The Middle East is seldom tranquil but only certain events unleash waves that reverberate across the region. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1952 overthrow of Egypt’s monarchy unleashed Arab nationalist violence and revolutions across the region. In 1979, it was Ayatollah Khomeini’s turn. Then came the Arab Spring.
In hindsight, the Arab Spring quickly transformed more into a spring break with burkas instead of bikinis. Still, what began with the self-immolation of a Tunisian fruit vendor protesting a police shake-down spread like wildfire and led to the ouster not only of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled his country with an iron fist for nearly a quarter-century, to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled for 30 years. The violence was contagious and soon consumed Libya, Yemen, and Syria. Civil wars in each country ended their ruling regimes but left chaos in their wake.
While apologists for the Islamic Republic repeat the claim that Iran has not started a war in its modern history, this is palpably false.
The fall of the Islamic Republic would be as momentous. A central pillar of both the Islamic Republic’s constitution and the founding statutes of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was the export of revolution. While apologists for the Islamic Republic repeat the claim that Iran has not started a war in its modern history, this is palpably false. Put aside wars in the Caucasus, the seizure of Emirati islands, or efforts to subvert Bahrain: the Islamic Republic’s sponsorship of Lebanese Hezbollah and its co-option the Houthis represent aggression and military investment on par with any invasion.
While Iranian diplomats may whine about Israeli airstrikes and assassinations, the Islamic Republic itself started the war with its megalomaniacal desire to wipe Israel from the map.
The collapse of the Islamic Republic would immediately mean an end to assistance and weaponry to groups like Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen, at least unless Turkey and Qatar fill the gap.
A successful movement by Iranians to oust a hated dictator could reverberate in other ways. Like Khamenei, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan imprisons opponents and seeks to impose a conservative religious agenda on a country traditionally more moderate. That Iranians rose up as their currency crashed and inflation spun out of control will also resonate among Turks who have seen Erdoğan’s mismanagement of the economy decimate their savings. When Erdoğan’s brownshirts arrested Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş and Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, few Turks came out into the streets. Turks are proud, though. If Iranians can put their lives on the line for their country to fight back against corruption and dictatorship, Turks may, too. Erdoğan very easily could find himself following Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and perhaps Khamenei, too, in a Russian exile.
Azerbaijan, too, suffers under an ossified dictatorship. While Azerbaijan extracts billions of dollars in gas and oil from its Caspian oil fields, President Ilham Aliyev’s embezzlement and corruption have impoverished his nation to the extent that per capita income in landlocked Armenia, which lacks oil and is under a dual blockade by Azerbaijan and Turkey, is higher.
The idea that Iranian Azeris would win freedom from one dictatorship and flock to subordinate themselves to another is preposterous.
While Azerbaijani irredentists in Baku and the think tank scholars they cultivate in Washington promote ethnic separatism in Iran and dream of cleaving off “South Azerbaijan” to form a greater Azerbaijan, they ignore the intellectual weight of Iranian Azerbaijan. The traditionally Iranian Azeri city of Tabriz was the epicenter of the 1905-1909 Constitutional Revolution. Azeris edited the first Iranian newspapers. Civil society runs far deeper in Iranian Azerbaijan than across the border in the former Soviet republic. Should the Islamic Republic fall, the idea that Iranian Azeris would win freedom from one dictatorship and flock to subordinate themselves to another is preposterous. It would be far more likely that Iranian Azeris would form the core of or host civil society to agitate for Aliyev’s fall.
The return of Iran’s former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi and a possible restoration of the monarchy in Iran would add another element to the impact of regime change. Nasser’s overthrew of Egypt’s monarchy created a domino effect that swept away monarchies in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and ultimately Iran. For Iran to restore its monarchy would inspire similar calls in Arab countries in which the public juxtaposes their current situation with a romanticized view of the past.
Even if Khamenei falls tomorrow, transition in Iran will be neither quick nor smooth. Still, the ramifications of the end of the Islamic Republic will be as seminal for the region as Nasser’s rise, Khomeini’s revolution, and the Arab Spring. What happens in Iran will not stay in Iran.
