Iran has ordered its proxy forces across the Middle East to exercise caution as the Islamic Republic fears an existential threat following Donald Trump’s return to the White House, The Telegraph has learned.
Officials have told commanders of Iran-backed militias to avoid provocative actions that could escalate regional tensions.
Commanders have also been instructed to maintain defensive positions while avoiding any actions that could be interpreted as aggressive by US forces or regional allies.
Always anxious to portray the Islamic Republic of Iran in a world leadership position, the official media in Tehran have been trumpeting a three-day visit by President Masoud Pezeshkian to Dushanbe and Moscow as a “significant strengthening of the global south.”
You might wonder what the “global south” is all about.
This is a cliché invented in the 1970s to distinguish “Third World” countries from the two blocs of East and West, without abandoning its sister cliché of “non-aligned world.”
Even though Iran keeps increasing its military support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — posing a significant threat to the European Union, the EU policy of appeasing the mullahs persists.
The EU blithely continues to trade with Iran, the top state sponsor of terrorism. The Tehran Times bragged in a recent report that the country’s exports to the EU have increased by 28% in just 9 months…
Despite the unpredictability of our current world, people continue to make predictions about geopolitical matters of which they cannot know. One prediction currently being thrown around, spurred by the flurry of optimism following the ousting of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, is that of the imminent demise of the regime in Iran. Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, speaking on the Conflicted podcast this week, declared that “the Iranian regime will collapse within a few years”, adding to a string of media commentary along similar lines.
The thinking here is that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Assad are the crucial dominoes whose fall will precipitate that of the mullahs in Tehran. With the regime naked and its imperial project on life support, the Iranian people will mobilise, and the faltering theocracy will crumble.
Rarely in history does an opportunity arise to confront a brutal regime that has not only oppressed its own population but also destabilized the world by support for terrorism and terrorist allies.
The Iranian regime is such a dictatorship. For more than four decades, this regime has systematically crushed the rights and freedoms of its citizens, and silenced dissent through violence, imprisonment and execution.
This year, thanks to the relentless — and often maliciously vilified — efforts of Israel standing alone, like David against Goliath, to save the West from an autocratic tyranny, the Iranian regime has at last been facing significant setbacks. Israel, unthanked, has weakened Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, diminished their influence and destabilized their plan to wipe Israel — and after that Western civilization — off the map.
Iran, the ninth-largest oil producer in the world, doesn’t have enough energy to keep the lights on or the factories humming — and that’s just one element of the country’s growing polycrisis.
Government offices in Iran are closed or operating at reduced hours. Schools and colleges have moved to online only. Highways and shopping malls have descended into darkness, and industrial plants have been denied power, bringing manufacturing to a near halt.
Although Iran has one of the biggest supplies of natural gas and crude oil in the world, it is in a full-blown energy crisis that can be attributed to years of sanctions, mismanagement, aging infrastructure, wasteful consumption — and targeted attacks by Israel.
“We are facing very dire imbalances in gas, electricity, energy, water, money and environment,” said President Masoud Pezeshkian in a live televised address to the nation this month. “All of them are at a level that could turn into a crisis.”
Tehran has evidence that the events that took place in Syria leading to the ousting of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad were planned by the United States and Israel, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, according to Iranian state news agency IRNA.
“There should be no doubt that what happened in Syria is the result of a joint American and Zionist plan.” Khamenei reportedly noted.
h/t MP
Congressman Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ): “…from very high sources, very qualified sources, very responsible sources, I’m going to tell you the real deal. Iran launched a mother ship, probably about a month ago, that contains these drones. That mother ship is off… I’m going to tell you the deal. It’s off the East Coast of the United States of America. They’ve launched drones, everything that we can see or hear, and these are from high sources, I don’t say this lightly.”
The biggest losers, by far, from the collapse of the Syrian dictatorship yesterday — other than the brutal Assad family and its thuggish acolytes — are the ruling mullahs of Iran.
Their dreams of Middle East hegemony are now in ruins, their genocidal aim of wiping Israel off the map now mission impossible, their ability to supply their murderous proxies across the region with weapons and boots on the ground now crippled.
Unlike Iran’s regime, the country’s people are overwhelmingly pro-American and pro-Jewish — sentiments rooted in a historical alliance that made Iran the closest ally of both Israel and the United States before the mullahs came to power. The regime’s anti-American and antisemitic stance is an affront to the true nature of its citizens, who yearn for peace and global partnership.
The possibility of negotiating a deal with Iran has resurfaced. Reports suggest that the Islamic Republic’s leaders are expressing a willingness to engage with the incoming US administration after Donald J. Trump assumes office.
Reaching a deal, however, with a regime actively waging proxy wars against Israel, most of the Persian Gulf States and the United States — and that is arming Russia in its war on Ukraine — would be a monumental error.
The Russia-North Korea-China relationship is not an equilateral triangle but an evolving alliance with conflicting interests, and reportedly beginning to show signs of fracture and lack of trust.
Now that North Korean troops have joined Russian forces in fighting a democratic country, Ukraine, the global ramifications of this East-West coalitional warfare have darkened. An alliance of aggressive dictatorships are directly confronting the free West.
For decades, the brave people of Iran have arisen time and again, demanding a future free from oppression and authoritarian rule.
In recent years, Iranians have launched countless uprisings, each filled with hope and courage, only to be met with violent repression from the regime, and mainly indifference from abroad. Each wave of protests saw the regime’s security forces killing thousands of demonstrators, and imprisoning and torturing many more. These movements have shown the strength of the Iranian people’s resolve, but despite their cries for freedom, support from the West— usually merely vocal, about the ideals of democracy — has remained disappointingly muted.
