← Call Me Back - with Dan Senor
Loading summary
Transcript33 lines
- [00:04]
A
You are listening to an art media podcast.
- [00:09]
B
I would argue that the shared narrative of this opposition, it's trying to throw out death to America and death to Israel with Long live Iran. This is a very patriotic nationalistic uprising that wants to put Iran's interests, Iran's economic and national interests before revolutionary ideology. You know, one of the slogans that people shout and have been shouting for years is forget, forget about Gaza, forget about Lebanon, think about us.
- [00:48]
A
It's 8:00am on Sunday, January 11 here in New York City. It is 3:00pm On Sunday, January 11, in Israel as Israelis begin a new week, watching closely the events unfolding in Iran. Yesterday it was reported that Israel is preparing for the possibility of renewed large scale military operations in Gaza as early as March. According to Israeli and Arab diplomatic sources, the IDF has drawn up plans for an offensive centered on Gaza City aimed at pushing the current Yellow Line ceasefire boundary westward toward the coast and expanding Israeli control of the territory. While the US Is attempting to advance the second phase of the ceasefire, which would include Hamas's disarmament, sources say Prime Minister Netanyahu is skeptical that those efforts will succeed. As a result, the IDF has been instructed to prepare contingency plans even as Washington's support remains a prerequisite for any renewed offensive. Turning to Syria, the US Military says it has carried out multiple strikes targeting the Islamic State positions across the country. U.S. central Command said the strikes were aimed at ISIS infrastructure and operatives. The Pentagon did not provide details on casualties or specific locations, but described the operation as part of ongoing efforts to disrupt the group's ability to regroup and carry out attacks. In Iran. New signs of unrest are emerging as videos circulating online appear to show fresh protests in several cities. After nightfall. Demonstrations were reported in Tehran, rushed where our guest today's grandmother is from Tabriz, Shiraz and Kerman. A nationwide Internet blackout has made it difficult to gauge the full scale of the protests. Last week, President Trump issued a series of public threats warning that the United States is, quote, locked and loaded and that Iran would be, quote, hit very hard if protesters were killed. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration has held preliminary discussions about possible military operations, including a large scale aerial strike against Iranian military targets, though officials stress there is no indication of an imminent attack. For now, no U.S. forces or equipment have been repositioned as far as we know. While it is not clear at this point if this new uprising will result in the toppling of Iran's regime, one key question, in my mind at least, is what happens if that does happen? Who would Step in to fill the void. Is that even predictable? Is there any serious policy planning taking place to that effect? To help us answer some of these questions, Kareem Sajapur returns to the podcast. Kareem is an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He previously worked for the International Crisis Group, where he lived in Iran for a number of years. He is a recurring guest on this podcast on all things Iran. Kareem, welcome back.
- [03:42]
B
Thank you so much, Dan.
- [03:44]
A
So, Kareem, we spoke last week, and you were, I would say, cautiously optimistic, but I heard, let's just say, signals of skepticism about whether or not the conditions for revolution in Iran were truly there, whether or not it was truly ripe. How have your thoughts evolved over the.
- [04:03]
B
Past week since we last spoke, Dan, these protests have expanded pretty dramatically, both in terms of the geographic scale. It's essentially a nationwide protest. Now.
- [04:15]
A
The.
- [04:15]
B
The size of the crowds increased dramatically when we spoke. I think last week it was at the highest, maybe low thousands. Now some of the crowds look like tens of thousands. And I want to emphasize again that when you're living under a totalitarian regime, which has the highest per capita execution rate in the world, shoots to kill political protesters, that's very significant because every person taking to the streets is risking their lives. And so collectively, I would say we now have millions of Iranians protesting throughout the country. Their slogans are ferocious. People are done with reform. It's not only calling for an end of the Islamic Republic, but they're much more clear now. And many people have started to coalesce around the inspirational leadership of the former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.
- [05:09]
A
Okay, I want to get to Reza Pahlavi in a moment, but before we do, can you just get a little more specific on the regime's response this past week? What is the regime actually doing, and what can that tell us?
