Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Ali KhameneiReuters

Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad Nakhalah this week confirmed that Iran has a plan to start a multiple-front-war against Israel.

While in Tehran, where he met with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Nakhalah told Al-Alam TV that the next confrontation with Israel would see fronts in the north and the south of the country.

In the next confrontation with the occupation the axis of resistance will operate from the north to the south, Nakhalah said adding that “there will be open channels of collaboration, without any limitation or red lines.”

“Each Israeli attack will be answered with a reaction from the entire axis of resistance. All forces will participate in it, as they will form a single axis,” the Islamic Jihad leader bragged as he touted the “qualitative developments in the capabilities of the Palestinian resistance.”

Nakhalah also revealed the “entire axis of resistance will work together” and that it has a “plan to struggle against the ‘occupation’.”

The Palestinian Jihadist also hinted the ‘resistance front’ still has attack tunnels which would be used in the next war against Israel and would lead to the “defeat of the Zionist project” and its disappearance.

Nakhalah’s visit to Iran came after he went to Lebanon to meet with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasralah, another indication the so-called resistance front is preparing for war against Israel.

Khamenei on Monday promised the Islamic Jihad leader that the Palestinian Arabs would eventually “establish a government in Tel Aviv” and that with “the grace of Allah the Palestinian nation’s victory will take place in the near future.”

The Iranian Supreme Leader stepped up his belligerent rhetoric against Israel after President Donald Trump decided to cancel US participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal with Iran.

His message in all the Tweets he fired off over the past 8 months was that Israel will disappear by “the grace of the resistance.”

By upping up the pressure on Israel the Khamenei regime appears to be attempting to divert attention from the multiple problems in Iranian society.

Demonstrations against the Islamist regime continue with farmers and retirees taking to the streets in Tehran and Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city.

The protesters chanted slogans against the regime and demanded their right on a decent living while accusing the government of repression.

Iranian farmers demanded the regime provide them with water and said they would be willing to die to get their rights.

“Death to the oppressor, Peace be upon the farmer; farmer dies, he does not accept humiliation; victory comes from God, death to this deceiving government and the deceitful person,” the farmers and their wives chanted.

In the end, the Basiij militia of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps violently broke up the demonstrations and arrested a number of farmers and retirees.

Iran has witnessed increasing popular unrest and large demonstrations against the regime for a year now with truck drivers and entrepreneurs at Tehran’s largest market taking the lead.

Influential Iranians now say that that there’s a real possibility the political system in Iran will collapse.

Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Godfather of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, said this week “that there is no guarantee that the Islamic regime will continue to exist if it does not take into account several basic problems that require urgent attention.”

The possible successor of the current Supreme Leader Khamenei added that “issues of tolerance, meritocracy, easing repression and hypocrisy” should be dealt with urgently by the regime “before it’s too late.”

Other’s like Faezeh Hashemi, a former member of the Majlis (Iran’s parliament) and daughter of former Iranian president Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said in an interview with the paper Mostaghel that the Islamic ideology of the regime “has totally collapsed.”

“The principles have already collapsed. We are not yet talking about a physical collapse, but I see (physical collapse) as a definite possibility ,” according to Hashemi.

Influential Shiite cleric Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi this week admitted that the Iranian people are abandoning Islamic teachings and are increasingly becoming secular.

During an interview with the Islamist newspaper ‘9 Day’ at the end of December 2018 Yazdi said that the ideals of the Islamic Revolution “have not materialized” and said that these ideals included “political freedom, equality and economic progress.”

The spiritual leader indicated that he thinks the ideals of the Islamic revolution will only materialize in the next world which will arise after the coming of the Mahdi, the Shiite messiah who will establish a global Caliphate with Baghdad as its capital.

Iranian pundits claim that Khamenei is aware that a majority of Iranians want a Western-style democracy and that Yazdi indicated that the situation in Iran is “critical”.

Khamenei, however, has no intention of shifting his attention from the expansion of the Islamic Revolution to the hardships of the Iranian people and simply wants the Iranians to obey his rulings, according to one commentator.

Indeed, the regime seems to realize that it is in danger and this week ordered the ban of the photo sharing Instagram app, a very popular social media platform among the Iranian population.

Other social media services in Iran had been banned earlier for the same reason the regime decided to ban Instagram: fear of a decisive popular uprising.

The internal problems in Iran will probably have no effect on the continuing Iranian entrenchment in Syria and Iraq and the preparations for war against Israel until the regime falls.

A former Iraqi government official on Wednesday effectively admitted that Iran is trying to take over Iraq when he warned that the Islamic Republic is recruiting Sunni tribes in Iraq for a future battle against US Special Forces in Iraq.

Atheel al-Nujaifi the former governor of the Nineveh Province said that the Iranian government already enjoys a great hegemony over the Shi’ite-led government of Iraq.

The new Iraqi government includes pro-Iranian parties and is becoming increasingly anti-American.

After President Donald Trump visited US troops in Iraq at the end of December, Iraqi MP’s demanded an emergency session of the Iraqi parliament to discuss the expulsion of the US military from the country.