0:00 I'm Dan Curts Failen and this is the foreign affairs interview. [music] >> In my view, if we look ahead five years from now [music] and there's another strong man ruling Iran, one prediction I would feel fairly confident making is that that [music] strong man will not be wearing a turban. >> I'm Kesan Thur, deputy editor of foreign affairs. [music] Dan is away this week. At the end of December, protests erupted across Iran. The government [music] has since cracked down hard with potentially thousands of Iranians killed. It now seems possible that the United States might intervene. Via social media, President Donald Trump has told Iranian protesters that [music] help is on the way. We do not know yet
0:45 what, if anything, Washington will do, but the repressive regime of Ayatah Ali Kami is being pushed to the brink after punishing years of war and sanctions. Few observers of Iranian politics have thought more deeply about the regime and its future than Karim Sajjatpur. He is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [music] and he is the author of a recent essay in foreign affairs in which he underlines the fragility of the Ayatollah's regime and explores what might happen after its fall. I spoke to Sajatpur on the morning of January 12th about [music] the upheaval in Iran, the weakness and brutality of the regime, what US intervention can and cannot achieve, and about what kind of political order might
1:32 emerge in the coming years. [music] >> Karim, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. >> Wonderful to be with you. You know when we scheduled this conversation it was to discuss your magnificent essay in foreign affairs from October which was titled the autumn of the Ayatollas and in that essay you sketched you know the various possible futures ahead for Iran as its very belleaguered regime under you know the 86-year-old Ayati Ali tries to cling to power. We will get to that peace, but it seems that the future may be coming a little quicker than we
2:18 expected. You know, since the end of December, protests have spread across Iran. They now seem to be in all 31 provinces of the country. The government suspended the internet on January 8th, and there's been a fairly stunn. We're getting reports of hundreds of people killed [gasps] but you know, demonstrators are still taking to the streets. And we've seen much of this before. You know, in 2022 and in 2009, there were massive mass protests uh that provoked a very severe government crackdown that eventually quelled them. But there also seems to be now at the top levels of the Islamic Republic and among certain elites a kind of panic and alarm that was not as acute
3:05 in 2022 and 2009. This time seems genuinely different. And why is it so different? >> Well, it's a great question, Kanesk. And I do think that these protests uh have felt existential for the regime and that uh they've been happening in every single one of Iran's provinces nationwide and the slogans of the protesters are quite ferocious. People are essentially done with the regime. They're calling for regime change and um including in in places that we would have traditionally thought of as regime strongholds. uh the cities of K and Mashad which are you know Shiite strongholders the birthplace of Ayatah Kumeni um the town of Kumain you saw
3:50 widespread protest. So in the past sometimes it was easy to dis dismiss protests in Iran as oh these are just the elites of northern tan but these protests are are nationwide and they transcend socioeconomic divides they try and send ethnic divides so not just Iranian Persians but Kurds and Azeris and others um and you know there's women and and men young and old. And [clears throat] the the thing about the Islamic Republic of Iran is that it's authoritarian in several ways. It's not only politically authoritarian, but it's also economically and socially authoritarian. So there's profound political, economic, and social grievances. And one thing we may have talked about before, Kanesh, is that
4:36 when you are a theocracy ruling from a moral pedestal, you have pretensions of being morally superior, representing God's will on earth, but you are elbowed deep in repression and corruption. That is even more offensive to your population than if you're just a run-of-the-mill dictatorship. you know, Vladimir Putin doesn't have any pretensions of of carrying out God's will on earth. And so, for that reason, I think you can see it in the protest that people are just really fed up with a regime which has been, you know, so politically brutal, but has also profoundly mismanaged the country's economy. There's chronic water
5:22 shortages, chronic power outages, and even then they want to micromanage people's lives. You know, at least in in Maduro's Venezuela, they weren't trying to police what you're wearing. You know, whether or not you're showing too much hair or whether or not you're drinking alcohol. And so, I think for that reason, the Islamic Republic is a regime which from I would say upwards of 80% of Iranians, it has no redeeming qualities. And and I now describe it as a zombie regime. It's a regime whose ideology is dying. Its legitimacy is dying. Its economy is dying. Its supreme leader Ayat is dying. 86 years old. But just like zombies, it still has the capacity for lethal force and that's what keeps it in power.
6:08 >> You mentioned that this the parless state of the Iranian economy. uh inflation is something like 50% maybe 70% for food prices. Thran is so starved of water that officials have been even considering relocating the capital in the coming decades. And Masoud Peshkan, the ostensibly more moderate president of Iran, [snorts] has sort of very publicly acknowledged some of the economic grievances of the protesters and suggested that there might be some coming economic overhaul, but do you think it's too late now for these sorts of technocratic measures to to to have any effect? Have the protests very much mushroomed beyond their material and economic causes?