- [05:21]
B
The playbook is pretty clear, which is that once protests expand, they throttle the Internet, they throttle communications in order to essentially massacre people in the dark. They want to inhibit people's ability to communicate with the outside world. They don't want the outside world to see what's happening inside Iran. And this morning, when I last checked, it's been, I think, almost 70 hours now that there's 1% connectivity in Iran, only 1% of the speeds it was before. And that's not only Internet communication. I think they've shut down cellular networks as well. And reporting is still trickling out of the country. But you're starting to hear reports of massacres of thousands of people being killed. And one thing important to note, Dan, is that Tehran is a very wired. There's Starlink terminals. And so you do see some information coming out of Tehran. But I think these massacres tend to happen in smaller places where there's much less connectivity and they feel that they can get away with it. And so the regime strategy is very clear. And in fact, they now are openly calling these protesters terrorists. And so for them now it's they're shooting to kill.
- [06:43]
A
Kareem, you wrote a piece for the Atlantic in which you laid out the structural conditions that would need to be in place or in fact, in many cases are in place for the regime to fall. And now what you're basically saying is all those were in place, and then you had a match lit over this past week. But can you go through those structural elements?
- [07:02]
B
So, Dan, I co authored that with Professor Jack Goldstone, who in my view is the foremost expert on revolutions. And so Jack has these five frameworks he would view as kind of prerequisites for any revolution, any state breakdown. The first prerequisite is you need a fiscal crisis, an economic crisis, and obviously Iran has that in spades. And that's what triggered this uprising. Essentially a state with hyperinflation and empty coffers. The Iranian real vis a vis the US dollar has depreciated 80% over the last year and 99% since the Iranian Revolution. So it's ESS, a national currency with very little value. The second prerequisite is you need to have divided elites, and we haven't yet seen fissures among the security forces. And I would argue that's going to be the key to determine whether or not the regime falls. The third prerequisite is you need to have opposition that starts to cohere. I don't want to make the argument that this is a united opposition, but what they are united about is their common desire to bring down the regime. I think for everyone, it's economic grievances, political grievances, and, you know, obviously for young Iranians, for women, profound social grievances against what's essentially a moral police state. The fourth prerequisite is kind of a shared narrative of resistance. And what's interesting in Iran is in 1979, you know, the country changed virtually overnight from being a US allied monarchy to being this anti American theocracy. And the organizing principle of the 1979 revolutionaries, and what came to be the organizing principle of the Islamic Republic of Iran was essentially anti imperialism. The slogans of the state became death to America, death to Israel. I would argue that the shared narrative of this opposition, it's trying to throw out death to America and death to Israel with Long live Iran. This is a very patriotic nationalistic uprising that wants to put Iran's interests, Iran's economic and national interests before revolutionary ideology. You know, one of the slogans that people shout and have been shouting for years is forget about Gaza, forget about Lebanon, think about us. And then finally, the fifth prerequisite for revolutions to succeed is you need to have a favorable international environment. And that context has also changed in the last two and a half years, in particular since Hamas's invasion of Israel. Because on October 6, 2023, Iran felt very strong, right? It was dominating five places in the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Gaza. It had its allies, Bashar Assad in Damascus, Maduro and Venezuela. It was helping to arm Russia's war in Ukraine. It was selling its oil to China at high prices. And all of that has now changed. Iran's regional proxies have been decimated. It's lost key allies like Assad and Madur. Oil prices have dropped. China is squeezing Iran. 90% of Iranian oil goes to China and China is demanding discounts. And you also have the Trump factor. Trump has shown himself devoid of any real ideology. He began his term wanting to do a deal with Iran. When that didn't work, he dropped 16 bunker buster bombs on Iran. And he's now openly threatening that if Iran continues to kill its people, the United States is locked and loaded and he's prepared to take military action. And so the international circumstances have changed profoundly for Iran.
- [10:51]
A
Something you and I talked about offline, but it may be good to spend a moment on Karim is this idea that when there's an attack against the regime, like Israel and the US did in June of last year, there is this sense that it can rally a nationalist sentiment against outsiders to an end of strengthening the existing regime. As you argue that that model, that idea, that theory may not actually apply to Iran today.
