Iraqis took to streets demanding eviction of the Iranian regime from their country, November 2019

Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei broke his two-week silence on the intensifying crises facing the regime in the Middle East, during a ceremony at the Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Academy on Wednesday, where he expressed concern about the future of the regime.

In his remarks, Khamenei, on several occasions, addressed the critical state of the Iranian regime and claimed, wrongly, that the “enemies” of the regime were trying to “disrupt” the true interests of the Iranian people.

This is actually an admission that there is great turmoil in the regime at the moment, with the regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and other troops, losing confidence in the regime and defecting.

Khamenei addressed this previously on October 2, during a session with IRGC commanders and outright admitted that defections were a major issue; something that is significant because his regime is trying to keep power in Iraq and Lebanon, which it considers its “strategic depth”. You can see how important these two countries are to the Iranian regime because of how much money the regime invests in their proxy militias there.

Khamenei used the same bizarre thought process to talk about the uprisings in Iraq and Lebanon, saying that it was a “conspiracy” by the enemies of the regime “to cause strife and undermine security” and create a power vacuum.

He said: “The people of Iraq and Lebanon should know that their priority should be security. The peoples of these countries should know that their demands can only be met in the context of legal structures.”

It is clear from this comment that he is actually talking about Iranian surrogates, like former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and National Security Advisor Faleh Fayyadh, and terrorist proxies, like the Popular Mobilization Forces, the terrorist Lebanese Hezbollah and its commander Hassan Nasrollah.

Khamenei said that “the enemies had similar plans for Iran”, but failed to note that the Iranian people’s uprising has been going on for nearly two years now. He simply cannot understand that the people of the Middle East don’t like Iranian interference in their affairs.

This only displays the desperate state of this regime, indeed the Shah dictatorship resorted to the same kind of rhetoric linking protests to the “enemy” just before its overthrow. Of course, what is happening in the streets paints a very different picture.

Interestingly, he didn’t comment on theses crises that the regime is dealing with: the growing Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) units’ activities, intensifying Iranian protests against the Iranian regime, the non-ratification of the anti-money laundering and terrorism financing bills required by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), US sanctions, walking away from the nuclear deal, social crises, etc.