6:55 >> So one thing I want to emphasize is that the 1979 revolution, it commenced in January of 1978. It culminated in January of 1979. So that process took 12 months until the sha left Iran and then Kumeni returned a couple weeks later. And so these protests in Iran, even if they are crushed in the near term, which is a possibility, my sense is that the anger, the political, economic, social grievances fueling them will not have gone away. And any attempts by the regime to address these underlying grievances are likely to be insufficient because I think the reality is that a
7:44 majority of people have realized that you that Iran will never fulfill its enormous potential as a nation as long as it's organizing principle is death to America and death to Israel rather than long live Iran. you know, uh the one of the slogans you commonly hear from protesters is is they say, uh, forget about Lebanon, forget about Gaza, think about us. And so for the last decades it's been a government which is um in the perception of of many people has used the country's national wealth to fund Arab militias uh which have which has only isolated the country and then a lot of the big national projects which the Islamic Republic tried to mobilize
8:29 support for namely the nuclear program you know that nuclear program of Iran probably cost the country upwards of half trillion dollars when you consider not just the sunk cost but also the opportunity costs and the sanctions and isolation the lost oil revenue for a nuclear program which wasn't producing any oil and nor what did it end up being a deterrent because you know both Israel and and then the United States uh bombed it and so I think there's just been one failure after the other for for this Iranian regime and I'm skeptical that they can rehabilitate themselves. Now, what I also believe is that um violence can delay their funeral. Um that's
9:15 possible. It can allow Ayat to die as supreme leader rather than be killed or or deposed. That's possible. But I don't think that this status quo is sustainable for that much longer. You described the opposition in your October essay as too fractured to unite but too persistent to simply vanish. Would you stand by that description today and are the protests revealing any new dimensions to the nature of opposition in Iran? So I think what's different now as opposed to when I first wrote that in September was if if you remember you saw the the much longer first draft version of it and I had seven scenarios instead of five and one of the scenarios was looking at the role
10:03 of uh of Resapah the former crown prince of Iran and and I entitled that section Iran is Spain. Could Iran transition to some type of a of a constitutional monarchy like like Spain? And so the role of Razap in these protests has been elevated because whereas in the aftermath or even during the 12-day war last June he was also inciting people to go to the streets and there wasn't a single protest this time around his name is being chanted in many parts of Iran and not just north even as I said in very traditional cities ostensibly traditional cities like Mashad and um people calling his name and saying you Pavi will return long live the king Javeid Sha and I think because of the
10:50 fact that to the extent there's like a overarching ideology of these protests I I do think it's nationalism it's this idea of a national reclamation you know our country has not been Iran the last five decades it's been the Islamic Republic our national interests haven't been prioritized this is not a government that has been advancing the security and well-being of Iranians. It's been trying to destroy Israel. And so I think for for many people embodies frankly by default that idea of kind of a nationalist leader because the regime is so effective at killing and decapitating effective leadership. And so he's been outside the country for five decades. and through some of the
11:37 prominent satellite television channels he he's now been able to communicate effectively especially with younger generation Iranians and you know Kesh this is a society in which 3/arters of Iranians were born after the 1979 revolution so they have no recollection of how things were and frankly that has been helpful because there's a a nostalgia about a period that they didn't experience so you know obviously things weren't perfect before 1979 otherwise a revolution would have But when they see the images and they hear the stories of 19 pre979, there's a great deal of nostalgia about the country's economy, its place in the world, its social freedoms, and I and I think to the extent that people are are are yearning for that normal life. Again, he is the inspirational leader
12:23 for many of them. Now, Jack Goldstone, the great author of a book on revolution, says that every revolution needs two kinds of leadership. You need both inspirational and organizational leadership. And that's been I think one of the things that's been been lacking um is organizational leadership on the ground. >> We'll get to uh Levi a little bit later, but I wanted to ask you first about the regime that's still in place. How would you describe the the sort of key components of the Islamic Republic, the the groups and the elites that are holding it together? And who benefits the most from the persistence of Khame rule? At this point, my shortcut for understanding Iran is to just think about a pyramid and Ayat is at the very
13:09 top of that pyramid. But the most important rungs below him are military people, revolutionary guardsmen. So in theory, we still call this a clerical regime. But in my view, it's become more of a military regime and clerical guard. The institution of the revolutionary guards are the most powerful political and economic institution in Iran. They've long eclipsed the institution of of the clergy and they have become kind of a military-industrial complex. They run major businesses. They run the country's ports. Friends of mine who who have done business in Iran say that you can't really become prominent in business without having to work with the revolutionary guards. has been a
13:55 skillful commander of the revolutionary guards in that he very meticulously appoints their top few tiers of leadership and he shuffles them with some frequency every few years so none of them can get too comfortable and their role and feel like they have an independent power base and the relationship between and the revs I would describe as symbiotic it's been politically expedient for it's been economically expedient for the revolutionary guards and you know he relies on them and so if uh you see the security forces start to fray or splinter which we haven't seen at all that would really probably be the end of Ayat's rule.
