Backed into a corner, Ayatollah Khamenei faces impossible choice

Iran’s ageing supreme leader remains defiant in the face of US and Israeli demands to surrender, but he confronts powerful enemies from a position of weakness.

Some Iranians question whether Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, is still in charge of events in Tehran. Picture: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei looked like a man staring down the barrel of a gun when he recorded his speech on Wednesday, ruling out surrender to the United States. The words were defiant, but they were delivered in a soft, weary monotone that has left Iranians wondering whether the supreme leader is still in charge.

That is a question that may decide the next phase of Iran’s history, after more than 40 years of an Islamic Republic moulded by Khamenei and his predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini. His regime is tottering from Israeli air strikes, and a US intervention could be its coup de grace.

Trump has demanded “unconditional surrender” – a bitter pill for Khamenei and his powerful military aides, but abandoning their nuclear ambitions could save what is left of their rule.

Khamenei’s response to the idea, in a statement recorded from his war bunker, was clear: “Surrender to what? The Iranian nation cannot be surrendered.”

Others in the regime are doing the maths. Iran has a finite supply of missiles it can use to reach Israel, and it may have already used up more than 10 per cent of its arsenal in less than a week.

Israel claims it has destroyed a third of Iran’s missile launchers, and each new barrage reveals new positions for the Israelis to bomb.

Iran had prepared for years for war with Israel, but it had envisaged a multifront conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon as its vanguard. Hezbollah, which Israel devastated last year, is now sitting the war out.

“They’re in a deep dilemma,” said Ali Fathollah-Nejad, director of the Berlin-based Centre for Middle East and Global Order.

“Will they want to de-escalate or risk a war and lose more? If they de-escalate, which would be the prudent thing to do also with the US-Iran negotiations, they would have to forgo their red lines of domestic uranium enrichment and accept the American proposal, which would be the only way out to secure regime survival.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waving during a ceremony on the occasion of 36th death anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in Tehran earlier this month. Picture: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader

Khamenei, 86, who once claimed that God spoke through his tongue, may be happy to martyr himself in his waning years, but there is a regime at stake, made of a complex web of competing factions that Khamenei has played off one another.

There are the vast and deep interests of a military apparatuses that has entrenched itself in every layer of Iran, and which will want to maintain its privileges.

There are relative moderates in the government, including the weak president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and his advisers, who had advocated a deal with the US to move Iran past the sanctions that have crippled its economy. Pezeshkian has presented himself as a reformist but has been hobbled by Khamenei, who has publicly criticised him.

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Smoke billows from a building at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba following an Iranian missile attack. Picture: AFP

But there are also the hardliners, who will judge Khamenei for any show of weakness, and a more sizeable opposition that will pounce on it.

He had deftly managed – and repressed – them all, but some question whether he has lost his grip, as he shelters in a bunker.

“I’m not sure whether he’s still the man in charge,” Fathollah-Nejad said. “I think he’s quite detached from what’s going on. It will be a decision by the remnants of the system and they’ve reached out to the Trump administration over the past few days.”

Khamanei, and his ruling elite, may all fear that a humiliating surrender could endanger them as much as a prolonged war.

“We are faced with a transition of power,” said Farzan Sabet, the managing researcher at the Global Governance Centre, referring to Khamenei’s succession plans.

“In that context you can’t appear weak. The other thing is you have to keep the hardcore base of the system on side. They are not psychologically ready for a humiliating defeat. Now the concern would be whether they would take radical action against the system itself.”

The regime could also fear a surrender might encourage Israel to intensify its strikes to ensure Iran’s military capabilities have been set back for decades, as they have done in Syria.

Trump, who himself may believe that he has a divine purpose, as his ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told him in a letter this week, has been holding off from entering the war.

Israel has already done much of the heavy lifting, and a US intervention would endanger its troops in the region, and possibly the world’s energy supplies.

He may also have learnt some lessons from the Iraq war, which he opposed, and the intervention in Libya. The outcomes of wars, especially those that topple regimes, are impossible to predict.

But his patience, as he keeps saying, is running out.

The Times