THE FALL OF IRAN COULD CHANGE EVERYTHING
Regime Change Would Transform the Middle East—But Would It be for the Better Or For the Worst (wait and see).
WHAT MAY HAPPEN IF IRAN’S REGIME FALLS FROM POWER?
As Iranian protests reportedly turn violent, the Islamic Republic faces its greatest crisis since its founding more than 46 years ago. While previous protests involved elites or smaller segments of society, the current unrest is spreading across Iranian society, including traditionally supportive elements. Even Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps veterans suffer the consequence of runaway inflation and the Iranian rial’s hemorrhaging value. The closure of the Tehran Bazaar is often the harbinger of government collapse if not revolution. It is increasingly likely that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s legacy will be the collapse of the Islamic Republic. If the Iranian public has its say, his son Mojtaba will also hang.
The Fall of Iran: What Happens Next?
The reverberations of the Islamic Republic’s collapse will reshape the region.
The likelihood of a smooth succession in Iran is slight. There is no centralized leadership to the current protest movement, and as the collapse of the Georgetown conference demonstrated, the diaspora opposition leaders and groups are more polarized than ever.
Rather than build bridges, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s team has chosen instead the slash-and-burn tactics and exaggerated claims of credit preferred by groups like the Mojahedin-e Khalq. The 50,000 registered regime defectors Pahlavi claimed just six months ago appear little more than a fevered dream; Iranians are on the street, but there is no indication that they are doing so at Pahlavi’s direction.
Still, even Syria-like chaos will neuter Iran’s ability to threaten the region. Traditionally, when the Iranian regime is under threat, its security forces retreat from the periphery toward Tehran; they do not lash out at the region if it means leaving core interests exposed.
Who Wins?
The primary beneficiaries of regime collapse will, in the short term, be both Iraq and the Gulf Arab states.
The Islamic Republic has, since the U.S.-led ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime, repeatedly impinged on Iraqi sovereignty. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s State Department and George W. Bush-era National Security Council official Zalmay Khalilzad naively believed Iranian promises that it would take a hands-off approach to post-war Iraq; by the time they were willing to acknowledge they were wrong, it was too late. A deliberate see-no-evil approach marked President Barack Obama’s subsequent willingness to withdraw from Iraq and engage Iran diplomatically.
More Winners and Losers
While the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will remain a potent force based simply on the resources they have stolen and squirreled away, regime collapse will lead to a ticking clock on the willingness of Iraqis to listen to them. Immediate losers will be Hadi al-Amiri’s Badr Corps, Qais al-Khazali’s Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, and Nouri al-Maliki’s ambition to return to the premiership, as well as Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leaders Bafil and Qubad Talabani’s leverage of the Islamic Republic against their Kurdish rivals. Rumors of Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi involvement in countering Iranian protesters will cause generational antagonism among Iranians toward their Iraqi Shi’ite co-religionists.
The Gulf Arab states may benefit in the short term, but could quickly lose some of their relevance. In 1981, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was formed to coordinate policy and defense among the frontline Gulf emirates, sultanates, and monarchies: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. The GCC consistently underperformed. Even 45 years later, their militaries lack interoperability. Internal antagonism toward Qatar for its sponsorship of Sunni extremist groups and, more recently, the Saudi-Emirati rivalry has ensured that dysfunction rather than solidarity characterizes any effort to stake common positions.
The Gulf Arab states may benefit in the short term, but could quickly lose some of their relevance.
The Islamic Republic’s collapse might exacerbate GCC divisions, especially if Riyadh and Abu Dhabi take their rivalry, already playing out in Sudan and Yemen, into Iran, with both Gulf states funding and arming different proxies. With the threat of the Islamic Republic’s “export of revolution” removed, there will be little reason for the GCC to continue to exist. Its six members will end the pretense of unity. Qatar will solidify its ties with Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates-Saudi Arabia rivalry could even lead to military skirmishes. Absent the threat of Iranian irredentism, Bahrain will thrive; while it lacks oil, it will be even better positioned to be the Singapore of the Persian Gulf.
The United Arab Emirates will also benefit in the short term. It has long served as a repository for no-questions-asked investment. But, should Iran collapse, then it could expect billions of dollars to pour into the country as regime officials desperately seek to protect their stolen assets.
Such financial flows will likely draw international attention that could spark a longer-term diplomatic crisis between Abu Dhabi and Washington.
Should civil war erupt in Iran—and its likelihood is high—then the Arab Gulf states must also be prepared for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iranian refugees. The first wave will be upper- and middle-class Iranians who can afford apartments in Sharjah, if not posh hotels in Dubai. With time, however, more working-class and rural Iranians will begin to flee by dhow and speed boat across the Persian Gulf, perhaps overwhelming the Emirates and its Gulf neighbors.
Oman is typical: Rather than plan for Iran’s fall, Muscat prefers wishful thinking that diplomacy can resolve any internal disputes before violence erupts.
Within Washington, there may be too much optimism that the Islamic Republic’s collapse will resolve the Houthis’ fight. Such a belief misunderstands the Houthis: while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps co-opted the group, it did not create it.
Indeed, the Houthis have intellectual and political roots in Yemen’s Imamate that predate Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. While southern Yemen rejects the Houthis, they do have a constituency in northern Yemen, which is one reason why the U.S.-backed Presidential Leadership Council has failed to end the Houthi scourge.
Within Washington, there may be too much optimism that the Islamic Republic’s collapse will resolve the Houthis’ fight.
Hezbollah might also survive in some form. Israel defeated Hezbollah’s military, but it is harder to uproot its ideology. A recent research trip to Lebanon confirmed that Hezbollah did not surrender, but rather internalized the lesson that they must revert to their pre-2000 covert cell structure. Perhaps they will no longer wield drones and missiles, but plastique and AK-47s can be equally dangerous in the hands of experienced users.
Many in Israel expect they can renew the warm ties they enjoyed with Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This, too, is wishful thinking.
Many Iranians will resent Israel’s suspected association with the Mujahedin-e Khalq in subsequent years, as well as the tendency of some Israelis to support “South Azerbaijan” separatism. While Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s visit to Israel won cheers in Washington, Jerusalem, and among some diaspora Iranians, Israel’s subsequent bombing campaign against Iran offended many Iranian nationalists. Decades of propaganda also take their toll. Egyptians remain overwhelmingly anti-Israel decades after the Camp David Accords; it is unrealistic to believe that generations of Iranians fed anti-Israel conspiracies will switch sides overnight.
Perhaps the biggest long-term winner of the Islamic Republic’s collapse will be Turkey. Just as Qatar replaced Saudi Arabia as a financier for Islamic extremism, Turkey has transformed itself into an ideological engine that seeks to export its own brand of Islamist extremism with an aggressiveness akin to 1980s-era Iran. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will see Khamenei’s collapse not as a warning about his own future, but rather as an opportunity to expand Turkey’s own revolutionary export and terror sponsorship.
What will emerge is not a more peaceful Middle East, but simply a change in the flavor of the extremism most threatening to regional security and U.S. interests.
A Time of Change in Iran? Chaos or Crisis?
Regime change in Iran will be welcome. The devil we know is not always better than the devil we do not. But, any tendency on the part of the White House and Washington think tanks to see Iran’s collapse as a “Hail Mahdi” pass to security and a peaceful Middle East will be embarrassingly naïve.
