After Assad's Ouster, What Next for Iran and Yemen?

 

The failure of Iran’s Axis of Resistance proxies in the Levant, in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, of course has local repercussions.  But it also has massive implications for the longevity of theocratic rule in Iran.

Iran totters on the brink of a hopefully slow but peaceful revolution. This is a minority view, but one nevertheless shared more by those with active connections inside Iran, rather than by the academic or analytical community viewing the situation from afar. 

 

73% (of Iranians) express their opposition to the public chanting of ‘Death to America’, while 18% favor it.  65% oppose ‘Death to Israel’, while 23% favor it.  64% agree with ‘Neither Gaza, nor Lebanon, I sacrifice my life for Iran’, while 24% oppose it.  73% agree with ‘Our enemy is right here, they lie that it’s the USA’, while 15% oppose it.

- GAMAAN Iranian Survey Report, Universities of Tilburg and Utrecht

The credibility of religious rule in Iran has been largely destroyed, as the IRGC’s clients in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are dismantled, and as the regime in Iran is seen as incapable of protecting key leaders and infrastructure from Israeli attack.  Suffering from high inflation, electricity, water and gas shortages, and new repressive hijab laws, Iranians are outraged that the government has squandered so much of their money on the IRGC’s activities abroad.  Remarkably, even 45 years after the Islamic revolution, annual polling consistently indicates that most Iranians retain pro-American and pro-Israeli sympathies, and are hostile to sponsorship of the Axis of Resistance.

Iran’s security forces face intensifying insurgency in Sistan-Baluchistan in the southeast and in the northeast on the Afghan border.  Large-scale exercises have been conducted in Khuzestan to counter ‘security threats, anti-revolutionary groups, and terrorist and takfiri networks’, all symptomatic of IRGC nervousness.  With an iron grip, the IRGC’s Basij forces and intelligence apparatus have in the past successfully countered threats to the regime and street protests.  But if the IRGC loses confidence - as did the Shah’s secret police before he was overthrown - and public dissatisfaction increases from its already high levels, then either there will be a violent overthrow of the religious leadership, or more likely a realignment of Iranian politics so that reformists take control of the agenda. 

Rarely recognised as such, Iran has a sophisticated political system, with the largest - and widest - electoral franchise in the Middle East.  Iranian voters have been consistently disappointed, as the reformist presidents they have voted for - from Khatami, Rouhani to the current Dr Masoud Pezeshkian - have failed to deliver change.  Each has been unable to quell the influence of the hardliners in parliament, and the all-pervasive influence of the IRGC.  But should the mood in the country change, politicians will flex their views, as has happened in the past, and the reformist agenda could gain traction.

Nonetheless, for a ‘quiet’ revolution to start will still probably require a detonator.  This could come in the form of an initiative from the incoming Trump administration, or be the consequence of an internal power struggle between factions when the current but frail Supreme Leader dies.  Or it could come from the fallout from potentially imminent military action to neutralize two threats that Iran still poses. 

The first is the Iranian nuclear weapons program, which could in a short space of time be accelerated to achieve breakout with a small number of crude Iranian nuclear weapons - a long-advertised Israeli red line, and probably just as unacceptable to a United States under President Trump.  An attack to counter this threat could come within weeks.

The second is Iran’s intact missile and drone arsenal.  In the Iranian attack on Israel which took place on October 1, approximately 20% of the missiles fired penetrated Israel’s sophisticated anti-missile defence.  Iran has an estimated 3,000 missiles and many more drones based in more than 25 underground ballistic missile sites.  Many sites have multiple missile silos, some equipped with carousel reloaders.  All sites have deep underground garaging, in which both missiles and drones can be parked up on mobile launchers, ready to be launched from prepared positions close by.  If Iran doubled its salvo size and targets urban areas, rather than remote military sites, so that there is less need for pinpoint accuracy, it could inflict mass casualties and damage, and moreover has proved that it has the capability to do so.

From an Israeli perspective, this arsenal needs to be neutralized.  Politically 2025 presents a never-better opportunity to do so, and with Syrian air defenses destroyed, some of the tactical challenges of doing so have been removed.

Even if there is no attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons program or the missile and drone sites, rising popular anger could still generate regime-changing protests and succeed where previous street protest movements have failed - especially if IRGC confidence erodes still further.

As with a further rollout of the Abraham Accords, a realigned Iran could have huge potential.  Iran has the biggest and best-educated population in the region, lots of oil and gas, and a huge market - all held back by sanctions and isolationism.  Some countries in the Gulf and elsewhere would welcome an Iranian return to world markets, others might fear the competition.

Of all the countries within the much-diminished Axis of Resistance, only Yemen so far has not suffered a reverse.  The Houthis have maintained their attacks on shipping, cutting traffic through the Red Sea, with oil exports in transit down by 50% this year.  The Houthis have continued to hit targets in Israel with missiles and drones.  US and UK counter-attacks on missile and drone infrastructure in Yemen have not curbed the Houthi action.  Both Israel - and now Gulf states suffering higher prices because of the need to ship around the Cape, plus Egypt suffering lost Suez Canal revenues - cannot tolerate such a situation indefinitely.

If the Houthis do not recognize the imminent danger they are in and pull back, two consequences could materialize.  Air attacks on Yemen could be widened and intensified;  Houthi leaders are already worried that they will be individually targeted.  Or factions within Yemen, such as Tareq Saleh’s Emirati-backed National Resistance Forces, could resume the civil war, as they are keen to do - with the Houthis now less confident about the support it will enjoy from Iran.  Quite what will happen in Yemen in 2025 is uncertain - but it is clear that the current situation cannot continue for a further year.  Either Yemen will be divided up amongst the current factions, each driven by its own foreign sponsor, or the Yemenis will determine their own political future by resolving their differences amongst themselves - the Omani-preferred solution.

There is one other major concern lingering over the whole region.  There is overwhelming popular support for Hamas, seen by citizens across Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Jordan as ‘the resistance’ and the embodiment of the Palestinian cause.  To the concern of some, but perhaps not sufficiently so to all Gulf rulers, sympathy for Hamas brings with it an ideological underpinning to Islamism, normalizing a brand of Islam inimical to stability and the longevity of most Gulf rulers.  This split between the Arab Street, and Gulf rulers, is for the most part hidden away, as it can only be under such efficient and authoritarian state controls.  But the rift is real, evident face-to-face or where social media cannot be curbed, and it threatens a second Arab Spring - not next week, but sometime soon if current circumstances prevail.