Humiliated ayatollahs are already plotting the next war

After Iran’s second massive barrage of rockets last week, which failed to cause any significant damage to its targets in Israel, Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech — delivered in Arabic — spoke volumes about who his priority audiences are.

He asserted that “resistance” factions such as Hamas and Hezbollah provided a “vital service” to Muslims of “the entire region” and would “not back down” – while failing to offer more than rhetorical support. Iran’s transnational proxy armies are a bulwark of defense for Iran itself, and Khamenei would happily see all these Arab militias incinerated in the exalted cause of regime survival.

The Revolutionary Guard will already be drawing lessons from Hezbollah’s decapitation and Iran’s failure to meaningfully confront Israel. While the ayatollahs will not jettison their paranoid, expansionist ideology of exporting the revolution, they will require new strategies to outmaneuver and outgun Tehran’s many enemies in future phases of conflict.

There will be redoubled efforts to achieve military nuclear breakout capacity, because — hawkish ayatollahs will argue — events might have played out differently if Tehran had possessed a nuclear bomb. Particularly if Israel attacks Iranian oil installations, renewed threats to block the Strait of Hormuz would be inevitable, along with a stepping-up of Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, or missile attacks on GCC states with all the knock-on effects of soaring oil prices and economic costs. “If the energy war begins, the world will lose 12 million barrels of oil per day. Either everyone will enjoy the blessings of energy, or everyone will be deprived,” was the threat from Abu Ali Al-Askari of Kata’ib Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed Iraqi militia.

Last week a cargo plane in Iraqi airspace en route from Iran to Lebanon was forced to turn back after Israel raised concerns that it could be carrying weapons. Israel has also been stepping up bombing of the Lebanon-Syria border, to deter movements of munitions and people. Over time, Iran will seek to replenish Hezbollah with weapons and funding, even as it leaves the reconstruction of Lebanon to others.

But Tehran may not rush. The ayatollahs’ relationships with Iran’s paramilitary proxies are rooted in intimate ties with militia leaders going back decades. Hezbollah’s emerging leadership will be unknown, untested figures. Israel’s remarkable penetration and neutralization of Hezbollah’s communications network will require new mechanisms to prevent espionage and sabotage. Consequently, Hezbollah will need considerable time to restore even a shadow of its former prestige.

The killing of paramilitary poster-boy Hassan Nasrallah will accelerate the growing regional pre-eminence of Iraqi paramilitaries. With a force of around 240,000, Iraq’s Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi is more than the size of Hezbollah: its $3.5 billion annual budget and massive economic holdings are many times greater than the stipends Hezbollah receives from Iran.

Tehran regards Iraq, protecting Iran’s western flank, as the crown jewels of its paramilitary franchises, and goes to great pains to distance the Hashd from the current war. When Iraqi and Syrian paramilitaries have offered to join the fray in Lebanon, they have repeatedly been told they aren’t needed, in part out of fear that they will be attacked at vulnerable border crossings en route.

A year after the Oct. 7 attacks, Iran knows that it has been colossally outmaneuvered and is already wargaming the next conflict

Baria Alamuddin

Just as Nasrallah adopted a regionalized leadership role after the 2020 deaths of Qassim Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, expect megalomaniac Iraqi warlords such as Qais Al-Khazali, Abu Fadak Al-Mohammadawi and Akram Al-Kaabi to aspire to regionwide notoriety, with Iraqi paramilitaries probably taking the lead in rebuilding Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis in this war’s aftermath.

America’s commitment to withdraw from Iraq and Syria is a major victory for these proxies. It may embolden them to further target Jordan, from where US forces neutralized Iran’s missile assaults on Tel Aviv. Iraqi proxies have been vocal about seeking to destabilize the kingdom in a way that would allow them to redeploy to Israel’s eastern borders, leaving Israel precariously encircled. Iraq’s leaders have raised concerns that provocative militia activities, such as firing rockets at US bases and at Israel directly, could bring the country directly into the line of fire.

The US pullout from eastern Syria will allow proxy paramilitaries to consolidate their corridor of control from Tehran to the Mediterranean. Although Israel may emerge the undisputed victor, a humiliated and vengeful Tehran could be well placed to exploit the fragile regional situation to reinforce its proxies’ pre-eminence.

Lebanese citizens have been furiously rebuking Hezbollah online for having brought biblical levels of destruction upon Beirut and Lebanon while scarcely landing a blow on Israel. I purchased groceries from an émigré Shiite Lebanese man who expressed utter confidence that Nasrallah was still alive, and Hezbollah had yet to deploy its heavy weaponry, which he expected would transform the battlefield — illustrating how people are struggling to come to terms with recent jaw-dropping developments. Just as the 1967 war was an incalculable setback for Arab self-confidence, Hezbollah may face a devastating domestic reckoning once this war ends.

Lebanese political factions should exploit the drubbing suffered by Hezbollah to pursue a very different political formula, founded on democratic non-sectarian principles, preventing the indefinite blocking of appointments of president and government roles.

With each successive generation since 1947, Israel’s decisive victories have sown only hatred, radicalization and vengeance. Just like the cluster bombs, phosphorus and depleted uranium left on battlefields, the poison produced by Israel’s disproportionate campaigns of collective punishment gave birth to Hamas, Hezbollah and Daesh. Radicalized versions of Hamas and Hezbollah will emerge even more implacably determined to ensure Israel’s destruction.

The mullahs of Tehran have faced huge setbacks in the past in their decades-long quest for regional domination. The eradication of Hezbollah’s top leadership will hardly prompt a change of heart. The ayatollahs sense their existential vulnerability, particularly with Netanyahu warning last week that the regime’s demise “will come a lot sooner than people think.” Previous defeats have been followed relentlessly by rearmament, sponsorship of new paramilitary forces and diversion of large additional funds via the Revolutionary Guards.

A year after the Oct. 7 attacks, Iran knows that it has been colossally outmaneuvered and is already wargaming the next conflict. The world must be one step ahead by preventing renewed flows of arms and funding into Lebanon and Iraq, with reinvigorated efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program, while exploiting the temporary weakness of Iran’s proxies to support disarmament of militias, and commitments to governance free from paramilitary interference.

• Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has interviewed numerous heads of state.