From the perspective of the US and other nations hoping for stability in the Middle East, regime change would be more than welcome in Iran. Any of a number of countries probably would act to bring change about if it could devise some promising and acceptable strategy for getting the job done. So far, no such strategy has emerged. Maybe it won’t be necessary.
Evidence mounts that in Iraq and Afghanistan the US and its allies are fighting a proxy war with the Islamic Republic. Iranian weapons and agents are turning up in both places. The conflict broadens to the extent US entanglement in Iraq constitutes war against terrorism, Iranian links to which are well known. Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran is believed to support Hamas in Gaza, Hizbollah in Lebanon, and shady groups in Syria.
Deadly contest
In this deadly contest, events so far favor Iran. In Iraq, the US is expending lives and resources in a quagmire with no end in sight. It has lost stature abroad and political cohesion at home. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, courts other Persian Gulf leaders eager to hedge their bets against a US pull-out from Iraq and mocks the United Nations with nuclear work.
Iran has much to gain if the US flees Iraq and by all evidence is pursuing the goal with nasty enthusiasm. The Islamic Republic acts determined not only to fill whatever power vacuum might develop in Iraq but also to amplify its regional influence, denials notwithstanding, with nuclear weapons.
Iranian domination of the Persian Gulf would, among other things, overhaul the oil market. Since the late 1980s, the Islamic Republic’s consistently expressed price aggression has been kept in check by more-sensible gulf producers led by Saudi Arabia. A nuclear Iran with 4 million b/d of crude production would tip that balance, especially if it were able to co-opt Iraqi output destined not to stay below 2 million b/d forever. And it could count on help from Venezuela, the maverick president of which, Hugo Chavez, met recently in Tehran with Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
For the US and its allies in and out of the gulf, options are limited. Among the worst of them is an air raid on Iranian nuclear sites. While possession of nuclear weapons by Iran’s ruling mullahs is no cheery prospect, preventive incursion would do more harm than good. Devastation would be impossible to confine to narrowly targeted air strikes. Tehran would retaliate with terrorist attacks, producing a body-count contest nobody wants. Oil prices would zoom.
What’s more, military attacks would give Ahmadinejad political support he doesn’t now enjoy. While his international truculence is said to be popular in Iran, his domestic policies are not. Indeed, Iran’s large, young, and underemployed population generally loathes the oppressive clergy from which Ahmadinejad takes orders. Military attacks would congeal nationalistic support around a vile regime.
Better strategy
A better strategy is to let internal pressure widen Iran’s political fractures. The oil-dependent Iranian economy is an ironic source of fundamental political weakness. Lavish subsidies of food and vehicle fuel, much of it imported, keep the government budget in deficit. Imposition of gasoline rationing late last month, following a 25% price hike in May, was a sure sign of strain. The move provoked riots and the torching of service stations in several cities. On July 3, during a news blackout, the Energy Committee of the Iranian parliament said the government would amend the rationing order to supply motorists “according to their real needs within the next 2 months” and called on the cabinet to supply the fuel.
The promise might relax immediate tensions. That it had to be made, however, signals the inevitably approaching end to Tehran’s ability to buy political calm with cheap fuel. A large fracture then will grow. It will be a step of unpredictable importance toward regime change. For outsiders, it will be a time to keep warplanes in their hangars and to imagine a world in which Iran shuns the role of international menace.