14:41 >> How important at this point is the role of ideology in in providing a kind of cohesiveness to the regime. You know, I think you quoted elsewhere the the line that at the at the start of the revolution, the regime was composed of 80% ideologues and 20% charlatans, and now it's the reverse, 20% ideologues and 80% charlatans. So, what role does ideology still play? And if it plays a minimal one or an increasingly minimal one, then is it merely expedience and and the bottom line that allows the elites to adhere to the husk [laughter] of the clerical establishment? That's a great question and I love that quote from a friend of mine who was a professor in Tehran who indeed said that
15:27 at the beginning of the revolution the regime was 80% idologues, true believers um and then 20% charlatans who didn't really believe but it was politically and financially expedient for them. And now it's the exact opposite. They're only probably 20% at most kind of true believers left in the regime and 80% are just charlatans who who go along for the ride. And many of my friends who studied the Soviet Union would have say the same thing about Moscow in 1985 that there were few really true believing communists left at that point. What's relevant here is that in my view the supreme leader still is a true believer. He still believes in revolutionary ideology. And what's key to understanding harmony is that he also believes is that if you deviate from
16:14 revolutionary ideals, meaning if you try to reform the system, that's not going to prolong your shelf life. That's going to accelerate your collapse. And for many, the experience of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union was very formative. And he cited this before that soviet Union collapsed when Gorbachev tried to reform it. And I think that's probably the view of Vladimir Putin. And frankly, Kesh, this is um an observation pointed out by some of the great political philosophers like Tokill and Machaveli that the most dangerous moment for any bad government is when it tries to reform itself. So we commonly refer to people like Ayat and their ilk as hardliners. They refer to themselves as usulo principalists. And what that means is that they're loyal to
17:00 the principles of the revolution. And in my view, there's kind of three grand principles left. Death to America, death to Israel, and the mandatory hijab, which called the flag of the Islamic Revolution. And it's notable, Kanesk, that even though, you know, I I'm told like now in the city of Tehran, more women than not are not no longer even wearing the hijab, and that's throughout the country as well. Even though the Berlin wall of the hijab has fallen, has still not uh lifted the ban on it because he believes that once you start to seed your principles and abandon your principles that's like taking a sledgehammer to the pillars of a building the whole thing will collapse
17:46 on top of their head. >> Yes. He's sort of terrified of the idea of Islamic Republic's glass nost basically. Right. >> Absolutely. >> Just sticking with Kame he's 86 years old now. Let's put aside for a second any sort of drastic kind of foreign intervention. What do you see as his current playbook? Is it merely repression as we saw in the wake of 2022 and 2009? Or are there other measures that he might endorse to to quell the protests? Whether it's engineering some kind of overt succession or transition to his son Mushtaba. if you were a fly in the wall in his bunker, what kinds of conversations do you think uh he's having right now?
18:33 >> So, I think in the immediate term, the conversation is we need to restore order at all costs, even if that means killing a lot of people, which they have done. That's what we're going to do. And you never take a step back when your population is rising up. There was a iconic moment in the 1979 revolution in late 1978, I believe November 1978 when the protests against the Sha were mushrooming. The Shaw went on state television. And he apologized to people. And he very famously said, I've heard the voice of your revolution. And one of my first projects at Carnegie was a monograph I did on Ayat two decades ago. And I found a speech from in which he said, you know, the sha thought by going
19:19 on television and apologizing to us that we were going to accept his apology and we're, you know, he was going to pacify the protesters and we were going to go home and and the revolution would stop. And just the opposite happened. That's when we the protesters, the revolutionaries saw how weak and vulnerable the Shaw appeared. We smelled blood and we pounced. And for that reason, his mentality now is that do everything to restore order, including shoot and kill. Once you get beyond that, I do think that he will allow his um diplomats to try to send out feelers. You know, his public voice is always going to remain defiant. Defiant both towards protesters internally and
20:04 defiant towards the United States. That's not going to change. You're not going to hear consiliatory gestures from but he may allow foreign minister Adakchi to go send out feelers to Steve Woodoff uh as we've read about in the last couple bit days or or to go try to talk to the Europeans. But for me the the best and perhaps only indication to really understand Iran's conduct is to listen to the statements of Ayal and his senior revolutionary guard commanders. Now what happens when and if they restore order and they now feel that okay they can make a decision about the future. The challenge he's going to face is that there was really only two people
20:52 in the conversation for succession to him that we know of. Um one was the former president Ibrahim Rayi who died in a plane crash two years ago and the other person is his son Moshaba and the profound challenge faces is that you know came to power opposing hereditary leadership of the sha you know issued these fatwa saying hereditary leadership is unislamic and so him bequething power to his son is is not going to have any legitimacy the on Moshaba. You know himself had been president for 8 years before he inherited power from Ayati in 1989. But I would say if he tries to bequeath power to his son or any
21:39 likeminded hardline official, a hardline cleric, in my view, it's not going to be sustainable. And I don't want to get ahead of the conversation, but that that is one of the scenarios we looked at uh which I described as Iran as North Korea. You described the pyramid with Khani at the top and security services beneath him. What would it take for those security forces or even just elements within those security forces, the Islamic guards especially, to abandon him? How could the opposition encourage defection among their ranks? Or is that a real long shot at this point? Up until now, the security services, the revolutionary guards in harmony have seen their fate intertwined. They're basically have seen themselves as stuck
