Iran’s leader must choose how to fight his war with Israel
SAFE to say it is not how he pictured his dotage. Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, wanted to spend his final years shoring up his creaky dictatorship. Instead he has spent 2024 burying his hand-picked president and approving risky strikes on Israel: hardly a recipe for stability.
Mr Khamenei, 85, is a reluctant wartime leader. Critics also charge he is an inept one. Now he must decide whether the biggest threats to Iran—and, perhaps, to his own rule—come from within or without.
To one side are hardliners in the clergy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who think Mr Khamenei has been dangerously passive amid months of Israeli attacks on Iranian interests. He did approve a barrage of drones and missiles in April as retaliation for an Israeli air strike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus. But it was telegraphed so far in advance that it was widely seen as an embarrassment, more likely to embolden Iran’s enemies than deter them.
Sure enough, Israel kept up an audacious campaign of assassinations and air strikes. By the end of September it had decapitated Hizbullah, Iran’s most valuable proxy militia. Hardliners began to insist that Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, would come next for the Islamic Republic too, unless Iran showed Israel that it could fight back.
When Mr Khamenei approved a ballistic-missile attack on October 1st, it was not only meant to deter Israel. It was also meant to reassure the hardliners seething about his inaction. It does not seem to have worked. People close to the IRGC still grumble about how the doddering old man has destroyed Iranian deterrence.
Hawks are already pushing for an even harsher response, if Israel retaliates. Kayhan, a newspaper whose boss is appointed by Mr Khamenei, called for strikes on Israeli gasfields and oil refineries. Some have also called for Iran to build and test a nuclear weapon (Mr Khamenei has long preferred to stay just below the nuclear threshold). To that end, dozens of mps have urged the national-security council to review Iran’s defence doctrine.
Yet these are not the only voices in Mr Khamenei’s ear, even if they are the loudest. Masoud Pezeshkian, elected as president in July, still seems keen on pragmatism. He has called for new talks with the West over Iran’s nuclear programme. That will be impossible if Iran keeps exchanging missile barrages with Israel.
Iran’s neighbours are also urging restraint. On October 3rd Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, met his counterparts from the Gulf Co-operation Council, a club of six Arab monarchies. It was the first time an Iranian foreign minister has been invited to meet a body that is usually suspicious of Iran, if not downright hostile.
Today, though, Gulf states are keen to avoid a bigger war that could see them caught in the crossfire. They promised Mr Araghchi that they would remain neutral, urged his government to lower tensions with Israel and dangled the prospect of trade and investment as an incentive.
Mr Khamenei fears a public that has risen up repeatedly. Many Iranians are furious that the regime has spent billions of dollars arming proxies that were meant to deter Israeli attacks on Iran but have instead invited them. Some might well cheer if Israel struck the IRGC. Yet others might rally around the regime (see next article).
Some analysts in Iran argue that Mr Khamenei still wants to avoid war with Israel. That is a fallacy: he has been at war with Israel for decades. Until this year, though, he chose to fight that war indirectly. That may still be his preference, and with good reason—but it may not be acceptable to the hardliners who increasingly hold sway. ■
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