“Ultimately, it is not really possible to topple the regime through airstrikes,” said Dr. Raz Zimmt, head of the Iran and the Shiite Axis Program at the Institute for National Security Studies.
The Iranian regime still maintains control on the ground and will not be able to be toppled through airstrikes, said Dr. Raz Zimmt, head of the Iran and the Shiite Axis Program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), in an interview with 103FM on Wednesday.
““Let’s assume the war ends in a week or two and protests resume three or six months later; that is a period of time that would allow them to recover,” Zimmt said on the ‘Seven to Nine’ program with Gideon Oko and Amichai Atali when asked whether airstrikes againstIslamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets during Operation Roaring Lion could, over time, erode the regime’s governing mechanisms.
“I asked for information [from the INSS] about reports on the deployment of roadblocks set up by the Basij and internal security forces across Iran,” he said. “I received a list of deployments of internal security forces and continued arrests against those suspected of espionage. Ultimately, it is not really possible to topple the regime through airstrikes.”
The Iran expert assessed that it is difficult to know to what extent the strikes have harmed the Revolutionary Guards’ ability to control the ground, and in any case, whether damage to Iranian state institutions would accelerate the regime’s collapse.
‘We assume his positions are more extreme, radical’
The head of the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies also addressed the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as Iran’s next supreme leader.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of late Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, attends a meeting in Tehran, Iran, March 2, 2016. (credit: Rouhollah Vahdati/ISNA/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS )
Zimmt argued that the timing of the war was likely the decisive factor that led Iran’s Assembly of Experts to choose Khamenei’s son.
“This is an appointment that is quite natural in wartime; it’s not certain that in normal circumstances they would have chosen him,” the researcher said. “He is his father’s successor, he is connected to the Revolutionary Guards, and he is familiar with state affairs even though he did not hold an official role. For many years, he accompanied the decision-making processes in Iran; all this makes him someone who can, in a very short time, manage the affairs of the state.”
Zimmt went on to say, “We do not really know what his positions are, because he has not appeared publicly or given interviews. We assume his positions are more extreme and radical.”
The researcher further explained that the Islamic Republic’s ruling elite does not speak with one voice.
“After the Operation Rising Lion, a public debate took place in Iran between the more radical camp that says, ‘Despite the blows we suffered, we will not change the strategy,’ and figures such as President Pezeshkian and former president Rouhani, who said they should focus on solving internal crises and concentrate on the economic system, in other words, ‘Iran first.’”
Zimmt emphasized that “the Revolutionary Guards are not a homogeneous organization; there are different shades of conservatives there, from pragmatic to more radical.”