In his fortified bunker, wherever that may be, in front of an institutional beige curtain, the old man with a black turban, diaphanous gown and a pink, rather sweet face did not hide his disappointment with Donald Trump. In a televised address to the Iranian people on Wednesday, the purpose of which was partly to demonstrate that he is still alive, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in his quiet, unemphatic way, “the American president threatened us and in an abrasive and unacceptable statement told the Iranian people to surrender”. This, he went on, is “illogical” — and the Supreme Leader knows all about this, having mastered syllogism as a young seminarian — because “the Iranians are not the kind of people who surrender”.
Khamenei was referring to the two noisy, emphatic words that Trump had posted the previous day: “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.” The US President had already prompted an exodus from Tehran, by telling the city’s inhabitants to evacuate. Intimating that he knows where Khamenei is hiding, Trump called him an “easy target” even if he won’t kill him “for now”.
Holding up his good hand, which is to say his left, for emphasis (he lost use of his right hand in 1981 to a bomb hidden in a tape recorder by an opposition group called the People’s Mujahedin), the Supreme Leader continued, “if America enters the fray it will suffer irreparable harm.”
Six days into the war, Israeli planes, missiles, and drones continue to cause widespread damage to Iranian military, nuclear and civilian targets, while the odd missile from Iran’s much smaller arsenal gets through Israel’s defences. On Monday, a US aircraft carrier began steaming from the South China Sea to the Middle East, while Trump toys with the option of “the big one”, as he calls it — bunker-busting bombs dropped by stealth bombers on Iran’s as yet impregnable uranium-enrichment site at Fordow, near the desert city of Qom.
The Supreme Leader’s warning of “irreparable harm” may be intended to suggest that, should the current, purely aerial conflict evolve into a ground operation — in other words, in the event that Fordow cannot be destroyed from the skies and troops are deployed — the result will be, to quote a prominent Tehran-based opposition figure, “Vietnam”.
If it’s true that the Americans — or rather the Israelis, whose penetration of Iran’s intelligence has helped them achieve dominance in the war so far — have spared Khamenei the fate that they have visited on dozens of assassinated military leaders and nuclear scientists, this is presumably because they wish to preserve the only person with binding authority over the entire regime. But keeping Khamenei alive is also a risk, for this fearless warrior in his 87th year is the icon of the regime’s most fanatical foot soldiers. Not for Iran the scenario of Iraq after the 2003 invasion, when Saddam Hussein’s “elite” Republican Guard melted away; nor will Khamenei emulate Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator who scuttled off to exile in Moscow when his regime was toppled last year. The Islamic Republic may have lost the love and respect of the majority of Iranians, but its core is intact.
To be sure, services are starting to falter. Banks that have been hacked have stopped disbursing savings; deposits in gold are also stuck. Some of the thousands of Tehranis who fled in response to Trump’s call have now returned, having found the hills outside the city no safer from Israeli attack than the apartments they left behind. Police stand at every corner, watching for sabotage.
If morale among ordinary Iranians seems to be holding up, this is down to the spirit of resilience and good humour that Iranians often adopt in times of mortal peril. People hand out slices of watermelon or drinks of sherbet to motorists waiting for hours in queues for petrol. Shopkeepers in rural towns deliberately undercharge fleeing urbanites for provisions. Even the practice of buying bread has changed. The head of a large family who used to snap up sangak by the dozen now hands them out to poor people in his neighbourhood. Meanwhile, gallows humour is an outlet for jangling nerves, as Iranians joke that the best way to avoid getting killed is to take sanctuary in the house of the country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian: no one, not even Israel, would waste a bomb on him.
Yet discord is spreading too. The question of how people should react to Israeli aggression has divided opposition activists into two camps that fling accusations at each other with a violence and coarseness I have never before witnessed in Iranian public debate. One side accuses the other of treacherous collusion with Netanyahu’s war of aggression; the other levels charges of falling in meekly behind the domestic tyrant.
Social media is full of pictures of civilian casualties; so much for Netanyahu’s weasel words about standing four-square with “the noble Iranian people”. Of the more than 600 Iranians who are thought to have been killed since the war began, an estimated 263 are civilians. More than 1,300 people have been wounded.
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah of Iran, whose detractors refer to him as Quarter Pahlavi, in honour of a coin of intermediate value named after his father’s dynasty, has been calling without effect for a mass uprising against the regime. The self-proclaimed Crown Prince made a bad impression when he was interviewed by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg last Sunday. “Anything that weakens the regime,” he said, “is something positive.” A visibly shocked Kuenssberg asked, “are you actually saying that Israel bombing your country, civilians in Iran being killed, is a positive thing?”
The irony is that, in the short term at least, the war has made Iranians less likely to overthrow their leaders, not more. Just a few weeks ago, the country seethed with political agitation, with lorry drivers going on a nationwide strike and Iranians protesting government failures such as water shortages, pollution, and a dearth of the natural gas with which the country is so generously endowed. For two years now, the regime has been unable to force the millions of women who abandoned the hijab during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests of 2022-3 to put on their headscarves again. The devastating effects of sanctions on the economy and expectations of Khamenei’s imminent demise led many to believe that a change of regime would happen organically and without outside stimulus.
“The irony is that, in the short term at least, the war has made Iranians less likely to overthrow their leaders, not more.”
However much millions of Iranians detest the Islamic Republic, uprisings orchestrated by foreign invaders are tainted with dishonour and treachery. Over the past century or so, Iran has suffered repeated interventions by foreign powers, from regime change to aborted reform movements. No Iranian who has come to power on the coattails of foreigners has prospered.
To Senator Ted Cruz, one of America’s most prominent hawks, regime change is “not a complicated question”, requiring only a “popular uprising”. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan might have something to say about that. Furthermore, implicit in predictions of an imminent rebellion is an assumption that public opinion is static. In fact, it changes fast, particularly in a wartime crisis that forces people to examine their basic allegiances while also placing them, and their families, in acute danger. Many Iranians, if faced with the choice between Khamenei and Netanyahu, will — with the heaviest of hearts — choose the former.
In the United States, the war has exposed rifts in the MAGA movement. Thanks to Tucker Carlson, at least we know not to go to Senator Cruz for Iran expertise. Questioning the Republican senator on Wednesday about his support for regime change, the former Fox News host sprang him a trap, asking, “How many people live in Iran?” When Cruz admitted he didn’t know, Carlson went on with feigned incredulity and impressive comic timing, “you don’t know the population [slight pause] of the country [slight pause] you seek to topple?” Then Carlson asked him what percentage of the Iranian population is ethnically Persian, which of course Cruz was unable to answer, allowing Carlson to declare in triumph, “you’re a senator who is calling for the overthrow of the government and you don’t know anything about the country!”
What is lacking in this war of dubious legality and towering ignorance is a moral or humanitarian compass guiding policy. Regardless of the Islamic Republic’s callous and criminal maladministration, and Khamenei’s role in goading Israel and the United States into their current fury, the acts of war that we are witnessing are propelling Iran towards a fate little different from those of Iraq and Afghanistan following the invasions of the early 2000s. European and other states need to kickstart diplomacy without delay — starting with the meeting that has been scheduled between the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Germany, on the one hand, and the foreign minister of Iran, on the other, in Geneva on Friday. This must go beyond a polite recapitulation of Trump’s demand of “unconditional surrender” and lay the groundwork for a revived diplomatic process aimed at allowing Iran strictly monitored uranium enrichment and sanctions relief. If this does not happen and Khamenei chooses to go down fighting, not only will the 92 million people of Iran suffer unjustifiably, but their country will radiate regional and global instability for years to come.
