Iran is terrified of the ‘day after’ the war

Bringing in the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces also hints at domestic concerns.

By Shay Khatiri, Middle East Forum

The Islamic Republic’s actions throughout the war indicate a fear of losing domestic control after the war ends. Replacements of slain officials and redeploying Popular Mobilization Forces confirm this.

Israeli strikes have eliminated a list of senior officials. Many of these offices remain vacant, but two senior replacements stand out.

Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr replaced Ali Larijani as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and Ahmad Vahidi replaced Mohammad Pakpoor as the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Zolghadr and Vahidi, like their predecessors, are both Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals, but this obscures more than it reveals.

Larijani and Pakpoor both had extensive foreign policy experience. Larijani had been involved in Iran’s nuclear file and alliance management for decades, and Pakpoor had led Iran’s Iraq operations.

In contrast, Zolghadr and Vahidi cut their teeth in domestic suppression. Zolghadr led the crackdown of the 1999 student uprising in Tehran.

He later took charge of domestic security at the Interior Ministry under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad ousted him in 2007 for allegedly being too paranoid about losing domestic control under U.S. pressure.

Later, Chief Justice Sadegh Larijani appointed him to judicial branch positions. In Iran, the judicial branch both prosecutes and sentences and is at the forefront of domestic suppression.

Vahidi has a similar background. He was the minister of defense under Ahmadinejad, but he moved on to domestic security.

He was the minister of interior under Ebrahim Raisi and played a key role in managing the 2022–23 protests. He used his position to increase domestic surveillance.

Bringing in the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces also hints at domestic concerns. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not a monolith.

As a leaked memorandum from a November 2022 meeting among Revolutionary Guard commanders and the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei showed, local commanders sympathized with the people’s grievances and warned that their subordinates were themselves impoverished.

These commanders are not usually corrupt regime cronies and are closer to the people, but they oversee most of the force.

In contrast, commanders of strategically important units, such as the missile base, Quds Force, and Khatam al-Anbiya, are rich and ideological.

During the conversation, there was an obvious divide between the two factions, the former advocating for accommodation with the people and the latter preferring a crackdown.

Iran’s security forces have been increasingly reluctant to kill their compatriots, prompting the regime to ask the Iraq-based, Iran-sponsored Popular Mobilization Forces.

Preemptively readying them suggests the regime is worried about another uprising after the war and that it cannot trust its own forces to get the job done.

Checkpoints are popping up in Tehran, further confirming fears of domestic uprisings, exacerbated by Israel’s degradation of the regime’s command, control, and communications apparatus.

There have been disappointments about a lack of uprisings in Iran, though some of these reports should be taken with a grain of salt. Iranians will not come to the streets while bombs fall.

President Donald Trump told Iranians to stay at home until further notice, citing the risks. Iran is under martial law.

A second uprising will require a call to protests by either exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, Trump, or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Protests against the regime will emerge if coalition forces change their mission from degrading Iran’s military capabilities to protecting civilians.

While many in the Western media still filter war coverage through a lens shaped by hatred of Trump, and many reinforce Iranian regime propaganda, the regime’s own actions suggest that Iranian decision-makers are less confident in the regime’s staying power than the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.

Rather than focusing on winning the war, they realize the real struggle will be surviving its aftermath.