- [11:16]
B
That's right, Dan. I mean, I was in the minority in the aftermath of the 12 day war among people who work on Iran in that I think there came to be a conceived wisdom that now the country, the people have rallied around the flag. And I wrote at that time in the New York Times and Foreign affairs that this was only going to be a short term sugar high for the Islamic Republic. And what we know historically is that if you're a nascent revolutionary regime, like you've just come to power and there's an external invasion that can help you consolidate power. You know, that happened to Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs invasion. It happened in the early days of the Iranian Revolution when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and it helped Ayatollah Khomeini consolidate power. But if you're a late stage dictatorship and your adventurism gets the country dragged into a military humiliation, that oftentimes serves to accelerate your demise. And we've seen examples of that. Argentina and the Falkland Islands, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was a humiliation, which a few years later the Soviet Union collapsed. And For Iranians, the 12 Day War in many ways just amplified the country's existing divide. So the 15% or so of Iranians who support the regime supported the regime even more after the 12 Day War. But the vast majority of Iranians who disliked the regime, their lives got even worse because the country was devastated. And, and then you have this perfect storm of other grievances, whether it's water shortages, power outages, national currency and freefall. And so that war, as many argued, didn't help the Islamic Republic. I think that humiliation has played a factor in the events of today.
- [13:04]
A
A few days after the protests began, President Trump warned that Islamic Republic was, quote, going to get hit very hard by the United States if Iranian protesters were killed. According to various organizations, the numbers range. One report says at least 26 executions took place last week. According to this one study, which we can cite in the show, notes 2049 executions in 2025. And at least 65 people have been killed in the protests. At this point, what would you say is the probability of a US Attack on the regime?
- [13:34]
B
Dan? We don't know the precise numbers. Out of Iran you cited, I think 65, perhaps. That's confirmed. I hear reports of hundreds, if not thousands. So that's something because the Internet is throttled. Information is not coming out. We don't know the full extent of the death toll. And you know, President Trump has put his own credibility on the line. He's now on multiple occasions said, if Iran shoots and kills its people, we're going to intervene. And at this point, the Iranians don't take that as an idle threat. They shouldn't. Given events of the last year, I would argue what is most critical now for protesters in Iran and just for the people of Iran is to lift this information blanket. You know, they've essentially, the regime has cut off all connection between Iranians and the outside world. And so whether it's the United States, Israel, whomever, whomever is able to Take Iranians out of the dark. I think they're going to be heralded in Iran for years and decades to come. And there are more and more Starlink terminals in Iran, certainly not enough. But the regime, according to reports, is even jamming those Starlink terminals. And I would argue even more important than any type of military action that is absolutely key.
- [14:52]
A
I know the discussion is not really happening on what I want to ask you about, but I want to go there because partly based on my experience from Iraq in 2003 and 2004 and even after that, it's immediately where my head goes, which is if the regime falls, what is the operating theory that should undergird planning for the US Administration, other governments around the world, governments in Europe, governments in the Middle east, in terms of what comes next? Now, I don't want to go through all the scars of Iraq, but heading into Iraq, there were different theories heading into the fall of the Saddam Hussein's regime. One theory was you decapitate the regime, right? Saddam and his sons are gone, and then you just keep the regime basically intact and you just get new executive leadership was one theory. There were others, including in the Pentagon, that said, no, no, no, no, no, you don't just decapitate the regime. You bring the entire regime down. You don't allow for any remnants of the regime to remain intact, including those that provide technocratic expertise or whatnot. You got to do a full scale wholesale remake of the governing structure and the governing functions of the country. And you bring in external exiles, Iraqi exiles who were living all over the Middle East. Many were living in London, some were living in the US you bring them back, many of them had been chased out of Iraq by Saddam. You bring them back to Iraq and you basically empower them to run things on an interim basis and create a path towards some kind of democratic process. And then lastly, you do none of what I just described. You just try to do sort of a combination, some folks who were from the inside, some folks who came from the outside, and you try to cobble something together to kind of hold things together. What is the theory about what happens here in Iran if the regime falls? What is your theory, Dan?
