Loading summary
Transcript79 lines
- [00:01]
Commercial Announcer
It's crunch time at work and you need to bring wings to your workday. Visit redbull.com gettingitdone and answer a couple questions about your work style to get a Spotify customized playlist tuned to your productivity. Plus, score a can of Red Bull on us while you go from to do to done. And remember, Red Bull gives you wings. Supplies are limited. Terms apply. Visit the website for more information.
- [00:31]
Thomas Small
Iran is currently being pummeled by its enemies, so it's tempting to think its problems come from outside. But the truth is more complicated. Professor Ali Ansari is a world expert on the modern history of Iran. He knows that in theory, the regime sits atop immense wealth, vast oil reserves, a well educated population, and the modern state apparatus that the revolution inherited. Yet instead of building durable institutions, the Islamic Republic became opaque and increasingly corrupt. Reform was discussed but rarely delivered. For these reasons and many more, Professor Ansari argues that although the Islamic Republic projects an image of strength, much of that is a facade, and that the regime's real weakness lies less in the actions of its external enemies than in the economic incompetence and political repression of its own leadership. And today's conflict is in many ways a consequence of that mismanagement and corruption. I'm Thomas Small. This is my Conflicted conversation with Ali Ansari. Hello Ali. What a total honor it is to have you on Conflicted. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
- [02:13]
Professor Ali Ansari
It's very gracious of you. I mean, and very nice to be on your show.
- [02:18]
Thomas Small
Well, you know, you are really a world expert in both halves of is Iran as a great idea Iran, both recent history and geopolitics, but also ancient history, medieval history, and Iranian culture. So I'm particularly glad to have you on at this time.
- [02:35]
Professor Ali Ansari
Wow. I mean, I'm basically a, I, I am a modernist. So let's I do occasionally dabble when I'm encouraged by people to go into the medieval and ancient period. But I, I am essentially a modernist and I suppose my, my understanding of the earlier periods is really drawn from the sort of literature that the Histography of Modern Iran, which I do and I, I look at the way in which they have interpreted their past. But I know we, we have a friend in common and the, our friend in common, Tom, Tom Holland is by far a much better expert on the ancient period than I am.
- [03:10]
Thomas Small
Your diffidence is legendary. Whenever you're on the Rest Is History, Tom Holland's podcast with Dominic Sandbrick. You're always downplaying your expertise. I mean the banter between you two
- [03:20]
Professor Ali Ansari
is legendary, but it's understatement. You see, I don't think people really understand it. We don'. Mean it, by the way, but you
- [03:25]
Thomas Small
say British understatement because you are British but you're also Iranian. So tell us a little bit about yourself. You come from a family that was very highly politically connected during the reign of the Shah.
- [03:38]
Professor Ali Ansari
I'm Iranian by heritage, yeah. I mean my father was an ambassador under the Shah. I have a long, you know, obviously my family goes back quite a long way in Iran. I mean, as long as you can in Iran when we have scant documents to go back really much further than 1800 anyway, it's not like Europeans or Americans or others. And I came here to be, I was being sent to school here, actually boarding school in. And I arrived here in June 1978, which for people who know anything about the modern history of Iran would say was impeccably good timing, I have to say. So I turned up in the United Kingdom in June 78, not really realizing actually that there was a full scale revolution taking over in Iran. And we didn't really pick up on that really until the autumn and in the age of 10, I've been here ever since. So you're right, sort of people say, you know, how, I mean, it seems to be the trend these days. How do you self identify? And I sort of clearly self identify as British, Iranian. So I'm, I, I clearly have an Iranian heritage or a Persian heritage if you will. But my, my most of my life and my, my focus and everything is, is very much in the United Kingdom.
- [04:46]
Thomas Small
Since your father worked for the Shah. I mean, did you ever meet the Shah?
- [04:51]
Professor Ali Ansari
I did, yes.
- [04:51]
Thomas Small
And what, what are your, what was your impression of him?