22:25 at the hip. They live together, they go down together. Now what we saw during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 is that when protests against the leader of Tunisia, Benali and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, when they began to proliferate and endure, at some point the militaries in those countries, in particular Egypt, said, "We're going to have to cut loose the dictator in order to preserve our own power and authority." And we see now in Egypt, you know, 15 years later, Cece rules probably with much greater authority than host Mubarak did 15 years ago. That is the big question inside Iran. Could the revolutionary guards, if protests persist, at some point could we
23:12 see a scenario whereby they decide to cut loose Ayat to try to preserve their own economic and political power? Absolutely. I think because at the end of the day, human beings are self-interested and so if they see that the ship is sinking, they may try to eliminate the 86 year old man and try to maintain power for themselves. The question is, it's rare in history that that works because when protests have gotten to that point, they usually reach a tipping point whereby any lastditch efforts a regime tries to make are unsuccessful. And so, um, you know, that's why we call it the tipping point. And so, I'm also skeptical that
24:00 that can be kind of a sustainable new equilibrium of senior revolutionary guard commanders who have been espousing hardline revolutionary ideology for two, three decades suddenly becoming, you know, secular autocrats overnight. >> We'll be back after a short break. And now back to my conversation with Karim Sajatpur. I want to talk a bit about the spectre of foreign intervention. You know, the regime has predictably been swift as it has long done to blame the protests on US and Israeli interference. But you know, the events of the past few years have shown just how immensely penetrated the country is by Israeli and US
24:46 intelligence and that the regime is in many ways truly compromised. You know, thanks to the US and Israel, Iran no longer has dominance over its own skies. Have the reverses that Iran has suffered notably in the June war, but before then in Israel's campaigns against Iranian proxy groups in the Middle East in the last few years, has that played any role in galvanizing the protests or encouraging Iranians to think of the regime as as much weaker than it was before? I think absolutely given the regime's regional humiliations by Israel, Israel having decimated a lot of Iran's regional proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah and the June war in which, you know, Iranians woke up one day and they
25:32 read the news that almost two dozen senior revolutionary guard commanders were just eliminated overnight in their bedrooms and in their bunker. And so that was deeply humiliating for the regime. And I do remember at the time Kanesk in the immediate aftermath of the June war there came to be a conventional wisdom among many analysts of Iran that there was a rallying around the flag effect. In my view, this was only going to be a shortterm temporary sugar high for the Islamic Republic because what we've seen throughout history is that um when nent revolutionary governments have or there's an external military intervention, it often times can help
26:17 them consolidate power. That's what happened to Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs invasion. It happened to the Islamic Republic in 1980 when Saddam Hussein invaded. It helped Kmeni and the revolutionaries consolidate power. But when you have a latestage military dictatorship which is engaged in what I would describe as like a an elective war, a war of choice. You know, death to Israel, a war with Israel is an elective war for the Islamic Republic. It's an ideological war. Those types of military humiliations for latestage dictatorships can actually serve to accelerate their demise. uh Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan is a is a good example of that. The humiliation of Argentina and the Faulland Islands as well. So I I do
27:04 think that the Islamic Republic's global regional uh domestic military humiliation has certainly played a role in the view of its people that you know this regime is incompetent and and it's it's much weaker than we thought. Uh, President Trump is reportedly weighing his options and the last time he weighed his options, he bombed Iran in June. Now, to be clear, there's no immediate sense, we're talking on the morning of Monday, January 12th, that American strikes are imminent. But what do you see as the potential benefits of some kind of US or indeed Israeli military action in Iran at this point? Well, I really look at historic
27:50 precedent. You know, what are the precedents of external military invasions against a brutal autocrat repressing its population where that's ended well and you know, unfortunately, there not many examples of that throughout history. I think for probably many Americans, obviously there's the Iraq war in Afghanistan, but you know, perhaps more recently for for many people, Libya, right? the um the NATO operation against against Gaddafi which on one hand I I think potentially did prevent um the mass violence of Gaddafi but you know it hasn't in hindsight been viewed as as a success. Um the operation against Milosovich I I think would be considered more of a success. But I
28:36 guess in in my view Kishkin if I were thinking about this in the US government, one of the things that I've all would have already started doing or at least started thinking about are offensive cyber operations to try to tear down Iran's digital iron wall. Because what this regime has been doing and they they've telegraphed this they've done it so many times so we knew to expect it is that they essentially throttle the internet and they throttle uh satellite dishes and and cellular networks in order to kill people in the dark and the country has had for the last four or five days uh 1% connectivity so the people in Iran
29:23 can't communicate with the outside world they can't communicate with one another. None of the images or videos are coming out with the exception of some people who have access to Starlink terminals. We don't know what's happening in Iran. And so I I do think that would be whether it's the US government or the Israeli government or anyone else, anyone that can restore Iran's connectivity to the world, that's going to be hugely hugely appreciated and will actually make a difference for protesters. But I don't think that there is you know there's unfortunately no um kind of surgical operation in which you can just eliminate and bring about quick change inside Iran because you have 150,000 revolutionary
30:09 guardsmen and the trick for any Iranian opposition is how do you flip those people you know how do you flip the mentality of those people to think that they're actually better off jumping off from the regime than than staying with it and that's a task which you know the US can be partly influential but but also it has a lot to do with how people anticipate the day after is going to be in Iran. >> So you would at this point you would dissuade anybody in the United States or Israel indeed from thinking that some kind of targeted campaign of assassinations or or bombings will truly help the the Iranian protesters. You know, I would before I would comment definitively on that, I would just like
