Dennis Horak was Canada’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Yemen from 2015 to 2018 and chargé d’affaires in Iran from 2009 to 2012.
It has been a very bad year for Iran and more challenges are on the way. Iran’s regional strategy is in tatters. Hezbollah and Hamas have been decimated and Bashar al-Assad in Syria has been routed. These proxy forces and allies were meant to be assets that would be brought into any conflict with Israel and bolster Iranian deterrence. Instead, they have been taken off the board with relative ease and virtually no Iranian pushback. It is a hit to Iran’s capabilities and its prestige.
Iran’s own military prowess has also been brought into serious question. The first direct exchanges between Israel and Iran last spring highlighted the quality of Israeli air defence capabilities, while exposing the weakness of Iran’s. Taken together with the loss of its proxies, Iran’s sense of strategic vulnerability has likely not been this pronounced since the Iran-Iraq war.
All this comes at the worst possible time for Iran as president-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to office. The incoming administration has made no secret of its hostility toward Iran and its full-throated support for Israel is undeniable.
The regime also faces internal challenges, including a still relevant opposition movement inside the country. Additionally, for only the second time in the history of the Islamic Republic, the country could soon be looking to replace its Supreme Leader, the ailing 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Change of this magnitude is inevitably fraught with uncertainty. A steady, experienced and credible hand will be needed to address the many strategic challenges that lie ahead. Will they have that going forward?
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Despite all these setbacks and uncertainties, it would be a mistake to ignore the resilience of the regime or to assume that the Islamic Republic is ripe for a Syria-style collapse if nudged along by the West or Israel. Iran is clearly on the back foot, but it is not the paper tiger some believe or hope that it is.
The regime retains serious firepower – as witnessed by the effectiveness of the Iranian-produced drones being used by Russia in Ukraine. It may have been unable to penetrate Israel’s defences to any great effect to this point and it is vulnerable to an Israeli counterstrike, but there are other regional targets that still give Tehran strategic leverage. The Gulf oil facilities, for example, are in relatively easy range and attacks on them would wreak havoc on the global economy. The attacks on Saudi oil facilities in 2019 demonstrated their vulnerability.
Moreover, while the threat of a second Trump administration is real and well understood in Tehran, it is not at all clear that an isolationist “America First” Trump administration would be willing to engage Iran, even if U.S. allies are threatened or attacked. It is worth noting that when those Saudi facilities were attacked in 2019, then-president Donald Trump did nothing in response.
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Clearly, Iran still has deterrent options, but its leaders will not remain sanguine about the setbacks they have suffered this past year. There is a new regional landscape, and Iran will have to re-evaluate its strategic position.
There are not a lot of good options for Iran right now. It will learn the lessons from the exchanges with Israel and look to improve its capabilities, but that might not be enough. The qualitative gap is large. Iran could also try to reconstitute its proxy forces in due course, but without a friendly regime in Damascus (which currently seems unlikely), that will be tough.
In a perfect world, Iran could reverse course and abandon its history of confrontation and provocation in favour of a regional approach centred on co-operation, including with Israel. But that would require a fundamental shift in the nature and ideology of the Iranian regime.
That leaves the most worrisome but also the most likely option. Iran could conclude that the only way to reconstitute an effective deterrent and sustain its regional power would be to acquire nuclear weapons. It has the technical means and know-how to pull it off, but the move would be risky for Iran. It would certainly invite an Israeli (and possibly U.S.) attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the consequences of which, for the regime, would be hard to predict or contain. The Iranian nuclear program was developed as a backstop. It was meant to keep the nuclear option open, just in case. The question in Tehran will be, has that moment arrived? Given their current vulnerability, it might have and that would be a regional game-changer.