- [04:54]
Professor Ali Ansari
Well, because we, we, we had other relations, you see, which I'm sure you're probably going to, to get at in that was cousin to the Empress. So I, we had a certain, shall we say, access to the court in those days. And I mean, you know, what can I say? You know, I'm, I'm sort of between 5 and whatever or 4 and 10, you know. When you meet the Shah, what impression will you have, I mean, of this individual? I, I was always, I have to say in a bit of awe, I'm sure. But then you would be, you know, I mean, you would be in those days and what the family said and whatever, I always remember, I have to say. And during the revolution, my father, when he had come out and go into exile and I, and I remember walking around it and London was scattered with graffiti, obviously, because the revolution was really under full flow by obviously 78, end of 78, 79. And I remember looking at all this graffiti and practicing my rather basic Persian even in those days, and sort of reading the graffiti which, you know, had death to the Shah and this, that. And I remember just saying to my father, I said, you know, was the Shah a bad man? And he looked at me very sort of like almost melancholy somewhat. Ryan, whatever. I mean, he must have thought it was a bit odd for a 10 year old boy to sort of ask such a potentially quite profound question, I have to say, you know, was the Shah a bad man? And he actually sort of paused and he said, he said no, but he made a number of mistakes. And in all my studies of Iran in the last 50 years or whatever it is, or, you know, 48 years, whatever, I don't think I've come to a better conclusion than that actually. I think, I think what he said is about right, you know, that I don't think he was a malicious person, but he certainly made a number of mistakes. And I think, you know, if you want to understand why the revolution happened, you can't understand it outside the personality of the Shah and where he effectively not only lost his nerve in 1978, but in the period of the 70s when frankly he was in a position to push the country both financially, politically, he had good international standing. He was in a position then, I think to drive the country towards a more democratic settlement and he just didn't do it.
- [06:55]
Thomas Small
Yeah, he adopted the one party state solution.
- [06:59]
Professor Ali Ansari
Yeah, one party state. Well, apparently he'd gone to China and he rather liked the system there and he came back and he decided, oh, we'll have one of these here.
- [07:07]
Thomas Small
Well, you might say looking at the world today, maybe betting on the China model was a good idea in the long term. If he'd had more time, maybe Iran would be the China of the Middle east right now. Not a bad thing to be in many ways. Now listen, growing up as you did in Britain, I wonder if, you know, now that the United States and Israel are at war with Iran, with their allies, Britain is somewhat involved, other countries are more involved. But what would you say in general is the most common misconception about Iran in the West?
- [07:40]
Professor Ali Ansari
I think the most common misconception at the moment is that because we live in the shadow of the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79 and I have colleagues of mine who dispute the fact that it was Islamic at all, in a way. I mean, you can take two different positions on it, but certainly as it unfolded, it became an Islamic revolution. I think it's to see Iran through the prism and through the lens of Islam almost exclusively. And I think that's a massive mistake. I mean, most of the histories of modern Iran are written as if the Islamic revolution was inevitable. And as all good historians know, nothing is inevitable. But then, you know, they view that sort of 1979 as this great inflection point, and everything leads to it and everything leads from it. But I tend to want to reframe that, you know, and I say, actually, you know, you need to look at the history of Iran from a much longer lens. I mean, it's a country with enormous cultural longevity, if not necessarily political, by the way, but certainly, you know, it's a political culture, shall we say, of some longevity. And, you know, the events of the 19th and 20th century have cast a very, very profound shadow on modern development. And it's not all about the Islamic revolution. I mean, the Islamic Revolution, I think, in due course, will be seen as a sort of a blip is the wrong word, given what's happening at the moment, but, you know, a sort of a diversion almost from what was going on. Because many people have tended to view the Islamic revolution as restoring the right track, you know, as if somehow Iran was. Had been diverted from what it was meant to do by the Pahlavis, you know, from 1925-79, and then fell back into the right track. But actually, if you look at the history of the Hajars, the preceding dynasty to the Pahlavis, what the Pahlavis were doing was simply continuing what the Rajas were doing just at an accelerated pace. I mean, that's basically all they were doing. And if you look at Iran today, by the way, what's going on and what's underpinning all the changes that are taking place and all the. The tension. And, you know, one of the reasons why the Islamic Republic is. Is in such a crisis is because it hasn't kept up with the changes in wider society in Iran and why the society in Iran is now highly secular. Those who, quote, self identify as Shia Muslims is less than 40%. I think it's about 35% now. And a lot of people are identifying as, you know, Zoroastrian, secular, atheist, Christian, I mean, whatever you want to call it. I mean, you know, almost anything. But. And, you know, the whole attitude is, I would say, almost like reverting to norm, which is that essentially there's a very strong Persian stroke, Iranian core, around which all these other different ideologies, be it Islam or whatever, all sort of envelope and, you know, the core is different. You see what I mean? The Islamic revolution made people believe that the core is Islam and it isn't.