30:55 to see I don't want to pretend I'm a military expert, but look at what are the options that are before them, what is being discussed. I think one of the challenges in this current Trump administration is that it's administration which I haven't it's not deliberative. I I don't know, you know, I've been in DC for 25 years. Uh, if you were to ask me and every other administration, who do you talk to to understand Iran's strategy at the Pentagon or State Department or White House, I'd be able to tell you. But this administration, it's it's not clear who is thinking really hard, strategically, deliberatively about these issues. You know, more often it's it's statements that the president will make off the cuff and then the bureaucracy uh tries to mobilize to provide options. But you know that is um you know you you can't
31:43 change regimes just with true social posts. >> But you're also suggesting that you can't change regimes just through targeted strikes. >> So I I think what's critical here is to not think about just you know to quote Tom Freriedman not just the day after but the day after the day after. So, does the United States or does Israel have the capacity to eliminate Ayat? I suspect that they do. Will eliminating Ayat lead to a transformation of the Islamic Republic? I'm skeptical of that. You know, it could. This is it's totally unpredictable, but it's he he he is at the top of the power pyramid, but there there are people below him, too. It's not just kind of eliminating Saddam
32:28 Hussein or eliminating Gaddafi. And again, for officials who may think that it's either kill or be killed, they're going to continue to kill. >> So, regime change via Starlink, not truth social. [laughter] You you mentioned that the there was this sugar high after the 12-day war of of Iranians sort of rallying around the flag after the American and Israeli bombing. Are you worried that any sort of overt intervention or military intervention by those of powers could indeed even if it's just a sugar high have have the effect of dampening the momentum of the protests? >> It's possible. What I what I've found in Iran is that outside action
33:13 or the threats of outside action, they often times just accentuate existing political polarization. So if you're a supporter of the government, and I suspect that the regime has maybe 15 at most 20% of popular support, any outside intervention is just going to further amplify those supporters and and they're going to further entrench and dig in and be willing to kill a lot of people to stay in power. But at the same time, I I think that um for the opponents of the regime, I don't think outside intervention gets them to change teams. And this was my argument during the June war. I don't think that disgruntled Iranians for political, economic, and social reasons after the June war said,
34:00 "You know what? We're now going to support the Islamic Republic." And I think, you know, that that was borne out with these protests. >> To what extent could outside powers um help prop up the regime? So do China and Russia have the will or even indeed the capability to ensure the survival of the Islamic Republic? >> So I think China already has obviously it's Iran's almost lone economic partner. Now 90% of Iran's oil exports go to China although China demands a deep discount but uh China in my view is more important to the Islamic Republic of Iran than America was to the Shaw's Iran and it also provides uh Iran surveillance technologies which it uses.
34:48 Russia is different in that you know Russia and and Iran have competitive economies. Both of them are energy producers. But Russia has definitely provided Iran aid and and guidance uh to do what Putin does which is to you know repress and and stay in power. And here let me just take a quick detour uh Kesh to say that I believe that China and Russia actually have very different interests visa v Iran because Russia benefits from the Islamic Republic being in power. They benefit from an isolated Iran which doesn't compete with Russia and European gas markets because it's doesn't have LG technology, isn't able to exploit its vast gas reserves. It is punching way below its weight as an oil
35:35 producer. You know, there was a time that Iran was producing uh 6 million barrels per day uh before the revolution. Now those numbers are are less than half of that. And so, you know, Russia doesn't want to see Iran compete with them. and Iran's historic sphere of influence, Central Asia. So for so many reasons which I can cite, I think Russia continues to benefit and and wants an isolated Iranian regime. China on the other hand in my view would actually benefit from Iran which fulfills its enormous potential as an energy superpower. If Iran were producing 6 million barrels per day of oil, if it exploits its vast gas reserves, in my view, that's positive for for China. If Iran starts to play a role in the Middle
36:22 East that is not destabilizing, which increases the risk premium of energy prices, but stabilizing, in my view, China wants a stable Middle East. And Iran is a is a closed market right now. It's in my view and I think I I wrote this in the essay. It's probably the largest population of people in the world that is for decades been closed off from the global economic and political system. 92 million people have basically not been part of the global economy and and Iran which has opened up to global commerce and finance in my view that's net positive for China. So I I do think that, you know, Russia is going to do everything in their power, and I'm sure they've been doing it already behind the scenes to make sure
37:09 that the Islamic Republic doesn't fall. The other relevant factor here are some of the regional militias, the Shiite militias, you know, is there's been a lot of reports that Iran has been bringing in Iraqi Shiite militias to help them to repress the protests, potentially Lebanese Hezbollah as well. And that commonly becomes a theme among Iranians which just amplifies their dislike of the regime because they'll say this is not this is almost an occupying regime, right? They're using foreign mercenaries, Arab mercenaries to repress this Iranian desire for self-determination. >> Are there any reasons to fear the collapse of the regime and whatever order it still provides? Um are there scenarios that you worry about in terms
37:55 of turmoil in the country or is the end of the regime something that everybody should want just as a matter of course? >> You know one of the scenarios additional scenarios Kaneska I wrote about which wound up on the cutting room floor. We alluded to it briefly, but it was Iran as Yugoslavia. And that is a scenario which I know some people worry about that um could you have actually the country being torn apart into different ethnic enclaves and that's frankly something that the regime commonly evokes that you know deluge right if if the Islamic Republic falls Iran will no longer be and the country is just going to be torn apart. And I I think that is a very lowrisk probability for a couple
