What Kind of Change Is Coming to Iran?

30:39And the country has had for the last four or five days, 1 % connectivity. So the people in Iran 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 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 kind of surgical operation in which you can just eliminate Ayatollah Khamenei and bring about quick change inside Iran because you have 150 ,000 revolutionary guardsmen.

31:36And 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 staying with it. And that's a task which, you know, the US can be partly influential, 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 bombings will truly help the Iranian protesters? You know, I would, before I would comment definitively on that, I would just like 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.

32:28I think one of the challenges in this current Trump administration is that it's administration, which I haven't, it's not deliberative. I don't know, you know, I've been in D.C. for 25 years. 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. With this administration, it's not clear who is thinking really hard, strategically, deliberately about these issues. You know, more often it's statements that the president will make off the cuff and then the bureaucracy tries to mobilize to provide options.

33:04But you can't change regimes just with true social posts. But you're also suggesting that you can't change regimes just through targeted strikes. So I think what's critical here is to not think about just, to quote Tom Friedman, 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 Ayatollah Khamenei? I suspect that they do. Will eliminating Ayatollah Khamenei lead to a transformation of the Islamic Republic? I'm skeptical of that. You know, it could. This is totally unpredictable, but he is at the top of the power pyramid, but there are people below him, too.

33:52It's not just kind of eliminating Saddam 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. You mentioned that there was this sugar high after the 12-day war 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 at powers could indeed, even if it's just a sugar high, have the effect of dampening the momentum of the protests? It's possible. What I've found in Iran is that outside action or the threats of outside action, they oftentimes just accentuate existing political polarization.

34:48So 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 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 think that 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, you know what, we're now going to support the Islamic Republic.

35:29And I think that was borne out with these protests. To what extent could outside powers 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 China, in my view, is more important to the Islamic Republic of Iran than America was to the Shah's Iran. And it also provides Iran surveillance technologies, which it uses. Russia is different in that Russia and Iran have competitive economies.

36:19Both of them are energy producers. But Russia has definitely provided Iran aid and guidance to do what Putin does, which is to repress and stay in power. And here, let me just take a quick detour, Kanish, to say that I believe that China and Russia actually have very different interests vis-a-vis 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 doesn't have LNG technology, isn't able to exploit its vast gas reserves. It is punching way below its weight as an oil producer.

37:01You know, there was a time that Iran was producing 6 million barrels per day before the revolution. Now those numbers 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 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 China.

37:44If Iran starts to play a role in the Middle 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 closed market right now. In my view, and I think I wrote this in the essay, it's probably the largest population of people in the world that has 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 Iran, which has opened up to global commerce and finance, in my view, that's net positive for China. So I do think that 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 that the Islamic Republic doesn't fall.

38:37The other relevant factor here are some of the regional militias, the Shiite militias. 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 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?

39:19Are there scenarios that you worry about in terms 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, Kanushka, 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 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, apremat le deluge, right?

39:59If the Islamic Republic falls, Iran will no longer be, and the country is just going to be torn apart. And I think that is a very low-risk probability for a couple reasons. Number one, Iran has 2 ,500 years' history as a nation-state, so it's not a 20th century post-Ottoman creation. There is this cohesive Iranian national identity, which Iran's disparate ethnic groups, I think, feel part of. About 50 % of Iranians are Persian. About a quarter are Azeri. But distinguishing Azeris and Persians, it's kind of like saying Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans. The Azeris, Ayatollah Khamenei is Azeri.

40:42The Tehran Bazar is dominated by Azeris. So, you know, they speak Turkish, but all of them speak, or they speak Azari, a Turkic language. But Persian is the lingua franca of the nation. Now, you do also have ethnic groups on the periphery, which have suffered tremendously under the Islamic Republic. The largest being the Kurds, Iranian Kurds. But 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.

41:21Now, 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 felt totally repressed and abused and disenfranchised, deeply disgruntled, but they're not large enough in size to really break off and 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 on the periphery of the country among ethnic minority groups.

42:03But 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 with far greater dignity and economic possibilities. And hopefully that, whatever leadership comes next in Iran will have a much more inclusive view and, 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 Khamenei's rule.

