Are the mullahs of Iran seriously threatened?
It seems to me that I’ve been reading for over a decade that the fall of the Iranian government is imminent.
That’s never even come close to happening, as far as I can tell.
And so I take this article with a hefty grain of salt. Here are some of the issues listed there that the mullahs apparently face, however:
Eighty percent of Iranians are currently living below the poverty line…Inflation has crossed the 45% threshold. Point-to-point inflation of necessary items is 66.7 percent, according to the state-run ISNA news agency. Institutionalized corruption and bribery permeate the economy. The unbridled import of goods by the IRGC has effectively destroyed local manufacturing, resulting in high unemployment. Furthermore, the Iranian regime is unwilling to enact standards consistent with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)—an intergovernmental anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) organization. It refuses to do so because it wants to continue financing Hezbollah and other terrorist proxies…
“If the hungry and unemployed army starts to march, its ferocity will be much greater than the 2019 uprising. People do not see hope for their future,” said an engineer working in Tehran. “The situation in the country is like a building whose foundation is collapsing.”…
Today, the Iranian regime is facing a major crisis in the form of water shortages, which is simply one among other noteworthy environmental crises. The water supply from Afghanistan to Iran is likely to be cut off, and this will deepen an already debilitating crisis for the Iranian regime, perhaps even provoking armed conflict.
In the past, all protests have been put down without hesitation by the government. Any successful revolt would have to involve the armed forces that the mullahs employ to subdue the people.
I think this next part is of special interest, and it’s something I had not read about before – which shows you how little mainstream coverage there is in the US these days of events in Iraq:
Iraq is moving towards building alliances with other Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, and in the south, the Persian Gulf states are embracing peace with Israel. The recent Iraqi elections and the sharp decline in the number of votes for pro-Iranian groups reflect Tehran’s declining status when it comes to the regional balance of power. Although the regime wants to continue using its regional influence to wreak havoc, the shifting political landscape is setting palpable limits on its ability.
The article ends with two alternative futures for Iran. The first is based on the idea that the US and Europe don’t have the will to oppose it militarily (very true, especially at this point with Democrats in charge) and therefore Iran will continue its nuclear weapons program, which will help solidify its power. The second is this:
…[Iran] will be forced to sign on to a deal that would see the loss of its enriched uranium stockpile, accepting permanent monitoring by IAEA, signing on to FATF, accepting restrictions on its missiles program, and effectively dismantling the Quds Force and proxy forces from countries of the region.
It would surprise me if the second alternative comes to pass rather than the first.
I’d say that second outcome is a pipe dream.
Hunter Biden’s pipe. But stronger regimes have fallen to economic pressures they couldn’t navigate. I would tend towards status quo.
There is no way Biden would do the second, as IRA says above. The ME is a powder keg awaiting the spark.
On another note, I read that the Chinese are taking control of Entebbe airport because of loan default. This might make some other countries pause in inviting the Chinese to invest in their countries.
China is making more trouble in the South Pacific. Stirring up trouble between the US and the Marshall islands over cleanup from the nuclear testing we did there in the 50’s.
This American Thinker article reads as if history did not exist.
Tyrannical regimes fall only when the regime leaders decide not to use any and all means to kill those who are the ringleaders of the opposition groups. No need to arrest/kill thousands of folks; just the top, say 100 or 200 or so.
See Venezuela.
See Hong Kong , where the demonstration leaders all just disappeared.
See Cuba where EVERY demonstration lasts one day and poof, it’s over.
As for economic conditions being miserable, so what, big deal.
Tyrants do not care nor have ever cared about the condition of the people. It is a non-issue to them.
See Cuba, N. Korea and the 70 year reign of the Russian Bolsheviks.
Cubans and N.Koreans citizens are not exactly “well off;” they – the Cubans – are just getting by. They do not have the means to overthrow their governments.
As to the USSR, if Stalin had been around in 1989, the USSR would still exist today. He would have ordered the military and the GRU to murder everybody that was within 10000 miles of any revolt. A few million killed? fine, so what , big deal.
Now if the military decides that regime change is needed, that is a different story. If the people- no matter how many- do not have guns, and if the military is on the side of the tyrants, it’s hopeless. The tyrants will stick around.
Ceaucescu’s fall is interesting; he lost the support of the people long long ago, but he stayed in power because the military was on his side.
The day the military switched sides, it was all over for him.
He and his really evil wife were executed, and they had it coming (as do a bunch of top level folks in Washington, DC).
If the masses – tens of thousands of them – do have guns and are willing to use them, then they have a good chance because the top military guys may look at the odds of success/failure of the revolt and decide to lay low while the weaponized citizenry deals with the tyrants. After all, the generals do not want to wind up on the losing side and risk losing their necks.
The condition of the citizenry never determines the longevity of a tyrannical regime. What determines it is the force the tyrants will use to suppress the revolt and what role the military decides to play.
That’s it.
I don’t know how many articles I read in American Thinker about the imminent fall of the Venezuelan dictatorship and the many demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of protesters.
Once the govt. there brought in the Cuban secret police, they knew what was needed to stop all demonstrations.
And they did.
End of story.
Oh, by the way, Joke Bidet will agree to any nuke deal the Iranians desire.
The Iranians realize it’s all a big PR scam and they have no intention in following anything that’s agreed upon, but it will play out well in the propaganda outlets in the USA (e.g. the entire mainstream media + social media).
