The Kayhan newspaper, known as Khamenei’s mouthpiece, praised Rushdie’s attacker, saying “his hands should be showered with kisses.” A cheerful headline declared: “The Devil’s Neck Under the Sword.” While Iran denies responsibility for the attack, Khamenei has repeatedly supported the late Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa ordering Rushdie’s assassination. Such harsh beliefs reveal a country whose leadership has completely lost its way, the promise of the 1979 revolution lost to the reactionary and complacent incompetence of a ruling elite. The question now, as the US and Europe consider a revived nuclear deal with Tehran and an end to sanctions, can this rotten regime be trusted to keep its word? Khamenei’s virulent anti-Western, anti-American stance, rooted in questionable theology (scholars question his religious credentials), profound paranoia, and deep personal ignorance of the world, is Tehran’s dominant political brand. It doesn’t matter, apparently, that it impoverishes and isolates Iranians while endangering their neighbors. After last year’s rigged presidential election, which Khamenei’s hard-line protégé Ebraim Raisi won with a low turnout, hopes for reform have faded. Internal repression is terrifying. Political dissidents, women’s rights activists, ethnic minorities, dual nationals and Baha’is are mercilessly persecuted. Iran’s economy, plagued by endemic corruption and sanctions, is in dire straits. While oil and gas export revenues have increased, officials, clerics and other regime-linked groups such as the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia are the main beneficiaries. It’s a mullah’s version of trickle-down economics, without the trickle. Annual inflation reached 52.5% in June. Reduced food subsidies hurt a lot. At least 30% of Iranians live below the official poverty line. Strikes are common. But few have forgotten the nationwide anti-establishment protests of “Bloody November” in 2019, when many hundreds were murdered. Only 28% think Raisi is doing a good job. “The policies… Khamenei has championed for three decades have pushed Iran to the brink of total economic and ecological collapse and, despite brutal repression, the country is mired in social unrest… Celebrating the attack on Rushdie, the cleric establishment appears to be saving face at home,” wrote commentator Sayeh Isfahani. Externally, Iran is increasingly aligned with Russia and China. Hosting Vladimir Putin in Tehran last month, Khamenei claimed that, as with Iran, the West and NATO opposed a “strong, independent Russia.” Like Putin, he is delusional about his country’s global standing and despises the US as a power in decline. Iran is reportedly supplying drones to help Russia attack Ukraine. Subscribe to The Best of Guardian Opinion Get out of your bubble. Sign up for our daily selection of opinion pieces and see things from a different perspective Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. China is Iran’s biggest energy customer, with Beijing now importing more oil than before US sanctions. The two countries are also pursuing “strategic defense cooperation” after Raishi told visiting Chinese officials that Iran was seeking a united front against the West. Like Russia, China has taken Iran’s side in the disputed UN nuclear inspections. Donald Trump’s idiotic decision to scrap the 2015 nuclear deal predictably led to a rapid acceleration of Iran’s program. Now he says he can build a bomb in months, but he has no plans to do so. In the short term, the Biden administration may soon agree to a revised pact – but deal or no deal, the regime’s behavior seems unlikely to change fundamentally. There is little sign, for example, of a relaxation of its regional ambitions. Khamenei personally commands the Quds Force, Iran’s extraterritorial military arm, which operates through proxies in Yemen, Lebanon and Palestine. Israel’s hopes that, by currying favor with Putin by soft-pedaling Ukraine, it could crush the Russian-Iranian axis in Syria have been dashed. Most troubling right now is the massive instability rocking Iraq, caused by the rivalry between Shiite parties and militias backed by Tehran and the popular, anti-Iranian, anti-American nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Iran’s self-serving attempts to mediate have gone nowhere. Israeli leaders are skeptical that such a malevolent and dark adversary will stick to any nuclear deal. Israel opposes a new deal and warns of military action at any time. If right-wing former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regains power in elections this fall, fears of a direct confrontation will increase. Analysts in Israel question US President Joe Biden’s motives. Is he too eager to score a major foreign policy success before the midterm elections in November? Is it all about confusing Trump? Haaretz’s Amos Harel questioned why the US is ignoring what he called recent Iranian aggression. “Just last week, a Revolutionary Guard plot to assassinate two very senior Trump administration officials, former National Security Adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, was revealed,” Harrell noted. Then came Rushdie’s terror and the macabre triumphalism of the Iranian media. Americans, too, should be deeply suspicious of Tehran’s intentions, suggested Iran expert Karim Shajadpour — because the power of Khamenei and the illegitimate elite surrounding him is bent on perpetual confrontation with the Great Satan. “US-Iran normalization could prove deeply destabilizing for a theocratic government whose organizing principle has been based on fighting US imperialism,” Sadjadpour wrote. Iran’s leaders, he argued, could not change even if they wanted to. “Even if the nuclear deal is revived, Tehran’s worldview will endure.” It is obvious that Khamenei needs the American enemy. But is the reverse also true? For the Republican right, Iran has long been a useful bogeyman to scare voters, cow Gulf Arab allies and rally support for Israel. So can Iran trust the US to abide by the terms of any reworked nuclear deal? Whatever the White House says now, it is by no means certain that Biden’s eventual successor will.
