“There is no corner of the Middle East that Israel cannot reach. » This is the threat, not at all veiled, that the Israeli Prime Minister wanted to address to the wide range of local enemies that Tel Aviv made in the aftermath of the land invasion of the Hebrew army in the south from Lebanon. But the warning did not come alone. Benjamin Netanyahu consciously embellished it with a message to the Iranians: “with every minute that passes, the regime [de los ayatolas] This brings you closer, noble Persian people, to the abyss.
These are not free words. Far from it, it is a sudden burst of condescension on the part of an Israeli head of government towards his most irreconcilable adversary in a troubled Middle East, whose geostrategic risk alerts have reached levels unknown since the sixties and seventies. The emergence of open regional armed conflict, with the possible involvement of powers such as the United States, has become a matter of concern. realpolitik.
Netanyahu’s proclamation aimed to promote insurrection in a country internally surrounded by a halo of political uncertainty, due to the succession of Ali Khamenei, and social instability, due to the long wave of arrests massive numbers of citizens – particularly women – for having acted. against the religious values of the Islamic Republic. Even if the Hebrew leader himself immediately admits that his message will serve more to unite Iranians than to mobilize them against their theocratic authorities.
This was reflected in the jubilant demonstrations recorded by Iranian television in the Islamic capital after the volley of missiles launched into Israeli territory in retaliation for the Israeli military escalation in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon and its attacks against Hamas and Hezbollah, militias under the patronage of the Shiite state.
However, the call from the Israeli far-right leader is not intended to remain vague. On the contrary, its dialectic aims to reactivate the shifting sands of its regional rival – with the authorization of Saudi Arabia with which the White House is trying to reconcile diplomatically – in a triple geostrategic game.
The trident of risks gripping Iran
In the economic order, where Western sanctions against the start of the nuclear program have had harmful consequences on the Iranian situation. In force since 2015, Europe put an end to it thanks to Tehran’s acceptance to admit supervisors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to control its nuclear advances, of exclusively civilian interest, according to its leaders. The United States, unilaterally, has maintained them since 2018.
Western embargoes and vetoes have placed Iran on the margins of international markets for a decade. In addition to causing inflationary increases of 64% in 2023 and 30% this year, a free fall in real wages and the standard of living of nearly 90 million citizens and a distorted macroeconomic situation with low state revenues. , a galloping deficit and symptoms of anemia in his country. productive fabric. To a large extent, the lack of growth is also due to the implementation of an austerity plan that led to cuts in the health sector and eliminated historic fuel subsidies.
Fitch Rating predicts that credit conditions in Tehran will be “seriously disrupted” in a hyperinflationary economy, with three in ten Iranians living below the poverty line, according to the Majlis Research Center, and households accumulating up to 60 billion of dollars in foreign currencies for fear of an international crisis. Rial debacle, explains Financial Times.
All this, added to endemic corruption and a barrel price which, with global caps and rebates due to G7 retaliation against Russia and the volatility of the energy market, has sailed throughout 2024 around $70; far from the 85 dollars which would allow the Iranian authorities to redress public accounts. As if that were not enough, its traditional foreign client, China, has reduced its demand for crude oil due to the consumption crisis, the loss of industrial power and the deflation that has emerged in its economy. To which must be added a devaluation of the rial which exceeded 30% this summer.
Oil begins its rise
However, the course of events could give a respite to Iranian finances if oil, which on Friday exceeded 79 dollars per barrel of Brent, the strongest weekly revaluation since the beginning of 2003. Faced with the prospect, the Biden administration is trying to appease, Tel Aviv would react by attacking not only military bases, but also Iranian oil infrastructure and uranium reserves.
Two options, the last “being on the table”, admits the White House, which insists on its “dissuasive” role against Netanyahu, but which could precipitate attacks against Saudi energy installations or those of its Persian neighbors, as Tehran warns .
More and more analysts consider as “feasible” a sharp rise in the barrel risk premium, which, in periods of strong geopolitical tensions, exceeded 12% of its value and led, for example, to the historic record of 147.27 dollars per barrel. black gold in July 2008. Market research firm Clearview Energy Partners estimates the immediate price increase to be between $13 and $28 in the event Iran threatens to disrupt oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
The market recalls this week that armed Houthi groups from Yemen and financed by the Ayatollah regime were behind the attack on the largest Aramco refinery in Saudi Arabia in 2019 and which they caused to collapse. Persian transit in recent months.
Destabilize the Iranian regime
The second ghost that Netanyahu has attempted to revive is one that seeks to lower his status as a regional power. The two cornerstones of Tehran’s diplomacy, the geopolitical domination of the Middle East since the control of the Persian Gulf and the destruction of Israel, which since the last century has maintained nuclear submarines permanently pointed towards the Persian capital – like have sometimes been recognized by Western diplomatic sources unofficially– were exploded by the military escalation of the ultra-Orthodox and far-right cabinet in Tel Aviv.
The third of the telluric movements generated by Netanyahu is to rush the decision-making of the ayatollah regime, reluctant to intervene if its own survival is in danger. Khamenei, 85, suffering from cancer, is aware that his credibility is at stake.
The Iranian spiritual guide has before him a double and unavoidable battle in this area. On the one hand, a domestic conflict, with a dispute over his succession between the generalate of the Republican Guard and the high ecclesial hierarchy, where the figure of his eldest son, Mojtaba, who, like Khamenei, covers his head with a black turban, appeared the one which identifies the direct descendants of Mohammed. But who, at the same time, had an opponent, Alireza Arafi, the dolphin of the supreme leader for more than 20 years, also ayatollah and, therefore, with a higher religious rank than his firstborn, although much more inclined than the latter to the modernization of the country. If one gives credibility, as Arafi has repeatedly admitted, to his bias towards artificial intelligence (AI) or the socio-economic advances of Islamic civilization.
And, on the other, an affront abroad, due to the regional geopolitical pulse between the Shiite state and its Wahhabi rival embodied by the Saudi royal house, until recently also a faithful enemy of Israel.
Economy and geopolitics go hand in hand in Tehran
Iran’s economic fragility is also combined with the strong geopolitical tension directed towards its areas of influence in the region. With unsolved enigmas like the death in an alleged helicopter crash of Iranian Prime Minister Ebrahim Raisi last May and his replacement by reformer Masoud Pezeshkian, a supporter of slowing down the crossfire with Israel and his country’s financial reintegration into world order, the search for the lifting of American sanctions and European involvement in their cause, with their historic allies Germany and France at the helm, which reveal the seriousness of the triple threat launched by Netanyahu against Tehran.
Ali Dadpay, analyst at the Stimson Center, a think tank American, underlines that “the Iranian economy is in decline, fueled by political uncertainty and popular discontent”. According to him, with military escalation in the Middle East and Israel’s strenuous efforts to involve the United States in the war, the Iranians are “once again preparing to confront geopolitical upheaval and financial volatility, drawing , as they did for another camp. over the past 45 years, since the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, to protect their heritage.
Dadpay recalls that the Persian market “already oscillates between pessimism and panic since the elections” which brought Pezehkian to power in July, with stocks falling, the rial at the bottom and gold, whose price increased by 5.7 % between July 1 and 20. and second round of elections, starting to stock the safes of Iranian homes. Today, with the dangerous war game the Tel Aviv government has led the regime into, even its stock market regulator “has had to limit daily value movements to 5% margins to avoid massive falls.” of the currency and notable increases in the currency. gold,” he explains.
