497. Is Trump Plotting Regime Change in Iran? (Question Time)

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1:15Welcome to The Rest of the Polarist's Question Time with me, Anastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Now, Rory, Josh in Bradford would like to know, how can the US credibly negotiate with Iran for a position of military escalation? I'm RJ Decker, a private investigator uncovering the sunshine state's darkest secrets. Tuesdays, it's the premiere of ABC's hottest new crime show. RJ freaking Decker as I live and breathe. He's a private eye. It's not a standard murder. It's someone bigger. And a public mess. Trying to get sent back to prison today? You go to prison one time and suddenly it's all the jokes.

1:51RJ Decker, series premiere, Tuesdays on ABC and stream on Hulu. Tax Act knows filing taxes can be confusing, so we have live experts on hand who can help answer any questions you may have. Questions like, can I claim my SUV as my home office if I answer work emails in my car? If I adopted 12 dogs this year, can I list them as dependents? And, am I doing this right or am I doing this very, very wrong? Our experts have the answers to those questions and many others. Tax Act. Let's get them over with. Does the military buildup serve as a necessary deterrence to strengthen America's negotiating hand, or does it risk triggering the very conflict it's meant to prevent?

2:38Okay, well, let's just take it back one stage and remind us where we are. So Iranian regime been in since 1979, so hugely long time, 47 years, and people have have been calling it out again and again and again, but it now seems to be very close to its death throes. Now, admittedly, people have been saying death throes. I've said that before, yeah. But since the Masa Amini demonstrations, which were demonstrations after a young woman was killed for not wearing a headscarf, which is now a couple of years ago, and then the latest killings, I mean, and killings beyond imagining. This was an uprising which we discussed listener podcast a couple of weeks ago, in which in Iran, for the first time, the middle-class bizarres, which are the sort of traders in Tehran and the working class, and the more liberal, progressive, wealthier groups have been out on the streets again and again, called to come out by the son of the old Shah of Iran, the old ruler of Iran, implicitly supported by Donald Trump, who said if the regime killed them, he would intervene and partly just motivated by their rage at this government, which has put Iran into the position of a bankrupt international pariah, engaged in foreign adventures, building nuclear bombs, being hit.

4:08So they get into the streets and the regime has responded by killing and killing and killing. In Tehran, literally, I was talking to someone who was in Tehran, machine guns in the streets, snipers on the roofs, thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands of people injured. Estimates on how many, very difficult to get, minimum of 3 ,000, 4 ,000 from the regime with estimates going all the way up, 16 ,000, 30 ,000 people killed. And somebody I was talking to yesterday said almost nobody in Iran now doesn't have a friend or a family member who's been killed or injured. And meanwhile, Donald Trump sends a big, beautiful armada, including the Abraham Lincoln, which is one of the biggest aircraft carriers.

4:56It's got about 7 ,000 people on it, fighter jets and destroyers and a real proper armada like he did with Venezuela. And I think that's what has made people think, well, you don't send that much kit and that many men without intending to do something. And the question then is, will he, won't he? And why hasn't he yet? And the reason he hasn't yet, I suspect, is there will be, even though we all know that Donald Trump tends to listen only to himself, I suspect there will be quite a lot of people trying to hold him back on this. Because whereas Venezuela was a straightforward decapitation, take the guy out in the top and then do some sort of deal with the people left behind, I don't think anybody, Marco Rubio said when he was giving evidence to an inquiry last week, that nobody can predict what would follow if they did inflict catastrophic, attack on Iran, which led to regime change, added to which the Iranians seem very, very confident that it wouldn't lead to regime change, that they would be able to unite the country if the Americans did attack them.

