The Reluctant Prince: Can Reza Pahlavi Lead Iran’s Future? Q&A with Eli Lake

Summary

Breaking History – The Reluctant Prince: Can Reza Pahlavi Lead Iran’s Future?

Podcast: Breaking History
Host: Eli Lake (A); Producer: Poppy Demon (C)
Date: February 10, 2026

Overview

This bonus episode of Breaking History delves into the current situation in Iran, examining the roots of popular unrest, the nature and future of the regime, and the potential role of Reza Pahlavi—the exiled crown prince—as a unifying opposition figure. Host and longtime Iran reporter Eli Lake draws on decades of experience to provide deep historical context for recent political developments, exploring the intersection of U.S. policy, prospects for Iranian democracy, and the complexities of leadership in exile.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Eli Lake’s Background & Iran Focus

• Lake’s Entry into Iran Coverage: Began in the late 1990s after the Tehran University uprising, contextualizing the start of modern anti-regime activism.
  • “A lot of people, myself included, would say that [the 1999 uprising] is the beginning of what we would see as the sort of chain of unrest, the popular discontent with the Islamic Republic…” (03:30)
• Reformist Era and Disillusionment:
  • Muhammad Khatami’s “new dawn” era ultimately stymied by hardliner opposition, murders of intellectuals, and state crackdowns.
  • Vivid recounting of how student hope met regime violence.
  • Lake’s time in Tehran in 2002, engaging with underground dissidents, highlighted the regime’s lack of legitimacy and the disconnect between regime propaganda and actual sentiments.
  • “Something that I think everybody now realizes, which is that this regime has zero legitimacy...” (07:54)

2. Roots and Recurrence of Dissent

• Patterns Since the 1990s: Lake draws a line from student crackdowns in the late ‘90s, through the “Green Movement” of 2009, up to recurring protests today.
  • “At this point… the regime crushed dissent and they have exiled, jailed or murdered anybody who wanted to reform the system.” (10:22)
• Current Conditions and Popular Will:
  • Widespread economic hardship, collapsing currency, water shortages, corruption, and looted pensions have compounded anger.
  • “Structural problems in Iran right now are so awful… I think it’s a matter of time, the worst thing that can happen…” (12:28)
• Foreign Policy & U.S. Dilemmas:
  • Lake warns that negotiations serve as a “lifeline to the regime” and signal to the people that their suffering might be overlooked for expediency.
  • “Negotiations are very bad because it is a lifeline to the regime and… sends the message back to the people that we can cut a deal that will allow us to keep slaughtering you.” (13:58)

3. Who Is Reza Pahlavi? (The “Reluctant Prince”)

• Background and Westernization:
  • Son of overthrown Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, exiled since 1979, Western-educated (Texas, Williams College, USC), and deeply Americanized in world-view.
  • “He became very American. He’s looking around and he sees the sort of trends of history… and believes in liberal democracy.” (21:24)
• Role and Reputation:
  • Acknowledged as an exile, not in Iran for decades, but still the only opposition figure polling even modest support (31%).
  • “He assimilates… He would say, I’m happy to lead the movement to transition Iran to a democracy, but I have no interest in becoming an absolute monarch.” (21:40)
• Inheriting a Shadowy Legacy:
  • Discussed the nuanced legacy of his father: autocratic but also enacted reforms (women’s suffrage, literacy, land reform).
  • Contradicts simplistic narratives about 1953; offers criticism of American-centric depictions of the Shah’s fall and the revolution.
    • “I never bought the argument that the 79 revolution was somehow informed by anger over America and British role…” (20:33)

4. Could Reza Lead—and What Would That Mean?

• Coalition Building or Royal Restoration?
  • To succeed, he must unite a landscape of human rights lawyers, unions, ethnic minorities, and diaspora—not just rely on monarchist nostalgia.
  • “He needs to unite all the different factions that oppose this regime and get them on the same page…” (23:10)
• Personal Reluctance & Public Perception:
  • Millions in and outside Iran want a king (“javed Shah!”) rather than a coalition builder—shows deep ambivalence about Iran’s path forward.
  • “Kings don’t make coalitions with people. They rule.” (24:10)
• Influenced by Nonviolence:
  • Pahlavi is a student of Gene Sharp’s nonviolent resistance, desiring a people-powered transition—contradicted by desperation among supporters for foreign (even military) intervention.
  • “He is a student of Gene Sharp… wants something like this [MLK/Gandhi nonviolence] for Iran.” (25:04)

5. Limitations and Hurdles—Foreign and Domestic

• Why Not Full U.S. Endorsement?
  • Long exile, untested leadership, unclear transition plan, and hesitancy even in Trump’s administration to back him completely.
  • “He hasn’t been in the country since 1978… It’s unclear that he would [win an election].” (27:42)
  • “I think that the Trump administration would like to keep their options open to see if they can cut a deal.” (28:22)
• Complicated Revolution Scenarios:
  • Discussion of possible post-regime pathways: interim government, constitutional referendum (return to 1905/1925 models), eliminating Supreme Leader’s power.
  • Reiterates the tragedy of talented Iranians fleeing; loss of “best and brightest” is both a symptom and a driver of Iran’s decline.

