Iran’s Year of Unrest

A year ago, protests erupted throughout the Islamic Republic as demonstrators took to the streets to express their frustrations with economic hardship, laws mandating the wearing of the hijab, and even their government’s foreign policy. While these protests have disappeared from Western headlines, they have not ceased. Ilan Berman writes:

Although regime officials have renewed their calls for a “resistance economy” in the face of reinvigorated sanctions on the part of the United States, the Islamic Republic shows no sign of rethinking its extensive (and costly) foreign-policy priorities, which include helping to keep Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in power and providing military support for Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

That, in turn, represents an opportunity for Washington. The Trump administration has made renewed [economic] pressure on Iran a centerpiece of its regional policy. . . . Accordingly, over the past half-year, the White House has sought to turn up the heat on Iran’s leadership through the “snapback” of American sanctions, and by cajoling European and Asian nations to reduce their trade with Tehran.

America’s greatest ally in this effort, however, might just turn out to be the Iranian regime itself. To date, Iran’s leaders have succeeded in containing the challenge to its rule represented by the ongoing protests. They have done so in large part through widespread arrests, pervasive censorship, and extensive repression. These efforts have likewise been greatly aided by the absence of clear leadership or an organized agenda for action among the protesters themselves.

Yet the longer the Islamic Republic continues its descent into economic crisis, the more compelling these calls for counterrevolution are bound to become—and the more profound the ideological challenge to the integrity of the Iranian regime will be. And that, in turn, makes the current protests the most potent force working toward creating meaningful change within the Islamic Republic.

Read more at Ilan Berman

More about: Iran, Iran sanctions, Politics & Current Affairs, U.S. Foreign policy

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF