Iran

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.”

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.”