December 23, 2024 | The Dispatch
Khamenei’s Brilliant Failure
His strategy against Israel and the United States was working—until Hamas attacked Israel.
December 23, 2024 | The Dispatch
Khamenei’s Brilliant Failure
His strategy against Israel and the United States was working—until Hamas attacked Israel.
Excerpt
On October 6, 2023, the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, could have done a tour d’horizon of the Middle East and been proud. His anti-Israeli/anti-American battle plan was working. An array of Shiite and Palestinian Sunni Islamist militias—the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and a smorgasbord of militant groups in Iraq—had effectively given Iran imperial reach at relatively little cost.
Through this “Axis of Resistance,” the clerical regime could harass Americans in Iraq and Syria. Ever fearful of escalation, Washington never took the fight back to Iran directly—with the exception of President Donald Trump’s decision in 2020 to kill in Baghdad Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force and the operational mastermind behind Iranian strategy. The axis was designed to keep America fatigued in the Middle East, to keep it leery of deeper intervention. Similarly, the alliance intended to complicate Israeli calculations, to keep Jerusalem from “mowing the lawn”—the routine pummeling of Israel’s nearest foes—for fear that military escalation against one party might trigger a wider conflict. With time, the axis would only get stronger; the Zionists and Americans weaker. For years, this approach worked.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.