Khamenei on Strategic Patience

Against the backdrop of widening anti-government protests and a general strike in the Tehran bazaar, on 30 June, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a graduation address to students at Imam Hossein University, a university run by and for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). While the broad theme of Khamenei’s address was to dismiss the belief that it is possible to peel the people away from the regime as a notion rooted in “stupidity,” the accompanying excerpted piece from Khamenei.ir is important in its illumination of Khamenei’s strategic thinking.

At the heart of debates about both diplomacy with the Islamic Republic and its military ambitions, are questions about the sincerity of the regime: Does Iran approach diplomacy as a means to resolve conflict or does it see diplomacy as an asymmetric warfare strategy to delay and distract opponents? And does Iran view ceasefires and temporary deals as steps toward more comprehensive agreements or the desired end result of engagement?

Khamenei’s discussion of strategic patience suggests that he sees some compromise as tactical, rather than an end goal. He views conflicts and struggle as a decades- if not centuries-long struggle and urges the IRGC never to exit “the arena” but rather to continue resistance as a multi-generational struggle. Indeed, he places this “struggle” and “resistance” at the heart of the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic over which he presides.

The implications of his speech to the IRGC are important for the region. In Lebanon, Iran’s proxy group Hezbollah has achieved unprecedented power with a stranglehold on the cabinet and, increasingly parliament. It has an ally in Lebanon’s presidency and has expanded its sphere of operation from southern Lebanon and the southern neighborhoods of Beirut into the east and increasingly north of the country as well. At the same time, the Iranian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has in recent months regained territory held for years by the Syrian opposition. When Khamenei tells the IRGC that they can never be “content,” he is effectively ordering them to continue their march into other areas, perhaps including a more direct confrontation with Israel, Saudi Arabia, or Bahrain.