- [10:27]
Thomas Small
Well, I would like you to help me and the listeners understand better this Iranian or Persian core, you know, what, for example, what is its geographical extent? Because it actually transcends the political boundaries of the nation state of Iran. And how many people are we talking about? I did a little bit of research and it seems that Persian language speakers understood most widely and you could include Dari speakers in that approximate about 125 million people. Persianate cultural populations are about half a billion people. But how can we in the west better understand what that means? What is this Iranian core?
- [11:11]
Professor Ali Ansari
So, I mean, at the moment, if you look at the geographic boundaries of modern Iran, it's probably a sort of a slightly shrunken. Shrunken polity to what it, you know, what in its sort of ideal sense it would be. But, you know, to be honest, the Iran that you have today is about, you know, it does represent, I suppose, that sort of Iranian plateau plus a little bit of hinterland which is the core of that, what we've might turn to term the Persian world, but in traditional, you know, the traditional way Iranians and you could look at it, I think, in a series of concentric circles, the sort of idea of what we might term Greater Iran. And I hesitate to use these terms because people will start to panic about imperial ambitions and that. But the sort of wider Persian world is really one that would probably approximate to what was the Sassanian empire actually back in the pre. In the classical world prior to the Islamic conquest.
- [12:05]
Thomas Small
Very provocative idea to our Arab listeners, Ali. It is invoking the Sassanians. They're going to say this is Islamic republic propaganda.
- [12:14]
Professor Ali Ansari
I know, but it's. It's actually, I mean, and let me, let me explain to you why it isn't actually so, you know, if, if we're looking at frontiers, it's sort of the Euphrates, the, the Oxus in the east and the Indus and then the Caucasus. And if you look at the larger sort of Persian sort of cultures, they would incorporate all the, including, you know, what we would term Mesopotamia. Obviously the Arabs won't call it Mesopotamia, they call it Iraq. But I mean, that's, that's the way I look at it. Now, fascinatingly, if you Persian claims at the Paris peace Conference in 1919. So think about Iran in 1919, probably at its lowest ebb, you know.
- [12:47]
Thomas Small
Yeah, it had been just walked over during the First World War.
- [12:50]
Professor Ali Ansari
Exactly, exactly. I mean, its neutrality had been trampled on it. I mean, it had no armed forces in the state, had, you know, the constitutional revolution come to all, nonetheless, I mean, to give them their due. And it also is indicative of the Persian, you know, as you say, cultural confidence. And you see this today. I mean, I, I think you see this today in a slightly more waxwork imitation of what was going on before. But in those days they sent a very well prepared delegation to Paris to join the peace conferences as one of the victors. I mean, remember that they went as one of the victors. And why didn't they go as one of the victors? Because frankly, the Russians had gone in the Russian Revolution, the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, but lo and behold, Iran had remained intact. But the territorial gains they wanted, the reparations, in a sense they wanted at the Paris Peace Conference were astounding. I mean, basically they went to Paris, of course, the British looked at this and said, this is a wish list that is just never going to happen. And it wasn't. Basically they said, we want everything up to the oxus, we want all the Caucasian territories the Russians took and we want all of basically Kurdistan for going into sort of Anatolia. They didn't go eastwards, but there was a very practical reason why they didn't go eastwards. That's because the British Empire in India was still extant and it would have been sort of impolitic to go.
- [14:01]
Thomas Small
So they didn't make claims for that part of the greater Iranian lands.
- [14:05]
Professor Ali Ansari
They didn't go to Herat. No, no, they didn't. They thought that would be unwise. But the other thing that they didn't do, and this is interesting, they never made claims for the Shia holy cities in southern Iraq. They didn't make claims for Najaf or Karabala. All they say in the document is, please let us know how you manage these and we'd like to be kept informed.
- [14:24]
Thomas Small
Interesting.
- [14:25]
Professor Ali Ansari
Which is not, you know, it's not, you know, whereas for the Kurds, you know, they sort of said the Kurds are proper Iranians and they want to return to the fatherland, which is not actually what the Kurds were saying at the time, but I mean, that's what the Iranians are saying, you know. So my point is, is that this predates the Pahavis, the Palavis, and it shows very well, this sort of idea of Iran and its hinterland and what they consider to be Persian at world, but in your, you know, what you're saying really is a much broader, you know, what the late, great Fred Halliday used to call Norzistan.
