Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei is doomed if he does and doomed if he doesn’t

 

By James M. Dorsey

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Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, is caught between a rock and a hard place. He risks being doomed if he does and doomed if he doesn’t.

Despite causing significant damage and Israeli casualties with its missile barrages, Iran is incapable of winning a war against Israel.

To be sure, Iran demonstrated resilience and cohesion by quickly replacing senior military commanders killed by Israel on the first day of strikes against Iranian military and nuclear targets and by firing missile barrages at Israeli targets within hours of the initial Israeli assault.

But with an air force that is no match for its Israeli counterpart, one of the world’s best, and ineffective air defences that Israel weakened in two attacks in 2024, Iran stands little chance.

That didn’t stop Iranian state television, after having been targeted by Israel, from broadcasting images of a downed largely undamaged armed Israeli Hermes 900 drone.

Even so, missiles and potential asymmetric warfare, pinprick attacks on Israel by Iran’s still-standing non-state allies, primarily Yemen’s Houthis and pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite militias, coupled with possible attacks on US facilities in third countries, increase Israel’s pain and the risk of a widening war but are unlikely to be decisive.

On the contrary, they probably will spark increased Israeli military pressure and could provoke a kinetic US response amid Israeli anticipation that President Donald J. Trump is on the verge of ordering US strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Israel has struck at Iran’s missile arsenals and launch and manufacturing sites, but it’s unclear how much of the arsenal Israel has destroyed. Iran is still capable of firing multiple barrages in an attempt to throw the kitchen sink at Israel.

Nevertheless, the number of missiles in each barrage is dwindling. The barrages started with 200 missiles in volleys on Friday and Saturday. On Tuesday night, the number of projectiles in a volley had slipped to 20.

Some analysts suggest the reduced number may constitute a signal that Iran wants an end to the fighting rather than an indication that it is running out of missiles.

While Israel has intercepted most of the incoming Iranian missiles, Iran may have surprised Israel with the number of projectiles that evaded its advanced air defences and hit not only residential areas but also national security targets.

Smoke emerges from one of the Weizman Institutes laboratories. Credit: Haaretz

This week, an Iranian missile struck laboratories of the Weizman Institute of Science, one of the world’s top research institutes. “Years of work have gone down the drain,” said molecular biologist Oren Schuldiner.

Iran may have difficulty replenishing its missile arsenal. By contrast, Israel can count on the United States to replenish its interceptor stock unless Mr. Trump uses interceptors to pressure Mr. Netanyahu to end the war.

Mr. Trump’s warmongering rhetoric and potential decision to enter the war suggests Israel has little reason for concern.

“If Iran runs out first and is unable to inflict massive damage, then Israel can conduct its operations relatively quickly and end the fight on its own terms. If Iranian strikes cause repeated mass casualty events and things get much worse because Israel runs out of interceptors, it’s an entirely different situation, and you can expect more comprehensive strikes by Israel for weeks and increased pressure for the US to enter the fight more directly beyond just defence of Israel,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Pentagon official, whose job was to plan for a possible war with Iran.

In addition, threats by Iran and/or the Houthis to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major global trade artery through which much of the world’s oil and gas supplies flow, would likely tighten Mr. Khamenei’s noose by increasing the risk of intervention in the war by the United States and other powers.

 

For all practical matters, Mr. Khamenei’s problem is that the Israeli prime minister has turned the tables on him, leaving him with no good options.

In many ways, Mr. Khamenei faces an impossible choice, much like Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini confronted when the founder of the Islamic Republic was forced to end the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war in 1988, sparked by Iraq’s invasion of its neighbour.

'Taking this decision was more deadly than taking poison. I submitted myself to God's will and drank this drink for his satisfaction,'' Mr. Khomeini said at the time.

Iran scholar Alex Vatanka suggested that, like Mr. Khomeini, Mr. Khamenei can take difficult decisions.

“Khamenei is pretty well placed to do the basic cost-benefit analysis, which really fundamentally gets to one issue more important than anything else: regime survival,” Mr. Vatanka said.

For now, Mr. Khamenei appears to have decided to fight rather than compromise or surrender.

“Those with wisdom who know Iran, its people, and its history, never speak to this nation in the language of threats because the Iranian nation will not surrender,” Mr. Khamenei said in a televised speech, responding to Mr. Trump’s call for Iran’s unconditional surrender.

“The Americans must know that any military intervention by the US will undoubtedly lead to irreparable damage. Iran stands firm in the face of imposed war, just as it will stand firm against imposed peace, and it will not yield to any imposition,” he added.

Even so, a prolonged war that highlights the embarrassing degree of Israel’s intelligence penetration of Iran compounds the vulnerability of Mr. Khamenei’s regime, even if Iranians have rallied around a government many detest.

There is little, if any, indication that Mr. Trump, let alone Mr. Netanyahu, will respond to Iranian efforts to persuade them to return to the negotiating table without making humiliating concessions.

And that is where the rub is.

Without being offered a face-saving exit from the war, Mr. Khamenei has no choice but to continue fighting, risking Israel applying its Gaza scorched earth tactics to the Islamic Republic by increasingly targeting critical infrastructure.

Yet, conceding to US and Israeli demands of either surrendering Iran’s right to enrich uranium to 3.67 per cent in line with the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s provisions would deprive Mr. Khamenei’s regime of whatever fig leaf legitimacy it has.

It would open the regime up to potential challenges, some of which could destabilise the country with potential regional repercussions.

Mr. Khamenei’s dilemma is one of his own makings, even if his detractors, the United States and Israel, were more than happy over the years to help him deepen the hole he was digging for himself.

Mr. Khamenei and other Iranian officials’, at times, bloodcurdling rhetoric, bombastic expressions of anti-Americanism, including the 444-day occupation of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, and Holocaust denials didn’t do Iran any favours.

Some Iranians believe the rhetoric and anti-Americanism contributed to Mr. Khamenei’s current predicament as did Iran’s forward defence strategy that relied on non-state allies such as Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite groups.

“The anti-Israel, anti-US stuff painted Iran in a corner. So did the funding for the likes of Hezbollah and others. Large amounts of money that could have been used for development went out the window,” said a Tehran resident reached by telephone.

The forward defence strategy, in which the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Israel’s Gaza war and decimation of Hezbollah punctured huge holes, was intended to counter Iran’s sense of encirclement by US military bases in the region.

Various intermittent US, Israeli, and Saudi efforts to undermine the Iranian regime by encouraging social unrest among Iranian ethnic minorities heightened Iran’s sense of encirclement.

Most germane to the Israeli strikes and assertions that Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons is the fact that Iran and Mr. Khamenei are the victims of their post-1918 strategy to persuade Mr. Trump to return to the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear programme. Mr. Trump withdrew from the agreement during his first term in office.

Iran waited a year after the US withdrawal to gradually abandon adherence to the agreement, in the hope that Mr. Trump could be persuaded to return to the deal.

When that failed, Iran progressively increased the percentage of its uranium enrichment to 60 per cent today, the core of the stepped-up concern that Iran is close to the development of nuclear weapons.

While the increase initially was intended to pressure the United States, growing voices in the Islamic Republic see the enrichment as an opportunity to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrence.

Grilled by the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Iranian Ambassador  Seyed Ali Mousavi insisted that Iran was willing to limit itself to 3.67 per cent enrichment as part of a negotiated deal.

“There is no doubt that we are willing to but through diplomacy, not (an) armed attack,” Mr. Mousavi said, ducking questions why Iran had enriched uranium beyond the 3.67 per cent norm in the first place.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.