Alarms about Saddam tactics: "Answer no"
Regimes usually fall when the top leaders disappear.
Iran may be the exception, believes Middle East expert Alexander Atarodi.
- Iran is a completely unique structure that does not follow the pyramid concept, he says.
Israel and the US continue to eliminate Iranian religious leaders and commanders at a rapid pace.
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Around 40 of them have been killed since the outbreak of the war. Ali Larijani, Iran's powerful security chief, became the latest in a row after defying the threat and appearing publicly.
But it is not likely to cause the regime to collapse, according to Alexander Atarodi.
- Of course, I believe it is a factor that influences and weakens Iran's leadership. But I think this factor has sometimes been overestimated.
A statue of Saddam Hussein being torn down in Baghdad in April 2003. Photo: Jerome Delay / AP
He believes that Israel and the US assume that the Iranian regime will fall when the leaders are eliminated and draws parallels to how the regimes in Iraq and Syria collapsed when Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad were forced out.
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"A completely unique structure"
Something he doesn't think will work in Iran.
- Iran is a completely unique structure that doesn't follow this pyramid concept. To think that you can knock out 20, 30, 40 people and then the whole system collapses? The answer is no.
In recent years, Israel has used the same tactics to try to put an end to Hamas and Hezbollah without fully succeeding.
– You also saw in a small area like Gaza that even if you eliminate as many leaders as you want, Hamas is still not disarmed. It is true that Hamas does not pose a threat to Israel, but Hamas has not disappeared and there has been no popular revolt against them either. So objectively, we have not seen any results of warfare where you eliminate various leaders.
Handwritten notes
Iran's supreme religious leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who was injured early in the war, has barely been seen since he took office. Instead, he has stayed hidden and communicated through handwritten notes published on social media.
But it will be difficult to lead Iran from a bunker for a long time, Atarodi believes.
– At some point he has to come out and I think that is what he is trying to do now ahead of the Persian New Year. He may not be able to stay hidden for years, but a few weeks or months until things calm down. The regime will be very careful about the whereabouts of key figures.
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