The balance of political power in the Middle East has shifted significantly to the detriment of the Iranian regime. The ongoing attacks on the regime’s proxy forces have created an unprecedented situation for the regime, the likes of which it has never seen before.
These changes are occurring at a time when the regime is unable to respond to these challenges and cannot afford to remain idle. In any case, the outcome means defeat for the regime.
For more than three decades, the regime has survived through its proxy forces, trying to expand its influence and operational reach. But now these forces are under constant pressure and are suffering damage. This situation poses serious challenges for the regime, directly affecting its stability and internal security. The regime is more aware than anyone of the growing internal turmoil, and in fact all of its recent provocations are aimed at diverting attention from Iran’s internal problems.
Democratic or even semi-democratic governments derive their stability and legitimacy from the votes of their citizens. These governments resign after their term ends. They either leave the political scene or recede into the background, awaiting the next cycle. But in dictatorial regimes, no substantial changes occur. The tyrant remains at the top of the hierarchy and rules for as long as possible. And supposedly elected officials only serve the goals of unelected leaders.
In such dictatorships, the stability and survival of the regime depend on factors outside the will of the people.
For the mullahs' regime, the incentive for its forces and clients is to "export terrorism and provoke wars". For this reason, the regime's supreme leader Ali Khamenei considers Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Palestine to be the "strategic depth" of his regime and uses this as a pretext to mobilize the Revolutionary Guard and Basij forces.
He must demonstrate his power in tangible ways to keep the repressive forces and criminals around him in defense of his regime. As a result, he constantly boasted that he controlled four Arab capitals, and ordered his agents to publicly declare their support for them on every platform.
In other words, Khamenei kept Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Basij, and their agents active all these years by exaggerating the role of his proxy forces. The propaganda about 150,000 Hezbollah missiles ready to be launched was part of this strategy. He knew that if he stopped terrorism and war through his agents, as the regime's founder Ruhollah Khomeini said, "the spirit of the supreme leader" would shrink. He knew that the criminals who kept his regime in power were all slaves to power. If they sense that their supreme leader is politically and militarily powerless, they will quickly fall apart.
Last October, on the first day of the war in the Middle East, the Iranian resistance movement declared that the head of the snake that ignited the war in the region was the Iranian regime.
In the 1980s, it insisted on continuing the war with Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of a million Iranians.
The regime also played a key role in igniting the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, where they were killed and to emphasize that Iran was the only source of concern for peace in the Middle East, and millions of people were injured and forced to flee their homes.