Protests in Iran and the Risk of Diversionary Conflict
Protests in Iran
On the 16th of February 2023, several cities across Iran saw protesters taking to the streets to commemorate the death of Mahsa Amini on the 16th of September. Killed by the regime’s “morality police” for not wearing the hijab, her death led to the biggest and longest protests in the country since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. At the heart of this public uproar lies the demand by citizens of different ethnicities, ages, genders, and socio-economic backgrounds for the ousting of the theocratic regime in Tehran. The regime reacted by murdering 529 protesters and detaining more than 20.000 of its citizens. However, Tehran’s reaction wasn’t limited to its domestic realm. In October of 2022, the regime targeted Kurdish positions in Iraq. Such an attack on a foreign actor raises the question of whether the Iranian regime is likely to initiate new ones as the protests continue. This analysis argues that the regime is likely to start an international crisis to divert the population’s attention from the domestic issues they face. Due to the international sanctions targeting Iran, both its ability to foster out-put legitimacy and to sustain a long-term repression campaign is unlikely. As such, the article finds that the regime’s only strategy is to initiate a diversionary conflict.
Strategies to appease social unrest
Authoritarian states possess three strategies when facing social unrest. The first consists in deploying their financial resources to either “pay for sufficient political and especially economic changes to satisfy domestic opponents” and/or repress protesters. On the one hand, using the economy to calm protesters is a strategy that lies at the centre of authoritarian states’ domestic legitimacy. Unlike democracies, where the government’s legitimacy stems from both citizens’ participation in politics through their right to vote and the government’s responsiveness to their demands, authoritarian regimes draw their legitimacy and subsequent obedience of their population from their “socio-economic performance”. On the other hand, a regime with enough financial resources can also initiate a sustained campaign of repression against its citizens to eventually deter them from protesting. The last strategy consists in diverting attention from domestic issues by engaging in an international crisis when both the first and second strategies are unachievable due to financial constraints. Therefore, a regime is likely to initiate a diversionary conflict if it does not have the financial means to employ the first and second strategies.
In Iran’s case, two factors indicate that the first and second strategies are unlikely to be at the disposition of the regime. Firstly, in contrast to authoritarian regimes such as China, the Iranian regime lacks the necessary resources to legitimise its rule and undertake domestic reforms that can mitigate social unrest. This lack of resources is mainly the result of four decades of economic sanctions imposed by the international community. Studies demonstrate that the sanctions caused significant and lasting costs. For example, following the imposition of a new sanction package by the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) in 2012, the Iranian GDP contracted by 12.5% in the first year, and by 19.1% after 4 years. Moreover, sanctions resulted in significantly higher inflation rates and, subsequently, decreased investment levels. These negative effects are further compounded by “economic mismanagement, distorted relative prices, [and] rent-seeking”. As a result, the Iranian regime lacks both the necessary economic growth upon which output legitimacy depends in non-democratic political systems and the necessary resources to reform its economy and mitigate public discontent.
Secondly, these financial limitations will likely prevent the regime from sustaining a long-term repression campaign against its population. Repression bears high financial costs for the regime. Indeed, quantitative studies demonstrate that the amount of financial resources allocated by the state to its security apparatus is positively correlated with its ability to repress its population. That is, the higher a state’s military expenditure, the more significant the level and duration of repression that the regime may decide to use. However, in Iran’s case, the sanctions imposed by the international community have led the regime to decrease its military expenditure by 30% between 2006 and 2015. As such, the costs to sustain the successful repression of a large part of the population may prove too high for the regime.
Faced with constrained financial resources, diverting attention through an international crisis becomes an auspicious strategy for the Iranian regime to safeguard its survival. The Diversionary Theory of War contends that governments initiate international crises to remain in power when faced with domestic issues that threaten their political survival. The “rally round the flag effect” that such crises engender increases support for regimes domestically as they generate events that “obscure other problems” experienced by citizens at home. Moreover, while the crisis unfolds, the regime can instrumentalise it to depict its political opposition as “anti-patriotic”.
Diversionary conflict as a solution
The diversion is traditionally achieved through war. The regime may initiate a conflict using its aerial, naval, ground, and/or strategic forces against a neighbouring state or foreign power in the region. For instance, faced with limited financial and economic resources on the one hand, and the inability to successfully repress social unrest on the other hand, the Argentinian government decided in 1982 to invade the Falklands to “rally the populace behind the government” and distract it from domestic social, political, and economic issues. Similarly, several scholars understand Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 as a diversionary strategy aimed at safeguarding the survival of Vladimir Putin’s regime. However, war as a strategy may prove too costly and too uncertain for the Iranian regime. Initiating a war against Israel, the US, or Saudi Arabia, may prove disastrous as Tehran’s capabilities are of no match to its technologically advanced rivals, and both Tel Aviv’s and Washington’s nuclear capabilities render any war against them unwinnable.
Therefore, the crisis is likely to stem from a military interstate dispute (MID). MIDs refer to interstate conflicts in which the belligerents use, threaten to use, or display force in manners that fall short of war. On the one hand, these actions are less risky for the Iranian regime and are more cost-effective than a full-blown war. On the other hand, Iran is more likely to initiate a MID than war because its strategy in the region revolves around asymmetric low-intensity conflicts with its adversaries. Numerous examples of Iran’s use of force in the region exist. For example, in 2019, an American RQ-4A drone was shot down by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Likewise, in June of the same year, the US accused Iran of attacking two tankers in the Strait of Hormuz while a tanker navigating under the British flag was arrested by Iranian forces in July. Considering Iran’s arsenal of speedboats, which ranges from 3.000 to 5.000 units, the regime may use them against foreign ships to divert attention from the protests.
Furthermore, Iran could use its regional proxies to launch attacks against its adversaries. Supporting foreign armed groups that share characteristics with the regime’s domestic base, such as religion or ethnicity, through escalatory discourse, weapons, and direct involvement in the conflict can also generate a rallying effect around those characteristics among the regime’s citizens. And since the regime in Tehran has perfected the art of deploying “small expeditionary units that link up with and command militias in the battlefield”, it can initiate attacks on Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the US, through the Houthi rebels, Hezbollah, and Iraqi militias respectively.
In sum, faced with both the inability to repress its citizens and the lack of resources to foster out-put legitimacy, the Iranian regime may initiate an international crisis to divert attention from its domestic issues. Crucially, whereas a full-blown war with its adversaries is unlikely, the regime may nonetheless seek to initiate a MID. This strategy may take several forms, ranging from “escalatory discourse” to the sinking of foreign vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the execution of attacks through regional proxies.