Translated from Kan
https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/opinions/1025505/
Israel is focused on the existential threat to it, but for the Ayatollah regime it is only a stopping point. The real goal is the takeover of the Muslim world and striking at its head. To understand where the Middle East is heading, one must be familiar with the trauma of the Iran–Iraq War and the DNA of the Shiite revolution – before it is too late.
On February 1, 1979, Khomeini landed in Tehran and declared the establishment of the Islamic Republic. About six months later, on July 16, 1979, Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq. About a year later, on September 22, 1980, Hussein invaded Iran. Why did he do it? Not only because of territorial ambitions and his desire to annex Iraq’s oil-rich Khuzestan province, but Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, immediately recognized the Shiite danger that had arisen overnight across the border and went into a holding battle.
He was the first at the regional level, even before Israel, and at the international level, even before the United States, to identify the Shiite threat, and he tried to preempt it and invaded Iran in order to subdue it. The war lasted eight years and ended in a painful draw that left hundreds of thousands dead and millions wounded on both sides. During it, Hussein inflicted severe damage on Iran and did not hesitate to use all means, including chemical weapons. Saddam used mustard gas against Iran, which had no response to it. Tehran still carries a very heavy trauma from that war.
As an aside, it can be noted that during that war, the United States and Israel went so far as to try to sell weapons specifically to the Ayatollah regime in Iran in what was then called the Iran–Contra affair or “Irangate.” This was a political scandal during the second term of the Reagan administration. At that time, the United States sold weapons to the Ayatollah regime in Iran in a roundabout deal mediated by Israel. In return, Hezbollah released American hostages it was holding in Lebanon.
Iran’s decision to develop its nuclear project and ballistic missile infrastructure was a direct result of its helplessness in the face of chemical weapons attacks during its war with Iraq. In those days, Israel was not even on Tehran’s target. It sought to defend itself against the Arab–Muslim–Sunni threat that Saddam Hussein led.
Then the September 11 attacks of 2001 occurred. The shocked United States looked for a culprit – and it was Saddam Hussein. Of all the potential suspects, he was the one marked as the greatest enemy of the West, and the United States went to war that ended with the overthrow of the “devil from Baghdad.”
Make no mistake, Saddam Hussein was indeed a dark dictator who did not do good for his people, to say the least. However, Hussein was the wall that blocked the Iranian octopus, the dam that held back the Shiite flood from overwhelming the Middle East. And that is what happened. Immediately after his fall, the gates opened wide to Iran, and it began sending arms toward Syria and Lebanon through Iraq. The fall of Saddam Hussein allowed Iran to build the axis of evil that bypassed Israel from all directions: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen.
Of course, the West and the United States will not admit their mistake and lack of foresight in removing Saddam Hussein, but that is already spilled milk. But what happened next? Khomeini’s Iran is a revolutionary state. In order to consolidate its rule and give itself legitimacy, it needs two things. The first is an external enemy, preferably one geographically distant. The second is that it must export the revolution in order to project, internally and externally, an illusion of strength and expanding power.
After Saddam and Iraq ceased to be a threat, Israel became the most available and preferred ultimate enemy, and Iran immediately marked it as such. At the same time, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen became convenient targets for exporting the revolution. Iran, the Shiite Muslim state, which had already made significant progress in developing nuclear weapons and missile infrastructure, embarked on a new path and a calculated conflict whose entire purpose is, in the first stage, to preserve the revolution, and in the long term, to restore past glory. In Shiite terms, this means Shiite dominance in the Islamic world, headed by the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
According to Shiite belief, after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, leadership of the Muslim world was supposed to pass by divine command to Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. However, the Sunni Umayyads of the Quraysh tribe stole it from them. Later they killed Ali ibn Abi Talib and persecuted his descendants, and eventually killed Ali’s son, Al-Husayn, in Karbala in Iraq. Since then, Shiites commemorate this day, the day of Ashura, in a ritual in which they strike themselves with chains until they bleed in memory of Imam Husayn’s death.
According to their belief, they await the coming of the Imam, the messiah in the Shiite sense, who will redeem them from persecution and restore past glory. In this context, the rule of the Ayatollahs is the technical substitute, the placeholder of the Imam (the messiah) until his arrival.
It is important to note this because Israel is never the ultimate target of Shiite Iran. Israel is only a stopping point that will lead the Shiite nation to its final destination, which is the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. There lies the Kaaba, the holiest place in the Islamic world. In Iran’s eyes, Israel serves as a necessary and convenient platform for uniting the Muslim masses around it. Israel and the Jews are easy to hate and incite against. Jerusalem, which has no significance in Shiite eyes, is indeed a magnet for Muslim masses that are easily incited against Israel.
All of this leads to the current war. In this campaign, Iran was helpless against the air superiority of Israel and the United States. This was its soft underbelly. It was hit hard and had no response except missile fire, which was not very effective against Israel, which has a strong air defense system.
In its war with Iraq, Iran’s soft underbelly was the lack of response to chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein rained down on it, and in response Iran launched its nuclear and missile project.
If this war ends with the Ayatollah regime remaining in place, Iran, just as it learned lessons from its war with Iraq, will also learn lessons today and will move on to the next mission. In my view, Iran will immediately seek to develop an effective air defense system as a response to Israeli and American air superiority. China and Russia will not hesitate to help it, and Iran also has enough knowledge to do it itself.
Later it will move full speed toward acquiring nuclear weapons, not necessarily through domestic production; there are sellers for every commodity in the world. Iran with a single nuclear bomb is a state that not only will not be dared to be attacked, but will also be able to further develop nuclear weapons of its own without fear.
Furthermore, after this war Iran will use, in my view, a weapon it has not used until now: the Shiite minority living in the Gulf states of Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and especially Yemen, in order to destabilize those countries. Possibly later it will also lead coups that will give them a foothold of Shiite rule in them. Saudi Arabia will pay a heavy price if such a thing succeeds.
In my view, the United States and Israel misunderstood the psychology that governs the Shiite Iranian narrative. This is a nation with a deep historical sense of pride and a Shiite narrative based entirely on a sense of persecution embedded deep in the DNA of the religious revolution. No matter how severe the blow dealt to Iran is, the continued existence of the Ayatollah regime there is indeed the beginning of a new order in the Middle East and the world. An order in which Iran will have the upper hand. The next war will look very different from the one we experienced in recent months.
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