When guys who think like Kerry or Blinken are “negotiating” for the USA, well, they may as well be bargaining on behalf of the mullahs. That’s how stupid they are
. Their idea of negotiating is just “tell us what you want, and we will agree to it.”
That’s how stupid they are; their Harvard education notwithstanding.
The mullahs have to think it’s some sort of trick the USA is playing, because they can’t believe that ANY govt can be that incredibly stupid and send even more stupid negotiators
If only that were the case.
You should believe it as much as you believe all the other lies you were and are told by your foreign policy experts and media.
Same would go for negative reports about the stability of Erdogan’s regime.
Both these regimes rely for their support on the higher birthrate and religiosity and conjoined aspiration / envy of the rural and provincial Fellaheen who utterly loathe the urban sophisticates and GloboHomo wannabes who are the ‘Dissidents’.
The Iranian and Turkish regimes are hardly utopias, but they’re populated by more of their ‘flyover’ people than yours are.
When the media is not just inventing lies, it is interviewing the folks in Tehran and Istanbul who speak English and hang out in the better coffee shops and go to the best parties. Or it’s doing vignettes of caricatures from Central Casting.
What is certain is that enough Iranians are satisfied enough to keep on trucking.
Finally as someone hints at above… A Little Green Man from Mars looking dispassionately at diplomatic and historical records might well decide rationally that the USA had a more perfidious record of breaking and bending and twisting agreements.
Again… as with China, not an endorsement. Goldfishes have to live in their bowls, but it’s as well once in a while for them to get a 360 degree drone video of where they’re at.
John Tyler:
Tyrannical regimes also fall when they lose the support of the military and police, and those entities refuse to use force on the people. That was something I mentioned in the post as a possibility for Iran. I don’t think it will happen, however.
The longer a problem is allowed to fester, the greater the cost.
When the UK was concerned that it might actually be occupied, one of the things they did was prepare for resistance. They commissioned a pamphlet by a guy who’d been in the Spanish Civil War for techniques.
One thing he said was that if you see a friend driving [supplies, etc.] for the Hun, either he’s doing it because he wants to or because he’s being forced to. In the first case, he deserves to be killed. In the second case, he wants to be killed.
Point is, even the most oppressive military depends on the country’s infrastructure for existence and at some point, the military interacts with the infrastructure. Where does the power come from? Somebody puts a bullet into a transformer outside the base. Or generators but the guy driving the fuel truck just received pictures of his kids on the bus stop.
The troops have families, including parents and siblings.
Not talking about demonstrations here. There’s a difference and secret police can’t spread themselves thin enough.
Decentralized, ad hoc resistance/sabotage can’t be quelled easily.
Regimes fall when they lose the support of the people. It may take a long time, but it is more or less inevitable.
History shows us that it happens suddenly. The USSR was an imposing world power, then it was gone. I don’t know a single person that predicted that one coming when it did.
The Shah’s secret police couldn’t save his regime, so why think the mullah’s will have any better luck?
They will fall. It might takes decades, or it might happen tomorrow.
Chester Draws:
The USSR fell for a number of reasons, but it was not a simple matter of losing the support of the people. That may have happened a lot earlier. What I believe did happen was a combination of economic hardship and the leadership in later days losing the extreme degree of hard ruthless cruelty of the earlier leaders.
As for the Shah, I’ve written about why the Shah fell. Please read this post. It’s relevant to what we’re discussing right now.
“Tyrants do not care nor have ever cared about the condition of the people. It is a non-issue to them.
“See Cuba, N. Korea and the 70 year reign of the Russian Bolsheviks.”
Absolutely; to which one could add “and the first 10 months, and counting, of the “Biden” regime”.
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“Joke Bidet will agree to any nuke deal the Iranians desire.”
Absolutely. Note, though that it’s a delicate matter of timing. (It should be a given that “Biden”, AKA “Obama2.0” has already decided to give the Iranians what Obama gave them if not more—“in the interests of peace in the Middle East and the world”(!)—but I assume that “Biden”‘s OFFICIAL decision to fold will be just after the 2022 mid-term elections, or “elections”, no matter what the results of those “elections” will be).
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“When guys who think like Kerry or Blinken are “negotiating” for the USA, well, they may as well be bargaining on behalf of the mullahs. That’s how stupid they are….”
Absolutely; alas, it has nothing to do with “stupidity” (though those two are right up there with the best of ’em in that category); rather—it is “Biden” sinister policies. The only finesse those two have to demonstrate in this continuing saga of “Biden”‘s deceit and betrayal is, as I mentioned above, the timing of it.
The essential thing for “Biden” to do is to prevent Israel from trying to pre-empt “Biden”‘s allies in Teheran. They put the screws on that “chickens&@t” Bibi and the’ll have to figure out a way to, similarly, fend off the new administration, which—almost hilariously—believes that “Biden” is an ally of the Jewish State. (Would be rather ironic, OTOH, if “Biden” is not quite as successful at this attempt at subterfuge and betrayal as was Obama…but then, who knows?)
Fidel Castro pioneered a new model of dictatorship, or authoritarian government, that ultimately survived him. That model has been refined and is now copied all over the world. They don’t use mass encarcerations and torture… just enough to keep the rest of the population frightened. They allow a certain amount of Opposition, but not enough to threaten them. And they accept that most of their country will be empoverished, so long as they can remain in power.
What is more, those regimes provide mutual support and cooperation against their enemies. And, right now, they are winning…