Iran Is at a Tipping Point. Here's How Trump Could Push It Over

0:00The big geopolitical story this week is the Iranian regime on the verge of collapse and is Donald Trump now that he's in his team America world world police are going to get involved in the US to get a good job of the Iran Trade Center in New York City. I'm Carlo Versano, and this is The 1600. Today, we're talking Iran, and I've got my good friend and colleague, Tom O 'Connor, in the cut with us today. Tom, good to see you. Thanks for having me. Tom's our deputy editor of foreign policy here at Newsweek. He's been covering the Iranian story. Actually, Tom, you've really been covering everything lately.

0:34It's been quite the year, right? Good start to the year, yeah. Yeah. No shortage of news. We'll get to some of the other stuff with Venezuela, China, Russia. I mean, this all sort of plays into it, you know, each other right now. But the big story this morning is Iran. President Trump, I want to bring this this tweet up or this true social up. As we were just coming on the air here, the president posted, quote, Iranian patriots keep protesting. Take over your institutions. Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I've canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters stops.

1:10Help is on its way, MIGA, which I assume means make Iran great again, President Donald J. Trump. So that is the president of the United States essentially offering U.S. support for these protesters, which is something that I think a lot of people have been hoping for or waiting for anxiously. Also, the Wall Street Journal reporting today that Trump is leaning toward airstrikes or some sort of military strikes in Iran as a way to, you know, potentially hasten the collapse of this regime. I guess, Tom, my first question is, is this regime actually on the precipice of collapse? It's a little it's it's not so cut and dry, is it?

1:49Yeah, I would say that, you know, there's no doubt that this is perhaps the greatest threat to the Iranian government since the Islamic revolution, certainly since the 2009 protests and perhaps since the Iran-Iraq war itself as well. Yeah, absolutely. And looking at it right now, there are certainly a lot of indications that this is somewhat of a perfect storm where you have economic malaise. You have this general feeling that the government is not responsive or holding itself accountable for the needs of everyday Iranians in many sectors of life. And of course, you have this kind of sort of saga recently of military setbacks, which is difficult when you're trying to establish a position of strength.

2:29Obviously, a lot of what the IRGC and stuff like that, and Khamenei as well, supreme leader, portrays this idea of Iran as a powerful guarantor of stability in the region. And, you know, when you have these big conflicts and confrontations and you're losing a lot of guys from it and suffering some some defeats here and there, of course, they also struck Israel quite a bit as well, but they lost a lot of guys. And that's, you know, it's concerning. And you have the other people after years of going back and forth between these reformists and principlists now is a reformist president, actually. And they feel that they're just not getting the results from the system.

3:04So there are serious threats here, I think. And even if the government ends up prevailing in these protests and, you know, at least prior to this tweet or a truth social that President Trump put out, there did seem to be seem to be some indications that the momentum was subsiding of the protests. We saw the pro-government rallies yesterday. I think that even if the government comes out ahead in this round, that there's still a lot of unaddressed concerns that if they don't move to alleviate or take significant steps to sort of address the core grievances that that sparked these protests, that there's only going to be greater opposition down the line.

3:40And there's been and there hasn't been signs yet the government is taking that route. So in terms of those grievances, I mean, you know, protest movements are pretty much all the same in the sense that they start economically. Right. I mean, the Arab Spring started in Tunisia with that fruit vendor. Right. who set himself on fire because he was being overly taxed or had to had to pay, you know, some sort of fees or something in Iran. You know, their economy is in the toilet. Right. I think the the real is is basically collapsed. Their currency is is essentially worthless. I saw, you know, inflation runs between 50 and 70 percent, which, of course, you know, we complain here in America when inflation goes above three percent.

4:18Right. It's cause for for alarm. Imagine have imagine that sort of price instability. Like you can see why people are just fed up, right? They're fed up with the economic situation, the lack of economic opportunities for a country that is full of educated young people, right? That's another thing that makes Iran so different from so many of the other countries in the Middle East. These people are young and they're hungry for a better life. And then you made the point about, you know, these external factors, right? So I think that's one of the things, I mean, from my angle, having covered Iranian protests, as you have going back years, decades, I mean, the one thing with this, you You know, they start.