- [16:40]
B
That's a critical question. And you know, the reality is, given our last quarter century of experience in the Middle east and Afghan in Iraq, I think the American ability, the US Government ability to dictate or shape outcomes inside Iran is pretty limited. But I think it is critical, as you alluded to, that we learn lessons from the experience in Iraq and Afghanistan we learn lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union because none of these transitions happened and played out the way we would have liked. Now we know from history, From World War II to the present, only around one in five authoritarian transitions lead to democracy. More often than not, they lead to another form of authoritarianism. You know, we would all like to see representative government in Iran in particular, because there's a strong sense in Iran, which is democracy, representative government would be in the interests of the United States because for the most part, you know, vast majority of Iranians want to have a much better relationship with the United States and certainly do away with Death to America and Death to Israel ideology of 1979. But at the same time, we know that there's fear of any society in the world about disorder and anarchy and chaos. And so big question is, there's 150,000 plus Revolutionary Guardsmen and they not only have guns, but enormous political influence. They also are running enormous economic mafias, very powerful people. You have for years had this Basij militia, these kind of morality police, shock troops. What happens to them? You also have an army and you're on a conscript army, which has had much less authority. And so I think the big challenge is how do you politically transition without deteriorating into disorder and militias and insurgency? That takes real leadership. It's going to have to come from Iranians. You know, I can tell you, living in Washington, because of the fact that the United States and Iran haven't had official relations for 46, 47 years now. There's probably almost no senior U.S. official who has ever stepped foot in Iran. And so we haven't had an embassy in Tehran since 1979. And much of the Iranian diaspora community has also been overseas for many decades. There's some who are eager to go back and play a role. Oftentimes, what we've seen throughout history is there can be resentment from those who suffered under the dictatorship towards diasporas or exiles who want to parachute in and assume power. I do think that anyone who emerges in Iran who essentially makes the argument that, listen, our goal is to fulfill our enormous potential as a nation, I'm assuming you will see populism in Iran emerge, not that dissimilar from the message of make America great again, to make Iran great again and to be prosperous for citizens to be free, to not have a police state that micromanages every aspect of their life. The big question is those who are stakeholders in the Islamic Republic, this political, economic, security elite, these Revolutionary Guard mafias, how will they react to transition In Iran. Will they go along with it? Will they try to fight it? I assume that many of them will try to co opt it. The other thing we know, I think this was evident in the Arab Spring, Dan, is that those who appear to have started the revolution or are the most prominent protagonists in the revolution are usually not the people who have power when dust settles a few years later. One of the most prominent protagonists in the Egyptian revolution was a young man called Wael Karim. I believe he worked for Google.
- [20:41]
A
Yeah, he worked for Google. He was, he was. This was the beginning of the social media Internet revolutions, at least that the press interpreted as Such was the 2009 Green Revolution in Iran and then the Arab Spring and particularly in Egypt, what you're describing. And it was the most prominent faces were actual employees of these big tech companies.
- [20:58]
B
That's right. And I remember President Obama, Obama said, I want the Google guy to lead Egypt. And their stories were very inspiring. They're very articulate. The world was rooting for them. Probably no one knew who General Sisi was at that time. And when the dust settled few years later, Sisi is arguably more powerful now than Hossim Mubarak was in Egypt. So I'm very sober and very clear eyed about prospects for transition in Iran. Obviously we want to hope for the best and to the extent possible to try to shape that outcome in a positive direction. But I'm also realistic. America spent how much money in Afghanistan and Iraq. We had tens of thousands of personnel there and the Taliban is back in power. You know, we weren't able to dictate that outcome. And so I think again, here it's going to be Iranians in the driver's seat to shape the future of their country.
- [21:52]
A
But Kareem, something like 50%. Only 50%.5 0 of Iran's population is Persian. There's lots of minority groups in Iran, many of which I think our listeners have never even heard of. And that does also give me flashbacks to Iraq, because with the fall of the regime, you had all these different. I mean, there were the large ethnic and sectarian groups like the Shiite Muslims and the Kurds, but there were a lot of smaller groups that I think many Americans and American policymakers had never even heard of. And then we saw inside Iraq, lots of score settling after you had this control of Iraqi society by this regime for some 30 years. And then it fell. And it wasn't like all these different groups in different parts of the country says, all right, now let's all just work together and re establishing order and a future for Iraq. There was a lot of score settling. There was ultimately some version of a civil war inside Iraq. How worried should we about be about something like that in Iran?