42:50And I'll just do a brief rundown here. You say that Iran could follow the path of post-Soviet Russia, in which an ideological regime gives way to the rule of a strong man who fixates on grievance-driven nationalism. It could go the way of post-Mao China, in which an authoritarian regime bends to accommodate some practical reform. Even, you know, Vali Nasser echoed that idea when he wrote December that Iranians want their own Deng Xiaoping. 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.

43:29Then 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 events have unfolded in recent months and indeed in recent weeks, do you think any of these possibilities are more or less likely? It's a great question. And I've thought about this a lot. And if I were to be rewriting the essay now, I'm not sure I would have changed any of these scenarios. Perhaps I would have fought with you guys to include those additional scenarios from Spain and Yugoslavia, just because, you know, Reza Pahlavi's name is being chanted.

44:21Let me say from the outset that for me during the, in the aftermath 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. More often, four out of five times, authoritarian transitions lead to another form of authoritarian regime. And one of the tasks that all of us have, Konish, 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, how Iran is going to become like Denmark and Sweden and Norway.

45:09And I actually believe that Iranian society is ripe and mature enough for representative government, for representative democracy. But I also think that leadership is totally critical. And absent a cohesive democratic opposition, it's not going to go to 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 Ayatollah Khamenei to his son, Mojtava, it's essentially the country becoming like a North Korea-style hereditary ideological dictatorship. Or even if Khamenei tries to bequeath power to a like-minded hardline cleric, meaning that that scenario is only sustainable with overwhelming brutality and isolation like North Korea.

46:14Because otherwise, there's virtually no constituency presidency in Iran to be North Korea. In fact, what I always argue, 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 view is that if they try to bequeath power to Moshe Bahamini, that's not going to be a stable equilibrium. And there's a wonderful Iranian intellectual whom I quoted, a guy called Ahmed Khastravi, who lived during the 1940s. And Khastravi himself came from a religious background, and he had this quote in which he said, he said this in the 1930s, I believe.

46:54He said that Iran owes one government to the mullahs so they can essentially expose their incompetence. And my argument that that debt has been settled after five decades now, people have gotten that out of their system. And in my view, if we look ahead five years from now, and there's another strongman ruling Iran, one prediction I would feel fairly confident making is that that strongman 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?

47:39There are individuals who are auditioning for that role almost in real time. One example is the current Speaker of Parliament, Mohamed Barghel Qalibaf. He is a former Senior Revolutionary Guard commander. He was a pilot. He is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War. He was very close to Qasem Soleimani. 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 publicly likes to portray himself as both the fire-breathing revolutionary, but also as this technocrat who can get things done. When he first came on the political scene, he once described himself as a Hezbollah Reza Shah.

48:29So Reza Shah is kind of the Ataturk of modern Iran, the first kind of secular autocrat. And there's a great deal of reverence for Reza Shal among many Iranians because he's viewed as the guy who built modern Iran. Even among supporters of the Islamic Republic, there's a certain kind of admiration for what Reza Shal was able to do in his years in power. And so people are kind of auditioning in that role. and I suspect, Kanishk, that what happens is that after Ayatollah Khamenei leaves the scene, however he leaves the scene, whether 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 an aspiring strongman, is not going to be revolutionary ideology.

49:19It's not going to be death to America. It's not going to be death to Israel. It's going to be 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 populism, economic populism, and this can oftentimes 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.

50:01Now, the last thing I want to say here in relation to aspiring strongmen, what we've also seen historically is that oftentimes leaders emerge in the aftermath of an authoritarian collapse, like 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 after the chaos of post-Soviet Russia, he was able to benefit from that and come and kind of fill that power vacuum, substituting communism with grievance-driven Russian nationalism.

50:53And so I do think it's quite possible that the next powerful leader of Iran is not someone that any of us even know. Because anyone senior enough, like a Qalibov, 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.

51:39Yes, I think that's a good way to put it. And there's a wonderful essay 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 best kind of nationalism we could describe as patriotism, right? It's love of one's country, but not hatred of others and inclusive, positive nationalism. Then you do have fascism, right? This kind of extreme nationalism that can lead you to self-destruction, as we saw in Germany and in Japan. And I think, I don't know if this quote is from Orwell 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 the country no matter what it does.