- [14:55]
Thomas Small
That gives us a great idea of the geographical extent. But, you know, thinking about this conversation because, you know, I really wanted to take advantage of having you on the other side of my microphone. You know, I realize despite, you know, I went to soas, I studied Islamic studies and Arabic, I've lived in the Middle East. I still, for me, Iran, understood most broadly, is still like the great Other.
- [15:19]
Professor Ali Ansari
Yeah, yeah.
- [15:20]
Thomas Small
And I realize that it's been that way for Westerners, like, from the beginning,
- [15:25]
Professor Ali Ansari
for a very long time, you know,
- [15:26]
Thomas Small
from the ancient Greeks and the Persians, you know, but it's still, it occupies an awkward place. Persia is a savior, quite literally in the Bible. Alexander, you know, a great friend of mine, Garth Foden, the historian, once told me, when I was a young man said, you know, the thing about Alexander, he wasn't the first, first Greek emperor, he was the last Persian emperor. So in a way, Alexander's conquests just grafted a nascent Europe onto what the Persians had already formed. And then from then on, it's still like on the other side of the Zagros, literally almost a wall between the west and Iran and, you know, the Romans and Sasanians clashing. You know, eventually even the Ottomans and their European empire and the Safavids clashing. It's always this great other. So, again, what is it that Iranians mean when they talk about this great Iranian culture, which I understand, from what I should say, from what I understand, the average Iranian is more connected to this high culture than I think we Westerners are. But I don't really know what it is. Is it just like poetry? Is it just deliciously spiced rice and dates and things? What is this Iranian culture?
- [16:45]
Professor Ali Ansari
So, again, I mean, we have to be careful sometimes, because a lot of these ideas of what constitutes Persian culture or Iranian culture or Persian culture in the west, you know, let's be clear that in the west, we use the term. We have used the term Persia, you know, traditionally, for the country that the natives have called Iran. I mean, they're the same place. And one of the things that irritates me more than anything is the number of people who come and say, oh, it used to be Persia, and then in 1934, it became Iran. No, it was always Iran. It just happened in the West. You called it Persia and you called it Persia because it was identified with the southern province of Pass or farce as the Arabs called it. Where the major dynasties came from in the ancient world. And of course the identity of sort of the Persian Empire within those sort of Western mindset comes with the sort of Greeks and the Persians and the division of east and west and the sort of the, the, the, the idea of the Persians as the antithesis to sort of Greek liberty loving, freedom loving Greeks who obviously had lots of slaves, but let's ignore that for the time being and you know, who are all, who are all despotic and the sort of idea of Oriental despotism. But of course, you know, the relationship between the Greeks and the Persians then, and then obviously the Romans and the, and the Persians is a much more interesting and intimate one. And you know, the, the, it's the, the identification of Alexander as this sort of major sort of Western hero in a sense, if I put it in Western era, is really a Roman invention that they sort of build this up because it's useful for them in terms of their propaganda against the one imperial power that genuinely was a challenge to them. I mean, I mean either the Parthians or the Sasanians, the two sort of great Iranian dynasties of the post Alexander or Seleucid period posed major challenges to the Romans. I mean, it not only posed major challenges to the Romans in terms of just blunt military power, it posed a major challenge in terms of the political culture and the political ideals and what it represented. So basically the legacy of the Sasanians and because the Sasanians were basically, basically the sustained empire was conquered and absorbed into the Caliphate, a lot of this sort of idea of Iran and, and the sort of the political, religious, administrative, you know, aspects of the Sassanian Empire fed in through, into the caliphate and particularly the Abbasid Caliphate. And it's through there that you get this sort of, you know, the legacy of the Sasanians really results in sort of Persian culture becoming a very staple and central aspect of Islamic, of the
- [19:09]
Thomas Small
Islamic world through literature like the Shahnameh and this poetic tradition literature.
