Rebellion In Iran And The Drone-Alliance With Putin: The Hidden Minefields

The ongoing unrest in Iran, having rumbled on for weeks, spikes afresh whenever the regime kills another young woman for ditching the hijab. Whither will it all go? Does it spell the end of the mullahocracy? The scenario is actually far more intricate than Western commentators seem to grasp. And what about the newly invigorated strategic bond between Moscow and Tehran – the use of Iranian drones and rockets in Ukraine – what does that portend for the world?

Let us take them in order. This most virulent round of protests in Iran first erupted in mid-September after the murder by the hijab police of young Mihsa Amini. Already throughout the summer, the country had suffered widespread unrest due to water shortages and general impoverishment. The new protests, however, featured women and younger folk in the vanguard. Amini’s hometown in the Kurdish area of Iran erupted at news of her death and the troubles spread most intensely to the Azeri areas as well as the capital and elsewhere. It’s worth noting here the first complication of the overall picture – that of outrage in the ethnic regions against the central government. In other words, the nascent threat of the country fragmenting regionally, a critical problem not just for the regime but equally for the opposition as the government is always quick to accuse the demonstrators of acting in the interest of foreign powers – Israel, America, Saudi Arabia – to pull Iran apart. Once again, the Mullahs have found a useful instrument for dividing the protesters: you want to keep Iran whole, you stop protesting.

Present-day Iran’s territorial unity has never quite felt completely solid, somewhat like Italy which was only forcibly unified in 1861 with unresolved provincial rumblings ever since. In both cases, unity was achieved under a rather artificial monarch, in Iran’s case dating back only to 1925 (with interruptions since) which is why so many young protesters in Iran keep calling for the exiled Pahlavi monarchy to be reinstated. It’s a coded way of saying we want revolution but not fragmentation. They have no illusions about the Pahlavi dynasty’s British-imposed feeble legitimacy but rather it’s their way of indicating that they’d like regime change while keeping the country whole. But neither the (Turkic) West Azerbaijan province, nor the Kurdish region are wholly happy with being ruled from Tehran. Both have ethnic brethren across the national border calling out to them; in the Azeris case there’s an entire country called Azerbaijan right next door. Which is also why the religious Mullah regime seemed like a painfully acceptable solution when the Shah was overthrown in 1979 – absent a monarchy, Shi’ism held the country together.

So that’s one complication. The country might fragment. The demonstrators are playing with vast historical forces. So is the regime by essentially offering the populace Persian imperial expansion in place of democracy and sufficient food. But there’s another huge complication: the mullahs don’t really run things. In fact, there’s a rather informal de facto division of power between the elected parliament, the Mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). Of the three, parliament has the least control while the IRGC deploys the most. The Mullahs, at this point, provide the ideological facade, but with the Revolutionary Guards as the underlying administrative police state. The Rev Guards have the preponderant access to the country’s oil revenue and field the largest law-enforcement, military and intelligence weight. Qasem Soleimani was one of them. To adapt the poet Kipling’s dictum, they have all the power without the responsibility. Which is why former President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, urged that IRGC officials run for elected office transparently – they could then be held accountable.

Just a small additional detail here, that no one is telling you: When the fire at notorious Evin prison recently made world news it was in fact the IRGC intelligence HQ which is housed there. Yes the HQ for their entire intelligence operation. The safest place you’d think. Which is why, when their usual screams of blaming “CIA, Mossad, foreign agents” for once sounds half-way plausible. Same with the recent assassination of the two elite IRGC officers in their car – both responsible for the Shahed drone supplies to Russian forces. But there are other plausible suspects than the Mossad or CIA.

You don’t see the rivalry between the Mullahs and Revolutionary Guards breaking out into the public eye because there’s too much for both sides to lose. But the cracks are severe and under sufficient pressure from popular discontent Iran could head into a kind of civil war with democrats, Rev Guards, and mullahs jockeying for the outcome. And separatist regions rebelling for autonomy. Tragically, the IRGC is likely to prevail which will result in an expansionist police state without mitigating ideology, one that will endure only with great bloodshed and not with any sort of popular consent for long. Think of the Soviet Union without Marxist justification. Absent any pan-Shiite glue or Islamist ideological momentum, the provinces are unlikely to stay on board, endure poverty and repression, just for the pleasure of recomposing the Persian empire in Iraq and Syria. So that way, open rule by IRGC, portends fragmentation too.

