Does Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei want the United States to attack Iran? It may sound counterintuitive, but Iranian behavior has changed in recent months. For decades, the Islamic Republic attacked Americans, but eschewed responsibility.
Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini blamed the 1979 attack on the US embassy on radical students unconnected to his regime, no matter how they coordinated behind-the-scenes. Iranian proxy groups then bombed the American embassies in Kuwait and Lebanon and the US Marine barracks in Beirut. The FBI investigation into the 1996 Khobar Towers attack fingered the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), though President Bill Clinton recalled the findings to prevent any impediment to his rapprochement drive.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is a dictator by omission rather than commission: He instructs his agents only about what they cannot do rather than risk any smoking gun on an order to attack.
Prior to the 2003 Iraq War, the Iranian government pledged non-interference. Instead, the Revolutionary Guards inserted thousands of its officers and Iraqi militiamen they trained. Over subsequent years, Iran conspired directly or by proxy to murder and maim hundreds of Americans utilizing explosively-formed projectiles. Through it all, both Republican and Democratic administrations avoided responding directly against Iran, instead targeting proxies in Syria, Iraq, and now Yemen. The only exception to this was President Donald Trump’s elimination of Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani on January 3, 2020.
Traditionally, Iran sought to attack its adversaries while maintaining enough deniability to avoid accountability. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is a dictator by omission rather than commission: He instructs his agents only about what they cannot do rather than risk any smoking gun on an order to attack.
In recent weeks, however, Khamenei has removed any doubt about where attacks originate. Iranian drones attacked Indian Ocean shipping directly. Iranian support and supply for Houthis is beyond doubt. Iran launched ballistic missiles at the Iraqi Kurdish capital Erbil to compel Iraqi Kurdish authorities to distance themselves from Washington. The IRGC has promised Hamas anti-aircraft missiles. On Tuesday, Iran acknowledged launching missiles at Baluch militants in Pakistan. Iranian authorities shed no tears that Pakistan today attacked inside Iran.
Why has Tehran started claiming credit for such attacks? The answer may be that Khamenei feels he is losing control.
Khamenei is weak. As the regime prepares to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in two weeks, the future of the Islamic Republic is uncertain. First, there is Khamenei himself. He is about to turn 85. A 1981 assassination attempt partially paralyzed him. A decade ago, he had prostate cancer surgery and, just two years ago, a sudden health crisis prompted his plane to make an emergency landing. There is no clear successor. Civil war in Iran could loom.
Khamenei fears declining revolutionary fervor among youth. In a July 12, 2023, speech, for example, he described a war between the Islamic front and liberal democracy, and lamented how the internet and satellite television today inspire young Iranians more than the mosque. On December 16, 2019, he complained to Iranian veterans about declining revolutionary fervor.
An astute White House could thread the needle: Hit Iran in its purse with “Maximum pressure.” Target Khamenei directly and declare open season on any Iranian military official outside Iran itself.
The Islamic Republic has been here before. One day before Iranian revolutionaries seized the US embassy, Steven Erlanger, at the time a young journalist who would one day rise to become the New York Times‘s chief diplomatic correspondent filed a dispatch eulogizing the Islamic Republic. “The religious phase is drawing to a close even as it is becoming formalized,” he explained.
The embassy crisis helped Khomeini purge the revolutionary coalition of all but the most radical religious fringe. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s subsequent invasion of Iran likely saved the Islamic Revolution. Iranians had lost faith in clerical dictatorship, but they were proud nationalists. Iraq’s aggression enabled Khomeini to wrap ordinary Iranians in a nationalist flag, especially given Saddam’s cynical efforts to play the ethic card in Iran. The war years and crisis allowed Khomeini to ingrain revolutionary structures in a way he could never during peacetime.
Khamenei today likely recognizes he needs an external crisis. He knows President Joe Biden would never invade Iran as George W. Bush did Iraq, but if he could goad Washington into even a single strike on Iran proper, he might snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and distract the Iranian public from the Islamic Republic’s failings.
The danger then becomes that Khamenei believes he has a win-win strategy: He can humiliate Americans reluctant to respond, but also benefit from retaliation. An astute White House could thread the needle: Hit Iran in its purse with “Maximum pressure.” Target Khamenei directly and declare open season on any Iranian military official outside Iran itself.
