With Resumption of Trump’s ‘Maximum Pressure’ Policies Likely Looming, Iran’s Leadership Scrambles for Survival

With Iran suffering increasing rates of hyperinflation and mounting regional setbacks, and with questions regarding the leadership’s succession plans abounding, prospects for the mullah regime’s survival appear to be dimming. Fearing a resumption of Washington’s “maximum pressure” policies after President-elect Trump returns to the White House, Iran is reportedly selling to Communist China all the oil it can before January 20. Yet the Iranian currency already is practically worthless. It now takes 778,000 rials to buy one dollar. As the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ CEO, Mark Dubowitz, notes on X, 70 rials could buy a dollar before the 1979 revolution, and while few Iranians might now remember that era, unrest is growing. “Inflation is already causing worker strikes across the country,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Frequent electricity outages in a country flush with oil and natural gas are adding to the population’s growing resentment of the regime, he says. The suffering is being exacerbated by an early winter cold snap. Offices, schools, and universities were ordered shut across the country due to a lack of heating fuel. “Gas reserves are at their minimum level,” the CEO of Iran’s national gas company, Saeed Tavakoli, said, adding that as temperatures plummet, shortages “will worsen.”Constant electricity outages paralyze water pumps, leading to interruptions in the water supply. Also, with car manufacturers now using low-quality components, Tehran is turning into one of the world’s most polluted cities, leading to closure of many institutions. To conserve energy resources, citizens are being urged to reduce heating in their homes “by at least two degrees,” President Pezeshkian said in a recent speech to the nation. The speech was ridiculed on social media across the country. The regime is also widely mocked by the ever-daring Iranian public. Even though the regime is tightening its enforcement of mandatory head coverings, women increasingly have been taking off their hijabs in public, filming themselves for posting on social media. “We need a roadmap to end the Islamic Republic,” the Brooklyn-based journalist and activist who launched the anti-hijab movement, Masih Alinejad, writes on X. She has offered such a roadmap during a congressional hearing, she writes, adding that “ending the Islamic Republic is not just a moral imperative but a strategic necessity for peace and stability in the region and beyond.”The Tehran-born Mr. Sabti was 7 years old during the 1979 revolution. His family had to escape after he turned 15, when life for Jews under the new Islamic Republic became unbearable. Living in Israel now, he says the regime’s prestige across the region “was at its strongest after October 7. But due to Israel’s actions since then, and to Assad’s fall, they now look like losers.”Tehran officials acknowledge these setbacks. “What happened in Syria is a lesson for us,” the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, said last week. He accused Israel and America of orchestrating the ouster of President Assad, but in a rare admission he said that Iran dropped the ball, vowing to now be “more vigilant in facing the enemy.” Mr. Khamenei will turn 86 in August and unconfirmed reports about his poor health have swirled periodically for a long time. While according to the Tehran buzz he plans to pass the baton to his son, Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, the process of succession is opaque.Iran watchers say that the elder Mr. Khamenei likely has devised a plan for an orderly transfer of power after his death. Yet, “considering the regime’s recent setbacks, it is very unlikely to be a smooth succession,” Mr. Sabti says. Add Trump’s presidency to the mix, and these setbacks will likely be exacerbated. As noted by an anti-regime website, Iran International, the country exported 2.5 million barrels of oil a day in 2018. As sanction enforcement tightened under the “maximum pressure” policy, Iranian oil exports plummeted to 350,000 barrels a day by the end of Trump’s presidency. After President Biden relaxed enforcement, Iran has exported an average of 3.5 million barrels a day for the last four years. Up to 15 percent of Communist China’s oil imports are from Iran, and Beijing is expected to resist renewed sanctions. Tehran, though, is aware that when America wants to, it has the ability to interrupt its oil exports. Also, in a joint statement issued Tuesday, Germany, Britain, and France threatened to reimpose mandated global sanctions against Tehran. If enacted, such a move would make it illegal for Beijing to purchase Iranian oil. With the mullahs’ power at a nadir, Jerusalem officials are increasingly urging their overthrow. “Your fight is not just for yourselves, but for the millions of lives the regime has destabilized and destroyed,” the Israeli UN ambassador, Danny Danon, said, addressing the people of Iran during a Wednesday speech to the Security Council. “In your hands lies the power to rebuild a land rich in history, culture, and resilience.”

With Resumption of Trump’s ‘Maximum Pressure’ Policies Likely Looming, Iran’s Leadership Scrambles for Survival

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