Supreme Leader Khamenei keeps proposing his own son as successor with the implicit appeal of continuity plus avoiding yet another cause for discord, this time over his successor. The IRGC aren’t fully on board, though they too are divided between those who want to get legit by coming out of the shadows and those who enjoy de facto power while letting the Mullahs talk the talk. An invitation to endless corruption. All in all, it’s a state of affairs highly vulnerable to destabilization from without. As we’ve seen time and again in such situations, outside powers inevitably support one or other side. The West, having gotten burned before, reeling from Iraq and Afghanistan, will likely eschew the fray. Moscow has already staked a claim with the recent strategic and military bonding over Iranian-made missiles and Shahed drones over Ukraine. The Kremlin has a habit of guaranteeing the stability of hated regimes in the near-abroad. You’d think Iranians retain sufficient memory of colonial occupation by Russia over the decades to know better. But both Moscow and Tehran are so bent on playing the bigger strategic game that they’re risking everything at home.

Always haunted by internal atomization, both countries opted for a similar direction towards empire and away from democracy. Those mystified by the newly prominent Moscow-Tehran bonding never noticed their collaboration in Syria. Or that Iran helped the Kremlin geostrategically for years by keeping Central Asia’s trading options bottled up so the region stayed dependent on Russia. But, as this column has noted repeatedly, especially after recent events in Ukraine, Moscow is losing its grip on its former Central Asian colonies. And that produces pressure on the Caucasus countries like Georgia and Azerbaijan and Armenia to grow more independent. Russia is in danger of losing hegemony over a whole swath of its near-abroad landmass. Look at the map. Russia bonding with Iran neuters that threat geographically by physically blockading the Caucasus and Central Asia’s westward access.

What else is at stake? It seems odd that Putin should implicitly admit the weakness of his weapons industry by importing drones from a foreign country – until you accept that the open gesture of alliance with Iran is intended to send a public message. Geostrategically, as above. But also in practical terms. The allies will help each other evade oil sanctions. And merge their military industrial complexes. Their co-operation abroad will now extend way beyond Syria. Already Iranian troops have been detected in Crimea and Belarus. But chiefly, Iran gets enhanced capability to threaten Israel from the Kremlin. Moscow is, in effect, warning Israel not to help Ukraine or else Hezbollah in Lebanon and the IRGC in Syria will receive Russian weapons and intelligence.

As a result, Tel Aviv is being very circumspect over Ukraine, at least in public. For example, Israel is one of only two developed countries not publicly condemning the deployment of Iranian drones in Ukraine. (Zelensky keeps hilariously disrupting the situation by periodically announcing that Israel is helping Ukraine.) Hitherto Moscow had quietly leaked to Israel details of rocket caches in Syria in recent years. That will discontinue. There is also, no doubt, an implicit nuclear threat underlying the potential U-turn of the Kremlin’s secret pro-Israel policy. Just a handful of Moscow-supplied nuclear tipped rockets or missiles in Iranian hands would mean an existential threat to Israel. Meanwhile, it appears that the Kremlin has set about forming a military contingent of Afghan Taliban to serve as mercenaries. Thus, the Kremlin ratchets up the stakes over Ukraine.

In addition, the new alliance between Russia and Iran means each will help the other to stay intact. Or try to. Moscow will aid the suppression of popular will and separatist moves in Iran and bully Azerbaijan into ceasing incitements to rebellion by their Azeri cousins within Iran. The strong Israeli support for Baku in recent years has been all about threatening that partition – Israeli drones and military aid played a substantial role in the 2020 defeat of Armenia by Azerbaijani forces. Tel Aviv’s backing of Baku’s military is intended to threaten Iran from the rear and distract it from Middle Eastern intrusions, thus lifting the pressure off Israel’s periphery. The Iran/Russia pact potentially neuters the Israel/Azerbaijan maneuver.

In the end, though, none of this will save the day for Moscow or Tehran. Russia’s regions are becoming restive as its men get press-ganged into conscription and ultimate demise on the fields of Ukraine. The Yakuts and Daghestanis and Bashkirs won’t go willingly into that freezing, foodless, shambolic suicide in droves for much longer. And Soviet-style dissolution will loom over Russia. Putin will likely be sacrificed in exchange for keeping the landmass unified but this time the West may not oblige. A few IRGC troops in Ukraine won’t change the equation and if the numbers multiply it will only reduce their control at home. On this trajectory, Iran’s rulers too will face the same inescapable choice – change the regime or destroy the country.