52:29And I do worry that 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 that can be manifested in destructive ways as well, whether it's a kind of 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, was Iran as Venezuela.

53:18That is, its immediate leaders removed, but the rest of the regime somehow intact, and now potentially hewing 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 Khamenei, I'm very skeptical they can pluck Khamenei out of Tehran the way that they captured Maduro out of Caracas.

54:03But if somehow senior officials in the regime or senior rev guard commanders got rid of Khamenei and were willing to do a deal with America, I think that's something that the Trump administration would welcome. And this is the challenging thing about if you're both a foreign 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 two days before negotiations were meant to begin between the United States and Iran.

54:48So even though Trump, as recently as yesterday, I heard him express support for doing a deal with Iran, he's also threatened that the United States is locked and loaded and prepared to take military action against Iran. So this certainly is keeping the Iranian regime on its toes. I have to confess that I'm a little surprised about all the talk about Reza Pahlavi, son of the depot shah, who is in the United States, and his potential role in the future of the country, either returning or shepherding 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 era of the Shah.

55:32Or do you think the role he'll play is a symbolic one, or from the outside? How do you see, you know, Bakhavi affecting events in the coming weeks and months. So he's been very open 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 a 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 satellite TV channels and social media, his message, I think, resonates with the population which is 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.

56:41So given this, as I said, this combination of nostalgia for how life was before the revolution, economically much more prosperous, socially free, and Iran had a dignified place in the world rather than being a global pariah. And I do think, Kanish, that the last two decades of events in the Middle East are relevant here, Because whereas 15, 20 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, there's a perception democracy has lost its luster.

57:29You know, that's impacted itself in Iran. And also, for many Iranians, one reference point is the United Arab Emirates in Dubai, which people go to frequently. Well, that's not a democracy, but people seem to be doing well and are happy there. And so, you know, Mohammed bin Salman is another example for people, someone who is leading a social transformation in Saudi Arabia. So, as I wrote about in the piece, there's the yearning for what they say in Persian is zendigia normal, normal life, a normal life in which, you know, we have economic opportunities. It's not necessarily democratic, but it's also not politically oppressive the same way the Islamic Republic is.

58:16but socially free. So they want to be able to watch what they want, 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 the yearning. And for many people, Reza Pahalavi is kind of the person around whom they've coalesced 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 Havel and Gandhi. And if you ask many of his most passionate supporters whom they admire, they will say Reza Shah, his grandfather, who was like an absolute autocrat.

59:08So there's a tension there between Reza Pahlavi's aspirations for Iran and some of the aspirations of his supporters who want to see him come to power and hang all the mullahs and all of the existing leadership of the Islamic Republic. And that tension, I think, 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 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.

59:53You 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 that sort of mistrust here to stay? And if so, how does it shape the future possibilities of politics and 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 the emergence of a stronger form of representative government? I'm skeptical, Kanish, that that mistrust can reverse itself anytime soon.

1:00:40That's a political culture which has been shaped over centuries, and you can't just kind of start with a blank slate after Khamenei dies. And, you know, 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 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 Doi John Napoleon, My Uncle Napoleon, about a highly conspiratorial family patriarch.

1:01:22So 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 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 maintain power. So, you know, that's why I said earlier that, you know, only 20 % of authoritarian transitions lead to democracy.

1:02:12At 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, that regardless of who's in power, nations will follow their inexorable 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 political culture, which is not dominated by paranoia and polarization, it's going to require very wise, enlightened leadership, which, you know, sometimes does not emerge from nations that have been ruled by brutal dictatorships for decades.

1:03:18And 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, has the potential to be a G20 nation. It has the 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 Iran has been a global pariah at odds with America, partnered with Russia.

1:04:09None of that is consistent with Iran's history. But again, I've just come around to the idea that nations don't just kind of naturally evolve. It also requires a great deal 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 Ayatollahs, 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, Konish.

1:04:53Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com. This episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Rose Kohler and Konish Therroer. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. 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. Thanks again for tuning in.

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