MARK ALMOND: With the mullahs refusing to bow to Trump’s playbook, I believe that he’ll name a halt sooner quite than later

The irony will be lost on no one that almost 50 years after the Islamic Revolution deposed Iran‘s hereditary shah, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – killed in an airstrike on Day One – has been succeeded by his own son.

Draped in clerical robes and with a greying beard, 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei appears the spitting image of his father, though he has yet to risk a public appearance before his people, who have endured a devastating ten-day US-Israeli bombing campaign that, according to one report, has already demolished 10,000 buildings in Iran.

On the face of it, Khamenei’s appointment is hugely embarrassing for Donald Trump. Just five days ago the US President described him as an ‘unacceptable’ successor and later declared: ‘I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy,’ referring to the pliable Delcy Rodriguez who replaced Venezuela’s president Maduro after he was kidnapped in a US operation on January 3.

But if Trump thought Iran would play out like Venezuela, he was very much mistaken. Instead of a more moderate figurehead, Iran’s so-called Assembly of Experts – made up of 88 senior clerics – has elected in Khamenei junior a notoriously hardline figure considered even more extreme than his father who will unite and reinvigorate extremist sentiment across Iran and possibly even the wider Middle East.

And his defiant crowning suggests very strongly the mullahs and ferociously loyal Revolutionary Guard will fight to the bloody end – only stopping if Trump blinks first.

Could yesterday have been the moment he did blink? In an interview with CBS News, he said: ‘I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force. Their missiles are down to a scatter. Their drones are being blown up all over the place.’

Typical Trump bluster perhaps. Whatever the case, if he does think the war is nearly over, he has got nowhere near his original aim of regime change.

The appointment of Khamenei makes clear that there remains – despite any number of ruthlessly targeted assassinations against top commanders and clerics in the regime – a central group of hardliners who continue to dictate policy while the bombs drop around them.

Khamenei junior is now the figurehead but, according to Israeli sources, does not really have the military experience or clerical clout – as a mid-ranker in the religious hierarchy – to have got the top job on his own. Of course, the accident of his birth helps, despite the fact the Islamic Republic insists that the Supreme Leader should not be appointed through hereditary succession.

But it is clear that the hardliners are in control and are confident they will manage to hold fast under the thunder of American bombs.

Iran is a different type of tyranny to that of a single dictator like Saddam Hussein in neighbouring Iraq. A pyramid of power giving the regime influence in every walk of life underpins the Islamic Republic. That is why it can doggedly continue even after so many senior figures have been knocked out.

As for Mojtaba Khamenei, it is personal. Not only has his father the Ayatollah been killed by American strikes. So, too, have his mother, his wife, his daughter and, according to some reports in Iran, his sister, a nephew, a niece, and a brother-in-law.

The strategy of the Revolutionary Guard is clear. It is to cause economic chaos by choking the world’s oil and gas supplies and by attacking and destabilising the oil states. They believe this will undermine the Gulf states’ alliances with America, gnaw away at support for the war throughout the West and eventually force Trump to end the conflict. But will it work?

The scale of the attack on Iran has been extraordinary. In the first six days of the war Trump claimed to have dropped more than 2,000 bombs on Iran, striking approximately 3,000 targets, with Israel dropping hundreds more. The IDF has launched at least 20 operations inside Iran, systematically dismantling the regime’s military infrastructure including air defence systems, missile launchers, command centres and naval facilities.

Trump soon made it very clear he sought ‘total surrender’ from the Iranian regime. And no doubt – much like his Russian counterpart in Ukraine – the President imagined this war would be over in short order. But he is quickly learning that regimes cannot easily be toppled from the sky. Even Hitler’s henchmen still held control in the ruins of the Reich until Allied forces marched in.

And because the mullahs’ regime is so deeply embedded in Iranian life it seems almost impervious to the carnage around it, quickly replacing fallen generals and politicians through a web of decentralised authorities.

The Republic may be hated by millions of citizens, but it’s the hardliners who walk around with guns. Aerial bombardment will not change that or stop the brutal Basij religious police who use motorbikes and private cars to quell the faintest whisper of dissent.

Indeed, far from being cowed, the regime continues to expand conflict in the region.

Just yesterday, Nato forces shot down an Iranian missile over Turkish airspace that was most likely targeting either Cyprus or the Ceyhan oil pipeline terminus in southern Turkey which transfers Azeri oil to Israel and represents about 70 per cent of the Jewish nation’s oil imports. The US has since closed its consulate in southern Turkey.

Iran has already launched thousands of missiles and drones towards targets in countries such as Jordan, the UAE and Kuwait. No doubt these countries – long after the war has ended – will reassess their foreign policy to be far more vigilant in the face of Iranian threats.

Turkey, however, is different. As a Nato member, an attack on the country could trigger Article 5 and bring the UK along with other European allies into the war. Furthermore, it costs less for Iran to fire a drone than for the West to shoot it down. A war of attrition is not in America or Nato’s best interests, and Iran knows it.

At the same time, Iran retains control over the strategically important Strait of Hormuz, through which around 20 per cent of the world’s oil passes. Despite Trump’s promise of a military escort for oil tankers, the price of crude has topped $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022.

Trump claims ‘short-term’ price increases are a ‘very small price to pay’ for world peace. The average American citizen at the gas pump will feel differently come the mid-term elections this November.

So, with aerial bombardment proving insufficient so far to bend the Iranian regime, what cards does Donald Trump have left to play?

The American people will not countenance the prospect of boots on the ground in the Middle East. This is a country still scarred by the desperate failures of a 20-year campaign in Afghanistan that claimed 2,459 US lives and resulted in the Taliban retaking Kabul.

Last week seven coffins draped in the star-spangled banner returned to the US from the Middle East. Trump can hardly afford to see another wooden box carried out the back of an aircraft before public opinion sours beyond repair.

My belief is that, sooner rather than later, Donald Trump will bombastically declare victory but in practice make an uneasy truce with his new Iranian counterpart.

Trump has made the same mistake as Saddam Hussein, who tried to topple the Iranian Republic in September 1980, assuming the infant Islamic regime was on its last legs and beset by internal division.

Saddam thought it would be easy to seize the oil-rich south west of Iran where many Arabs lived.

Instead, he was met by fierce resistance as the Ayatollah stirred religious sentiment among young men of fighting age who went readily to the battlefield for him. One such man was Mojtaba Khamenei, and he now rules the country.

Any peace deal with Iran would mean the authoritarian regime endures. Politically, this will be a humiliation for Trump – who vowed to topple the mullahs.

On the other hand, Iran’s military will be severely depleted. Their nuclear ambitions have been thwarted for a generation, it will take years if not decades to recover the full extent of their military infrastructure and, with its proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen severely depleted after repeated attacks by Israel, the regime will be less capable of spreading terror throughout the world.

And yet, the great tragedy is that, despite the popular uprising and slaughter of more than 30,000 protesters by the regime last month, nothing will have changed for the people of Iran – who have been desperately oppressed since the Revolution in 1979.

In fact, Khamenei junior will most likely feel compelled to clamp down further yet on any dissent.

Bloodshed and brutality will continue in the streets and torture chambers of the Revolutionary Guard. While Trump will have declared his war a triumph, and moved on.

• Mark Almond is Director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford