513. Inside Iran: The Country Trump Cannot Control? (Question Time)

25:08Rory Stewart:Well, I was going to come to what happens now and how the war will unfold. So, So, Aras, what's Karim's best estimate of how long this war will last? Ishan Gayour, analytically speaking, not what he hopes, what do you foresee happening over the next six to 12 months? Lindsay Bennett, how does Karim see this ending? Can I just, before you come in on that, just sort of, I look at this and I think Israel and the US are now actually in a bad situation. I mean, effectively, the regime has not been toppled and Iran is demonstrating that it can completely destroy the economies, the Gulf, and hold the Straits of Hormuz hostage.

25:47Rory Stewart:And they will fear that if they stop the war now, Iran essentially, the regime emerges in a stronger position because people will think, well, if you strike them again, they're going to be able to destabilize the Middle East and hold the Straits of Hormuz hostage. And that will be an incentive for Netanyahu and Trump to keep pushing on to try to either topple the regime or somehow guarantee the straits can be opened, but maybe those things are not achievable. So then I don't see how this thing comes to an end. Over to you. So let me first look kind of six months out and then come back to the immediate term.

26:23And I don't think, Rory, that unfortunately there's going to be a resolution to this conflict because President Trump's goal was essentially to try to change the character of the Iranian regime. It wasn't only about degrading them militarily, which obviously the United States and Israel have done, but to kind of end this 47-year menace of the Islamic Republic of Iran chanting death to America and death to Israel. And that doesn't look like it's a near-term possibility. And so what Iran wants to cease hostilities, among other things, they want reassurances that the United States and Israel are not going to attack again.

27:08But those assurances cannot be granted Iran so long as Iran is, as I said, not so much its hostility toward America, but toward Israel, because Israel is within missile range of Iran, and it feels an existential threat from Iran's nuclear ambitions. And so I think there's going to be no deterring Israel from potentially taking military action in the future, so long as Iran's identity is premised on death to Israel and death to America. And so I don't see this conflict being resolved in the next year. Now, we could definitely see a cease of hostilities. I think President Trump's challenge is that, in my view, this was not a war of necessity.

27:57It was a war of choice for President Trump. There wasn't an imminent nuclear threat. There wasn't an imminent missile threat. There was an imminent threat to President Trump's credibility because on nine occasions last January, he warned the Iranian government that if they killed their protesters, America was going to intervene and support those protesters. And obviously, we know that Iran shredded President Trump's red line, and they killed up to 30 ,000 protesters, according to some estimates. So the reason why Trump intervened was a threat to his credibility, not an imminent threat to U.S. national security.

28:38And what began as a war of choice, in my opinion, has essentially evolved into a war of necessity in that I don't think that it's possible for President Trump to simply now end the war and say, okay, we're good, we won, when you have a pariah regime essentially holding the global economy hostage. And so it is a predicament. You're absolutely right. It's a predicament for the United States and Israel. From my vantage point, virtually every country here has been a loser, with the exception of Russia, which, as its oil coffers, have been significantly enriched over the last weeks. And one could argue that Israel's endgame is perhaps a little different than that of the United States, whereas the United States' goal was not to turn Iran into a failing state.

29:34Genuinely, I think the Trump administration's goal was something along the lines of Venezuela, or if not better. But I think Israel wanted to significantly degrade the Iranian threat, which has happened. and they are prepared to do, as they say, to mow the lawn every several months to prevent Iran from regrouping militarily. There's a question here, Karim, from Sarah. Why are the US and the West more broadly so bad at understanding the cultures of other countries, including Iran? What do we miss as a result? And can I just add to that, what do you think we don't understand about Iran? Well, there hasn't been any relationship between America and Iran since 1979.

30:16So 47 years in which there's no U.S. embassy in Tehran, no Iranian embassy in Washington. And there's not that much expertise on Iran and the senior ranks of the U.S. government. Off the top of my head, frankly, Alistair, I don't know of a single person at the White House, Pentagon, State Department, or elsewhere who has real expertise on Iran or has visited the country. So that obviously is a challenge. What we're also talking about here is not just knowing Iranian culture or speaking the Persian language, but it's understanding the ideological and strategic culture of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is very different than understanding Persian culture.

31:01I would say that someone asked me this question last fall, what have been the biggest mistakes that U.S. and Western policymakers have made on Iran? And I would say there's two related mistakes. Number one, I think people overestimated the ability of this Iranian regime to reform. And when I say people, that's been primarily a critique of the left and academia, those who said that the Islamic Republic is capable of changing its identity. Well, in 47 years, it hasn't shown itself capable of changing its identity. But I'd say the other mistake is those primarily on the right side of the spectrum who have overestimated perhaps the fragility of the Iranian regime.

31:47And if only we increase the pressure or if only we decapitate their leader or attack the military, militarily, the entire system will collapse. And, you know, that is also so far been proven incorrect. And so that's why I've kind of over the years leaned on this idea of the containment model, which worked vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. And listen, I know it's very unsatisfying because in modern times, we want to see a quick resolution, a quick fix, which is either going to change the Iranian regime, which would, in my view, be in the interests of the United States to have an Iranian government, which represents the national interests of the country, or even a democratic Iranian.

32:34that would be wonderful for the United States, for Britain. Or, you know, if we can't change them quickly, we want to do something which says, okay, let's just do a deal with them. You know, we're the problem. Let's just be nicer to them. But you can't normalize relations with a regime which needs you as an adversary for its own internal legitimacy. And so that's why over the years, I've kind of fallen back on this idea of the containment model, which... Just on that, Karim, was... Yeah, please. Would you say that the JCPOA was a form of containment? Was that as close as we've got as the West to being in a kind of broadly a right, an okay position?

33:14So I supported the JCPOA, which was a very polarizing issue in American domestic politics. My critique of the way the JCPOA was managed was that in my view, Iran is not only a nuclear challenge. At that time when the JCPOA was signed in 2015, I believe there needs to be three pillars of an Iranian strategy. One is certainly nuclear. You need to contain the nuclear ambitions. Second is the regional context. And regional context, I mean their support for regional proxies like Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas, and also their use of drones and missiles. And the third pillar of an Iran strategy, in my view, needs to be thinking about how do we advance the cause of change inside Iran?

34:03And this was a somewhat similar template to our strategy towards the Soviet Union. President Reagan believed that standing for freedom and democracy was an important component of challenging the Soviet Union. And I think that was proven right. So my only critique of JCPOA was that I didn't believe that the entire strategy could only rest on one of those three pillars.

34:28Rory Stewart:Question from Alex from Oxford. To what extent does weakening the regime potentially make the former Iranian proxies more dangerous? You know, the counter to that is that most of these proxies are significantly reliant on Iranian resources. And so in the event that there is political change in Iran and a new Iranian government decides that supporting these regional proxies opposing Israel are not in the Iranian national interest, and that happens to be my view, you know it may be that initially you start to see lashing out from some of these groups in particularly the houthis of yemen but over time when the mothership has been changed that source of revenue will largely dry up and i don't really see any other country in the world filling that financial vacuum that iran fills for them the question here that relates to something that Donald Trump has been saying and then slightly walking back from it and then walking forward again and we don't quite know what he thinks but I think that's what prompts this question from Zirian Assis in Manchester what is the likelihood that Kurds will be involved in a ground offensive in Iran and are we likely to see an independent Kurdish state anytime soon just talk us through the whole massive issue with the Kurd issue and in particular this this idea that was floating around for a few days as to whether the Kurds might be involved in some kind of ground campaign Yes.

36:00So just for context, even though the words Persian and Iranian are often used interchangeably, about 50 % of Iran's population are ethnic Persians. And you have also other minority groups, like, for example, about a quarter of the population are Turkic, Ozzedi. You have Iranian Arabs, Baluchis, and Iranian Kurds. And Iranian Kurds constitute about 10 % of the country's population there in the periphery along the borders with Iraq and Turkey. And in my view, Iranian Kurds are a wonderful part of Iran's population who have been disproportionately repressed, brutally repressed by this regime. So both politically and economically, they've been significantly repressed and disenfranchised.

36:51and they have very, very legitimate grievances against the government. Now, Kurds have large populations in four countries in that region, in Iran, in Iraq, in Turkey, and in Syria. But I would argue culturally, historically, linguistically, Kurds are closer to Iranians than they are to Turks or to Arabs. And for that reason, I think if Iran had a decent central government, many Iranian Kurds are very happy to be part of Iran. The more brutal and repressive Iranian government is, the more you will see separatist tendencies among Iranian Kurds. And so, as you said, Alistair, there was a moment of only a few days in which this idea was floated of America potentially coming in and arming or financing Kurdish groups.

37:43And the challenge there is that, in my view, the most potent opposition to the Iranian regime is nationalism. The most potent opposition to kind of Islamist radicalism is Iranian nationalism and what I call pluralistic Iranian nationalism. So it's not a kind of a chauvinist Persian nationalism, but a pluralistic nationalism, which encompasses, you know, Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Baluch, Arab, etc. And the danger is that many Iranians are sensitive about the country's territorial integrity. They really fear the Yugoslavia outcome of the country fracturing along ethnic lines. And so when an outside power comes in and is allegedly or in reality arming or financing different ethnic groups, you're going to lose a lot of nationalists who want to see the regime go.

38:40And so that is, in my view, a dangerous strategy of playing with fire. But I do want to emphasize that Iranian Kurds are a wonderful and critical and integral part of the fabric of Iran and deserve a much better role than they have now.

39:00Rory Stewart:Kareem, as my last question, I'm going to be wicked and ask my own question. So Kareem, you said something that you thought that the war was a war of choice that's now become a war of necessity. And the story seems to be that there wasn't any pressing reason for the US to intervene two weeks ago, but now they've intervened. It's very, very difficult for them to leave this regime in place given the chaos it can cause for the whole world. But at the same time, you've also explained many reasons why 20 % or 15 % of the population, if they have deep enough support and are determined enough, can hang on for a very, very long time.

39:39Rory Stewart:And good reasons to question whether simply striking this regime from the air is actually going to get rid of them. So you seem to be suggesting it's a war of necessity, but it may be a war that the US and Israel can't win, in which case they need to accept that ought implies can. They don't have an obligation to do what they can't do, and they need to stop trying to do the impossible. So the nuance I would add there, Rory, is when I say we've gone from a war of choice to a war of necessity, that doesn't mean to imply that I believe that President Trump's metric for ending the war is changing the regime.

40:17That would be obviously a wonderful outcome if it leads in a more positive direction. But I didn't believe before the war or even now that, as the last 25 years of experience in the Middle East has shown us, that the United States has the power to dictate political outcomes in the Middle East. And so what I mean as a war of necessity is that I don't think the president can end this war with Iran still essentially holding the global economy hostage by deciding which ships can go in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. I think that challenge needs to be addressed. I think that many of America's Persian Gulf partners also agree that the war can't be ended like that.

41:06But ultimately, I think about an observation that Kissinger made, I believe when a conventional army is fighting against guerrilla fighters, conventional military like the United States, if you don't win, you lose. And for the guerrilla fighters, if you don't lose, you win. And so I do think that when all is said and done, this war militarily was obviously won by the United States and Israel. But the narrative war could well be that Iran is the winner because it survived having withstood this incredible show of fire by the world's greatest superpower and the Middle East's greatest military power, Israel.

41:51Question from Beth and Mallory. What is the real view of Russia and China of Iran? So that is an important question because those two countries are commonly lumped together, Russia and China. And I actually believe they have different interests vis-a-vis Iran. The China-Iran relationship, in my view, is pretty straightforward. Iran is an energy producer. China needs energy. And so their relationship up until now has been fairly transactional. 90 % of Iran's oil exports are bound for China. and I actually think that a lot of Iran's conduct is not necessarily in Chinese interest. For example, the Chinese benefit from having stability in the Middle East in order to ensure the free flow of oil and there's been no country in the Middle East which has been more detrimental to stability and the free flow of oil than Iran.

42:47I also believe that if Iran really fulfilled its enormous potential as a nation. Iran should be a natural gas superpower. It has the second largest proven reserves after Russia, but it's not even top 10 when it comes to exports because of its isolation. In 1978, Iran was producing 6 million barrels per day of oil, post-revolution that the average number has probably been half. So if Iran really fulfilled its enormous potential as an energy superpower and as a global market. In my view, that's good for China. I don't think any of that is good for Russia. I think Russia benefits from Iran being a nuisance to stability in the Middle East because it increases the risk premium of energy.

43:32Russia benefits from Iran being a thorn in the side of the United States. Russia benefits from Iran, which is isolated and not able to exploit its natural gas resources and compete with Russia and European gas markets. Russia benefits from an Iran which isn't competitive with them in their historic sphere of influence, which is Central Asia. So even though we commonly lump China and Russia together on Iran, I actually think the two countries have very different end games. Final question from me, Karim, and thank you so much for your time and your insight. I think our listeners and viewers will really, really appreciate your contribution.

44:14But I think if we had one area where we had the most questions, it's kind of in this area of what are the alternatives? What are the alternatives to what Trump and Israel have done? Sarah, what would you say is a solution to the problems of Iran besides foreign intervention? Sabina, do you think military intervention is the only way to achieve regime change in Iran? So I guess people just saying America, Europe, all saying Iran is a problem. So I guess that is the kind of question I think is most asked is, how else do you try to get them to be less of a problem? Well, I think one of the most important tools in our toolkit, and I say this as the West, both America and UK and Europe, is our values, Western values of democracy, liberty, human rights, these were very important tools which helped us prevail in the Cold War.

45:06And what I've seen over the years, certainly in D.C. and since the Trump second term, is that those great American institutions, whether it's places like National Endowment for Democracy and Voice of America and institutions within the U.S. government, whether that's within the State Department, USAID, that played important roles during the Cold War have essentially been, in the words of Ann Applebaum, unilaterally disarmed, or they've atrophied. And it's my view that the U.S.-Iran Cold War is not going to really end until you have a government in Iran which either is representative of its population or, at a minimum, reflects the national interests of Iran rather than the revolutionary ideology of 1979.

46:01And as what we've just seen over the last three weeks is that military power, hard power alone cannot resolve that for you. And I think we really need to think much more seriously about a strategy which helps to empower and stand with the aspirations of people inside Iran who want to be South Korea, not North Korea, and a strategy which helps to kind of accentuate Iran's internal fissures. And I understand this is not a totally satisfying answer because this is not an eight-minute abs, right? This is not something that you can achieve in two weeks. It can potentially take years. But I do believe very much that there's no country in the world with a greater gap between its government and its people than Iran.

46:53and it's one of the few places, certainly in the Middle East, in which you could argue Western values and Western interests intersect. Very good. Well, and of course, not helped by the fact that Donald Trump occasionally appears to be more interested in the dictatorial approach to life than the democratic. But Karim, honestly, it's been fantastic to talk to you. I hope we'll maybe do it again one day, but thank you so much for your time.

47:15Rory Stewart:Karim, thank you very much. It was a great privilege. Thank you both. It was great to be with you. Great privilege. Thank you. Thank you, Rory. Likewise. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

47:26Rory Stewart:Well, Roy, that was great. Really interesting. I'm really pleased. It's extraordinary how even for Karim, all the contradictions and impossibilities and tensions there. I mean, there is a real sense now in which Trump and Israel have created a world in which there are no good options. I mean, he keeps reinforcing the fact that I think he would agree very strongly with us that this was a catastrophically stupid thing to do. But I guess he's leaning into the idea that now you've done it, leaving this regime able to claim a victory feels not just sticks in the craw, but is actually a real problem.

48:07Rory Stewart:Because how on earth is the economy of Dubai going to get off the ground again? How is Qatar going to start exporting gas again? If a regime is left there, which at any moment, you know, potentially triggered by another strike from Israel, and as he says, Israel's not going to stop striking them is going to strike Middle Eastern countries, shut the straits, etc. And yet it's slightly felt, listening to him, that that may be the situation for quite a long time to come because he didn't sound very optimistic that the regime was about to disappear or become pro-Western anytime soon. No, on the contrary.

48:38I think you got the sense from him that he thinks that they feel they've withstood this extraordinary bombardment and they've withstood it without uprising on the streets without any real pushback internally they may have worsened relations with the people with whom they got on reasonably well in the past but they weren't worry about that i also thought it was interesting the way he talked about the this is something we said when this thing first blew up that if you are a dictatorship a real dictatorship you can hold out for longer and they you know for them, he was saying there that this is not something that's going to get resolved in weeks, it's going to take years.

49:19And I think that question from the listener who said, you know, what do we keep getting wrong? I think one of the things we get wrong is that we assume too often that countries and cultures that are very, very different to ours are going to react in the way that we would. The other one I would add is that we understand that these regimes are horrible

49:40Rory Stewart:and are hated by very, very large numbers of their people. And we talk to Iranians or Libyans or Iraqis or Afghans, often outside the country, but sometimes inside the country, who just say, this regime is absolutely horrible and none of us like it and we want to be rid of it. And that can tempt you into an intervention, thinking that the intervention is somehow going going to topple the regime and create a much better situation. And of course, when the son of the previous ruler of Iran, the Shah, is saying, you know, this regime is going to collapse like a pack of cards, or when optimistic Israelis are saying this regime is going to collapse like a pack of cards, we just have to remember, you know, maybe remember Hamas in Gaza, right?

50:30Rory Stewart:It's true. Hamas was a horrible, brutal terrorist group. It was profoundly unpopular with so many Palestinians. But that didn't mean that the Israeli campaign in Gaza has somehow got rid of Hamas. Hamas is still basically the de facto power. Or maybe the most dramatic one in my life is Afghanistan, where the Taliban government was unbelievably unpopular, brutal, theocratic, hated by the majority of the Afghan people in 2001. We intervened, we spent 20 years on the ground, we spent $2 ,000 billion, and now the Taliban have taken over again. And I don't think they're popular now. I think they're probably much like the Iranian regime, 15%, 20 % support, 80 % against.

51:13Rory Stewart:But that doesn't mean that our massive investments of money can achieve what, understandably, Iranians want. My final point is this, that if you're Trump and you're the Americans, you are absolutely obsessed with the idea of being able to say, we won. At the end of whatever happens, we won. Partly because they haven't been clear about what their objectives have been. They've been in one minute regime change, one minute taking out their nuclear weapons, one minute killing Khamenei, and they've changed. There's not been a sort of consistent sense of what the strategy is to meet a specific objective.

51:50That becomes harder for them. Whereas this context is that the war stops without them being utterly destroyed because that is the rhetoric and the language that was used by Trump and Hexer and co. When this whole thing got launched, they are in an absolute mess of their own making, both politically, strategically, militarily. And I think the fact that they don't have allies kind of rushing to help them in the way that they think they should just Trump clicks his fingers and everybody goes running because the rest of the world is looking on and saying, well, excuse me, what is it that you were trying to do?

52:28I think if the Trump regime had any sense, they'd actually listen to somebody like Kareem, who's basically saying, look, you've underestimated what these guys are up to and what they're capable of. And because there's a lack of clarity about what you're trying to achieve, they're just going to sit you out.

52:46Rory Stewart:The problem, of course, on that one is that The best case scenario for ending the war would have been Trump saying something like, this was all about their nuclear program, and I've damaged their nuclear program more, and they've got fewer missiles. But it's now so obvious to the rest of the world that he's exposed their ability to attack the economies of the Gulf and drive up oil prices and close the Straits of Hormuz. If he just says, well, mission accomplished, I've taken up their missile programs, they've destroyed their nuclear weapons, we've won. Everybody will be saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

53:22Rory Stewart:You've now created a state which is effectively able to blackmail the hood of the Gulf and the global economy. You can't walk away. Well, listen, thank you to you for having the idea of getting Kareem on. Thank you to all our listeners and viewers. You sent in hundreds of questions. And above all, thank you to Kareem for being such an engaging and interesting guest. See you soon. Thank you very much. Bye.

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