QASR AL SARAB—The online rumor had mobile phones lighting up across an international gathering of government officials and experts over the weekend at this desert resort in the United Arab Emirates.
Could it be true, as some reports on social media indicated, that the Islamic Republic of Iran would soon announce that its eighty-five-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was in a coma? If so, it would have far-reaching consequences, as Khamenei has been the most prominent purveyor of his country’s most odious policies: “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” and the development of a nuclear program to advance both goals (not to mention its ban on uncovered women).
The instability that typically accompanies authoritarian succession would be magnified by three other major setbacks for the Middle East’s most disruptive power. Since September, Israel has decapitated and degraded Tehran’s proxy forces Hezbollah and Hamas, killing the leaders of both groups. In late October, Israel penetrated and took down Iran’s Soviet-made air defenses, and earlier that month Israel’s air defenses (deployed alongside those of the United States and others) intercepted or rendered harmless hundreds of Iranian missiles.
Iran hasn’t been this weak in more than two decades.
The rumors about Khamenei’s imminent demise proved untrue. However, what is true is that the long-formidable Islamic Republic of Iran—after spending decades building proxies, manufacturing ballistic missiles, and developing nuclear capabilities—is reeling from Israel’s military successes and its own vulnerabilities.
Iran’s new problems are already yielding knock-on benefits for the West’s unfolding contest with the “axis of aggressors”—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Strikes on Iran’s manufacturing facilities have reportedly interrupted its supply of missiles to Russia for the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine. Tehran is also reportedly pleading with Moscow for urgent replenishment of its air defenses, at a time when the Kremlin itself may be running short of these systems.
Iran hasn’t been this weak in more than two decades: almost naked defensively from air attack, its proxies unable to retaliate effectively against Israel, and its advanced weaponry unable to reliably penetrate Israeli and US air defenses. Tehran may even lack the air-defense capability to defend its nuclear-related facilities, tempting some to wonder whether now might be the moment to strike them.
What all that adds up to is a potential gift and challenge for President-elect Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who already have spoken at least three times since Trump’s election. It is also a test for the presidential transition from the Biden administration to the Trump administration, as one group of officials passes to the other its analysis of the risks and opportunities regarding Iran.
Western officials say Netanyahu regards this moment as a window of opportunity—one that might not reemerge—to neutralize or significantly set back Iran’s existential threat to Israel, which would be even more menacing should Tehran obtain deliverable nuclear weapons.
For the dealmaker Trump, who has declared time and again that Iran will never deploy a nuclear weapon on his watch, this moment provides a chance to either participate in a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear sites or use the threat of doing so to negotiate a far better deal than anyone has reached with Iran previously.
Trump might now be able to go beyond the Obama administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed in 2015, the aim of which was to limit Tehran’s nuclear capabilities, and beyond renewing the “maximum pressure” campaign of his first term. Given Iran’s current weakness, the incoming US president could try to press Tehran to agree, in exchange for economic relief, not only to abandon its nuclear program but also to cease its support for the proxies and terrorist groups that have destabilized the Middle East and beyond for decades.
The reported meeting last week between billionaire Trump confidant Elon Musk and Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, which was apparently not coordinated with the Biden administration but almost certainly was held with Trump’s approval, suggests that the president-elect senses this opportunity and wants to explore whether there’s a chance for an early win.
The consensus among experts and officials here is that a Trump administration would bring the president-elect’s characteristic unpredictability to the Middle East, with options ranging from Trump bombing Iran to him showing up in Tehran to negotiate with its leadership.
Given that in his first term Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and given US intelligence reports revealing that Tehran has in turn tried to assassinate Trump, the stage is set for just the sort of high-stakes drama the president-elect savors.
The new Trump administration is probably months away from updating the National Security Strategy that it published back in 2017. The new document will wrestle with a landscape far more dangerous than that of Trump’s first term: wars in Europe and the Middle East, rising tensions with China, and an accelerating battle for technology’s commanding heights in the era of artificial intelligence. What’s also new are some ten thousand North Korean troops in Russia, underscoring the expanded military and defense-industrial cooperation among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
Iran’s recent setbacks make it the weakest link in this anti-American axis.
Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Joe Biden said, “The United States is clear: We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.” Beyond that, I am told that if US intelligence showed that Iran is crossing the nuclear-weapons threshold, the Biden administration has developed a plan that it would execute to take out Iran’s entire nuclear infrastructure. US forces have the bunker-busting bombs to do it and the heavy bombers to execute the strikes. In a clear signal to Tehran, US military forces demonstrated as much on October 16, when US Air Force B-2 bombers conducted precision strikes against five hardened underground weapons storage locations in areas of Yemen controlled by the Houthis, Iran’s proxies in the country.
Given US capability, Israeli opportunism, and Iranian vulnerability, some experts here speculated about whether the preternaturally cautious Biden administration might revisit its own reluctance to hit Iran. The consensus is that the president won’t strike unless Iran shows it has crossed the nuclear-weapons threshold, something that US officials say they would be able to discern.
Whatever Iran’s external vulnerabilities, US and regional experts believe Iran’s religious leadership and revolutionary guards face no serious threat from domestic opposition, which has been successfully repressed and remains divided. Should the supreme leader die soon, these experts wager that he would be replaced by his fifty-five-year-old son Mojtaba, though it is also possible that the IRGC could gain more power and influence in any post-Khamenei scenario.
Pessimism has always been the safest bet at times like this in the Middle East, particularly following Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, the brutal Israeli war in Gaza that has followed, and the expanded conflict in Lebanon that has followed that. Carnage begets carnage.
Yet there is also an opportunity to defang Iran. If the incoming Trump administration isn’t distracted by deporting immigrants and purging perceived enemies in the US military, judiciary, and intelligence services, then it can apply a mixture of negotiations and military means to press Tehran, and thus advance the peace efforts that it pioneered during its first term through the Abraham Accords.
It’s hard to imagine a more compelling start for Trump 2.0, one that would confound his critics and seize early geopolitical momentum for his second term.
Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on X: @FredKempe.
This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.
Further reading
Image: Iranian missiles are displayed at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force Museum in Tehran, Iran, November 15, 2024. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia press Agency) via REUTERS