Cynics are justified in their refusal to get their hopes up.
As the increasingly insurrectionary anti-regime demonstrations inside Iran enter their second week, major media outlets are starting to see cracks in the regime’s foundations.
In its conversation with three unnamed Iranian officials “familiar with government deliberations,” reporters for the New York Times indicated that the mullahs have “been thrust into survival mode.” As I wrote last week, the regime’s political officials are sounding notes of resignation and despair — confessing that the country’s challenges are beyond remedy.
The clerisy, in which the regime’s real power lies, has been uncompromising. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted in a recent speech that the “rioters must be put in their place.” Regime officials have begun accusing the demonstrators of being in league with Israeli intelligence — often a precursor to a more aggressive crackdown on dissent. Early indications that Tehran is aggressively throttling internet access are similarly ominous.
But the mullahs may not be as confident in their survival as the violent crackdown on demonstrators by security forces suggests. According to “an intelligence source” who spoke with the Times of London, Khamenei and his inner circle of aides and family members have a “plan B” if they start to see the Iranian military — which is distinct from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — desert, defect, or otherwise refuse to follow directives. The mullahs, the Times reported, would flee to Moscow.
It’s not just that “there is no other place for him,” as one Iranian dissident who worked with Israeli intelligence observed. Khamenei “admires [Vladimir] Putin, while the Iranian culture is more similar to the Russian culture.” The shared Persian and Slavic cultural affinities notwithstanding, we can safely assume that the Islamic Republic in exile would fly to Moscow for want of any other place on earth that would take them.
After all, Putin’s Russia is rapidly turning itself into a retirement community for anti-American agents. It is home to erstwhile Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and his regime’s officials. It is where the convicted spy Edward Snowden enjoys asylum. Doubtlessly, Nicolás Maduro would be enjoying borscht and vodka on the Old Arbat right now if he had the good sense to treat Donald Trump’s ultimatum with the seriousness it deserved. Khamenei and his gang of thugs would fit right into Moscow’s pestilential milieu.
And yet, the cynics are justified in their refusal to get their hopes up. We’ve seen anti-regime uprisings before, all of which were ruthlessly crushed. But one Western intelligence assessment reviewed by the Times assessed that Khamenei was “weaker, both mentally and physically,” following the twelve-day war with Israel and in the wake of U.S. strikes on the country’s nuclear program. “He has barely been seen in public and, notably, has not been seen or heard from during the last several days of protests,” the report observed. And the theocrat’s “obsession with survival” may lead him to act impulsively.
The fight-or-flight instinct can go both ways.