The war between the US and Israel on one side and Iran and its proxies on the other is taking place amidst the backdrop of a cacophony of voices rooting for the IRGC. For when we consider Iran, it must never be forgotten that the country is in effect controlled by the IRGC. Voices of support have come from a multitude of countries, including Germany, the UK, Canada and India. Such individuals need to reflect on what the consequences of an IRGC victory would mean for the world. First, it would boost the confidence of the Chinese Communist Party leadership that they could prevail against the US in the battle for primacy now extant across the globe. The CCP leadership would multiply its efforts at reducing the power and influence of democratic countries. The same would be the case with the IRGC and other allies (or in some cases satellites) of the PRC. Countries bordering the PRC would in particular get weakened, making it easier for the PRC to sabotage growth and to promote rebellion against the elected governments of target countries. Dictators would get a confidence boost in their survivability, now that the PRC has shown that a dictatorial regime can prevail over the US. With all its faults, and despite all the drama surrounding President Trump, citizens of the US know that there are limits to Presidential power. The ability of the US President to levy punitive tariffs has been substantially curtailed by the US Supreme Court, while a single judge has stopped work on the ballroom designed by Trump for the White House—the Trump Ballroom, as it is likely to be named if completed.
In the PRC the courts and the legislature function as subordinate institutions to the Office of the General Secretary of the CCP, just as they do in Iran where the IRGC-backed leadership is concerned. Rather than democracy becoming the wave of the future, what is likely is that more and more democracies will turn into quasi or full-fledged dictatorships. As for the arts and culture, a democracy would not have the stultifying grip of the censor. In some countries, a word or sentence even mildly critical of the government of a country can send the writer to jail. Looking at the world of letters, who can forget the epochal decision of the US Supreme Court to allow a book, Ulysses, written by James Joyce into the US. A lower court had banned the book. Were the Supreme Court to have followed that precedent, the volume of literature, good or bad, coming out of the US would be much smaller. An ambience of freedom is needed for the green shoots of creativity to mature, and dictatorships do not have that.
Importantly, an IRGC victory would mean that Iran will have a chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz, which is an international waterway. This would give Iran the power of blackmailing countries into doing what is in the interests of the IRGC-ruled state. And as for terrorist incidents, they would rise exponentially. “Terrortron” modules that were lying quiet would spring into activity and cause havoc in several countries. The Rule of Law would be replaced by the rule of those who scorn efforts to get them to follow any rules. What each individual dictator wants would be the law. It would be a much less predictable world, with what may be called the Age of Disorder.
For autocrats make up the rules as they go along, often contradictory ones, and among the ill-effects of such a situation would be a decline in technical knowledge. Once the grabbing of the Strait of Hormuz takes place, other radicals in countries such as Egypt may get emboldened to try and seize control, to establish similar chokeholds over the Suez or Panama canals, or even the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits. Should the US and its partners cede primacy to the PRC and its satellites and allies, economic growth across the world would be affected. Much has been made of the rapid growth of the PRC during the 1980s and 1990s. What is forgotten is that this took place in a world where the primary power, the US, was a democracy. Scholarship and innovation require flexibility rather than gauge progress by following rules prescribed by autocrats who have scant knowledge of the subjects they are laying down a path for. Rules are meant to facilitate growth, not stifle it.
Once again executions are taking place in Iran on a weekly basis, including the state-sanctioned murder of a young woman. Her “crime” was to play basketball with some boys without wearing a hijab. There is a reason why migration takes place from autocracies to democracies. It is because life for the many is usually better in a democracy. Or in other words, the IRGC fails and gets replaced at long last by the rule of those who believe in democracy. Choose the country you would like your children to settle in apart from home, and it will be understood what the consequences of the IRGC prevailing over the US are. As for Israel, the only Jewish-majority country in the world would witness a sharp rise in terror incidence, and a much more dangerous security environment in a region where the IRGC is dominant. The same would be the case for the GCC countries, for the Iranian leadership opposes the sheikhs who rule in the GCC. Of course, the same leadership sees no incongruity in itself ruling Iran in a manner far more autocratic than the royal families of the GCC. For those who value freedom, the choice is obvious. The IRGC must not be allowed to prevail over the democracies fighting against the regime sheltered by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Hopefully, for once, President Trump will be accurate and the Iran war will end in a couple of weeks with a “more reasonable regime” as its replacement. Seeking the destruction of a country because it is Jewish (Israel) or a democracy (US) goes against any principle of humanity and needs to be remedied through a regime change caused majorly by the Iranian people themselves.
