Not like Venezuela: why Iran is likely to survive US-Israeli strikes

Iran’s leadership is likely to prove resilient despite US-Israeli decapitation tactics, analysts say. Dozens of senior Iranian officials, including the former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and national security chief Ali Larijani, have been killed since the start of the bombing raids on February 28. Tehran has argued these changes do not matter. “Of course, individuals are influential, and each person plays their role – some better, some worse, some less – but what matters is that the political system in Iran is very solid,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Al Jazeera earlier this month. The war in Iran has entered its fourth week, with US President Donald Trump threatening to send more warships and marines to the region. The possible escalation is in sharp contrast with the US raid on Venezuela earlier this year, when President Nicolas Maduro and his wife were abducted in a three-hour raid. The conflict has led to a major spike in oil prices, and President Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States would halt strikes on power plants for the next five days. Guy Burton, an independent political analyst, said the Iranian system had been “designed to withstand both external military pressure and internal dissent”. “Leadership decapitation does not translate easily into systemic collapse. The relatively rapid replacement of senior figures suggests prior contingency planning and institutional depth,” he said. Niu Xinchun, executive dean of the China-Arab Research Institute at Ningxia University, said Tehran had been preparing for a leadership transition since last year’s war with Israel. “However, questions remain as to whether the successors possess the authority, experience, and capability of the former officials to navigate the current crisis – a factor that injects further uncertainty into the situation,” he said. Iran has moved with remarkable speed to fill the power vacuum created by the initial waves of US-Israeli strikes, relying on a layered succession system designed to prevent regime paralysis. According to The New York Times, the late Ayatollah had instructed senior Iranian officials to predesignate as many as four successors for every key military and political post. Zhang Chuchu, deputy director of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Fudan University, said Iran’s decentralised power structure helped keep things running. “Iran does not rely solely on top-level decision-making; instead, mid-to-lower-level commanders have been empowered to continue executing policies and launching counterstrikes autonomously,” she said. The country has adopted the doctrine of “mosaic defence” – allowing regional commanders to make decisions – which Araghchi said “enables us to decide when and how the war will end”. The model’s underlying logic is that war depends not only on initial military might but also on resilience, time and adaptability. A strategy geared towards protracted conflict was seen in many 20th century conflicts, from the Japanese invasion of China to the Algerian war. Zhang added that Iran had a long history of active anti-US and anti-Israel operations in the Middle East, and had established a network of Shia groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and militia groups in Iraq. This stood in stark contrast to Venezuela, which lacked both extensive experience in sustained conflict and a well-established regional resistance network, she pointed out. She said it was a “strategic miscalculation” for the US and Israel to try to paralyse Tehran by carrying out the targeted elimination of its leadership. Moreover, as lower-tier commanders launch independent asymmetric strikes without central oversight, the lack of restraint risked fuelling more unpredictable and enduring warfare, Zhang noted. “The killing of Larijani … has effectively shuttered the window for diplomacy. Even if the West wanted to engage in talks, Iran’s fractured internal factions make it nearly impossible to identify a single, authoritative counterpart for negotiation,” she said. Burton also pointed to the importance of religion in the world’s biggest Shia majority country, but said “the regime today relies less on ideological cohesion and more on coercive capacity”, under pressure from both internal unrest and external threat.

Not like Venezuela: why Iran is likely to survive US-Israeli strikes

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Islamic Republic’s government is expected to prove resilient despite attacks that have targeted many of its top leaders

Islamic Republic’s government is expected to prove resilient despite attacks that have targeted many of its top leaders