Iran is weaker than we think

As for Iran’s military chiefs, their standard of success is so low that, in the immediate aftermath of the failed aerial offensive, Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, declared that Iran “has achieved all of its goals”. He then unwisely added a vainglorious threat: “If the Zionist regime or its supporters demonstrate reckless behaviour, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response.”

Iran’s response was an all-out air offensive with hundreds of ballistic missiles, drones, and cruise missiles. But this very expensive attack failed most miserably, wounding just one Israeli, a seven-year-old Bedouin, and inflicting only trivial damage to the non-functional edge of a runway.

The power of the Revolutionary Guards within the regime steadily increased because of the military strength it generated with its abundant, cheap and, above all, expendable molokh khor “lizard-eater” Arab manpower (Ever since the huge losses of the Iraq war, Iran has been very casualty-sensitive).

But the Revolutionary Guards finally failed strategically because their Arab recruitment policy was so successful that it overshot the culminating point of success: seeing the historic Sunni capital of Damascus under Shia domination, and Baghdad the very seat of the Sunni Arab Caliphate ruled by Iran’s agents, Sunni Arab states from Morocco to Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which had repeatedly fought Israel from 1948, moved to abandon their hostility, openly or discreetly. And while the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7 gained no goodwill for Israel or the Jews, Israel’s overall response proved that it has the strength to resist Iran’s imperial ambitions. When an Israeli air strike decapitated the Revolutionary Guard expeditionary high command gathered in Damascus on April 1, by killing its chief and his entire staff, not a word of criticism was heard in the Sunni Arab world.