- [22:49]
B
So I don't worry about it in the same way it manifested itself in Iraq and in Afghanistan and in Syria. And that Iran is not a 20th century creation. It's a nation state which has existed for centuries, arguably close to 3,000 years. And so it's true that around half of Iranians are ethnically Persian, but around probably 25% or so are Turkic Azeri people. My mom comes from that background, and Ayatollah Khamenei is Azeri. The merchants of the bazaar. The most prominent merchants of the bazaar are Azeri. So they're essentially, it's like saying, distinguishing Italian Americans and Irish Americans. You know, they are obviously part of the fabric of Iran. The minority group, which has suffered great repression over the decades are Iranian Kurds. But Kurds will be the first to tell you that culturally, they're much closer to Iranians Persians than they are to Arabs or to Turks. So it's my view that if you have responsible, kind of inclusive leadership in Iran, that's not going to be inevitable insurgency that you're going to face from Iranian Kurds or Arabs or Baluchis or others. But that requires wise leadership. If you have an ethnic nationalism where a strongman who wants to repress minorities or repress minority expression, then, yeah, that's going to manifest itself with protests. But I don't think about Iran the same way I think about Iraq in that I do think there's a much more coherent national identity and attachment to the idea of the nation of Iran than in many countries in the Middle east that, you know, 20th century, post Ottoman creations.
- [24:38]
A
But if the collapse or the death of Khamenei sparks some kind of vicious succession struggle within the leadership of the country, the current leadership couldn't, like an IRGC Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps general or someone who was a leader in the regime and in the security structure of the regime, try to take power and basically say, I can maintain order and tell US Policymakers I can maintain order and have the effect of trying to restructure a military religious dictatorship to just protect the interests of Iran, not spiraling out of control. I mean, I'm not trying to go to a very dark scenario, but I'm just imagining different scenarios where you could get some version of the current regime minus maybe some of the most extremist elements of the regime.
- [25:24]
B
Last fall in foreign affairs Dan wrote an essay entitled Autumn of the Ayatollahs.
- [25:29]
A
An excellent piece, by the way, which we will link to the show notes. I think we did last time. We'll do it again. It was one of Foreign affairs best piece pieces of 2025. I encourage our listeners to read it.
- [25:37]
B
Well, I appreciate that. So one of the scenarios I laid out was Iran is Pakistan. Iran's transition to a country which is a much more overt military autocracy. Certainly there is a possibility that after Khamenei is either deposed or dies or, you know, gets a pillow to the face in the middle of the night, that you will see the emergence of an Iranian strongman who is an alum of the security forces. And even that can take the country in different directions. Right. You could have a nationalist strongman who wants to improve relations with the United States, kind of like an Iranian sisi in Egypt. You could have a scenario where it's someone who's more akin to an Iranian Putin who wants to try to harbor grievance driven nationalism. But the distinction I'd make between Iran and Russia or Iran and China is that whoever rules China and Russia, no matter what kind of governments are in power in those countries, I think they're going to always see themselves as great powers in competition with the United States. Whereas historically Iran has been a friend to the United States, a friend to the West. I mean, both the Nixon and the Carter administration said that there was few countries in the world whom they were closer to than Iran. There's a quote I often cite from Henry Kissinger in which he says there are few nations in the world with whom the United States has more common interests and less reason to quarrel than Iran. So it's my view that if you have a transition in Iran to a government whose organizing principle is the nation, the national interest, the economic and national and security interests of Iran, then death to America makes no sense. Death to Israel makes no sense. You'd actually want to partner with the United States. And the reality that I think everyone recognizes in Iran, including the Revolutionary Guard elite, is that this country is always going to be an economic basket case so long as its official slogan is Death to America, because it's subject to probably the most onerous sanctions regime in the world. And it should be, in my view, a G20 nation. It has the human resources and the natural resources to be a G20 nation. But instead it's a global pariah.
