In a recent interview with the state-run Shargh newspaper, international affairs analyst Mohsen Jalilvand emphasized the growing strategic crisis faced by Iran’s regime, describing its current predicament as a “completely different situation,” which is summarized in two propositions: “security threat” and “existential threat.”
On October 1, Shargh newspaper wrote, “Theoretically, we must define a completely different situation… the shift from a security threat to an existential threat. Countries must perform their best in the gap between security and existence. When a country faces a security threat, it can re-produce and redefine security with some planning; but no decision-making system risks its own existence… We must seriously redefine and reproduce security threats under the umbrella of active diplomacy, but we must not, by any means, allow the floor of the security threat to rise to the ceiling of the existential threat.”
In the context of the Iranian regime, ‘security’ often serves as a justification for internal repression. The regime uses the term to frame its heavy-handed domestic policies, designed to suppress dissent and enforce theocratic rule. The other side of domestic repression and oppression is warmongering and terrorism abroad. These two complement and feed each other. By alluding to the regime’s regional activities, the expert acknowledges that its involvement in terrorism abroad is backfiring, creating conditions that could transform a manageable security threat into an existential crisis.
At the height of its oil revenue boom, regime leaders openly boasted about ambitions to reshape the global order. Regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei did not hide that he had his eyes on the Muslim countries in the region and considered them the strategic depth of his expansionist regime.
In a speech on March 25, 2006, Khamenei boasted: “Today, 1.5 billion Muslims around the world are looking to this flag [referring to the regime’s flag]. This is the strategic depth of our nation and revolution in the Islamic countries of the region; in Palestine, in North Africa, in the Middle East, in Central Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent; these are the strategic depth of the Iranian nation.”
Over the years, the regime has created dozens and hundreds of terrorist proxies in the region under the pretext of defending holy Shiite sites in the region and “liberating Jerusalem.” The deployment of senior IRGC officers to these countries also takes place under the deceptive title of “advisory assistance.” We have seen examples of this in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
From the beginning, it was clear that these interventions were carried out with the aim of warmongering and creating crises. For Iran’s regime, waging war in Muslim countries is a strategic imperative and a matter of existence. That is, if this regime stops exporting terrorism and, as it calls it, expanding “strategic depth” even for one day, it will have to fight the fed-up people of Iran in the streets.
This statement by Khamenei is an example of such a situation, “If these [so-called defenders of the shrine] had not fought, the enemy would have entered the country… If they had not been stopped, we would have had to fight them here in Kermanshah, Hamedan, and other provinces” (Source: Tasnim News Agency, the IRGC Quds Force affiliated, February 5, 2016).
By logical inference, it can be concluded that regional warmongering has not been able to halt Khamenei’s urgent and pressing issue, which is the uprising and overthrow. This time, Khamenei not only has to fight protesters in Kermanshah, Hamedan, and other provinces, but the scope of this war has placed his and the regime’s very existence at risk.
What Shargh newspaper and the international affairs analyst want to hint at but quickly gloss over is now glaringly visible in rebellious Iran more than ever. The strategic deadlock of religious fascism and its struggle to escape from it will undoubtedly pave the way for the uprising and overthrow even more.