Meanwhile, In Saudi Arabia: "What Mohammed bin Salman Fears Most From the War With Iran"

From Bloomberg, March 6:

Middle East scholar Bernard Haykel explains Tehran’s calculus, the risk of regime collapse, and how Saudi Arabia’s crown prince views the conflict. 

Within 24 hours of last weekend’s US and Israeli strikes on Iran, a host of other countries were drawn into the Middle East’s latest war. Iran retaliated by targeting sites in Israel and across the Gulf — including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain — as well as Iraq, Oman and Jordan. Israel, meanwhile, has carried out air strikes on Lebanon and sent ground troops in as it seeks to dismantle the Iran-allied Hezbollah group after cross-border attacks.

This isn’t last year’s 12-day war. Shipping, air travel, energy supplies and stock markets are already feeling the strain, and the IMF has warned of global economic impact. Messaging from the Trump administration has also been inconsistent.

To contextualize the moment, we turned to an expert on politics in the Middle East. Bernard Haykel is a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and a regular commentator on the region, known for taking the long view on its history, religion and social change. His forthcoming book is about contemporary Saudi Arabia and its leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — with whom he is in regular contact. Born in Lebanon, Haykel also has a personal connection to the Middle East.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to an extended version in the latest episode of The Mishal Husain Show podcast.

Tell me about hearing that the US and Israel had begun striking Iran. What were the first thoughts that went through your mind?

I wasn’t surprised that this attack happened. I was only surprised by how soon it did, given that the Iranians were [still] negotiating with the Americans.

Word among the leaders in the Gulf States — like the crown prince of Saudi Arabia — was that Israel would attack sooner or later. They had knocked out most, if not all, of [Iran’s] air defenses last June. This was an opportunity to really destroy and defeat the system itself and topple the regime.

The surprise, really, was more to do with timing — and also the fact that the Americans were all-in, because it was primarily an Israeli decision to attack, I think. 1

¹ The US and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, targeting key military and government infrastructure and killing the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as other senior commanders. Haykel’s comment on the decision-making echoes US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s suggestion that Israel’s determination to attack Iran forced the US to act. Rubio later clarified his remarks.

Were you surprised, though, by how fast it spread to other countries?

[Only that] the Iranian regime felt existentially threatened. The Iranians have been saying this to all the leaders in the Arab world: that if they are existentially threatened, they will attack broadly and widely and try to disrupt oil and gas shipments.

Within Iran, the longer-range ballistic missiles had been very seriously destroyed by the Israelis in the 12-day war of last June. The Iranians have a much larger arsenal of short-range missiles and drones that hadn’t been damaged. So that’s why you’re seeing so many more missiles going at the UAE and at Bahrain and Kuwait and Qatar and Saudi Arabia. That’s the arsenal that the Iranians actually still have.

I want to ask how you see a moment like this. You’ve studied history, you’ve studied Islam. When you see the news, are you always using that longer lens, looking back in time, putting it in context?

Yes. These are modern states and ideologies — including the Iranian state’s ideology, [which] draws on a particular cherry-picked version of Islam.

I see the Middle East as divided between two groups or two ideologies — two ways of looking at the world. You have the status quo powers [who] basically want to develop their countries. They want peace and stability to economically advance, and they include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, also the UAE — despite what they’re doing in Sudan and Yemen.

Then you have this other group that is revisionist in the sense that they want to redraw the map of the Middle East. They want to change the power dynamics. They include, surprisingly, both Iran and the Israeli right wing.

The Iranians want to see Israel destroyed. They want to see America thrown out of the region militarily, as well as [in terms of] its economic and political and cultural influence. The right wing in Israel also wants to reshape and reimagine the Middle East according to its own political agenda. What we’re seeing today is one of the revisionist powers, that is the Israelis, attempting to do just that. To destroy the Iranian regime and to see either something replace it — or chaos.

And that’s a real fear of mine. If you end up with a failed state with 92 million people, you could end up with a catastrophic situation for Iranians and for the neighbors.

It’s interesting to me that you call Iran a modern state, given its structure — a theocracy with Ali Khamenei, supreme leader and ayatollah, at the top of the pyramid.

It is a theocracy, as much as you have a cleric who heads it. But if you look at the ideology of Iran, of the state, you see it’s a combination of different strands.

You have anti-imperialism. You have anti-colonialism. These are modern ideologies. You have social justice, ideas from communism and Marxism. Those are modern as well. But you also have elements of medieval theology repackaged in a modern guise.

And then you also have Iranian nationalism, which is again, a modern ideology, not an ancient one. So what you have is a hybrid regime in Iran, in its ideology. 2

² The present system dates from 1979 and the Islamic Revolution that ousted Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Shah of Iran. In 1953, after Iran’s democratically elected prime minister was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA and Britain’s MI6, in a bid to maintain control over the oil industry. Now, the former Shah’s son Reza Pahlavi is seen by some Iranians as a potential post-regime leader.

Let’s dig into the peril and the complexity of this moment. Most people are imagining either the Iranian regime survives or, if it doesn’t, then something better comes. You are also raising the prospect that the state could fail and there is just anarchy.

I think there are three possibilities.

The regime survives as it is and gets hardened even further in its determination to be a revisionist power. That’s one possibility.

The other is a Venezuela-like solution: The regime stays, but you have a new leadership that’s less revolutionary [and] willing to cut deals with the Trump administration. Same regime, but reformed.

The third possibility is the downfall of the regime. And in that case, you could end up with a civil war. Iran is only about 50% Persian by ethnicity. You have other ethnicities — the Baloch, the Kurds, the Azeris, the Arabs. They could be armed by outside powers. You could end up with a very chaotic and weakened central state. That would spell disaster for Iran and for the region. Iran is a large country with a super-talented population. It has massive resources in oil and gas. Seeing a Libya-style war in Iran would be catastrophic.

Which of those three scenarios do you think is the most likely?

My bet is that this regime will survive. This is a very tough regime that still has at least 20% of the population on side, and is willing to kill to remain in power. We saw this in the response to the demonstrations that took place in January. 3

³ A sharp depreciation in the value of the Iranian rial sparked protests that became the largest since the regime came to power in 1979. The response was brutal; thousands were killed. At the time President Trump urged Iranians to keep protesting, and said “help is on the way.” He has now urged Iranians to rise up once more.

[The regime] has deep roots in Iranian society. And frankly, despite all its problems, it has delivered on basic services for its population, whether it’s healthcare, education or basic infrastructure.

So I don’t see it disappearing. I think the Americans are hoping for a Venezuela-like reformed regime, and the Israelis probably would prefer chaos in Iran....

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