6. The U.S., Trump, and the Future

• Trump’s Policy—Strengths and Limitations:
  • Acknowledges real foreign policy successes (“set back the Iranian nuclear program considerably,” “arranging a deal whereby Israeli hostages were returned”) (39:55).
  • Emphasizes that true transformation is unfinished—“the job isn’t finished until… there is a transition to something better.” (34:53)
  • Warns against half-measures (e.g., supporting revolt but failing to carry it through, as with Bush in Iraq ’91 or Obama’s “red line” in Syria).
• Missed Opportunities & Infrastructure:
  • Cites lack of U.S. cyber/information support during uprisings (e.g., restoring internet, disrupting regime command) as a failing across administrations.
  • “There really needs to be something like that in place because… the Iranian people are just not going to let this go.” (38:37)
• Constraints: Missile Defense Realities:
  • Realpolitik check: U.S. hesitancy partly due to Iran’s missile stockpile overwhelming Western interceptors. “Iran has more ballistic missiles than we have the interceptors to shoot them out of the sky.” (43:04)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Regime Legitimacy
  • “Something that I think everybody now realizes, which is that this regime has zero legitimacy…” (07:54 – Eli Lake)
• On U.S.-Iran Negotiations
  • “Negotiations are very bad because it is a lifeline to the regime and… sends the message back to the people that we can cut a deal that will allow us to keep slaughtering you.” (13:58 – Eli Lake)
• On Exile and Opposition
  • “He hasn’t been in the country since 1978… yes, people call his name. There is a serious poll… but he hasn’t won an election. It’s unclear that he would.” (27:42 – Eli Lake)
• On Nonviolent Change vs. Desperation
  • “Pahlavi is… a student of Gene Sharp… That is an irony that we have this moment in history where Trump promised at one point to basically use American arms to help this movement, which is kind of against the spirit of Gene Sharp.” (25:04 – Eli Lake)
• On the Difference Now vs. "End of History" Past
  • “At this point… the regime crushed dissent and they have exiled, jailed or murdered anybody who wanted to reform the system.” (10:22 – Eli Lake)
• On the American Role
  • “I don’t really think that [responsibility to protect] as a doctrine works… but this is one where there was a terrible humanitarian catastrophe that happens to overlap with a regime that is the source of so much mayhem and mischief in the Middle east and has been an avowed American foe. So… this is over determined.” (42:05 – Eli Lake)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [03:20] – Lake’s introduction to Iran, origins of unrest, personal reporting
• [07:54] – Reflections on the regime’s lack of legitimacy, cultural observations from inside Iran
• [10:22] – Legacy of crushed dissent, evolution to current opposition, ongoing state repression
• [12:28] – Economic/structural decay, prospects and limits for outside intervention
• [15:12] – The story of Reza Pahlavi: background, exile, education, transformation
• [21:08] – The 1953 coup, Shah's reforms, historical reinterpretations
• [23:09] – Possibilities and limits of Reza Pahlavi as a unifier and leader
• [27:42] – Why the U.S. hesitates to fully back Pahlavi; polling and legitimacy
• [31:06] – Post-revolution scenarios, what the Iranian people want (referenda, abolition of Supreme Leader)
• [34:34] – Trump’s foreign policy: achievements, shortcomings, comparison to past U.S. leaders
• [38:37] – The crucial question of U.S. support for protestors (internet, covert aid)
• [43:04] – Missile defense and real constraints on support/intervention

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Tone and Style

The conversation is journalistically rigorous but accessible, with Eli Lake frequently adding personal anecdotes and biting historical analysis. There’s a steady tension between optimism (“the Iranian people are just not going to let this go”) and grim realism about foreign policy constraints and the pyschology of exile. Humor and references (“American Beauty,” “buying Greenland”) punctuate the otherwise somber subject matter.

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Final Reflection

This episode unpacks the paradox facing Iran: with mass discontent and a regime weakened by its own failures, the conditions for change seem ripe. Yet meaningful, peaceful transition—potentially via a figure like Reza Pahlavi—faces daunting obstacles, from diaspora politics to U.S. strategic caution, and the ever-present threat of state violence. Listeners are left with deep historical context, no easy answers, and a preview of an upcoming Iran-focused series.

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Transcript

[A]

Hello, listeners. Welcome back. This is Eli Lake. This is kind of a bonus episode. We're going to be dropping a few of these every now and again. And right now we're going to be talking about Iran. It's been in the news. I've been writing a lot about it for the Free Press. And it's just a conversation with my producer, Poppy Demon. And I think you'll enjoy. And keep your ears glued because sometime in May we will be dropping a well crafted and long series about a topic we can't tell you about just yet, but I think you'll really love it in this new format for Breaking.

[B]

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[A]

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[C]

Eli Lake hello.

[A]

Hi Poppy. We're trying something new in kind of to do these interim episodes before we launch the first season of breaking history 2026. And that is to just sort of update on events and try to draw lessons and, you know, use some of my print journalism as a launching pad.

[C]

I wanted to ask you when you started covering Iran and why you have such a special interest in it, because everything's coming to the fore right now. But this is something you've been covering for about 20 years.

[A]

Yeah, more than 20 years. I started really getting into Iran because I covered the aftermath of the 1999 Tehran University uprising. A lot of people, myself included, would say that that's the beginning of what we would see as the sort of chain of unrest, the popular discontent with the Islamic Republic that came from the 1979 revolution. And we should really talk a little bit about that period because in 1997, Iranians elect Muhammad Khatami, who is a reformer president who had promised more freedoms to allow, you know, to stop closing opposition newspapers, for example, who had, you know, promised basically kind of more freedoms. And he was supported by a lot of the student movement, which is what ultimately came to the Tehran University part of it. And then during Khatami's presidency, the west began really engaging. Christiane Amanpour, famously at cnn, goes back to Iran. She's Iranian, and she reports on the Khatami election as well as this sort of it's a new dawn for Iran. And it was a story that we were very much kind of wanted to hear. This is after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A number of former authoritarian and totalitarian states had been going democratic. It did feel like the end of history, to borrow that phrase from Francis Fukuyama. And Hatami was part of that story. The problem was he was never able to get his reforms out of Iran's parliament, known as the Majlis. Effectively, all of his reforms were vetoed because he had the votes in the parliament known as the Majlis. But then the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader at this point, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would not allow it. Add to this, there is something known as the chain murders, which are a series of these awful kind of killings by maybe we call it the equivalent of the Iranian plumbers from the Watergate era, which are former high level security people. Some of them are still in the intelligence service and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, but they don't really have an official. They're not acting officially, or at least that's the COVID story. But a number of prominent intellectuals, newspaper editors are showing up dead. And this is the era of Hatimi. So you have the promise of reform. You have the external facing promises of what he would call a dialogue of civilizations, and trying to kind of knit Iran into the international community. And this is the height of neoliberalism again, only a few years away from the collapse of the Soviet Union. But at the same time, you have this reality. And the Iranian students at Tehran University and other universities who got involved, they understood this. The crackdown was absolutely vicious. And so I was covering that because there were still a lot of people who could get the word out. A few years later, I started covering the fate of someone named Akbar Gandhi, who was originally very zealous supporter of the revolution. And he had come to see it, its flaws. And from prison, he wrote these dramatic open letters to the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, saying, if you're so confident that you represent the will of the people, why don't you stand for election? I thought this was extraordinarily brave. I think I was writing for the New York Sun. I think I was one of the only Western journalists who was really covering that story. Wow. And I got to know a number of people in the Iranian opposition at the time, and these were people who impressed me. I felt I had an opportunity, I should say, at the end of 2002, on the eve of the Iraq war in 2003, my original plan was to travel. I had developed relationships with some of the Kurdish parties in Iraq, was to travel through Tehran and go into Iraq. It turned out to be too dangerous. At the time, there was a group of kind of Kurdish Islamists who were on that border who were kidnapping Westerners. So I ended up staying in Tehran for two weeks. But it was an absolute education. I did hook up with some of the freedom movement at the time and some of the students. And just having been there, what I came away with is that something that I think everybody now realizes, which is that this regime has zero legitimacy and that all of the things that we are kind of that are projected back to the West. Death to America. Death to Israel. The students that I spoke to thought it was a joke, and they were at the point. Whereas if we were being told by the regime that this was the case, then we believe the opposite. I mean, I'm oversimplifying a bit. I also saw all these ways in which Iranians were kind of violating the rules of the strict Islamic theocracy. So I was able to. I was able to hook up with some people who showed me how to buy liquor in Iran illegally. It's this fascinating way, you kind of go into a store, you say you want something else, and someone sort of knows there's a code. I wrote a column about that. I met filmmakers and artists and people who really just wanted to live a kind of in a Western freedom. And that still had critiques of the West, I should say. But it was. I got a long discussion with kind of an aspiring filmmaker about the movie American Beauty. Do you remember that movie?

[C]

I do. Kevin Spacey.

[A]

And the argument was, I mean, what he would say is sort of. I remember this very vividly. What he'd say is, he would say, yes, of course. Everything you say about our system is. Is correct, it's corrupt, it's stifling. But this movie reflects a deep kind of corrosion of the American soul. Look at what happens to this guy. This is unthinkable that he would have this affair with his daughter's friend and ruin his life and everything like that. And that stayed with me. But this was still a period, especially because of some of the little bit of the loosening under Hatsumi. A lot of people who were middle class had satellite dishes. So there was the beginning of this opening. And then of course, it was stifled, but that was the kernel of it. So I've stayed with that story and I've really had an interest in sort of seeing this transition to democracy. Cause I think it's the one population in the Middle east where is, if there was a vote, you would get a fairly kind of pro Western free vote. You'd get a pro Western government.

[C]

Well, let me ask you, I want to talk about the opposition. I want to talk to you about Reza Pahlavi. But I just want to pick up on one thing there. You talked then about the 90s as a kind of origin to revolution, to disruption. Do you see things that you saw then happening now? What do you think is the link to everything that's taking place in Iran?

[A]

Well, what I see now is, I mean, what happened was, is that they, the regime crushed dissent and they have exiled, jailed or murdered anybody who wanted to reform the system. At this point, I mean, we just saw another round of arrest of so called reformists, but there really were none left. I saw the beginning of that when I was in Iran. These were literally show trials of Khatami advisers that were charged with treason. This is the end of 2002. And when I say they were charged with treason, the crime was that they had participated in a poll with the Gallup organization, which is a Western organization, as part of the. What's Sometimes called track two or Track three diplomacy, where what you have are civil society leaders meeting as opposed to diplomats. And this was approved by the Khatami government. And then it was, they turned it into sort of an example of treachery. Now, they never arrested Hatami. And Hatami is loathed today by most Iranians because he didn't stand up for his principles. But many of his closest aides were, you know, there was a trial and they were, they were sent to the Aven prison, which is a dungeon. And that was also, that also left an impression on me. Even though I didn't speak Farsi, I was able to watch it with somebody who could translate and show me what was going on. And it was. The message was very clear to everybody. So that was the beginning of the end, and then it's just gotten worse. And every single time, if you look at the 2009 election in Obama's first year, the people are supporting again reformer candidates Mousavi and Karabi, who are still under house arrest, I might add, although they've come out in favor of the revolution. And then they stole the election. They gave it to this guy Ahmadinejad. Now the irony is that Ahmadinejad, the sort of hardliner, hand picked, you know, in that, that was the second term Ahmadinejad, you know, who isn't a central figure, he has come out for pretty radical reform at this point. That just shows the revolution's kind of ether young and they consume themselves. So we're at a point now in Iranian history where there is, I think, I wouldn't call it a consensus, but I don't, I, I think that there's, I think it would be safe to say 70 to 80% of the country would like to get rid of this awful corrupt system. And they don't have the guns and they don't have, they don't have the power of the violence. And so anything we can do at this point to try to balance that, I don't mean sending arms to average Iranians. What I mean is to say that there's a lot of things I think the United States can do, short of bombing them, that would be extremely helpful the next time they come to the streets. And I think it's only a matter of time because what we saw, the end of December and early January was not the first time the Iranian people had said enough. It was the seventh or eighth time we'd seen it in sort of a national level. And I think that it's just, it's only a matter of time. The structural problems in Iran right now are so awful. It's not just the currency which everybody talks about. The real is worth nothing. There's not enough potable drinking water. There is a huge problem right now with the pensions of just average workers because they've been looted by the people who really run the economy, which is the Revolutionary Guard Corps. There's a series of bank failures. All these things are kind of independent of sanctions, which is what I think some of the people who make excuses for it. So in that respect, I think it's a matter of time, the worst thing that can happen. And even though I still think that Trump is probably going to end up bombing Iran, I think that negotiations are very bad because it is a lifeline to the regime and it sends the message back to the people that we can cut a deal that will allow us to keep slaughtering you. So I would hope, I think it was very bad idea to start those talks like they had. I think you got to let them sort of stew.

[C]

The thing is, I think crucially with that is because of the way that President Trump has been acting in the foreign stage for the first time, at least it would be a real threat that there's going to be some kind of intervention. We've obviously seen him act in Venezuela and other places. So assuming, I mean, this all tees up where we're going to take this discussion, which is that the hesitancy from a lot of Americans of any form of intervention is what are we going to leave structurally as an opposition? You know, too many times have we intervened and there's not been a kind of plan for afterwards. That's kind of how the critique goes. So tell me for a beginner start here, who is Reza Pahlavi and what do you think of him as a potential future leader of Iran?

[A]

Well, Reza Pahlavi is the kind of crown prince of the Pali dynasty that was replaced at the end of, at, you know, the, of in the 1979 revolution. So his father left in part because he was unwilling to do the kind of, to use the violence that, to do the kinds of things that this regime is willing to do in the face of popular unrest. And you know, his 18 year old son at the time, Reza Pahlavi, who was next in line, the crown prince left with him. I mean, he wasn't, he was already in the States. He was training in the, in Texas to be a cadet in the Imperial Air Force. He attended a semester of Williams College, very prestigious school, I might add. It's the same school where a former CIA, a famous CIA director named Richard Helms, attended. And then he joined his family who had to go from like sort of country to country because no one would take him in this weird interregnum period of 1979. So he was in Cairo and Morocco and all these places, and he, he earned his college degree at the university, the rest of his college degree at the University of Southern California through kind of correspondence classes. And can I ask a stupid question?

[C]

Why, why study in the U.S. i mean, and what is the effect of that?

[A]

Well, a lot of elites from all over the world study in the US because we have great universities.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So that's, that's the first reason, I think.

[C]

But is it sort of a signifier of aligning with Western values on some level? I mean, it's.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think certainly Mohammad Reza Shah, his father was a very strong American ally. Yeah, he was an autocrat. But the autocracy or the authoritarianism in Iran is sometimes overstated. In our two parter, I have many critiques of the chasm between the ultra wealthy and many in the poor. And as is kind of the Persian custom, Pahlavi was a flaunter. So he liked to use ostentatious displays of his wealth, which didn't play well if you were living at or below the poverty line. But on the other hand, he was responsible for great reforms in Iran that kind of took Iran out of, you know, their own sort of dark ages. And he was able to get women's suffrage. He got much, much more universal education, improved the literacy rate of Iranians and did something known as land reform, which actually really was a structural challenge to the power of the clerics in Iranian society, which is what Ayatollah Khomeini comes from the Shia kind of theologians of Comb, which is right near Tehran. So they were the. Many of them were the absentee landowners for much of the country and you had a kind of peasant class as a result, almost like the serfs of Russia. And finally it was Mohammad Reza Shah that changed that. He did it through decree, meaning it wasn't by that point. It was really hard to. You couldn't say it was a truly elected majlis or parliament. But these were at least the reforms themselves were very much in keeping with the democratic tradition in Iran that goes back to the 1905 Constitutional Revolution. But we can get into this. But there's a bit of a mythology around the US intervention in 1953 when the CIA, through Kermit Roosevelt persuades Mohammad Reza Shahuz that a young man, a very unready young kind of monarch, to assert his constitutional authority and fire the Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadda. Now Mossadda is this kind of, you know, heroic figure for the anti imperial left. But Mossadegh was very much of a kind of like would have agreed he had with much of the reforms of Mohammad Reza Shah later on. Yeah, and I would say that it was they this is called a coup. I don't think it was a coup. I think it was Mohammad Mosaddegh was himself trying to basically drive the Shah out of the country. It's a power struggle and he had alienated a number of other constituencies that he had in his own base. And the reason why Mohammad Mosadda had to ultimately resign his position back in 1953, in my view, was not because of the CIA and its black propaganda or the British MI6. It was because the senior Ayatollah in Qom, Ayatollah Khashani, was also the speaker of the Majlis, had withdrawn his support, his earlier support from Mosadda's coalition and was now opposing him and had brought people on the street demanding that he resign. Now the irony here is that Hashani himself, who was a bit of an extremist, was a huge influence on Ayatollah Khomeini. So in this respect I think it's fair to say that Khomeini, even though he wasn't really a prominent figure at the time, was probably in the camp that wanted to get rid of Mossada, which is unlike the story that people tell about the 79 revolution, which is that, well, they nursed this grudge for a generation. And this is, this is for Mossada and the coup. The people who end up stealing the revolution, Khomeini and the clerics are the same people that were responsible ultimately for turning the tide against Mosadda. So I never bought the argument that the 79 revolution was somehow informed by anger over America and British role in the, in this 53 affairs. I don't like to call it a coup. So back to now, back to Reza Pahlavi.

[C]

Yes. So he got up to his kind of Western education.

[A]

Yeah, his Western education. And then in the early 80s, I mean, so his father, Robert Reza Shah has cancer. It's in a pretty bad way. By 1980 he'd had it for many years. He kept it from his own family. He dies in 1980 and all the responsibilities of maybe trying to take back the dynasty fall on the Shoulders of this very young man, Reza Pahlavi. And Reza Pahlavi, in the early 80s, he has meetings with the CIA. At one point, he gets some funding from the CIA. As I report in my piece. It's. It's regime irritation, not regime change. But over time, what I would say is that what happens with Reza Pahlavi is that he assimilates. He's in America at a young enough age that he becomes very American. He's looking around and he sees the sort of trends of history and lives through the end of the Cold War, collapse of the Soviet Union and believes in liberal democracy. And as somebody who believes in liberal democracy for years, he would say, I'm happy to lead the movement to transition Iran to a democracy, but I have no interest in becoming an absolute monarch. I do not want to become the shah. So I say at the end of this piece that it's not the mullahs that destroyed the Pahlavi line, it's America. Because nearly 50 years later, you have people in the streets of Iran shouting, javed Shah, long live the king. They want to bring back the monarchy. But you have the crown prince, who in his bones, I think, doesn't believe that we should bring back. Maybe he would be a constitutional monarch like King Charles in the uk, but he doesn't, I think, want to actually rule the way his father did, to be an absolute monarch.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So that's one of kind of history's ironies. Now, can he be the leader of the revolution? I believe he could be. But in order to do that, he needs to unite all the different factions that oppose this regime and get them on the same page. And that covers. There's still a union movement in Iran that covers the human rights lawyers like Nargis Muhammadi, who was just re sentenced another seven years. That means the ethnic minorities, most notably the 15 million Kurds that live in Iran. And he has to, you know, do some coalition building.

[C]

And does he have it in him? Is he that kind of person?

[A]

I think in his best moments, he can be that. The problem, I think, is that he is that the people. There is a movement. There are. There are like millions of Iranians, particularly in diaspora, but also inside the country, that are not interested in that. They want him to be the king and to be the king. Kings don't make coalitions with people. They rule.

[C]

So this is why they want that, because they think it's cleaner, someone needs to take the reins, or they believe in monarchy in general.

[A]

I think it's. I don't Want to. I think there's a lot of different motivations going on. I think that part of the motivation is as all politics come down to compare to what. Yeah, so there are a lot of people who were not born who don't have any living memory of life under the Shah, but they, they have a vision of life under the Shah. Well, it was much better than this. So that's the first thing. The, the misrule of the, of Khamenei and his fellow Moas is such that I think we're at the stage now where most Americans think, well, I want whatever you replace because you've driven our country into the ground. That's the first thing.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Then I think there's a. There again, there are millions of Iranians who fled Iran in 79, who did feel they. Some fealty to the Shah, and they want Reza Pahlavi to be a man. He's not. So there's that as well. And then there's Reza Pahlavi himself. And Reza Pahavi is not just a kind of committed, I believe, to liberal democracy as a superior way to organize society. He is a student of Gene Sharp, who believed in nonviolent resistance and is one of the foremost theoreticians of what's known as people power. We should do a breaking history on the success of. But that's what we associate with, say, Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi. And so he wanted something like this for Iran. He's wanted that for a long time. It is an irony that we have this moment in history where Trump promised at one point to basically use American arms to help this movement, which is kind of against the spirit of Gene Sharp. Although I certainly understand why Reza Pahlavi wants a military intervention, as do other so many Iranians that I talk to at this point, including Sharina Bhatti, another Nobel Peace Prize winning Iranian human rights lawyer, who would never have said that before, but it's become so desperate after the slaughter of January 8th and 9th that I think the argument is basically, listen, the people don't have any. They don't have guns, the regime has guns. So can you start picking these guys.

[C]

Off and willing to kill so many? I mean, these crackdown numbers disputed, but, you know, tens of thousands of people. It's, it's like that scale, right. You know, you feel like your hand is forced.

[A]

Right. It's like Bobby Yarr. Yeah, it's, it's absolutely grotesque. They're now purging anybody who was slightly reformist. So you've got you know it. This is a really ugly moment.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And the question is, what can arms, what can military intervention do? And if we're being honest, we're in uncharted territory.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I don't think a full scale invasion of Iran is any. Is. Is. Is on the table at all. That's not going to happen.

[C]

Well, that pivots nicely to where I want to take listeners next, which is into the halls of D.C. so we've got Reza Pahlavi, we've got the protests going on. What's stopping President Trump just saying we back Reza fully, we're gonna do anything we can to put him in power. Why the hesitancy from them?

[A]

Well, he hasn't been in the country since 1978, so, I mean, that's almost 50 years. I mean, like, you don't know. I mean, yes, people call his name. There is a serious poll from people who are reliable that say he has 31% support in the country, which is far more than any other figure that they polled for, including Khamenei or regime figures. But that he hasn't won an election. It's unclear that he would. The transition documents that Pahlavi's office has put out talk about this idea that he would be the kind of the leader of the uprising. So he would be the final say in that he would be the transitional leader. But how long is that period of transition until. I mean, all those are his questions. And I think that the Trump administration would like to keep their options open to see if they can cut a deal. Now, there's a great way of. It's kind of a frame from someone who I'll try to get an interview with Karim Sajapur, who is a terrific. He's the council. I think he's at the Council on Foreign Relations or Carnegie or one of these great think tanks. But he's a great writer and writes a lot for the Atlantic. And what he says is that in the beginning of the revolution, it was 20% charlatans and 80% true believers, and now it's 80% charlatans and 20% true believers. So the idea would be that you kill a couple charlatans, you kill a few more true believers, and then the charlatans look around and they say, I don't want to be on the kill list. Maybe I should join. And then maybe you get one of them and they're more reasonable and they really will cut a deal. That's the idea. But that still leaves the Iranian people potentially in the lurch and it's not the kind of full. I don't think it's what the Iranian people are demanding, which is a constitutional referendum that eliminates the powers of the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council, returns Iran to something like the 1905 Constitution or maybe the 1925 Constitution. And that's what I think they want. And they've, that's what they're, they've been saying. So I don't know how that'll be reconciled. But I think that a lot of this is Trump trying to keep his flexibility and his options open, similar to what we're seeing in Venezuela. Although I remind some of my pessimistic friends on that, that there is still a plan to have to transition to elections. So for now, you're going to have the vice president and the rest of the regime sort of making these decisions, but making decisions and answering to Marco Rubio and Donald Trump and not, you know, they're the people who, you know, Venezuela is an enormous debt right now to China and Russia, mainly China. So to have that is an interesting. We'll see is that an inner ignum. But that's very different than what Pahavi wants. So I think that's part of it, too.

[C]

Let's, let's just play out a couple of those scenarios that you've touched on in a little bit more detail. So if the regime did fall, Pahlavi steps up as some kind of interim leader or the rallying together the opposition. What the people want is a referendum which would, would vote on certain specifics of a way in which the system would operate, I. E. A presidential or how the elections would work. That's. Is that kind of one pathway?

[A]

I think they want to eliminate the supreme leader, as Akbar Ganji, as we talked about earlier said, if you're so confident you represent the will of the Iranian people, why don't you stand for election?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So they want to eliminate this office, which is, you know, kind of kept its thumb on the Iranian Society now since 1979. So that's the first and foremost thing. And then beyond that, I just think they want, again, I'm going to rely on Karim Sajapor, because I think he says it so well. They want their government to be organized around the principle of make Iran great again as opposed to death to America. So, so many of the resources that Iran got after signing the nuclear deal, when all the sanctions were lifted and the United States paid in pallets of cash for the release of various hostages, that money was not reinvested in Iran that money went to like Hezbollah and Iran's kind of regional ambitions. And one of the ironies here is that I have noticed that the self styled, so called alleged anti imperialist left has taken up the cause of Iranian sovereignty without grappling or reconciling the fact that Iran is a regional imperial power. That's what it means when it, you know, basically kind of, you know, funds arms, trains, directs proxy, you know, terror groups and militias and little statelets like the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which was more powerful than the Lebanese army. No longer because of Israel or Hamas or the Iraqi militias that, you know, were maybe necessary at various points to go after ISIS and Al Qaeda, but no longer and have not absorbed into the Iranian National Army, Iraqi, I should say, national army. So Iran is an imperial power.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And I do think that this is, I think this is a moment that will be remembered with great shame for the left, or at least those who want to sort of maintain their kind of commitment to anti imperialism because they've picked the side of ultimately kind of regional imperialist. Now you could say America's more powerful imperial power, at least according to that analysis. I would quibble, but that doesn't really make much sense. I mean, because especially now that you have such overwhelming evidence, the Iranian people do not want this.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And that is so that, that's a big part of it too. And I think they also want, you know, I mean, what you see every time you've got failed states driven into the ground by fanatics and authoritarians, which, you know, there's a. They drive away their best and brightest. So you have, there are plenty of Iranian engineers who probably could do something to figure out how to deal with Iran's water crisis, for example, or to deal with Iran's failing banks. Iran is a vast nation of 90 million people. There's a lot of talent. But why would, if you had any kind of talent, why would you want to stay in Iran? Why wouldn't you just try to leave?

[C]

Absolutely. What about Donald Trump as a president? Is he uniquely positioned to achieve peace in Iran or, you know, how do we compare this to the rest of his record in foreign policy?

[A]

Well, Trump has an opportunity to be an historically great president on foreign policy, but he's not there yet and there's still a lot of open files. So I think he was vindicated on US intervention and allowing Israel to do the 12 day war. I think it exposed Iran as an, as a paper tiger and left them incredibly vulnerable, which is, you Know what we're dealing with now? Yeah, but the job isn't finished until, I mean, there is a transition to something better. And if he ends up making a deal, as we speak right now, Steve Witkoff is envoy to the world and Jared Kushner are meeting with high level Iranian officials in Oman. I mean, if he cuts a deal that allows this regime to survive, then I think he will go down as kind of like George H.W. bush when he urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein only to allow the dictator to use his attack helicopters to, to go after and slaughter, you know, tens of thousands of his own people. Or Obama when he drew the red line against Bashar Al Assad in Syria using chemical weapons. He does. And then Obama kind of backs away from it, punts it to Congress, who doesn't do anything. These, in my view, are kind of legacies that if I was Trump, I would want to avoid. And I have reason to think that he, he, he, he doesn't want to be known that way. And then Venezuela is another example in his foreign policy where if all we get is, you know, kind of the Maduro regime limping along, then that to me is a failure. When they had an election, we know that the party of Maria Machado prevailed. And that should be the model to have another election and to try to get, you know, the, the rest of the thugs out of there. Yeah, but to, but then he's trying to go for a model that avoids the pitfalls of the regime change full on wars of George W. Bush. So he doesn't want to deal with an insurgency comprised of the remnants of the regime loyalists in either Venezuela or Iran. I understand that. So I'm open to that. But if you don't get the transition to something better and you don't get the end state of Iran, it doesn't have to be a perfect democracy, it doesn't have to be Denmark. But if it was something better, where you gave the people a chance, and you'll know by the way people will vote with their feet, I think a lot of Iranians would return to their home country if they felt it was safe. So he's got to do that. And there are other questions, which is, let's leave aside the bombing. Why didn't the United States figure out a way to try to either turn the Internet back on, have a plan in place to try to give Iranians a chance to defeat, or figure out ways through Starlink or other satellite to get around that Internet blackout, and then in turn take away the Internet and take away the command and control for the regime as they were doing the crackdown. The United States has those capabilities. Why were they not deployed at that time is something that I'm certainly trying to find out journalistically. But I think that that's a huge question. And there should be a kind of plan in place, assuming there will be a next time, and that we should have a kind of protocol the next time Iranians are kind of in the street en masse. Here's what we're going to do to try to advantage them. And right now, that is a. It's not only on. It's not just Trump, because we didn't have that for other uprisings under Biden and other. And Obama, et cetera. But there really needs to be something like that in place because we. I think the Iranian people are just not going to let this go. And finally, like, you know, back to kind of, you know, Trump sometimes creates his own problems, his kind of insane talk about Greenland. And by the way, I would support buying Greenland, like, in a normal way, but, you know, leaving. What, are we going to invade Denmark? It's an insane proposition.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

