The Mullahs Overplay The Military Card: Khamenei Beating The Drums Of War
21 December 2017By Amir Taheri
Faced with mounting domestic problems and diplomatic isolation to prolong its
hold on power the leadership in Tehran is increasingly depending on the
military establishment. Highlighting this growing dependence is the "Supreme
Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has held conclaves with the military chiefs
on three occasions in less than a month during which signs of the military's
ascendency within the regime's power structures have multiplied.
One sign was Khamenei's decision to ask the newly appointed Chief of Staff
General Muhammad Hussein Baqeri to take-over the key issues of cooperation
with Russia and Turkey over Syria to the exclusion of President Hassan Rouhani
and his administration. Baqeri has also launched an ambitious project for the
creation of a de facto military alliance with Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan, with
Russia as an outsider-supporter, in direct contradiction to Rouhani's
repeatedly asserted hope of accommodation with Western powers.
Another sign was Khamenei's decision to write a personal letter to General
Qassem Soleimani, the man in charge of "exporting the revolution" through his
Quds (Jerusalem) Corps and the various branches of "Hezbollah" under his
commands in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
In his letter, Khamenei credits Soleimani with having "destroyed" the alleged
Caliphate (Da'esh in Arabic), and gives him the mission to pursue an even more
aggressive strategy to extend the "recent victories" to the rest of the
region. Once again, Khamenei's instructions make nonsense of Rouhani's
repeated claims that Iran is seeking an end to tensions with neighboring
nations.
As of humiliating the official government on issues of foreign policy were not
enough, Khamenei has asked the military to take-over the task of providing
relief and, later, reconstruction in the recent deadly earthquake that
shattered parts of five provinces.
The implicit message, hammered in by Revolutionary Guards' Commander General
Muhammad-Ali Aziz-Jaafari, is that when it comes to dealing with a major
emergency the civilian authorities are worse than useless.
To emphasize the rising profile of the military in Tehran's power structures,
Khamenei has ordered a whopping 14 per cent increase in defense and security
budgets with a substantial rise in expenditure on the development of a new
generation of missiles with help from North Korea. Here, too, the "Supreme
Guide" rides roughshod over the official government's policy of trying to
persuade the European Union and, hopefully even the United States, that Iran
has slowed down in its missile projects as a goodwill gesture towards the P5+1
group which drafted the so-called nuclear deal.
Meting 52 top military commanders, including General Baqeri in Tehran last
Sunday, Khamenei declared the armed forces to be" in the forefront" of what he
termed " the victories of the revolution on all fronts." He also decreed that
the military should have the first right of refusal in recruiting "personnel
of the highest quality."
Khamenei's growing reliance on the military may be tactically astute.
The Khomeinist regime has lost much of its popular base and, judging by rising
social and economic tension across the nation, is often on the defensive on
domestic issues. The old narrative of the revolution as a Robin Hood exercise
to rob the rich and give to the poor is exposed as sham.
Official data clearly show that under the mullahs the rich have become richer
and the poor poorer. Rampant corruption often highlighted by state-controlled
media adds to the popular sentiment that a new Nomenclature, firmly in place,
is intent on robbing the nation on a massive scale. In the past few weeks
alone at least 12 senior officials accused of embezzlement on an astronomical
scale have fled to Austria and Canada.
Growing unemployment, rising inflation and the plummeting value of the
national currency punch further holes in any narrative of revolutionary
success in areas that matter to the ordinary citizen.
Thus the regime is developing a new narrative based on the claim that the
terrorism that is rampant in so many parts of the world l most notably in the
Middle East, is also threatening Iran and that only the military-security
elite could protect the nation against it.
"We are fighting away from our borders so that we don't have to fight in our
cities," says General; Hossein Salami, number-two to Gen. Aziz-Jaafari.
However, at least in medium and long-terms such a narrative is unlikely to
produce the desired effects. In any properly organized and governed country
the armed forces are not in the "front line" of the nation's fight for
security let alone survival.
The "front lines" always consist of a nation's diplomacy, economic power,
social cohesion and cultural appeal. In other words, a nation's military
forces do not operate in a vacuum but in a broader context of socio-political
reality. In that context, Iran today is more vulnerable than at any time since
the 1940s. Khamenei expects the military to fill all the gaps created by
decades of political and economic failure; and that is simply too much to ask.
The "Supreme Guide" may also be wrong on another score. In any country the
various institutions of state evolve at roughly the same level. You cannot
have an excellent military and a third-rate civil service, judiciary and
economy. Systems that solely focus on military excellence never achieve
anything beyond transient success.
One example is Sparta, which had the ancient world's highest-rated military,
disappeared from history whereas Athens, with its ramshackle citizen armies,
survived the Persian, the Macedonian, the Roman and the Byzantine empires.
Another example was Napoleon Bonaparte whose military machine set the whole of
Europe ablaze while he ended in humiliation and death in exile.
And who could fail to be impressed by the Operation Barbarossa launched by
Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union in 1941? And yet the end result was
Berlin, the Nazi capital, as the biggest heap of ruins in history.
In Iran's case, Khamenei is playing, even overplaying the military card for
narrow political reasons at a time that Iran does not face any serious
military threat to its national security and integrity. Beating the drums of
war may sound exciting for a while; but, in time, its hollowness is bound to
become clear.
Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran
from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications,
published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since
1987
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