- [19:15]
Professor Ali Ansari
Certainly with the adoption of the Arabic Alphabet, it then becomes one of the great, the world's great literary languages. It's the poetry, the history as the literature. I mean most of the, and I've always said this, you know, one of the reasons why you have this tremendous continuity actually is because many of the bureaucrats who ran in the Muslim world were Persians. Yeah. So under the Abbasids, many of these sort of like leading viziers were all from the Persian world. And of course they promoted a certain degree of literary continuity. I mean, it was a sort of a, an intellectual class that promoted that continuity of Persian culture. And you know, Persian itself is a language, certainly in the classical period, the 10th and 11th century onward, becomes the language of high culture and it becomes the lingua franca of the eastern Islamic world. Of course, I mean, so one of the striking things, of course that people point out is that Iran, the eastern part of the caliphate, never became Arabic speaking. I mean, it retained Persian and Persian blossomed actually in the eastern Islamic world. Whereas, you know, if you compare it with Egypt, another ancient country with a great pedigree or whatever, it basically becomes an Arab country. Iran never does. Iran retains that deep sense of its own self and identity. And I think a lot of that has to do with the very simple fact that prior to the arrival of the, of the Arabs, you have a thousand years of a fairly sort of impressive history, if I can put it that way, in terms of the Archaemenids, the Parthians and the Sasanians, there's a deep, deep legacy there. There's a profound sense of themselves. And it's something that the Arabs who come into the Persian world also want to adopt. I mean, that's the interesting thing. Rather than them sort of simply subsuming it and providing their own Arab identity, Muslim identity, they also want to be connected to the Sasanians and stuff. I mean, the Sassanians cast this enormous shadow on it. And you know, it's. What's interesting to me is it's actually took the Islamic revolution in Iran for people to actually to realize this. I mean, this is what's quite interesting. I remember talking to people in Iran about this who were doing theses on the, you know, the rise of Islam and you know, how Islam conquered the world, this or that, and they do these theses and then they'd sort of come and say, you know, the more research we do, the more we realize actually that the Sasanian Empire was a little bit more influential than we had realized. And I mean, it's that sort of element that in a sense, of course it would be because you sort of absorbed the whole thing. In this phrase that I always like saying captive Persia took prisoner her conquerors is repeated over and over again.
- [21:42]
Thomas Small
Not to mention the tremendously important role that Persian Muslims, Persian speaking Muslims, Persian cultured Muslims in the early centuries of Islam played in constructing Sunni Islam. The great, you know, the great compilers of the Hadith. Not all of them, but most of them. The great philologists of the Arabic language, the great theologians and mystics.
- [22:04]
Professor Ali Ansari
The grammar. Grammar. Arabic grammar, yeah.
- [22:08]
Thomas Small
So Persians played a huge role.
- [22:10]
Professor Ali Ansari
Yeah, yeah. And also it's the Persians essentially, who turn Islam from an Arabic religion into a universal religion. I mean, that's basically, you know, it's their adoption and their promotion of Islam that basically ensures that when you go from the Umayyad to the Abbasid Caliphate, it's basically, as I say, from an Arab kingdom to a sort of an Islamic empire. And the Muslim empire incorporates all. And because of the shifting, obviously, the capital from Damascus to Baghdad, and Baghdad, bear in mind, is only a few miles down the road from Ctesiphon, the old Sassanian capital, you can see that the heart of the Muslim world shifts eastwards. And as it shifts eastwards, it becomes more embedded in the Persian world. And Iran, Shar, the Persian world, becomes an absolute central part of that.
- [22:55]
Thomas Small
Well, listen, we could talk about the old times forever, but the reason I initially reached out to you and asked you to come onto Conflicted was an article that you wrote recently, before the war, but recently in the New Statesman where you argued that the Islamic Republic is suffering from really deep structural weaknesses of its own making. It was a very robustly arg. Obviously, things have changed a bit since the war began, but I think it's still helpful to people if you could explain your argument in that article how the political economy of the Islamic Republic had really degraded and contributed a lot to its current woes.
- [23:41]
Commercial Announcer
The new WeGovy pill is now available through Weight Watchers. Powerful GLP1 results in a simple pill at the lowest price available. And with Weight Watchers, you can get doctor support and personalized nutrition programs. See if you qualify@weightwatchers.com ad not reviewed or approved by Novo Nordisk.
