The Islamic Republic has been weakening for months

In October 2023, the mullahs of the Islamic Republic could look within Iran’s borders, and beyond, and be content with the worlds they had created. After all, they had weathered the storm of the Women, Life, Freedom protests by terrorizing their own people, and could rest assured in the strength of their proxy networks, feared fighters operating at Iran’s behest (or guidance) throughout the Middle East. Yes, if we’d looked hard enough, there were signs of weakness in their response to the killing of Qasem Soleimani – in hindsight, a singular failure to match the violence of the words to the violence and efficacy of their actions, a fatal mistake in today’s world. And yes, political karma suggests you can’t go on living under sanctions and exploiting your own people indefinitely, while also trying to pull the wool over the world’s eyes. But if you’d listened to senior IRGC figures talking, as well as Ayatollah Khamenei, you’d have heard a sense of smug invulnerability in the strength of their domestic intelligence agencies and the inviolability of their forward defense strategy, a web of force stretched across the Middle East ready to strike Israeli and Western interests at the drop of a hat. Iran even felt strong enough to bully Saudi Arabia and the UAE, striking Saudi oil facilities in one particularly brazen episode. 

But after October 7, Iran faced a dilemma. Should it stand up for its proxy in Palestine and take the fight to Israel, thereby fulfilling a lifetime’s worth of promises, or simply take a step back? Iran tried to do both and failed twice over. Its response to Israeli attacks on Gaza was to unleash the Houthis’ missile capabilities, and to lean into supporting and supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus dragging Israel into a regional conflict that no one thought they could win – they still haven’t won it, but crucially, nor has Iran. And as the violence escalated in proportion with the ranks of those Iranian officers targeted in Syria and Iraq, the force of Iran’s deterrence was called into question as Tehran tried to calibrate its response in a manner which showed both a readiness to fight a war and a clear desire to avoid one. Two fatally contradictory messages. 

Hamas was obliterated, as was Hezbollah, crumpling under Israeli bombs. And in April 2024, in response to the killing of senior IRGC figures in the Iranian consulate in Syria, Iran launched two of its largest and most advanced ballistic missiles at Israel. Neither of these missiles (or the accompanying army of drones) had any significant impact on Israel, aided by its international partners. And at this point, perhaps, their fate was set, a fact confirmed eight months later when Iran’s great ally in the region, Bashar al-Assad, scurried away to Russia, leaving his country open to Sunni Islamists (and Turkey) openly hostile to Tehran. Tehran’s deterrence strategy was seemingly at an end, its fabled missile arsenal ineffective in the face of Israeli technological superiority. What we have seen in these past few days is a continuation of this theme, a confirmation that there is a highly significant distance between rhetoric and reality. Israel, perhaps recklessly, simply wasn’t buying Iran’s threats anymore.  

It is too early for Netanyahu to crow – shades of George W. Bush on a warship spring to mind here. It’s also too early for the people of Iran to rejoice at the fall of a hated regime. Just ask the Gulf powers how nervous they are at the prospect of a wounded Iranian tiger, totally unmoored from international norms, lashing out in desperation at shipping lanes and oil refineries. But the writing has been on the wall for a weakened and shattering Islamic Republic for many years now, whatever its next incarnation resembles.