But that alienating of Europe in that way, we could really use, you know, effective diplomacy with Europe to kick out Iranian ambassadors, use the fact that a lot of Iranian elites live in Europe and America and Canada, and try to use that as a leverage point to try to get defections at the elite levels of the regiment. These are things that I hope we're doing, but I think it's made it much harder to do, given the Trump theatrics on other things like tariffs in Greenland, et cetera.

[C]

Yeah, it sounds like, and I mean, this is kind of the case covering foreign policy, and that's why it's so great you've done it for so many decades, is that we won't know exactly how to evaluate Trump's record until some time has passed and to see the proof in the pudding.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And then.

[A]

So although I do think, I think getting, I think set, he did set back the Iranian nuclear program considerably. And that was an unalloyed kind of foreign policy victory. And he. For that, he deserves a lot of credit. He deserves a lot of credit for arranging a deal whereby Israeli hostages were returned, allowing for Israel to, you know, kind of end the war. You know, I don't think they could have ended it unless they got their hostages, living hostages back.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So that, to me is. Those are real accomplishments and we shouldn't diminish them. But I also think that, on the other hand, Trump does other things that make his. Make his path to greatness, if you will, harder. And then we haven't even talked about the domestic stuff, but we've seen in this whole period, it looks like they've backed away from their policy of sending poorly trained Border Patrol agents and ICE officers into cities where they were not wanted to try to round up illegal immigrants. Now it looks like that's no longer going to be the policy after the horrible tragedies of the shooting of Alex Pretty and Renee Good. But the way that his administration handled it was atrocious and they should be shamed for that. Calling them domestic terrorists when there wasn't evidence of that kind of thing.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's a mixed bag with Trump, as always. And even though that's a domestic story, it's hard to make the case that you're supporting a democratic transition in Iran when the president muses about nationalizing the midterm elections.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

These things are in tension, if you will.

[C]

Yes. And we should say that when you were talking about the hostages, there something that is maybe obvious, but I think about a lot is that Iran, we're not intervening just simply for the good of our heart, that we think the people want assistance in overthrowing the regime. Of course, Iran has funded so much terrorism globally that there are strategic interests in why America benefits if it's overdetermined.

[A]

Yeah. Now you're getting at a great point here, which is that there's something known as R2P, the responsibility to protect. I don't really think that that as a doctrine works because there's going to be horrible tragedies in the world that America can't do anything about. But this is one where there was a terrible humanitarian catastrophe that happens to overlap with a regime that is the source of so much mayhem and mischief in the Middle east and has been an avowed American foe. So, again, this is an example where this is over determined. I wouldn't want to say that in all cases when there are humanitarian disasters and, you know, America will intervene, that I think is a. I don't think you can. I don't think that's a realistic thing. Nice. But it's. But in this particular case, again, it's over determined. And the real problem is that just a sort of the final thing. And I wrote this last week. But the reason why we haven't. I think the real reason why we haven't done it is that we are kind of realizing now that Iran has more ballistic missiles than we have the interceptors to shoot them out of the sky. So we developed an amazing technology of missile defense, which many people thought was impossible, but in fact, the reality is we did come up with this technology. But what we didn't think about was that it cost us far more to build the interceptors to shoot them down than for the bad guys to come up with the missiles. So that was another thing. After the 12 day war, we had a huge kind of backlog. The cupboard was bare for the most part, and the assistance that we're providing to Ukraine. So we need to also figure out how to make more of these interceptors and to deal with our supply chain. That's a separate question, but it's one that I think has been avoided by Congress, defense secretaries and presidents. For the last 25 years, everybody has said missile defense and missile this is the future of warfare. I've been reading that in National Defense strategies now for 25 years. So that's. That's where we're at.

[C]

Yeah. Well, I think we'll leave things there. But again, a final plug to listen to our Iran series. We'll be coming back with more episodes like this when appropriate. And look out for our new series. It's coming soon.

[A]

Okay, thank you.

[B]

Thank you, podcast family. We regretfully are taking a bit of a break. That's because we need best quality. Take any barrel and we make expect the best when we deliver that excellence from sea to the river expect the best. In all the chatter. You got the only part here that matters. Breaking history means so much new me. We're making the next season.

[A]

Great.

[B]

Now your feet put your gift free featuring it inspector test. And we deliver that excellence from sea to the river expect the best. Ignore the chatter. You got the pot right, kid. Matter. We'll be dropping content whenever we can. Our listeners are like family and friends. Expect the best and we deliver that excellence from seek to the river inspect the best. Best. Ignore the chatter. You got the only card yet matter. Sam.