have persistently refused to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organisation – a move that would inhibit its ability to carry out activities, not least home-grown terrorist operations.
Against this backdrop, there is even greater urgency for European governments to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation to prevent a situation that would be reminiscent of the final days of ISIS, when the jihadist group doubled-down on terror operations abroad in a last-ditch attempt to deter military operations against it.
Still, any escalation from Iran’s regime will almost certainly be met with even harder Israeli air-strikes. This will be a reoccurring theme in the coming weeks, months and quite possibly years. It took around seven-years for the Syrian dictator to be toppled after he lost air superiority in 2017. In those seven-years, as Assad sought to consolidate himself and cling onto power, he waged a ruthless campaign of domestic suppression. And this is exactly what we can expect Khamenei and the IRGC to do. Having lost the skies, they will go out of their way to control the streets. After all, the regime has a comprehensive domestic suppressive machinery, which currently remains relatively unscathed. Israeli strikes on this apparatus could change the stakes.
In the medium- to long-run, however, suppression alone is unlikely to hold the fort for the Ayatollah. The “Syria-isation” of the Islamic Republic of Iran will progressively hollow out the regime from within. This, in and of itself, is likely to create the space for Khamenei to face Assad’s fate. The timeline for this to occur remains hard to predict – months or years are more likely than days or weeks.
Of course, one course of action could inevitably accelerate this: the elimination of Khamenei. The ageing, megalomaniacal Ayatollah has spent the past few years empowering a cult of personality and hinging every aspect of the Islamic Republic on his authority. Eliminate the Ayatollah, and his regime may very well collapse like a house of cards.
Kasra Aarabi is the director of IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran and a British-Iranian expert on Iran’s military-security apparatus.