4:55It seems like this could be the moment. The regime violently puts them down. And that's sort of the end of that. Right. Happened a couple of years ago. It happened in 09 with the election protests and the Green Revolution. Do you agree that, you know, to the extent that anything is different this time, it is the combination of the total collapse of the economy and what you said about how they're kind of naked on the world stage right now? Right. I mean, Trump and Netanyahu have done irreparable harm to the country in terms of the bombings that we did on their nuclear facilities over the summer.

5:29Their proxies where they project their power on the world stage are in complete disrepair right from Hamas to Hezbollah. And they're big backers in Russia and China have their own problems, but they've got bigger fish to fry. And one of the things that we learned from the operation in Venezuela is those guys are kind of fair weather friends. They're not, you know, Moscow and Beijing, they may support you. They may buy your oil. They may say that they're going to be there for you. They may sell you air defenses that don't work, but they're not, you know, when the rubber meets the road, it doesn't seem like they're really going to, you know, come to your aid.

6:01Does that seem accurate? Yeah. I mean, it's sort of this, you know, we've talked about this before, obviously, this sort of new era of great power competition where it's not just this sort of proxy battles behind the scenes, you know, competing over trade and influence, but some real kinetic stuff happening. And there are countries that are going to caught up in this middle powers like Iran, who is not a major power of the world, a great power, let's say, but also not a tiny minor country. And it's part of this axis of resistance. And it's part of this axis of resistance. So, you know, since what we've seen since, you know, October 2023 with the war in Gaza has been the axis of resistance slowly being eroded in many of the places that decades of investment and training and personnel were put into this axis, you know, from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq.

6:49And, you know, it just took two years to sort of push this back, roll it back completely. I wouldn't say it's completely unraveled, completely defeated. You know, Hezbollah still exists. Obviously, the Syria equation is completely flipped up. Assad's gone. Yeah, exactly. And that cuts off geographically the link there. You know, you still have Iraq to an extent and obviously Yemen to an extent. But it's not the same world we were living in before that. And it does leave. I mean, the point of the axis of resistance was to have forward operating deterrence, strategic depth against Israel. That depth has now been reversed to Iran itself where we've seen Israeli strikes and even U.S.

7:26strikes against Iran. So they have to consider what their national security strategy looks like in terms of actually thwarting enemies where now there are people openly talking about U.S. and Israeli intelligence agents in the streets of Iran. I'm not saying that that's the main driver of these protests, of course, not at all. But the fact that that is an open factor we can talk about now shows that Iran is in this moment of vulnerability. And they're using that messaging also to kind of portray these protests as, you know, foreign backed and, you know, the result of outside incitement and everything.

7:58But there's a lot at play here. I mean, it is remarkable, again, having having covered these for so long to just see how many people are on the streets. I mean, we're talking about I mean, the estimates I've heard are a million plus. Right. I mean, this country of 93 million people, I believe. So, you know, it's relatively small, I guess, in the scheme of things. But that's when you have a million people on the street, that's that's huge, legit, no matter what kind of country you're in. And also, you know, the young people, particularly the young women who are out there. I don't know if you've seen these viral images of some of these young Iranian women who are lighting their cigarettes with flaming pictures of the Ayatollah.

8:33You didn't used to see that in other. Well, I will say that a lot of those images coming out are not from within Iran, but from abroad, because there is also a lot of protests. And that's the thing about Iran is that there is a huge diaspora population in places like, you know, in America, obviously, but also Canada, the UK. And you're seeing this, you know, solidarity with the people in the country at the same time. And this is, you know, this is something that I think is not very well understood many times is that when the government takes steps like it does to restrict the Internet access and, you know.

9:05But the country's in a total Internet blackout. Yeah, and really throttles access to just a few, you know, semi-official and official news outlets that give their narrative. On one hand, yes, that does suppress the narrative and the capabilities of the domestic opposition and civil activists to get their word out and to get these images out. On the other hand, it seeds the information space to a lot of the foreign or, you know, based abroad dissident groups and opposition groups, exile groups, stuff like that. whether it's Pahlavi's faction or the MEK or, you know, a diverse number of Iran to live around the world who are very anti-Islamic republic.

