Weak Iran could see ‘hardest of hardliners’ take leadership, says former UK national security adviser

A “vicious factional struggle” in Iran to succeed ailing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could allow the “hardest of hardliners” to take power in Tehran, Britain’s former national security adviser said.

Mark Sedwill has also urged the UK to consider following the US lead on imposing maximum pressure sanctions on the regime once Donald Trump takes power on January 20.

After a year of setbacks for Iran, from heavy damage to proxies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the removal of Bashar Al Assad from power in Syria, Iran was “wounded but remains dangerous”, Mr Sedwill wrote in the foreword of a report by Policy Exchange, a London think tank.

The events, as well as declining support from Russia and China, presented Britain with “an unprecedented opportunity to neutralise a key strategic threat,” the report said.

The circumstances in Tehran also meant that the regime could be approaching a tipping point where its hardline leaders are removed from power, said Mr Sedwill.

“As we cannot predict events, the task for analysts and policymakers is to prepare against a range of contingencies,” he said. “One of those contingencies is that the most pivotal country in the Middle East, Iran, might be approaching a turning point.”

Iran’s network of armed proxies has been severely weakened, largely by Israeli air strikes.

Economically, the country is in distress, with inflation at an 80-year high making food and other costs prohibitive for citizens. But instead of addressing these issues the government has increased defence expenditure by 200 per cent.

While aligning itself to the maximum pressure policy, Britain should also insist that Mr Khamenei’s successor be “willing to liberalise at home and behave responsibly abroad” earning a “respectable place” in the international community.

“From crisis emerges opportunity,” added the former adviser who served from 2017 to 2020. “It is an opportunity for the UK to lead.”

Mr Sedwill served during the first Trump administration and said he saw “first-hand the value he [Trump] assigns to the UK-US relationship.”

The president’s determination to resume the policy of maximum pressure “presents their allies with a dilemma: align or seek an alternative”, he wrote.

While it was not for the West to determine who ruled Iran, it can “make clear that the right choice will bring benefits just as the wrong one will bring more of the same”.

Britain’s Arab allies also valued its “solidarity against their greatest security threat” and he suggested that in the current climate “the prize of a stable and prosperous Middle East, aligned with the West, is within reach”.

It should also be made clear, he said, that the UK would endorse attacks on the Iranian nuclear programme should evidence arise that Tehran is attempting a nuclear “breakout”, irrespective of the extent of UK participation in such operations.

His comments come in the Policy Exchange paper that argues for a more robust British policy against Iran to exploit its growing vulnerabilities, that would include stronger sanctions on oil exports, targeting its shadow tanker fleet and publicising Iranian interference operations in Britain.

Co-written by Sir John Jenkins, former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq, the report highlights how the Iranian regime is in “an unprecedentedly vulnerable position”.

If it aligned itself with the new US administration, Britain would have “a window of opportunity to shape the Middle East’s future by exploiting this weakness”.

The reward would be “neutralising a key strategic threat that sponsors terrorism, conducts kidnappings and assassination attempts on British soil” and views the country as a key political enemy, it said.