Iranian Power Politics and the Day of Reckoning Charles Elias Chartouni/July 01/2020 شارل الياس شرتوني/سياسة القوة الإيرانية ويوم الحساب
The explosion at the Parchin military complex, near Teheran, is far from being an accidental breakdown in what turned out to be an experimental site for missile production.
This explosion betrays the structural flaws of a dysfunctional governance, and the gradual unraveling of Iranian national security. The repeated accidents in the last few months ( downfall of the Ukrainian airliner, the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, the smuggling of nuclear archives, and the Parchin explosion …) are quite indicative of systemic failures and the pervasive inconsistencies of the overall governance.
The Iranian expansionist drive is a corollary to the bolting inadequacies marring the Iranian system, and a testimony to its inability to address the backlogs of a deadlocked society and extract itself from the ideological confinement, the choking hold of power elites ( the clerisocracy and the Pasdaran ), their vested interests and unwillingness to engage the rest of the world community, and put an end to the self defeating incompatibility between international normalization, domestic liberalization and reforms.
The defensive posture displayed by the regime is no hazard, at a time when breakdowns are evolving exponentially and demonstrating the ineptitude of a political system living off its repressive policy, losing steadily its credibility and shorn of its conventional religious legitimacy. Contradictions develop at a pace that undermines its ideological credentials, strategic warrants and operational legitimacy.
This political trail, far from subsiding, continues its course and so is its containment, and this has nothing to do with the actual sanction policy devised by the current US administration and the imponderables of the incoming elections.
Checkmating the Islamic regime power drive is a strategic imperative to stabilize Middle Eastern geopolitics, stem the tide of islamism on both sides, promote the bolting liberalization agenda within Iran, put an end to the widening strategic voids and engage State reconstruction in the region. The Islamic regime in Iran, has either of two ways, normalize its international status, engage symmetrically the world community and liberal reforms, or deal with an enduring containment policy, and this has nothing to do with Trump’s re-election or defeat.