9:45So, you know, we're getting this sort of information now from a lot of people who are not in the country, who some of them obviously talk to people within the country. But it's a very mixed bag. So we have to be careful with how we're reading this and try to understand that there's probably a disconnect between what Iranians in Iran feel and what Iranians outside of Iran feel. So that's a good point. What do the Iranians think inside? I mean, this is one of the hardest things. Iran is a hard story to cover as a journalist. You can't get in. It's very hard to get information out, especially when there's an Internet blackout.

10:17And from my understanding is it's not, you know, it's not a monolith. I mean, no country is a monolith. Right. But the Iranian street is not a monolith. They're not. It's not like Venezuela, where there is a, you know, an opposition figure who exists within the country that who could take over. Right. You've got a you know, it's not just the Ayatollah, right? There's the Revolutionary Guard that is essentially the security apparatus that runs the country. It goes very deep. And we don't know exactly what would even replace this regime should it collapse or be decapitated by U.S. or Israel. Is that fair?

10:50Yeah, absolutely. And there's a, you know, first thing I'll say is that when it comes to the debate within Iran, I mean, Iran is a democracy in a sense. I mean, there are political parties, really, I kind of alluded to them before, the two main camps, the reformists and the principlists who, you know, go back and forth for power, as I said before, President Pozeshkian is seen as a reformist. I mean, he ran on a platform that we have to focus more on the economy. We have to improve the lives of everyday Iranians. Obviously, this came amid one of Iran's most fateful confrontations, you know, since its beginning.

11:23So, I mean, there hasn't really been that opportunity to pivot there. And there are a lot of forces who are very influential within the broader Iranian, their version of a deep state, you know, which includes the IRGC, obviously, which obviously have their own priorities and are pushing more towards things that don't quite align with any sort of reformist or moderate agenda. On the other hand now, so, you know, the reason I make that point is because I think that that that idea that, you know, Iran was slowly reforming from within was was what did keep people off the streets for a while. They felt like, OK, well, if we vote in a moderate reformist, then we'll push things back.

11:59Exactly. But the experience right now, I think, has a lot of people losing faith in the system. On the other hand, now, looking at what a collapse could look like if it was something dramatic, let's say, you know, decapitation or, you know, the government falls apart one way or another. I think that also instills a lot of fear with a lot of Iranians who I've spoken to who are concerned about what's happened in neighboring countries. You look at the experience of Iraq, look at the experience of Syria, of Afghanistan, even like going as far away as Libya. The idea that the U.S. would come in and be, you know, the guardian or the guide.

12:33That never works. I mean, obviously, you know, the experiences speak for themselves. And I think it's complex. You know, maybe it takes time. But there is also that fear. And I bring that up also. One final point I want to make on that is that in Iran, there are armed groups that have a history of committing acts, you know, killing civilians. I mean, ISIS just committed the I think it was just two years ago around this time. They committed the deadliest terror attack in Iranian history. There's Kurdish factions. There are, you know, Arab, Azeri, Balochistan factions. And not all of them are violent.

13:04Not all of them are armed. But, you know, there is this concern that what people know as Iran as a state could disintegrate if the government does collapse. Which is, you know, I mean, again, I know that Iran is not Iraq. right or first of all it's it's shiite iraq is sunni iraq is i mean it was it was a bunch of things but it was the government was sunni yes right um when we went into you know we didn't take into account all of these factions when we went in right we decapitated the government we took out saddam and you know what filled the vacuum was a civil war and insurgency that lasted for years yeah um so i mean i don't i don't know what my question is there but i guess it's just Like, are these various dissident and insurgent groups, is there any one of them that could theoretically take power?

13:51I think what would happen, I mean, again, before I even get into that, I'll say that, you know, one of the prevailing scenarios is just that someone within the government itself or the military would just take power and just, you know, use the existing apparatus of the IRGC, including the Besiege, which is their paramilitary organization that deals with suppressing internal dissent. would use this system already, just easily kind of march in there and sort of split the difference between the protests. Say, OK, well, Khomeini is no longer in power. You know, this is the new, you know, this is the new regime now.