5:59And they do have a pretty, they have the biggest military in the Middle East. I mean, it's very hard to get exact numbers, but you're talking about conventional armed forces, you're talking about the Revolutionary Guard, which is the kind of elite. And in both cases, you're talking about hundreds of thousands. And then you're talking about the ability to mobilize reserves that probably take their full complement not far off a million. So this is not even Iraq. This is definitely not Venezuela. This is something that has the capacity to provoke all sorts of problems within the region. And even though America's allies in the region have said, we don't want our airspace used, and we don't want this, and we don't want that, that would not mean that if America did attack, that the Iranians wouldn't think that those countries that have American bases become legitimate targets, added to which you've got Israel sitting there watching very, very carefully what happens.

6:54So it's pretty tense stuff. And his mate, Steve Witkoff, is off, I think, to Turkey to do some attempted negotiations with the Iranians, but it's hard to know where they go. So this may be a bit like Greenland, that it's sort of a lot of noise and goes nowhere for now. On the other hand, it may not. And we're back to the question of how you predict Trump and the framework of where in the strange reality TV show, which is Trump's narrative, doing something in Iran comes. And I'd like to get you on that. And if it's a reality TV show, what he's tempted to do in Iran of the different options he has.

7:31On the question of the risks of taking out Iran, I mean, one is this question of what Iran can actually now do to destabilize the region. Militarily, they've, of course, turned out to be much weaker than people would have thought they were a few years ago. Their nuclear program is basically on a very permanent hold. It may not have been eliminated to the last moment, but boy, have they got problems with their nuclear program. At least for the next two, three years. their proxies which were these militia groups that they were running hezbollah and lebanon well that basically was blown apart by this israeli action with these pages and the walkie-talkies that took out the 1200 top leaders of hezbollah uh their great base which was syria has collapsed al-shara has come in and is explicitly anti-iranian basically driven out all the iranians which leaves them really with some allied militia groups in Iraq and the Houthi.

8:30In Yemen. And it's true that the Houthi have more capacity to strike than they did a couple of years ago, and they're manufacturing their own weapons now. So they get some components from Iran, but the Yemenis themselves are now manufacturing things that seem to be able to fly all the way to Israel. But I don't think the big problem, probably, if you are Israel or Qatar or Saudi, is that you are particularly worried about the Iranian strike back in a way that you might have been three, four years ago. I think your bigger worry is about whether toppling this regime is going to create a better situation for you or a worse situation for you.

9:11So there will be some people, certainly in the Gulf, who think, okay, this regime is much weaker than it was. It's not a big threat to the region. It's safer to leave it alone rather than start firing missiles around because if it's toppled, who knows what follows? A more nationalistic military Revolutionary Guard government that wants to really build up and take revenge, civil war, chaos, et cetera. And even in Israel, I think there is some concern, yes, about whether their dome is sufficient to defend against drones and missile strikes, but probably more than that. again this question of whether they wouldn't rather have a weak state than the different forms of alternative state that might follow i think there'll also be a generational battle i think there's a there's an older generation that'll that'll lend itself more to supporting the the the supreme leader and i think a younger generation that maybe will be more open there does seem to be you know it's very hard to know exactly what's going on but i spoke to somebody who's recently been in Iran who said that you really do get a sense that they want, that public opinion would like something to happen, would like some sort of change.

10:24What's really strange though about Trump, and you know I've used this phrase before about strategic chaos, so on the one hand if you go down the Witkoff route it looks like trying to get some sort of new agreement, maybe get a few sanctions lifted and in exchange you get them to agree to limitations on their weapons programs. you could go all out for regime change, or you could just try and keep them guessing. And what Trump seems to be doing is a kind of a mixture of all three. Now, what I don't know is whether that's deliberate, whether that genuinely is an approach of strategic chaos, whether he actually knows what he wants to do and how he wants to get there, and how the American system is even working when they are so dependent upon what he says and does at any moment in time.