38:43 reasons. Number one, Iran has 2500 years history as a nation state. So it's not a 20th century posttoman creation. There is this cohesive Iranian uh national identity which Iran's disperate ethnic groups I think feel part of. You know about 50% of Iranians are Persian about a quarter are Azari but distinguishing Azeris and Persians it's kind of like saying Italian-Americans and Irishameans you know the Azeris Ayat is is Ozari the terron bazar is dominated by Azaris so you know they're they speak Turkish but all of them speak or they speak Azari a Turk language but Persian is the lingua frana of the nation now you do also have
39:30 ethnic groups on the periphery um which have have suffered tremendously under the Islamic Republic. Uh the largest being the Kurds, Iranian Kurds. But you know, even Iranian Kurds, if you speak to them, they will say Kurds culturally, linguistically are much closer to Iranians, to Persians, than they are to Turks or to Arabs. So they feel part of the fabric of Iranian society, even though they've suffered great repression. Now you also have some minorities like Arabs who are in oil rich regions and baluchis that are on the border with Pakistan that are not only ethnic minorities but also in some cases religious minorities. They're Sunni not Shiite and they've also you know felt totally repressed and and abused and disenfranchised deeply
40:15 disgruntled but they're not large enough in size to really uh break off uh into another um to form another nation. So I do think that there is certainly a possibility that when and if political change happens in Iran, you'll start to see agitations uh on the periphery of the country among ethnic minority groups. But I I don't think that any of them have kind of a viable plan B to secede from Iran or that that is the hope of many of them. I think that for the vast majority of them they just want to live in a in a you know with far greater dignity and you know economic possibilities and you know hopefully that whatever leadership comes next in
41:01 Iran will have a much more inclusive view and and as as I said prioritize Iran's national and economic interests before revolutionary ideology. I would really urge listeners of this podcast to read the essay in the magazine in which you go through a number of different scenarios that could follow the end of Khame's rule. And I'll just do a a brief rundown here. You say that Iran could follow the path of postsviet Russia in which an ideological regime gives way to the rule of a strong man who fixates on grievancriven nationalism. It could go the way of postmau China in which an authoritarian regime bends to accommodate some practical reform. Even you know Vali Naser echoed that idea
41:49 when he wrote in December that Iranians want their own Dang Xiaoing. Worse perhaps and I think you mentioned this earlier Iran could become more like North Korea, more ideological, more isolated, more brutal perhaps with the persistence of some form of clerical regime. Then you suggested Iran could be like Pakistan in effect entirely run by the military. And lastly, I think and maybe this was slightly more implausible, Iran could resemble Turkey under President Erdogan, a kind of populist authoritarian regime with a facade of democracy. As [snorts] events have unfolded in recent months and indeed in in recent weeks, do you think any of these possibilities are more or less likely? It's a great question and I've thought
42:34 about this a lot and if I were to be rewriting the essay now, [snorts] I'm not sure I would have uh changed any of these scenarios. Perhaps I would have fought uh with you guys to include those additional scenarios from Spain and Yugoslavia just because you know Resvy's name is being chanted. Let me say from the outset that for me during the um in the aftermath of uh of the June war when I was doing research, one of the statistics that jumped out at me in my research is that from World War II to the present, only one in five authoritarian transitions lead to democracy. Uh more often, four out of five times
43:20 authoritarian transitions lead to another form of authoritarian regime. And one of the tasks that all of us have Kanesk in this world of writing about foreign affairs and geopolitics is to be careful not to conflate our hopes and our analysis, right? Because I would have loved to have written a piece about, you know, how Iran is going to become like Denmark and and Sweden and and Norway. And I actually believe that Iranian society is ripe and mature enough for representative uh government, for representative democracy. But I also think that you know leadership is is totally critical and um you know absent cohesive democratic uh opposition um it's not going to go to
44:06 democracy on its own. So in the North Korea scenario that I laid out, my argument was that if Iran chooses to bequeath power from Ayat to his son Moab, it's essentially the country becoming like a North Korea style hereditary ideological dictatorship. or even if they if tries to bequeath power to a likeminded hardline cleric meaning that that scenario is only sustainable with overwhelming brutality and isolation like North Korea because otherwise there's virtually no constituency uh in
44:53 Iran to be North Korea. In fact, what I always argue it's a it's a regime which in some ways resembles North Korea, but it's a society that aspires to be like South Korea. And so my my view is that if they try to bequeath power to mob, that's not going to be a stable equilibrium. And there's a wonderful Iranian intellectual whom I quoted, a guy called Ahmed Castravi who lived during the 1940s. And Castravi was himself came from a religious background. And he and he had this quote in which he said he said this in the 1930s I believe he said that Iran owes one government to the mullas so they can essentially expose their incompetence. And you know my argument that that debt has been settled uh you
45:39 know after five decades now people have gotten that out of their system. And in my view, if we look ahead 5 years from now and there's another strong man ruling Iran, one prediction I would feel fairly confident making is that that strong man will not be wearing a turban. It's going to be someone who is not a cleric, much more likely to be someone who's a product of the intelligence or security services. >> Do you see at the moment any likely candidates to play that role? There are individuals who are auditioning for that role almost in real time. You know, one example is the current speaker of parliament, Muhammad balib. He is a former senior revolutionary
46:26 guard commander. He was a pilot. He is a veteran of the Iran Iraq war. He was very close to Sulmani. He became mayor of Tehran. He's run for president several times. I think he finished second each time. And he's been speaker of parliament the last years. He's someone who, you know, publicly likes to portray himself as both a fireb breathing revolutionary but also as this technocrat who can uh get things done. When he first came on the political scene, he once described him himself as a Hezbollah Razasha. So Resasha is kind of the the atatur of modern Iran, you know, the first kind of secular autocrat. And there's a great deal of