- [27:48]
A
One question, someone who's very prominent in the news now is Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. He's outside of Iran, obviously, but we see his voice and him being referenced all the time. I think he's got some meeting with senior US Officials, perhaps even the president. What is his role or what role could he play if the regime fell?
- [28:05]
B
So in Jack Goldstone's book, he talks about how every revolution requires both inspirational leaders and organizational leaders. And I think Reza Pahlavi, as his supporters call him Prince Reza Pahlavi, has emerged as the key inspirational leader of this revolution. And the people chanting his name throughout Iran, including in what we thought of as regime strongholds, you know, cities like Mashhad and Khomein, the birthplace of Ayatollah Khomeini, people are chanting, javid Shah, Long live the Shah. So he has emerged in this role because he really symbolizes for a lot of young Iranians. And remember, Dan, three quarters of Iranians now were born after the 1979 revolution. There's a great deal of nostalgia about life in Iran before the revolution and Iran's place in the world before the revolution. And I think for many people, Reza Pahlavi symbolizes that. He embodies that. So it's clear he's emerged as one of the key inspirational leaders of this revolution. He would be the first to say that he's not a ground commander because he's been living overseas for nearly half a century. And so then the big question is to what extent in a post revolutionary, a post Islamic Republic environment, can he emerge as a leader? And, you know, he's been very clear about saying that his goal is not to become an autocrat. He doesn't want to be an absolute monarch. He sees his role as a transitional role. He wants to help the country transition to democracy and, you know, perhaps play a symbolic role as perhaps the constitutional monarch. I think one of the sources of tension is that many of his supporters, his passionate supporters, would actually like to see him become an absolute monarch, which is, you know, I've known him for two decades. That's not something which is in his nature. But it's undoubtedly true that many of these protests, the loudest slogans, are the ones chanting for Reza Pahlava.
- [30:02]
A
Kareem, last question. And this is really looking far ahead. If Iranians reclaim their country from the regime along the lines you're describing, what could you imagine they would want to do with their nuclear program? I mean, look at what happened to Ukraine. Having given up their program, wouldn't there be a consensus in Iran about keeping it?
- [30:23]
B
That's an important question, Dan, and I think it's not top of mind right now for most people. You know, the nuclear program, for decades, the Islamic Republic tried to make this a great source of national pride. And ultimately that project totally failed because people saw the cost of that program in terms of both sunk costs, opportunity costs, sanctions, lost oil revenue. That's upwards of half a trillion dollars for a program which never generated any electricity and subject the country to profound isolation. So I don't think it's among the top few concerns most people have that let's restart the nuclear program. Now at some point, I would say in the medium term, if you see a transition to a stable government that wants to then focus beyond its borders. Right. It wants to. Oftentimes during political transitions, countries are preoccupied internally consolidating their power. But, you know, let's say that transition happens to a stable system. Yes. Then perhaps they think about is it wise to have a nuclear program? What kind of a nuclear program? An energy program. Because, you know, there's been a renaissance of nuclear power even in America. And so is it an energy program? Do we want to have a military dimension to it? But we kind of seeing this now, Dan, in Syria, which is that Ahmed Al Shadab wants to rebuild this country. He recognizes that to rebuild his country, he's going to have to have a good relationship with the United States because as long as US Sanctions are in place, no countries, especially the Gulf countries, are going to invest in Syria. The next leadership of Iran is going to have a similar predicament. No one can make Iran great again, rebuild Iran as long as this kind of onerous US Sanctions are in place. And to get rid of those onerous US Sanctions is going to require a different orientation toward America, obviously toward Israel, towards the regional proxies, and some reassurances about the country's nuclear ambitions.
- [32:28]
A
All right, Karim, thank you as always. As I said last week, we will be in touch with you, I think, quite regularly. You're an important narrator and interpreter of events for me and for our listeners. So I appreciate you doing this.
- [32:41]
B
It's my pleasure. Thank you. Dunn Foreign.
- [32:50]
A
That's our show for today. If you value the Call Me Back podcast and you want to support our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members only show, Inside Call Me Back. Inside Call Me Back is where Nadavael, Amit Segal and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling. To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to arkmedia.org that's ark media.org call me back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti. Our production manager is Brittany Cohn. Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.