شارل الياس شرتوني: النظام الإيراني وعثرات تمدده الإمبراطورية المفرطة/Charles Elias Chartouni: The Iranian Regime and the Pitfalls of Imperial Overreach
The Iranian Regime and the Pitfalls of Imperial Overreach
شارل الياس شرتوني: النظام الإيراني وعثرات تمدده الإمبراطورية المفرطة Charles Elias Chartouni/January 07/2020
By taking off Qassem Suleimani, President Trump has firmly put an end to the skewed calculations of the Iranian regime predicated on unrestrained discretionary power and unhindered movements throughout the larger Middle Eastern spectrum. Once he apprehended that “ Khamenei thought Suleimani gave him a competitive advantage, [he] took him off the board. With a drone not an invasion force” ( Michael Doran).
The message sent to Khamenei was straightforward: as long as you are engaging a destabilization course by fomenting regional wars and promoting terrorist activities, you are creating the congenial embedding for a head on confrontation.
The destabilization strategy put forth by the regime has become too hazardous to be tolerated for a longer period time, and the assassination of Qassem Suleimani is the outcome of this destructive course and not its origin.
The elimination of this key actor was inevitable if the systematic unraveling of what’s left of the regional order is to be contained with it’s attending cortege of civil wars, exponential militarization of conflicts ( conventional, nuclear and Chemical ), and politicized ethno-religious cleavages.
The ultimate wager of a discredited Islamic autocracy is to equate its survival with the legitimate national security concerns of Iran. This has been its plea throughout the last four decades and emergency exit, every single time its survival collides with the endemic crisis of legitimacy.
The emblematic figure of Qassem Suleimani was paradoxically instrumentalized as a decoy to dispel existential and strategic insecurities, whereas the overall recapitulation of his murky records points towards the intricate conflicts induced by the expansionism of an undermined Islamic revolution.
The capitalization on his assassination by the self defeating regime is another ploy to evade the mandated reforms on the inside, and the critical diplomatic overtures on the outside.
The Mullah regime has an instinctive aversion towards any political, ideological or strategic challenges which question its debunked credentials, failed governance and conflict prone foreign policies.
Destabilization and perpetuation of conflicts, ideological mystification and psychotic walling of the National imaginary, State terrorism and the trivial recourse to violence, are the repertoire it draws on to secure its survival and maintain the foreclosures.
The strategic boldness demonstrated by the American President and the projection of toughness are essential to thwart the ongoing destructive dynamic, preempt the scenarios of regional chaos and unraveling of the interstate system, the energizing of Sunnite extremism ( in its State and terror movement variants -Saudi and Gulf oligarchies, ISIS and its acolytes- ) and keep the reformist yearnings alive in a decaying country.
Hopefully, the frenzied lamentations of Shiite rituals are not going to trump the dispassionate calculations of responsible statesmanship.
This murderous dystopia should come to terms with the limits of corrosive cynicism and the sway of blood, if conflict are to be addressed rationally and solved amidst so much violence, irrationality and subliminal hatred.