14:22And try to just, you know, to quiet things before it gets to that point. The other side of it, the other scenario I was kind of mentioning before, where you did have this broader, you know, anarchy in a sense, I think that the concern would be not that one of these groups specifically talk about the ethnic factions would seize power in Tehran, but more that they would sort of break off the country. You know, you have a Kurdish semi-autonomous state right now in Iraq, which, you know, deals with the central government, but in Syria it doesn't. And there's a big problem there right now. So there's a history of that, the U.S.

14:53backing, you know, these semi-autonomous Kurdish sort of territories within a country. And some of these groups also have historical relationships with Israel as well. And the same with the below Chistan areas, the areas near Azerbaijan, for example, these areas, the Arab areas near Iraq. So, you know, it's a mixed bag. It's a huge country and right in the middle. And Iran has a long history of staying together, which works in its favor. But you have to remember, this is not a country that's gone through a major civil war recently, anytime soon, even during the Islamic Revolution. It went through a major war with Iraq, but that was an external enemy that did involve some groups from within basically fighting on behalf of Saddam or so.

15:35You know, there is this idea the country wants to rally together. But, you know, it's a time of uncertainty right now. So people are looking at these worst case scenarios, taking them very seriously. You mentioned this guy, Reza Pahlavi, who is the exiled crown prince. He was the he's the son of the Shah who was deposed by Khomeini in the in the 79 revolution. So, I mean, I've read that Pahlavi is I've seen him. He was on Fox News. He was, you know, appealing directly to President Trump saying, you know, you're a man of peace. Do what has to be done to, you know, to to foment this this revolution.

16:07Is he I mean, he doesn't even live in Iran, right? He lives in D.C., I think. Is he the best shot to lead? Should the regime fall? How would that even work? How do you even lead a country from exile? I would say that if you had had this conversation maybe just a year ago or so, that it would seem just completely unlikely. We have seen now, we have some footage of some people within Iran holding his picture, chanting his name. Are those the majority of protesters? I think a lot of people are just fed up in general. I don't think they have strong opinions on the monarchy or maybe even on the Islamic Republic itself.

16:42They're just sick. They just want life to be better for themselves, which even some of the government officials have acknowledged is obviously is a valid concern on their part. Pallavi himself, he's positioning himself right now to be a potential substitute. He's done this for a very long time. He's dedicated his life to it. And he – it's not the first time he's come out and said this is the end of the Islamic Republic. You know, take me in. I'm the only alternative. And, you know, there are some competing factions out there, but definitely he is he's positioning himself as a symbolic figure, as the most prominent figure.

17:17And he probably is in many ways. But, you know, as you said, he has he's not living in Iran. Obviously, he couldn't. And the extent to which he could actually put together a coalition. Remember, you can't just walk in there and restore the monarchy. And I know he says he wants a constitutional monarchy. So he's not saying he'd sit there and just be the king and rule over everything. He's saying that he'd have free and fair elections. But, you know, that legacy of the Shah and it's, you know, and the situation of the country at that time still looms large in Iranian history. Now, of course, it's been replaced in some ways by the experience of the Islamic Republic.

17:52But those are two competing narratives that people don't necessarily see as one is better than the other. I think that there is some nostalgia out there for a time where, you know, anything they see is better than this. But, you know, it's difficult. And that's what I'm saying. Me, I cannot sit here and say, you know, I would want to have to try to say what the Iranian people think broadly. And I think, again, going back to the government, you know, restricting media acts, stuff like that. It doesn't work sometimes the government's favor because it allows these other narratives to really take take hold, especially when it comes to foreign media outlets, foreign officials.

18:25And, you know, the extent to which, again, Pahlavi, I feel like, is able to just step in there. I mean, he would have to he'd have to make alliances. He'd have to deal with some figures. He's probably within the government right now. You know, as we said before, Iran is a massive country, a lot of competing factions. And the person who does step in after Kemeni, whether it's through protest or just when Kemeni passes and he has no, you know, we have we have no idea who his successor might actually be, is going to have to be in some ways a compromise candidate among very, very different factions.

