Despite a 45-year hostility toward “Little Satan,” Iran had never launched an attack against Israel from its own territory. Instead, the road to Jerusalem passed, as stated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, through Karbala, an Iraqi city sacred to the Shiites, and for this reason it went to war with Iraq. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader since 1989, has used affiliates (Hezbollah, Lebanon's Shiite militia, and the Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad) to attack Israeli targets and avoid direct confrontation. In recent years, as Israel has attacked Iran's nuclear program and its scientists in Tehran, Khamenei's advisers have called for "strategic patience."
All that has changed. The launch of more than 300 drones and ballistic and cruise missiles against Israel on April 13 heralds “a paradigm shift,” according to Ahmad Dastmalchian, former Iranian ambassador to Lebanon. The firepower stunned many Iranians, far surpassing the response to the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani, its top general, in 2020. The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) , Major General Hossein Salami, assures that the regime is now working with “a new equation.” “The era of strategic patience is over,” an advisor to the Iranian president said on X (formerly Twitter) on April 14.
Foreign pressure partly explains the change in policy. Israel has stepped up its attacks against Iranian targets across the Middle East since the start of the war in Gaza in October. It has killed 18 Iranian IRGC commanders and some 250 Hezbollah fighters in attacks in Syria and Lebanon. The April 1 airstrike on the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, which Iran insists is sovereign territory under international law, demonstrated that affiliate groups no longer provide it with the deterrence it has long relied on.
However, internal forces are also shaping decision-making. For most of his career, Khamenei has relied on tough conservative pragmatists like himself. Many were commanders of the IRGC, the regime's most powerful fighting force, and were willing to collaborate with the West if they thought doing so strengthened them. Now, more recently, a group of ideological intransigents who are in Iran what the extreme religious right is in Israel have become relevant. Members of the Paydari Front, or the Stability Front of the Islamic Revolution, are Shia supremacists who oppose any kind of compromise with anyone, inside or outside Iran. They mock their critics, calling them atheists and counter-revolutionaries, and want to turn Tehran's parks into mosques. They consider any type of reconciliation with the West anathema, to the point that some of them burned in Parliament the text of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement signed in 2015 by Iran with six world powers to limit its nuclear program. They equate “strategic patience” in the face of Israeli attacks with appeasement.
Their opponents speak of state capture. Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric elected president in 2021, has appointed them to prominent government positions. His father-in-law is perhaps the most radical cleric in Iran; he delivers sermons that stir up the fervor of the paydaris. The Paydari Front strengthened its grip on power in last month's parliamentary elections after many boycotted the vote. Their candidates prevailed over Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a pragmatic politician and former mayor of Tehran, commander of the IRGC and relative of Khamenei. Now they intend to unseat him as president of Parliament. They have approved new chastity laws. Against the advice of IRGC veterans, they are trying to reintroduce the mandatory hijab after its de facto suspension in the wake of widespread protests in 2022. On the same day that Iran attacked Israel, they sent the police again morale to the streets after a one-year hiatus.
Within the Iranian armed forces, realists know that their military arsenal cannot compete with Israel's. The air force projected regional power under the shah, but has not modernized since. America's F-4 fighter jets from the 1960s are no match for Israel's F-35, the world's most advanced fighter jet. Many of the tanks date from the Second World War. However, the Paydari Front conceives its earthly battle in divine terms. "When you pulled, it was not you who pulled, it was Allah who pulled," the fanatics declared after the attack, citing an verse from the Koran. Their members speak of the sacrifice made in the 7th century in Karbala, when Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad was assassinated by a Muslim tyrant. Since then he has been venerated by the Shiites, who pray for a great destruction capable of bringing about the arrival of Imam Zaman, a messianic leader who will inaugurate the consummation of times. His followers celebrated in the streets. Iran's attack and handed out candy. They have covered Tehran's billboards with banners in Hebrew advising Israelis to stock up in anticipation of another attack.
Paydari Front clerics have also infiltrated the ranks of the IRGC. The most recent generation of commanders has spent their careers attending summer camps run by paydari clerics, many of whom are also stationed in their units. “The new generation is more ideological and aggressive, less experienced and less pragmatic,” says Saeid Golkar, an IRGC expert at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Unlike previous generations, he does not remember the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. He uses religious texts to devise strategies. “Those who do not know war want to fight more,” he says, quoting an Iranian saying.
Khamenei remains at the helm. His senior commanders say they gave Israel and its allies three days' notice of the attack. They also indicated when it was over. However, some Iranians question the 84-year-old's ability to stand up to the paydari campaign. Under Raisi's presidency, the religious right has purged the public administration of reformists and critics. He has used Israel's continued attacks to marginalize the pragmatists remaining within the regime and their calls for moderation. Some claim to welcome the prospect of an Israeli attack on Iranian soil. They believe that it would unite Iranians, a proudly nationalist people.
Now, for all its power, the rise of the Paydari Front may be making the Islamic Republic more fragile. The gap between the rulers and the governed is increasing. Its president, Raisi, is almost as unpopular among the population as Binyamin Netanyahu is in Israel. Many Iranians blame their inexperienced ideologues for crippling the economy (the rial hit a new low against the dollar after the April 13 attack). And they fear that their fanaticism could drag Iran into war. Such is the antipathy towards them that many see the enemies of the regime as friends. After the rockets were launched, the Iranians exchanged jokes mocking their ineffectiveness. “Many Israelis have died... laughing,” one of them joked. Graffiti has appeared in the streets calling for Israeli retaliation. “Hit them, Israel. The Iranians support you,” read one in Tehran. As one Iran watcher noted, Iranians' reaction to an Israeli attack could pose a greater threat to the regime than the attack itself.
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Translation: Juan Gabriel López Guix
