Next Up In Iran Regime Change Or Renewed Push For A Nuclear Weapon

In the aftermath of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian facilities vital to its nuclear weapons development programme and Iranian strikes on Israeli targets and the U.S.’s Al Udeid base in Qatar, each side will have just one key question to ask of itself. In the U.S.’s case, with heavy Israeli input, it is whether now is the time to deliver a final push to change the regime in Iran. After all, the current Presidential Administration unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or colloquially ‘the nuclear deal’) because it believed Iran was using it only to benefit from sanctions relief while continuing its attempt to develop nuclear weapons. Several subsequent attempts to negotiate a new, tougher, and more rigorously-enforceable deal failed due to perceived Iranian double-dealing by Washington. In Iran’s case, the key question is whether it should resume its nuclear weapons development programme. After all, it has been the primary pillar on which the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have secured their grip on power in the country over the past few years, and without which they would lose that authority.

U.S. President Donald Trump floated the idea of regime change in Iran on 22 June on his social media platform, writing: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change’, but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA [Make Iran Great Again]!!!”. He was also instrumental as President-Elect in pushing for the removal in December of Bashar al-Assad from his long-running presidency of Syria, according to several security sources in London, Washington, and Brussels exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com since then. “He wanted to put Moscow’s, Beijing’s and Tehran’s leadership on notice that Washington can easily redraw and restructure borders and regimes in not just the Middle East but also in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, if it wants to,” the senior European Union (E.U.) security source said. “He’s not against the idea [of regime change] in principle, but he’s aware of the potential for long-term problems to be created as a result, particularly the U.S.’s involvement in lengthy conflicts,” he added. Indeed, Trump echoed the first point when he appeared to reverse his earlier comment on regime change when asked flat out on route to the NATO summit in the Hague whether that was what he wanted. He said: “Regime change takes [sic] chaos, and ideally, we don’t want to see so much chaos. So we’ll see how it goes.” On the second point, Trump made it clear in his ‘Endless Wars’ commencement address to the United States Military Academy at West Point on 13 June 2020 that he saw the days of the U.S. being the ‘policeman of the world’ as being over. This was seen in the U.S.’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal in 2018 and then from Syria in 2019, and later in 2021 from Afghanistan and Iraq, as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. “The general feeling in Europe on this is that Trump won’t actively pursue regime change, provided that Iran makes no move to resurrect its nuclear weapons programme, but if it does, then more attacks on Iran will ensue, aimed at further destabilising the current regime,” the E.U. source underlined.

Related: Pakistan Strikes Critical Win With Oil, Gas Wildcat Discovery

That said, even if the regime change scenario did come into play, it is far from clear how it could be effected. Neither the U.S. nor any of its key intelligence allies – most notably the U.K. – have been able to position anyone as a possible, never mind obvious, candidate, to take over from outside the entrenched Iranian political hierarchy. Recent attempts to showcase the U.S.-based exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi — the eldest son of Farah Diba and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran – have been extremely unsuccessful in gathering any significant popular support in Iran. This highlights a major problem in this regard, which is the deep historical awareness of much of the Iranian population about the previous occasion when the U.S. and U.K. effected a change of regime in Iran. This was the 1953 removal of the enormously popular Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in the U.K.’s Secret Intelligence Service (‘MI6’)/U.S. Central Intelligence Agency coup d’état — codenamed ‘Operation Boot’ or ‘Operation Ajax’, respectively – and his replacement by General Fazlollah Zahedi, as also detailed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. The fact that this was done to reverse the March 1951 vote by Iran’s parliament to nationalise the country’s oil sector, cancel the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s oil concession, and expropriate its assets has not been forgotten over the years either. Nor did the fact that this coup ushered in an even more brutal era in the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who became so widely despised in Iran that he was removed by the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

There is also no possibility that a secular democratic candidate to take over the leadership in Iran will emerge if the Supreme Leader is still in place and protected by the guardians of the 1979 Revolution – the IRGC. Although the current President of Iran — Masoud Pezeshkian – has been described as a ‘moderate’, there is really no such thing in Iranian politics. All its key power groups — political, religious and military – are firmly rooted in and supportive of the Islamic and revolutionary ideals that were the foundation stone for the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. The only difference between them has been the nature of their engagement with the West, which itself is a function of how willing any of these groups are to ‘play the game’ with the U.S. and its core allies, as also examined thoroughly in my latest book on the new global oil market order. “At the centre of the guiding principles for all top-level Iranian politics is the concept of Velayat-e-Faqih, which means that all serious political and religious authority is entrusted to the [Shia] clergy, which makes all key decisions for Iran, provided that they have been approved by the Supreme Leader, and this is then enforced by the Guardians of the [1979] Revolution, the IRGC,” a senior source close to Iran’s Petroleum Ministry exclusively told OilPrice.com. “These decisions cover everything of significance for Iran, from foreign policy, through defence policy, economic policy, and intelligence policy, to any domestic policy over and above how many aerials a specific apartment complex in Tehran can have on its roof,” he added. 

Given this lack of a clear pathway for regime change to be effected in a way that substantially reduces the potential for long-term chaos in Iran – that Trump has made clear he does not want – it seems the most likely option is for things to continue as they are in broad terms. Tellingly perhaps in this context were the extraordinarily placatory words issued by Trump in thanking Tehran for the equally extraordinarily detailed advanced warning of Iran’s attack on the U.S. base in Al Udeid. More specifically, Trump wrote on his social media: “I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice [of the attack], which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured.” He added: “They [Iran] were very nice, they gave us warning. They said we’re gonna shoot ‘em. Is one o’clock ok? I said, it’s fine. And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn’t get hurt.” Around two hours after these messages, the current ceasefire between Iran and Israel was announced. Consequently, the most likely scenario from here, thinks the E.U. source, is that at some point Iran and the U.S. will reconvene to discuss a new version of the JCPOA. In fact, since the ceasefire Iran’s deputy foreign minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi said that the Trump administration told Iran through mediators that it wanted to return to negotiations this week. Iran responded that the U.S. must rule out any further strikes on Iran if it wants to resume diplomatic talks. From that point, concluded the E.U. source, Iran is likely to sign any new version of the JCPOA – regardless of its conditions that threaten the established order of the Supreme Leader and IRGC — whereupon it will do its best to abide by none of the conditions, while the U.S. and its allies do their best to quietly encourage a popular uprising in the country over time.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com