The Iranian regime is hollowing out – analysis

Inside Iran, the regime is less popular than at any time in its 45-year existence. The economy is in free fall.

By Hugh Fitzgerald, Frontpage Magazine

Trump claims he would “prefer” that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities not happen. But it’s up to Iran.

If it refuses to negotiate, as Ayatollah Khamenei now insists, then Israel will have no choice but to attack, and Trump will have no choice but to support and aid the Israelis, by providing both those 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs, as those Massive Ordnance Penetrators, or MOPs, are known, and the bombers big enough to deliver them.

Since Israel’s airstrikes on October 26, 2024 that destroyed Iran’s anti-missile systems, Iran has been threatening to wreak a terrible vengeance on the Jewish state.

But nearly four months have passed, and Iran has not dared to launch a single missile, rocket, or drone at Israel. Its threats are empty; its boasts those of a miles gloriosus, a braggart warrior.

The more it threatens to destroy its enemy, Israel, the more ridiculous Iran becomes in the eyes of the world. More on Iran’s hollow bravado — akin to the frog that puffs itself up to ward off predators — can be found here:

“Iran Says Israel, US ‘Cannot Do a Damn Thing’ Against Tehran,” Algemeiner, February 17, 2025:

Iran has claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than building weapons.

However, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported in December that Iran had greatly accelerated uranium enrichment to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, at its Fordow site dug into a mountain.

Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, has been warning about Iran’s rush to enrich uranium up to a level just below weapons-grade, a development by the Iranians that only makes sense if they are determined to manufacture nuclear weapons. There is no civilian use for uranium enriched to that level.

The UK, France, and Germany said in a statement at the time that there is no “credible civilian justification” for Iran’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”…

Whose judgement do you trust? Those Americans who claim that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would set its program back by only “a few weeks or months,” or the Israeli experts, whose Mossad agents have deeply penetrated Iran’s nuclear program?

No Western country has anything like the knowledge about Iran’s nuclear program that Israel does. If Israel’s leaders thought that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would delay its progress toward a bomb only by “a few weeks,” then they might not undertake it.

But they believe that such an attack could have “a significant impact.” Elsewhere, Israelis have said that the program could be set back for much longer, even for a year or two.

Such a delay would give Trump’s attempt to end Iranian oil sales time to succeed, driving the regime in Tehran to the point of economic collapse. Such a collapse, for a regime that is as hated by its own people as is that in Iran, could lead to that regime’s overthrow.

It would be replaced by a democratic, pro-Western regime that would promptly halt Iran’s nuclear program so that all economic sanctions could be lifted.

The Iranian regime is hollowing out. Inside Iran, the regime is less popular than at any time in its 45-year existence. The economy is in free fall. What can Iran do?

It can only issue empty threats, like that just issued by President Masoud Pezeshkian, who warns his enemies — Israel and America — that if 100 nuclear sites in Iran are destroyed, “we will build another 1000.”

He’s doing his best to emulate the tomato frog of Madagascar, that inflates itself to ward off predators.

That strategy hasn’t worked out so well for the frog (Dyscophus antongilii) in question, and I don’t think it will work for the Islamic Republic that has just passed an annus horribilis, with a loss of all three of its main allies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria), and now faces another year, for Iran more horrible still, with President Trump determined to end Iran’s oil sales and thereby destroy the country’s economy.

Hold onto your hats, Iranians. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.