The Islamist threat is reinventing itself

Despite the elimination of Iran’s main leaders and the signing of an agreement, the Revolutionary Guards are still in power and the Islamist threat, far from being averted, is reinventing itself on the West’s doorstep, explains geopolitical expert Michel Fayad, author of the book “Après la guerre? La menace à nos portes” (Fayard), in an interview with “Le Figaro”.

The memorandum of understanding signed in mid-June in Versailles between the United States and Iran fell apart within three weeks. What is the outcome of this war? Have the Revolutionary Guards emerged as the clear victors? “From the very outset of the US-Israeli attacks on 28 February, the United States and Israel eliminated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the head of the Defence Council Ali Shamkhani, the Defence Minister, the Chief of the Armed Forces and the Commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Pakpour. Iran’s military capabilities have been severely damaged and the economy is on its knees. Yet the Islamic Republic has survived and is proclaiming its victory. The agreement reached subsequently is neither a diktat nor a capitulation. It grants immediate exemptions for oil exports, promises the lifting of all sanctions, the unfreezing of assets and a fund of at least 300 billion dollars raised from regional partners – without a single US dollar. In return: the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the commitment – already made in the past – never to acquire nuclear weapons. There is no provision for the dismantling of either the nuclear or ballistic missile programmes. Three weeks later, the agreement was already defunct. Following the attack on three merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz on 6 and 7 July, the United States struck around ninety military targets in Iran in two night-time waves. Tehran responded with around a hundred drones and missiles against US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar. On 9 July, Donald Trump declared the ceasefire over and the memorandum null and void. The attacks continued during the funeral of the Supreme Leader, who was buried on Friday in Mashhad. And Iran, which controls the strait through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, is now asserting its right of passage there. That is all the agreement was worth.”

According to Fayad, “the Revolutionary Guards are the great survivors of this war. They now hold the reins of the regime single-handedly. On 8 March, Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, was appointed Supreme Leader. Since then, he has never appeared in public and communicates only in writing. His statement of 18 June is not a moderate endorsement of the protocol: in it, he declares that he had ‘a different opinion’ and that he gave his authorisation only on condition that President Pezeshkian undertook to safeguard the rights of the nation and the Resistance Front. This amounts to a pre-emptive disavowal, as responsibility for the agreement is shifted to the government. The organisational structure around him is military in nature. Mohsen Rezaee, who headed the Revolutionary Guards for sixteen years, has returned as military adviser to the new Supreme Leader.

‘As I explained back in June 2025,’ Fayad continues, ‘the two pillars are Rezaee and Mohammad Ali Jafari, the architect of the “mosaic defence” and head of the Revolutionary Guards for twelve years. They are joined by Ahmad Vahidi, former head of the al-Quds Force created by Rezaee, who was appointed to lead the Revolutionary Guards on 1 March, and Mohammad Bagher Zolqadr, Rezaee’s former right-hand man and Jafari’s brother-in-law, who was appointed secretary of the Supreme National Security Council on 24 March, a week after an Israeli attack had killed Ali Larijani, who had been in command of the Council. Larijani was a negotiator; Zolqadr is a Pasdaran. On that day, the Revolutionary Guards ceased to influence the regime: they took it over. Retaining a Supreme Leader allows for the preservation of Velayat-e faqih, that is, command over their allies: Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq. However, a framework agreement between Israel and Lebanon is currently being implemented which requires the disarmament of Hezbollah, and Baghdad has committed to disarming the Shia militias of the Hashd al-Shaabi by 30 September. The Revolutionary Guards did not merely survive. They have restructured the regime around themselves.”

At the end of his book, Fayad writes that “the real question is not when the war will be won, but: are we prepared for a long-term struggle?”. Does the agreement concluded by Donald Trump perhaps demonstrate that the West is not prepared to wage this struggle? “My book does not reduce this war to Iran or Hezbollah. The real conflict pits democracies against an ideology – Islamism, both Shia and Sunni – and against an economic dependence that ties our hands. An ideology cannot be destroyed from above, nor with a document signed in haste. This protocol perfectly illustrates our lack of preparedness. The Trump Administration opted for a compromise rather than a long-term strategy. Tehran, for its part, has preserved what matters most: its ideological apparatus, its networks of influence, its strategic capabilities — and has secured some relief from economic pressure. The real war begins now. It is ideological, financial, cultural and demographic. It is being waged in the Middle East, but also in Europe, particularly in France, both through Sunni networks funded by the oil monarchies and through Shia proxies. As long as we refuse to admit that the weakening of a regime does not make the ideology that drives it disappear – and may even give rise to other forms of it – we will remain vulnerable. The June 2026 agreement was not a victory: it was an admission of defeat. Are we prepared for a long-term struggle?”

In his book, Fayad demonstrates that we must look to the Middle East to understand what lies in store for the West. Is war on our doorstep? Who are our enemies? “The subtitle ‘La minaccia alle nostre porte’ is not a figure of speech. Islamism is a coherent revival of the legal and political dimensions of Islamic texts. Millions of Muslims reject this interpretation in their daily lives, but this personal choice does not refute the texts themselves. Our enemies are not Muslims, but a totalitarian ideology that has two facets. The first is Shia. It encompasses the Islamic Republic of Iran, its proxies, its sleeper networks, its espionage activities, attacks against Jewish or Israeli interests, as well as its links with organised crime, particularly drug trafficking and the DZ Mafia. The second is Sunni. It constitutes the largest base, as Sunnis outnumber Shias eight to one. It draws on Wahhabi, Salafi, Muslim Brotherhood and Tabligh networks, funded by petrodollars. It is from this milieu that the mass attacks suffered by France have sprung, from the Charlie Hebdo attack to the murder of Dominique Bernard. Weakening Iran does not eliminate the threat; it unleashes it, fuelling the rivalry between Shia and Sunni Muslims. The main players lying in wait are Erdogan’s Turkey – an Islamist power masquerading as a democracy – the oil monarchies, nuclear-armed Pakistan and Islamist Syria. War is already at our doorstep: foreign funding, networks of influence, digital propaganda and separatism. The first step is to name what we are fighting against.”