Iran’s Chaos Campaign Ramps Up

• Iran’s newly elected president was wrongly deemed a moderate by the Western press

• The nation continues to fund terrorism around the Middle East

• American intelligence has accused Tehran of plotting to assassinate Donald Trump

The story

Iran continues to wield immense influence in the Middle East; its tentacles have spread across the region for years. Syria’s dictator, President Bashar al-Assad, is propped up with Iranian money and muscle, while Hezbollah receives $700 million annually from Tehran. Hamas, too, gets weaponry and funding; Iran likely helped Hamas plan the deadly Oct. 7 attack.

The past few weeks have seen accelerated Iran-backed activity. Houthis, a Yemen-based group which acts as yet another Iranian proxy, recently attacked Tel Aviv with a drone — the first such attack this year. While Iran does not maintain direct control over its proxies, it's improbable that they were unaware of the attack, especially since they supplied the drone.

Meanwhile, American intelligence agencies have evidence that Iran was planning the assassination of former president Donald Trump. Although there was no connection to the recent shooter in Pennsylvania, an attempt would likely be in response to Trump killing Iran’s top general Qasem Soleimani in 2020.

The agencies said they were increasingly confident that Tehran would make an attempt — the threat level is not plateauing.

This seemingly contradicts another recent headline concerning Iran: the election of a supposedly moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian, after the death of the incumbent president in a helicopter crash.

The politics

Americans on both sides have long disdained Iran, since the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution and ensuing hostage crisis. But traditional coalitions — interventionist Republicans who favor a regime change in Tehran, and Democrats who advocate accepting Iran into the family of nations — have morphed in surprising ways.

The Republican Party still has anti-Iran hawks, to be clear. Trump’s killing of Soleimani was a major coup, but many in the party would like to augment the U.S. response. Former Vice President Mike Pence and Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, recently penned an op-ed in which they called for striking back at Iran.

This approach contrasts with a new GOP perspective from the likes of Senator and Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance (R-OH), who — although no fan of the Iranian government — has repeatedly spoken out against regime change.

Democrats portray themselves as more anti-interventionist and seek to revitalize the JCPOA. Republicans have, for years, pointed out — especially in the wake of the Oct. 7 Israel massacre — that former president Barack Obama and President Biden unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets contributed to its tumefied influence around the region.

Beyond the headlines

The election of Iran’s “moderate” president garnered positive press, but the presidency in Iran is a relatively weak position. While he does oversee the government, unlike America’s president, he isn’t capable of effecting significant change.

Real power is held by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who engineered the rise of newly elected Pezeshkian. He likely did so because he predicted that Western media would portray Pezeshkian as a moderate, which most did, and paint the false impression that Iran is moderating.

Khamenei has long preached about “the evil Zionist regime” of Israel, and calls America the “Great Satan.” His X account is filled with inflammatory commentary, such as this post from 2018: “Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.”

Why Iran is risking war with the United States is a bigger question; the assassination of Trump would surely trigger it. It is possible that Iran believes, with a weakened Biden, it could emerge from murder relatively unscathed. But that’s a sizable bet — one which could plunge the region into full-scale war.

Why it matters

When Iran’s former president was elected in 2021, headlines similarly proclaimed him a moderate and suggested that Iran had turned a page. Since then, clearly Iran has not. Its new president will not affect its pursuit of destroying Israel and America; Iran is controlled by extremist Islamists, no matter who is the presidential puppet.

Iran’s regime plotting to assassinate Donald Trump and funding groups like Houthis and Hezbollah demonstrates its commitment to wreaking havoc in the Middle East and beyond. Despite Western sanctions, as has been the case in Russia, the regime plays war games while average Iranian people suffer.