11:14I was talking to some hawks in the US, and actually we're about to interview on leading Rob Malley, who's a deep Iran expert, who's part of Biden's administration. But the hawk line, in other words, the aggressive line against Iran, is essentially saying nothing could be worse than this regime. They're saying that we've known this regime for 49 years. They are implacably hostile towards the West and towards Israel, and that's never going to change. Now, there's some debate. There's a brilliant book by Vali Nasser on Iran's grand strategy, and he points out that it's not quite clear whether all the fault lies with the Iranians, because it is true that when Rafsanjani, who was the reformist president, tried to reach out to the West in the 80s and 90s, he was perpetually rebuffed by the Clinton administration and others.

12:07And so their conclusion that America has only ever wanted regime change in Iran is probably true. In other words, the paranoia of the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, is probably justified. But regardless of whether it's our fault or their fault, the fact is they are implacably hostile to the shaitani b'sorg, the great Satan, which is the United States. That means for the hawks, they think, okay, anything that follows has got to be better. And they think now is the time because he's weakened, his nuclear program has weakened, sanctions have weakened them economically, and there does appear to be genuine public opinion turning against them.

12:44Correct. However, of course, the problem is that when you say anything's going to be better, I of course get the heebie-jeebies, because that's of course what we thought was Saddam Hussein. But it can't be worse than Saddam Hussein. This guy is so implacably hostile to us. And actually in many ways, it's turned out in places like Iraq and in Libya with Gaddafi that civil war and chaos, I mean, let's take Libya, right? We thought getting rid of Gaddafi is a no-brainer. This guy is literally blowing up airliners over Lockerbie. So it can't possibly be worse. But what actually happened is through the civil war that we created in Libya or helped to ferment by Toplin Gaddafi, that is why the weapons have come flooding into the Sahel.

13:26These are all these Islamist groups that are growing. These are the military coups that are emerging from Chad through to Niger to Sudan. So there's a really strong story that a lot of the horror, instability, extremism, and collapse of democracy all the way across North Africa came out of Toplin. The other thing I think is worth reflecting on in this is what is happening in Iran now says to other countries about the likelihood or the desire of them to acquire nuclear weapons. Because there is a chance that the conclusion others take out of this, if Iran does get really badly hit by America, is the only way you can actually look after yourself is genuinely to go for your own nuclear weapons program.

14:11so the saudis look at this and think and the saudis are getting very close to pakistan in relation to defense and pakistan are well down the the nuclear track turkey what does turkey think about watching iran get its nukes wiped out and and don't forget the so-called new start treaty runs out this week this was the treaty that where the americans and the russians agreed to a limit on their nuclear warheads we're recording on tuesday it runs out wednesday and we just don't know what if anything replaces it so basically that's sort of at least something that had a sense of control on nuclear proliferation just goes there is then no international agreement and no limit and one of i one of the interesting dogs that didn't bark on keir starmer's visit to china i think china is developing nuclear warheads at a pretty alarming rate.

15:05So there are around something like 12 ,200 nuclear warheads, and about almost 10 ,000 are in stockpiles capable of being used militarily. And America and Russia between them are in charge of 90 % of those. So China, although it's developing at 100 nuclear warheads a year, is still a long, long way behind. So they want to grow. And as they grow, what do these other, Mark Carney's famous middle powers, what do they do? Other than possibly think, is that the only way that we actually guarantee our own security in this very dangerous world? So I think the whole nuclear proliferation debate is going to become part of this as well, particularly with nothing, at the moment, nothing replacing this new Star Treaty.

15:49And maybe in Europe too, because if you think about it, and people say, you know, the Russian economy is the size of Spanish economy, it's a third small in the British economy. So it can't be that strong. But of course, it's inconceivable that somebody would invade Russia in the way that Russia invaded Ukraine because they have nuclear weapons, which is why a lot of the British budget is now going to go into more and more nuclear weapons. And which is why the big discussion, if you're Germany or Sweden or whatever, is how does one set about having your own nuclear deterrent? And of course, that's proliferation.