47:12 reverence for Resa among many Iranians because he's viewed as the guy who who built modern Iran. You know, even among supporters of the Islamic Republic, there's a certain kind of admiration for what Resell was able to do in his years in power. And so people are kind of auditioning in that role. And I suspect Kesh that what happens is that after leaves the scene, however he leaves the scene, whether it's he dies naturally or he's deposed or he's killed, I think the winning argument inside Iran, if you're an aspiring politician or or an aspiring strongman, is not going to be revolutionary ideology. It's not going to be death to America. It's not going to be death to Israel. It's going to be
47:57 long live Iran. Let's make Iran great again. A certain kind of national populism and I do think economic populism will likely play well in Iran because this is a nation which in my view should be a G20 nation. It has the human resources and natural resources to be a G20 nation and instead it's a global pariah. So a populism, economic populism, and this can often times lead you in very bad places as we saw with Chavez in Venezuela. But someone who comes and says, "I'm going to put the oil money on your dinner tables," you know, that I think will resonate. Now the last thing I want to say here in relation to aspiring strong men what we've also seen historically is that
48:44 oftentimes leaders emerge in the aftermath of an authoritarian collapse like a Vladimir Putin who were mid-ranking figures. They were not senior enough to be associated with the collapsing regime, but they understood power well enough to know how to accumulate it in the successor regime. And so Putin was a mid-ranking KGB official. And you know, after the chaos of postsviet Russia, he was able to benefit from that and and come and and kind of fill that power vacuum. substituting communism with grievance-driven Russian nationalism. And so I I do think it's quite possible
49:32 that the next powerful leader of Iran is not someone that any of us even know because anyone senior enough like a Kalibuff to be associated with the Islamic Republic is likely to be tarnished. But someone who is kind of a mid-ranking figure in security or intelligence forces may not have a tarnished national reputation, but may understand how to navigate power in a way that they could come to power themselves. >> So then am I right in thinking that you're suggesting that the sort of nationalism that's animating these protests could become the ethos of a future authoritarian dispensation in the country? Yes, I think that's a good way to put it. And there's a wonderful essay
50:19 that George Orwell wrote many decades ago which is just entitled on nationalism. And he talks about the different kinds of nationalism. You know, the the best kind of nationalism we could describe as patriotism, right? It's um love of one's country but not hatred of of others and an inclusive positive nationalism. Then you you do have fa fascism, right? This kind of extreme nationalism that can lead you to self-destruction as we saw in Germany and and in Japan. And I think I don't know if this quote is from Orwell or or it's only apocryphal, but he said, you know, patriots are proud of their country for what it does and nationalists are proud of their country no matter what it does. And I I do worry
51:05 that um uh on one hand I understand the desire for a national renaissance among Iranians that after five decades of revolutionary ideology the antidote to that for many people is Iranian nationalism but you know that can be manifested in in destructive ways as well whether it's a kind of a ethnic nationalism Persians against others or it's a form of fascism, you know, against Arabs or against neighboring countries. So, calibrating that nationalism in a positive way is going to be a difficult task. >> One option we could not discuss in your essay because it had not happened yet.
51:50 Was Iran as Venezuela? >> That is its immediate leaders removed but the rest of the regime somehow intact and now potentially huing to an American line. Do you see that as any kind of possibility? >> I'm skeptical that it can be a possibility, but I've spoken to a few people who are either in the current Trump administration or served in Trump's first administration who have told me, and this was as of 10 days ago. Their views may have changed, but they told me that that is a deal that this administration would welcome if they can get rid of. I'm very skeptical they can pluck out of Thrron the way that they captured Maduro
52:36 out of Caracus. But if somehow senior officials in the regime or senior Redgard commanders got rid of Kami and were willing to do a deal with America, uh I think that's something that the Trump administration would welcome. And you know, this is the the challenging thing about if you're uh both a foreign uh ally of the United States under Trump and a foreign adversary is that this is a president who he has shown himself capable of wanting to do deals with Iran and dropping bombs on Iran. And the previous military campaign against Iran last June, that commenced 2 days before negotiations were meant to begin between the United States and Iran. So, uh, even
53:23 though Trump is, as of as recently as as yesterday, I I heard him express support for doing a deal with Iran, he's also threatened that the United States is locked and loaded and and prepared to take military action against Iran. So, this certainly um, you know, is keeping the Iranian regime on its toes. I have to confess that I'm a little surprised um about all the talk about Raza Pakvi son of the depos who is in the United States and his potential role in the future of the country either returning or shephering some kind of transformation. Do you think he has a significant constituency in Iran? You did mention that a lot of young Iranians have no recollection or no memory of the the the era of the sha or do you think the role he'll play is a symbolic one or
54:10 from the outside? How do you see you know [laughter] affecting events in the coming weeks and months? So he's been very open uh and clear about saying that his role is to be a transitional figure in Iran to help the country transition to democracy. And if people decide that they want to restore constitutional monarchy, he would be willing to play that role. But his goal is not to become an absolute monarch like his father or his grandfather. And when he speaks directly to the Iranian public on uh satellite TV channels and social media, uh his message I think resonates with the population which is
54:57 just totally cynical about the prospect of their regime reforming and doesn't have any other alternative opposition figures inside the country given how repressive and effective the regime is in decapitating alternative leaders. So given this as I said this combination of nostalgia for how life was before the revolution economically much more prosperous uh socially uh free and Iran had a dignified place in the world rather than being a global pariah and I I do think kesh that um the last two decades of events in the Middle East are relevant here because whereas 15 20
