The revelation that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a wave of US-Israeli airstrikes on Saturday has thrown the Islamic Republic’s future into doubt, with US President Donald Trump saying the leader’s death gave Iranians their “best chance” to “take back” their country.
FRANCE 24 spoke to former NATO Deputy Chief of Staff Michel Yakovleff about whether or not the Iranian government would be able to withstand the latest US-Israeli bombings and what the survival of the Islamic Republic would mean for the limits of Washington’s incomparable military power.
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FRANCE 24: What do you foresee as possible scenarios for Iran in the coming days?
I think we are going to experience more days of attacks and attacks by the Iranians. My concern is that the American strategy will be much more ephemeral than the Iranian strategy. The regime’s theory of victory is that we simply survived the storm. So when the Americans and/or the Israelis get fed up, we send one last volley to show them we’re still alive and well.
The navy Trump talks about is a big navy by any standard, but historically it’s not that big. In reality, it is a few days of massive strikes. After that, you will have to enter a slower, much lower pace of operations. Significantly, visibly lower.
And I also wonder how long the Israelis will be able to keep up with hundreds of daily missions over Iran. My concern is that, if by the time they have made their first push and their first serious volleys, the Israelis and Americans really do run out of ammunition and/or targets, and the regime is still there, well, what’s next?
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FRANCE 24: Both Israel and the United States have been urging the Iranian people to rise up in some way, saying: “We have weakened the government; this is your chance.” Is that a totally unrealistic expectation? We have seen celebrations, but we have also seen images of large crowds mourning the former ayatollah.
I don’t know enough about Iranian society to say if it’s unrealistic or not. But it’s a little absurd for the American president to think he can say, say in two or three days, “I’ve done my part of the job, now it’s your turn to take over.” That’s the easy way out.
Trump has a tradition of betraying all of his allies, the latest being the Ukrainians, and before that, the Afghans. I doubt there is that degree of faith in the Iranian public.
It’s actually a really open question. Everyone knows that Trump wants this to be a few days. Never in history has a regime change been achieved in this way. Now this could be the first time and I would personally welcome it. I would be very happy to be proven wrong. But I can understand that it is very easy for the Iranian public to say, “Just make your revolution and finish the job.” That’s very easy when it comes to a remote American president.
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FRANCE 24: So if in the short term it is a military success, but in the long term the United States and Israel lose strength and the Iranian regime rises, even if it is weak, does that mean that, in the long term, this will have been in vain?
If that’s what happens, then it will be worse than “it will have been in vain.” It will have demonstrated the limits of American and Israeli power.
Now, we are not there yet: there is a real series of tactical successes. And it may be, and I hope so, that the regime is much closer to falling apart than it itself believes, and that this would be the last push that would, in fact, allow it to achieve a strategic objective. That’s the positive way of looking at things, the hopeful way of looking at things.
If it doesn’t work out that way and the regime survives the current storm, then it will be very bad news for the free world. Because it will have demonstrated the limits of American power.
