Iran's Dilemmas

Following the incident of the killing of Ibrahim Raisi, the eighth President of the Iranian Republic, along with some of his aides, the most prominent of whom was the Foreign Minister, Amir Abdollahian, after a helicopter crash on Sunday, May 19, 2024, in northwestern Iran, it was certain that the consequences of that shocking incident on Iran's situation, whether the incident was orchestrated or not. If it was orchestrated, it would be a deadly and dangerous blow, marking the beginning of a new level of Israeli-American targeting operations, whose goal is to undermine the Iranian regime and disrupt its active regional roles aimed at carving out influential spheres for its influence across the Middle East map, according to Iran's own conception of the limits of its geopolitical interests that are disturbing the prevailing state of submission and alienation in the region.

And if the hypothesis that the crash of the Iranian President's helicopter and his death was not orchestrated, but rather an accidental incident, then it is no less grave in its implications, dimensions and far-reaching consequences than the first possibility. The Iranian regime appeared incapable of securing the transportation of the head of state and ensuring his safety within its geographical domain. Worse still, it seemed powerless for long hours to determine the president's last location and reach his remains, before entrusting the task of locating the site and recovering the body to a drone sent by neighboring Turkey, after Iran requested assistance. This mission was accomplished the following day within less than an hour of its commencement.

In both cases, this tragic incident - in addition to a long series of Israeli-American targeting operations inside and outside Iran - revealed what was hidden about the state of the Iranian regime, which appeared, in the most dangerous stages of the conflict, to be in an unprecedented state of weakness, fragility, and exposure, and about many facts about the state of the decay, obsolescence, and weakness that its structures, frameworks, and means have been experiencing.

Similarly, the assassination of Dr. Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas movement, in an attack that targeted him at his place of residence in the heart of Tehran, in the early hours of Wednesday, July 31, 2024, while he was attending the inauguration ceremony of the elected Iranian president, successor to the late president, which was carried out in the context of an unprecedented regional confrontation, one of whose main parties is Iran and its allies in the "Resistance Axis" and the Palestinian factions, including Hamas, which (Haniyeh) stands at the head of, is an incident no less severe in the significance of its implications and repercussions for Iranian national security, the state of the regional conflict, and the future of the Middle East, than the incident of the killing of the late Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi, and the long series of Israeli targeting operations that have targeted strategic targets of great importance, inside and outside Iran.

Contrary to all the previous rounds of conflict with Israel and its Western patrons, the Khomeinist revolutionary system in Iran will pay a heavy price if it chooses this time as well to swallow the frog of the (Haniyeh) assassination operation, as happened with many other serious operations in which Israel repeatedly crossed Iran's red lines, including Israeli operations that targeted Iranian experts at the heart of Iran itself over the past years. Whether this swallowing is under the title of (strategic patience) linked to the possession of deterrent (nuclear weapons), or it resorts to the choice of responding again through a network of armed allied factions in various parts of the Middle East map - these are irregular armed formations whose relationship with Iran is relatively flexible, as they are not entirely independent nor merely subordinates, but are rooted in their environment, equipped, trained, and indoctrinated, and evade the laws between states, so that they can serve Iran without directly implicating it, according to the description of the Lebanese thinker and diplomat Ghassan Salameh.

Unless there is a comprehensive Iranian self-review that scrutinizes the dangerous gaps and holes in Iran's fragile and weak defense walls, and carefully defines the nature and level of the response, the worst of the targeting and undermining operations that will target Iran is inevitably coming, and Iran's losses will then be multiplied, as it will certainly be subject to unprecedented existential threats in its history if it resorts to repeating the ineffective handling of the latest version of Israeli targeting operations by resorting to one of its familiar treasury options, and does not go to test a new, more effective and viable approach to putting an end to the escalating Israeli transgressions. At that time, all Iran's maneuvering tactics aimed at avoiding or delaying direct engagement with Israel will be mere openings and additional opportunities gifted to the Israeli war decision-makers and their American patrons.

The inevitable result of repeating this pragmatic approach will be to ensure that the long Israeli hand maintains the initiative, in war and politics, at a time when it is still the one that chooses freely and with great care the time, place, nature and ceiling of engagement operations, offensively and defensively, initiatively and in response, except for the October 7th attack, which allows it to isolate its enemies one by one, under regional and international guardianship, working by all means to impose ceilings and red lines for the rules of engagement, to ensure that the hostile operations against Israel remain under control, and these ceilings, lines and rules are binding on all parties in the region, except Israel, which conducts hostile operations, exceeding all ceilings, violating all red lines, and breaking all rules, for about nine months of the conflict cycle that erupted since October 7th.

The Israeli war machine has failed, over more than nine months of its war against the Palestinians in Gaza, with all its atrocities, to regain the deterrence characteristic that it had struggled to build its mental image for about seven decades, whether at the level of Palestine or at the regional level, but through the assassination of (Haniyeh) in the heart of Tehran, in terms of timing, place, target and occasion, it has accomplished or nearly accomplished that mission.

It is now certain that the repercussions of the assassination of (Haniyeh), in addition to the incident of the killing of the former Iranian president, passing through the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, and the limited and ineffective Iranian retaliation against Israel, and before that the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, in addition to a long series of Israeli targeting operations that targeted strategic targets inside and outside Iran, on Iran's position, its national security, its future and its existence, will have no end, and should not be underestimated, and which will represent the locomotive for an upcoming series of targeting operations, aimed at undermining the Iranian regime and disrupting its active regional roles in various parts of the Middle East, according to Iran's own vision of the limits of its geopolitical interests.

According to all calculations, the biggest losers from the assassination of (Haniyeh) are Iran, where he was targeted in its capital and as its guest, on the sidelines of the inauguration ceremony of its new president, who was elected to succeed a president killed in a revealing incident, while (Haniyeh) was safe in a small state like Qatar, and a rival state like Turkey. To a lesser degree, the shrapnel of the assassination operation will hit the walls of national security of the countries of the region, foremost of which are the Arab countries, as it reveals the entry of the region into a new level of the runaway Israeli war machine, without any ceilings or red lines, and without any rules of engagement. Meanwhile, Hamas and the Palestinian factions and forces will be the least affected by this unsurprising Israeli crime on the long journey of Palestinian liberation and independence.