Iran’s Supreme Leader believes the US is in decline in its influence in the Middle East. According to a statement last week, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that the current war against Israel, which Iran launched using proxies in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack, has “disrupted” the US goals in the region.
The October 7 attack can be read as a turning point in the world order, in which Iran, Russia, Turkey, China, and others see the attack as a major shift that is taking place and seek to exploit it to achieve their goals.
The Iranian leader believes the “United States’ long-standing ambition to dominate the region has been undermined by the resilience of the Axis of Resistance,” an article in Iran’s Fars News noted. “The United States is now left with no option but to withdraw from the region,” the leader added, according to the article. He openly boasted of how Iran backs attacks against Israel from “resistance factions” in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. This is the multi-front war that Iran has sought to launch.
The multi-front war
Iran views this as a war against Israel and the US, and toward that end, it got its proxies in Iraq and Syria to carry out more than 200 attacks on US forces. This culminated in January with an attack on US personnel in Jordan in which three US service members were killed. However, the supreme leader clarified that Iran does not “orchestrate” every attack, but rather it supports their attacks. “They decide and act independently,” Fars News claimed. This is disputable as there is evidence that Iran is coordinating these actions. “Of course, we defend the resistance. We support the resistance groups as much as we can,” Khamenei said.
“These groups operate on their own,” he claimed. Iran believes that October 7 has not only resulted in a loss of US influence but also that the October 7 attack is drawing Israel into a quagmire in Gaza. Iran wants to exploit these trends and processes. “The Zionist regime is defeated whether it gets out of Gaza or not,” he said. In Tehran’s view, the US and Israel are major losers over the last five months in terms of the war and influence, while Iran is clearly a beneficiary. Iran, Russia, China, Turkey, and Qatar are likely other major beneficiaries of this conflict.
Iran is revealing part of its long-term goal in these types of discussions. It will mobilize its proxies but also pretend that it acts independently. The goal is to get Israel bogged down in a long war and get Israel to focus on Gaza while Iran increases its role in the region. Overall, Iran will then exploit the war in Gaza to try to reduce US influence.
Clearly, the war in Gaza was the first shot by Iran and other countries in a major war for the future of the world order. On the regional level, it was designed to end the process of the Abraham Accords, but that is a near-term goal for Iran, the long-term goal is much more complex. The Iranian regime leader’s comments shed some light on this longer-term vision.