16:20I mean, this is going from a world in which nuclear weapons were kept at a very, very small group with people like Israel and Pakistan, bending the rules and getting secret programs going to a world in which almost everybody can afford it is incentivized to do it. And the other thing that happens or could happen, you mentioned, so if you think of the countries that had nuclear weapons programs and that stopped them, Ukraine, okay, well, how did that end for them? Absolutely. Libya? Libya? Yeah. So at the moment we've got, well, we've got nine nuclear powers, okay? And then the other thing that happened, particularly after those countries that were giving up their programs you had i can remember when we were in government there was an obsession uh with this guy aq khan sure who became a kind of i guess you'd call him a kind of nuclear nuclear arms program business yeah exporting expertise and so there'll be more of that if you have an iranian nuclear program that is suddenly brought to a halt through regime change.

17:19Heaven knows where all this stuff goes, the expertise, the materials, et cetera. So I think that Trump is being very, very Trumpy in saying this armada's on its way, hope we don't have to use it, but they better watch out. And I suspect there will be others say, okay, this is not Venezuela. This is not even Iraq. This is something much, much more unpredictable. Well, one of the questions is what is it that they think they're doing? So again, I was talking to someone senior in the British government who said that their assessment was that the most likely scenario, if Trump struck, is that he would get rid of Khamenei and there'd be an internal coup.

17:55He would then be replaced by a strongman or a faction from within the existing regime or by a sort of nationalist military group, maybe non IRGC, not Revolutionary Guard. That is what we would probably describe - There's a lot of big ifs in there. A lot of bigots. Let's just flesh it out. That's called the Venezuela option. To bring people up to date on what's happened in Venezuela over the last few weeks, Maduro was captured, taken to the US. His deputy, Delce Rodriguez, has taken over. Everyone else that we mentioned in the podcast, all the senior figures, the interior minister, the defense minister, the speaker of the parliament, who's her brother, they're all still there, totally in place.

18:32The only thing that they're doing, they're still making anti-American speeches, is that they're opening up the economy to American oil companies and now suggesting they may open up to mining. But most of the political prisoners are still locked up, the media is still suppressed, the entire administration of their militia groups, the military, the oppression, the Supreme Courts, the banks, all that are completely intact. So is that what these people think they're going to do in Iran? Is Trump's idea that somehow he gets rid of Ayatollah Khamenei and then you have the entire evil regime structure still in place, but somebody who's more willing to do deals with American oil?

19:08How does that play out because then your friend who's just come back from Iran would say, I think, F that. Thousands, potentially tens of thousands of people have been killed in the streets. This is the most murderous bloody regime on earth. The 150 ,000 members of the Revolutionary Guard have blood on their hands. Hell no, are we putting up with the idea that we just get rid of how many and we continue to be ruled by this bunch of gangster thugs for the next 40 years. There must be justice, there must be a price. We must get rid of these guys. Meanwhile, the former regime elements are going to be thinking, if we give an inch, and they keep talking about the Shah being too weak because the Shah only killed a few thousand people and was toppled.

19:49If we give an inch, we're going to be strung up from the lamppost because everybody knows we have blood on our hands. Yeah. Don't forget, we're going to talk after the break about this election in Texas, where Trump's party had a bit of a blow. But going up to the midterms, the last thing he's going to want is a sort of spike in the oil price. And I think the other thing to remember about the Revolutionary Guard, we think of them as a kind of, you know, oversized special forces group. They're also a massive business. They run large chunks of the economy. They run the ports, they run construction, they've got trade monopolies in all sorts of ways.

20:26So I don't think this is remotely like Venezuela. But there's a risk that he thinks that it is like Venezuela, of course, so far as he's concerned, Venezuela went perfectly by his perspective. And so then let me come to the final thing before we go to the break, which is trying to get into the head of this man. So we know because we sat through the Davos speech that he's very, very proud of what he calls his precision military operations, which he gets congratulated on and he does them perfectly. So in terms of trying to guess, we can't predict him, is it? I'm asking for a 40 % probability. What are guesses of some of the things, if you are a president obsessed with ratings and a reality TV show that you might want to do in Iran, which will capture the headlines of the world?