55:43 years ago I think there was probably more folks in the Iranian opposition using the word democracy, you know, after America's failures to try to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan and just the diminishment of democratic countries everywhere. You know, dem there's a perception democracy has lost its luster. You know, that's impacted itself in Iran. And also uh for many Iranians one reference point is is the United Arab Emirates and Dubai which people go to frequently. Well that's not a democracy but people seem to be doing well and and are happy there. And so and you know Muhammad bin Salman is another example for people someone who is uh leading a social transformation in Saudi
56:28 Arabia. So, as I wrote about in the piece, there's the yearning for what they say in Persian is zenia normal. Uh, normal life, a normal life in which, you know, we we have economic opportunities. It's not necessarily democratic, but it's also not politically oppressive the same way the Islamic Republic is, but socially free. So, let's uh they want to be able to watch what they want. um have free access to media, to be able to go out with their boyfriend, their girlfriend, to drink alcohol, to have a normal life, I think is is the yearning. And for many people, Resa is is kind of the person around whom they've coalesed
57:15 to help lead them to that destination. Now, he has an enormous challenge in that he's been outside the country for 47 years. And if you ask him about the leaders whom he admires, he will cite people like Martin Luther King and Havl and Gandhi. And if you ask many of his most passionate supporters whom they admire, they will say Resa, his grandfather who was like an absolute autocrat. So there's a tension there between Razap's aspirations for Iran and some of the aspirations of his supporters who want to see him come to power and hang all the mullas and all of the you know existing uh leadership of the Islamic Republic and and that tension I think
58:01 has inhibited his ability to do what needs to be done to bring down the regime which is you have to flip some of the um discontented political elites of the Islamic Republic, including the security forces, and to kind of flip them, you have to reassure them that, you know, they're not going to be hung in Iran's tomorrow. And so that is a task which I think any opposition leadership in Iran faces. >> You know, you discuss in the piece what some have called the paranoid style of Iranian politics and a deep political culture of mistrust. That's mistrust of outsiders, but also of insiders and institutions. Is is that sort of mistrust here to stay? And if so, how does it shape the the future possibilities of politics and
58:49 political arrangements in Iran? And indeed, what conditions would allow for the erosion of that mistrust and the creation of a maybe in your mind healthier political culture that might eventually see uh the emergence of a stronger form of representative government? I'm skeptical, Kanesk, that that mistrust can reverse itself anytime soon. That's a a political culture which has been shaped over centuries and you can't just kind of start with a blank slate after many dies. And you know, there's there's kind of good reason for mistrust if you've been a country in which outside powers have been engaged in conspiracies, right? There was periods in which Russia and the UK
59:34 divided Iran into spheres of influence. The country has experienced outside coups. So it's not without reason that there is a culture of paranoia. And in fact probably to this day one of the most beloved novels and TV shows in Iran is called Dojan Napoleon, My Uncle Napoleon about a highly conspiratorial family patriarch. So I don't think that that culture of mistrust is going to go away anytime soon. And what happens when you have this culture of profound mistrust is that it inhibits collaboration, political collaboration and the formation of kind of effective political parties. And when you don't have political collaboration and
1:00:21 effective political parties, advancing democracy and representative government become that much more difficult. And then more often what happens is that the people who have the most coercive capacity are able to assert themselves and and maintain power. So you know that's why why I said earlier that um you know only 20% of authoritarian transitions lead to democracy. At the end of the day I always return to the issue of leadership and the individual. And this is an observation which Kissinger once made. He said before he went into government when he was a professor at Harvard he thought that history is driven by impersonal forces
1:01:07 that regardless of who's in power nations will follow their inexurable interests and after he served in government he reached the opposite conclusion that the individual matters profoundly in history and the last book that Kissinger wrote before dying was about leadership and so I think that if ever there's going to be a transition to democracy in Iran and uh political culture which is not dominated by paranoia and polarization. It's going to require very wise enlightened leadership which you know is sometimes does not emerge from nations that have been ruled by brutal dictatorships for decades.
1:01:52 And lastly, let me ask you, as you're watching events unfold, do you feel more hope or more fear? >> I definitely have fear in the immediate term that the Islamic Republic is going to be willing to kill many thousands of people in order to stay in power. I feel hope in the medium and longer term that this is a country Iran which as I said it it has the potential to be uh a G20 nation. It has the uh natural and human resources to do so. And I think the last 47 years of the Islamic Republic have been an aberration, have been totally unnatural that um you know
1:02:38 Iran has been a global pariah at odds with America, partnered with Russia. None of that is consistent with Iran's history. But again, I I've just come around to the idea that um nations don't just kind of naturally evolve. It also requires a great deal of of enlightened leadership to help take them to that destination. And so I'll be watching to see what kind of leaders emerge inside Iran. >> Karim, thanks so much for your time and again for the wonderful essay you wrote, the autumn of the Ayatollas that we published last year and we look forward to exploring these ideas with you again in the future. >> It's my great pleasure. Thank you so much Ganesh. [music]
1:03:27 >> [music] >> Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreign affairs.com. This episode of the foreign affairs interview [music] was produced by Rose Kohler and Keskur. Our audio engineer is Todd Joerger. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arena Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. [music] Thanks again for tuning in. [music] >> [music]
