Tehran at the Crossroads: From Proxy Fires to a National Reawakening

After the Twelve-Day War, while leafing through some of my old pieces, I came across an article I had published in An-Nahar Al-Arabi on 26 April 2023 titled “On the Clang of Weapons Iran and Israel Dance.” A wave of amazement washed over me: the events of the later “Twelve-Day War” were knocking on the door with startling clarity. I had penned those lines before 7 October, and before Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah’s adventure in Lebanon.

Back then I wrote:

“You would have to be deaf not to hear the clang of weapons in our region. On that beat, a stone can go astray, a compass can lose its north. The matter far exceeds the particulars of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; a cauldron is boiling in the Middle East, and seismic shifts are hammering at the gate.”

And I added:

“Whenever the old, naive illusion of a Western withdrawal from the Middle East resurfaces, a mere glance at the deployment maps of Western naval forces in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Gulf, and the Arabian Sea is enough to see that this illusion has no foundation. Just as in the 1950s, colonialism may have receded in form, but Western—especially American—hegemony endured, weighty and tragic.”

The United States will not put boots on the ground in our neighborhood except in the gravest emergencies—and even then, its presence will be limited, precise, and temporary. So long as its hold on global trade routes remains intact, it will manage conflicts remotely—through consent, pressure, partnerships, or alliances; call it what you will, it will persist. And as the old Tom-and-Jerry game between Israel and Iran fades—a conflict that flares up, then dies down without resolution—the fragility of the tightrope beneath the region becomes plain.

In a world of soft, uneasy calm—yet with no shortage of fools—the brittle tactics that once “managed” the conflict are collapsing with no ready substitutes. Each side dreams of a decisive victory in the next round, the only cure for its stalemate, yet neither has anything left but maximal options. That is when moments turn perilous: when the game becomes existential. (End of quotation.)

It was already evident the confrontation between Iran and Israel would soon become direct and unavoidable, as though we were living Gabriel García Márquez’s “Chronicle of a Death Foretold.” Everyone knew; yet folly, doctrinaire fatalism, and a clinging to the status quo blinded leaders and elites alike.

The crumbling of the Assad regime severed Iran’s “Achilles’ heel” lifeline, shuttered its network of proxy arms, and upset the map of militia influence. Despite all the warning signs, the boulder was left to roll downhill—straight toward Tehran.

Those sweeping changes are but a foretaste of what is still to come; the scene is truly dramatic. Change in Iran is inevitable and bangs forcefully at the door. It might arrive gradually and cumulatively—or in a storm. There will be no Iranian “spring” in the Arab sense, nor a coup as Western and Israeli circles fantasize. Yet the aftershocks are honing the tools of political, military, and societal elites. The odds of a measured, evolutionary shift are high: Iran is not a pure personal dictatorship (à la Assad or Kim Jong-un) but a totalitarian system run by an ideological elite that allows a degree of internal selection and blood-refreshing.

Iranian debate now revolves around the strategic vulnerability of the nation-state and the decay of a military doctrine built on “exporting the revolution” and pro-Tehran militias pitched, not to liberate Palestine, but at minimum to shield the Islamic Republic’s core. Still, the Revolutionary Guards command key financial arteries, opening the prospect of sharp turns.

At the presidential level, scenarios swirl—from elevating Mojtaba Khamenei, to a collective council of senior clerics, to a presidential board, even a military council. Early tremors can be detected within the ideological edifice itself: doubts over the usefulness of “exporting the revolution” when the threat has reached Tehran’s doorstep, and over the need to rethink Iran’s regional posture and strategic priorities.

Tehran thus faces two stark forks in the road:

• First, to keep playing its tired double game, stretching out negotiations and risking a slow slide toward a post-1991 Iraq-like depletion.

• Second, to sever the state-militia duality once and for all, abandon the failed strategy of planting regional proxies, rebuild a national army rooted in modern concepts of power and security, and fast-track genuine socio-economic development.

One sees a noticeable rise of a nationalist-ideological discourse replacing the purely religious one, elevating the idea of the nation-state over the militia state. Yet the struggle is far from settled: on the other side stands an entrenched old guard—an entrenched military-bureaucratic complex living off sectarian zeal, still dreaming of re-opening “branches of the Iranian revolution” until some imagined victory. I suspect the balance will tip toward the nationalist current—there is no escaping it.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union kept funding folk-dance communist parties even after its hard core had grasped that the ideological era was ending. By analogy, Iran may still toss crumbs at its regional proxies, but it is moving toward weaning them off the mother’s purse; it seems unwilling to pour billions into lost adventures anew.

These shifts will profoundly alter Syria and Lebanon, and Iran’s policy toward both. After what has transpired, it is hard to envision any realistic scenario for a full-scale Iranian return there. Indeed, current reviews in Tehran discuss forging new accommodations with Arab states and Turkey, all of whom share Iran’s alarm—and resentment—over Israel’s unbridled ascendancy.

On my first visit to Tehran I realized how ungainly the two stock images of this venerable people were: a demonic caricature of hostility, and the opposite, a naive portrait of blind devotion. Beyond such simplifications lies a rich culture, a society of true grit, and self-confident elites. Generation Z is no longer timid or docile as it seemed during the “reform” era; it is a generation that knows exactly what it wants.

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