21:10Is it full revolution, liberal democracy? Is it chaos? Is it taking out a couple of top people and leaving the regime in place? Is it firing some of your beautiful missiles? Is it getting a piece of paper that you can wave around? What are the sort of things he might be tempted to do when he puts down his Big Mac and turns off Fox news. Well, I mean, it is terrifying to think that that is possibly how he makes these judgments, but he might. I'm sort of tempted by, I mentioned those three possible strategies. I'm tempted by the third one, which is that he kind of leaves the Armada there for quite a while, and he doesn't go all out for regime change.

21:50And the headlines that generates is that every week we're asking what's happening with the Armada, and it keeps everybody guessing and talking about it. No, I think the headline moves on to something completely different uh i think it just he gets a new target no he goes to nigeria again or right because i think the other thing about here don't forget for his maga brand and you said in the main episode that the the epstein files are kind of causing fissures within the kind of maga brace the other big thing that he said was that he wouldn't take america into forever wars now there's a venezuela he got away with it okay up to now.

22:23I think there is a real risk of something much, much worse than straight in and hit the guy in Iran. I think you're talking about, and I agree his military has been weakened, but you're talking about a country that has shown its capacity really to mobilize support, and then to fight asymmetric warfare in all sorts of different ways. So I don't know. Okay, here's another possibility for you. He keeps the armada there, but what actually happens is that Netanyahu mobilizes against Iran and strikes Iran because he's been obsessed with Iran for 30 years. He will see this as his one big chance. There will never be an American administration that will be more willing to allow Israel to strike Iran.

23:08He's got an election coming up and he's got to recover his position in the polls. Netanyahu needs to show himself as a tough man and a hawk, and he can't do it in Gaza at the moment, or he doesn't want to do it in Gaza at the moment. So maybe it's an Israeli strike against Iran with the US providing coverage that we're more likely to see? Possible. Yeah, entirely possible. But then I think if you look at what the reaction to that would be, the reaction whenever the Americans have got involved in recent times has been pretty limited. And they've signaled it as well. They've said, we're going to take out this base, we're going to attack this base.

23:42So they've actually managed to avoid casualties. I think if the Israelis did it directly like that, I think the reaction would be far stronger. Well, and I think there's another final thing, and maybe we should get a break here, which is that when people are wondering why Gulf countries seem to be encouraging Trump to hold off for the time being, I wonder whether it isn't that at some subconscious level, along with many, many other arguments, one small argument may be that they're actually worried about Israel's rising power, that Israel is now becoming a military superpower and a regional hegemon.

24:13And that they may think that a weak anti-Israeli Iran is nevertheless the lesser of the two evils as a counterbalance in the region. Final thing is just to bring the focus back to the 90 million Iranians. This is their country, it's their destiny, it's they that are being killed. I was talking to Christopher Lake, a great writer on Iran, married to an Iranian. And what horrifies him is the sense that Iranians in so much of this conversation are being treated as pawns in somebody else's game. That there are all these different countries around the world thinking they're playing chess with Iran when they're probably playing blind man's buff.

24:51And the people who end up losing are the Iranians themselves who are not getting the dignity, the autonomy, the justice that they're looking for and instead just absolutely vulnerable to whatever fantasies or ambitions all these other regional powers have okay let's take a break then we'll come back to talk about another marvellous country led by a marvellous man in the form of hungary very good looking forward to it

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28:03Welcome back to Rest of the Policy Question Time. Me, Alastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Alastair, here is a question from Vivian, who's actually in Budapest. When did it become okay for prime ministers and presidents to interfere in each other's elections? I've been stunned by how many world leaders took part in Orbán's campaign video. As well as seeing Zelensky and von der Leyen being attacked by Orban on giant posters. This is not just a Hungarian election. This has become every other world leader weighing in. Orban is a fascinating guy. Hungary is a country of about 10 million people.