18:57Let's talk about Trump for a minute. You know, we mentioned his his post this morning. This comes, as I said, the Wall Street Journal reporting that he's leaning towards taking military action in Iran. You know, I wouldn't a few months ago, I would have said there's no chance of that happening. Obviously. I mean, he already like you mentioned, we already took military action in Iran. I don't know what else we could do. I mean, we you know, we bombed there the nuclear facilities, the enrichment facilities. What would what what would military action even look like? It's not going to be like a Caracas situation where we go in with Delta Force and they snatch the Ayatollah out of his bed.

19:33First of all, the guy's 86 years old, right? I don't even know. What would that even do? I mean, if there was, let's say, a Venezuela model, and that's what some of the folks I've been talking to have been discussing this, this idea of a Venezuela model for Iran, what that would look like. Obviously, you know, as you said, Iran's a very different country. It's a totally different playing ground there. We did take more dramatic military action back in June during the 12-day war. And at that point, we thought, I mean, not we, but some folks out there said, well, this is the biggest challenge of the Islamic Republic.

20:07You know, this is the point where it might collapse. And I think, you know, some folks in Israel were saying, well, you know, why aren't the Iranians taking the streets now? Here's the moment. You know, the government now is in a far more, more even than today, certainly, state of disarray. We have senior senior posts, people killed, not yet replaced. I mean, that's a that's real, you know, operational momentum there. But what we did see after that really is a lot of Iran is kind of rallying together. Sure. Of course, there were some people who, you know, just like they do now back then were opposed to the government.

20:37But there was a fear that that the that the what came next could be some sort of chaos and anarchy or the government was in disarray. And the IRGC, despite its losses, rallied together, consolidated power, filled the posts. and particularly when it comes to domestic sort of intelligence organizations of a siege, really stepped up and kind of clamped down on things. Now, those same officials and the same apparatuses are in full force today to try to overcome these protests right now. So what does U.S. military action look like? Well, I mean, I guess what I'm trying to say is it wouldn't be so simple to just strike a bunch of major targets because we already did that.

21:15And so the Israelis, even more so than us. We struck these military targets that were like out in the mountains. What would I mean? Is there a situation in which American warplanes are striking targets in Tehran? Sure. I mean, it certainly could happen. But again, to what end? You know, it's easier to destroy a house than to build one. Right. And I guess that's the issue is that you can you can you could just, you know, pummel the Islamic Republic. Like you could pummel Iran. Their air defenses obviously are no match for ours. The ones that are still existing. So it's not really a concern. It's just that what's your operational aim?

21:47You can't force a peaceful transition of power, you know, through military means. Right. Either you're going to have either you're going to install someone or you're going to, you know, build a coalition on the ground. So I guess to go back to the Venezuela model thing, what would have to happen is you'd have to have a deal with someone either within the IRGC or within the political apparatus. Who's ready to flip. Who's ready to flip. who's ready to step in there. And that's not an unthinkable scenario. Looking at the IRGC today, it's a very deeply ideological organization that is on paper sworn to Chemenini and probably is sworn to Chemenini, but it also has deep economic interests and probably cares about its survival.

22:26And again, I think a lot of those folks there also have those same concerns I mentioned earlier about what the alternative look like if there isn't a strong man that shows up, if there is a sort of broader instability that sweeps the nation. And, you know, that's the points they've been saying out loud. I think they believe that. Right, right. It's like, look at the debathification of Iraq, right? Yeah. I'm trying to like put my, pretend like I'm Donald Trump here. And, you know, what is he thinking? How does he think of these things, right? We saw in Venezuela, he has no interest in, I think, you know, the dirty and the hard work of regime change.

23:02But he loves these sort of like spectacular shows of American military might. So I think that it's certainly plausible that, you know, we maybe even, you know, today or tomorrow, there's going to be some sort of military strike on some sort of, you know, government or regime targets in Tehran. And I guess the argument in favor of that would be, you know, if, as you said, the momentum of these protests might be slowing, could that alone be a reason to, you know, to keep the pressure on this regime and to keep the protesters in the streets saying, look, America is ready to help you? I don't know.