Dr. Carol E. B. Choksy

The son of a former IRGC commander admits the regime squandered over $50 billion on its failed Syria project, failed on the nuclear front and held no one accountable. Hamzeh Rahim-Safavi is the son of Yahya Rahim-Safavi, the former IRGC commander-in-chief and longtime military adviser to the supreme leadership. His admissions tear through several of the regime’s most important propaganda narratives. Safavi stated plainly that the Islamic Republic was defeated in Syria. He also rejected the religious explanation used to justify the intervention, saying the project was not primarily ideological or religious but a strategic attempt to reach the Mediterranean through military power, economic networks and proxy forces. For years, Iranians were told that their money and soldiers were being sacrificed to “defend the shrines.” Safavi has now admitted that this religious language concealed a geopolitical power project designed to establish a land corridor, sustain Hezbollah and expand the Islamic Republic’s regional influence. That project collapsed with Assad. Estimates indicate that the Islamic Republic spent between $30 billion and more than $50 billion supporting Assad. The money financed oil shipments, credit lines, military equipment, IRGC operations and foreign proxy forces from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Lebanon. Much of that investment is now effectively unrecoverable. The land corridor to the Mediterranean has been severed, supply routes to Hezbollah have been weakened and the economic agreements intended to recover Iran’s investment have largely collapsed. Safavi’s most damaging question was not simply why Syria was lost. It was why nobody was held responsible. He said that if he caused even minor financial damage at the University of Tehran, he would be required to repay it. Yet the regime spent tens of billions of dollars on a failed foreign intervention without identifying a single official responsible for the defeat. That is not an administrative oversight. It is how the Islamic Republic is designed. The IRGC can gamble the wealth of the Iranian people on foreign wars, proxies and ideological projects without parliamentary control, independent auditing or consequences when those projects collapse. Iranians absorb the inflation, sanctions and lost development while the architects of failure retain their power and receive new positions. Safavi delivered an equally devastating assessment of the nuclear strategy. After 20 to 30 years, the Islamic Republic has neither built a bomb nor secured the economic and diplomatic benefits available to a country complying with the international nuclear system. Instead, the regime imposed decades of sanctions, isolation, economic damage and military danger on the Iranian people without delivering the security it promised. Its nuclear threshold strategy achieved the worst of both outcomes. Iran paid the economic and geopolitical costs of being treated as a nuclear proliferator while remaining vulnerable to attacks on its leadership, military infrastructure and nuclear facilities. Billions more were consumed building enrichment facilities, underground complexes and an expansive security apparatus. The result was not deterrence. It was deeper isolation, repeated sabotage and a permanent threat of wider war. Once again, nobody was held accountable. Safavi then turned to the intelligence apparatus itself. He said the intelligence system was not merely failing but effectively “shut down.” He pointed to repeated assassinations, penetrations and precision strikes while asking why nobody had been dismissed, prosecuted or even publicly identified as responsible. This admission reaches the centre of the regime’s vulnerability. The Islamic Republic built one of the region’s most intrusive surveillance systems to monitor Iranian women, students, workers and dissidents. Yet that same security state repeatedly failed to protect senior commanders, nuclear personnel and sensitive military infrastructure. It is powerful against unarmed Iranians and dangerously penetrated against foreign intelligence services. Safavi also warned that the regime now faces the possibility of mass leadership targeting, the destruction of deep missile infrastructure and a nightmare scenario in which external war coincides with another nationwide uprising. His warnings reveal how dramatically the internal assessment differs from official propaganda. State media continues promising victory and deterrence while insiders describe defeat, intelligence collapse and existential vulnerability. The record is devastating. The Syrian project collapsed. An estimated $50 billion was lost. The nuclear strategy produced isolation without security. The intelligence apparatus failed to protect the leadership. No senior official was held accountable for any of it. The Islamic Republic calls this resistance. Its own insiders are beginning to call it what it is. Strategic failure without accountability.