- [24:04]
Professor Ali Ansari
So, basically, if you look at the history of modern Iran, it's about the challenge between tradition and modernity, okay? And successive dynasties or rulers have sought to really restore Iran to its previous greatness and to modernize it as we would understand it. And, and you could say we got some way there under the pan. We didn't get far enough for reasons that we have maybe alluded to. And, you know, many of the problems in the political economy remained, and they were inherited by the Islamic revolutionaries. Now the Islamic revolutionaries inherited essentially a fairly powerful rich state that was, you know, well established, fairly good relations, so on and so forth, but because they inherited this thing and they couldn't believe their luck actually in having chucked out the Shah, you know, after a relatively bloodless revolution has to be said, and I make this point in the article, that if you look at the, the cost in blood for the overthrow of the Shah, it's a fraction of what people have paid, you know, as a consequence of living in the Islamic Republic. So what to summarize the argument in a way, I mean what I basically have argued and what I've seen and I've worked a lot on the Islamic Republic and its, and its structures is that basically these, the Islamic revolutionaries got, got intoxicated with their victory, relished their inheritance, discarded all the positive things that the Shah might have been doing, but adopted all the negative things that he was doing. So any sort of move towards a political economy that might become more transparent, accountable, longer term investment culture really regressed into this sort of highly personalized, mercantile, opaque, weak, short term, highly volatile economy actually, which also didn't really pay too much service or too much attention to things like the rule of law. If you want to have a modern economy, you must have some sort of transparent legal system that people can operate under in which private property is also protected. And this never happens in the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic basically says, oh, we've got this fantastic oil industry. We can sell all this oil, we can get lots of money and we can spend it. I mean, that's basically, you know, what they're doing. And over the last, you know, 40 years, you've seen even successive presidents of the Islamic Republic, particularly Rafsanjani and Khatami, basically argue that, you know, this economy needs proper structural reform. We're just, we're just not doing it. And it's getting worse and worse. So this is back then, then you get President Ahmadinejad from 2005 to 2013 and he completely wrecks it. I mean he, he basically oil price goes up, there's lots of money, they dish the money around but they don't invest in anything. And, and actually all the problems you see today in the political economy of Iran can be, period. Because for the sake of argument, even before the current mess that we're in, even the last two years, there were problems with the delivery of electricity. The water table was collapsing in Iran. They'd over farmed areas. In fact, I think it has collapsed in certain areas. They couldn't deliver gas.
- [27:04]
Thomas Small
You know, remember the water crisis in Iran, when you read the facts about it, it's, it's, it's really bracing.
- [27:10]
Professor Ali Ansari
Yeah, I mean it's, it's shocking. So all these things are the consequence of massive mismanagement and, and corruption and the sort of kleptocracy that has emerged in Iran. And, and you know, people always say it's sanctions. And this sanctions are not the cause of the problem. You know, sanctions are there for different reasons. They don't help matters. But also sanctions aren't there simply because people didn't like Iran. I mean, you know, sanctions there because people decided they wanted to put pressure on or this or that or the other. It's policy. It's a policy choice. Right. And it's a policy choice based in some ways on the way the Islamic Republic and the leadership has behaved. But you have these, this multifaceted crises, you see. So you have a political crisis, but that's, you know, that's on the surface, that's, to use a Marxian sort of concept, the superstructure, that's a political ideological crisis. And you know, most people aren't interested in the Islamic Republic anymore and think it's rotten, but that's fine. You know, the people are doing well out of it can continue and as long as they deliver on the economics, but they're not delivering on the economics. I mean, this is the problem. The problem is, is that actually the economics is a mess and people are, you know, economist after economist has said that. I mean, it's not me saying it, it's people in Iran saying, saying we are just not producing enough. The economy's in a bad way. We have currency depreciation, we have inflation, so on and so forth. And of course, the currency depreciation is also assisted by the fact that when you don't have the rule of law and you make lots of money, the last thing you want to do is keep your money in this very insecure place. So you shift your money abroad and keep it in foreign bank accounts. And of course that depreciates the value of the local currency.
- [28:39]
Thomas Small
Well, we know all about that here on Conflicted. We've heard people tell us about the IRGC's incredibly sophisticated means of evading sanctions by building up a global financial underworld, basically a network of dark shadow finance. And that they can now offer that service to other people, African dictators, drug dealers, et cetera, that can help them hide their money using these networks that the IRGC has developed.
- [29:08]
Professor Ali Ansari
And of course because they've got used to this system in many ways, when the Iranians say we want sanctions lifted and we want to sort of like, like get networked with the global economy, no, they don't really, actually, because the minute you do that, you've got to become transparent. You've got to become a certain amount accountable. You know, you, you at the moment, you know, Iran is one of three countries blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force. And some people say that's political. It's not particularly, particularly political. It's, it's, there's. Myanmar, North Korea and Iran. And so let's say for the sake of argument, sanctions would drop tomorrow. I mean, no company would go anywhere near Iran for that very reason, because it's in breeding, nothing is clear. And then you've got the environmental crisis, which we've mentioned. You know, the water table collapse is absolutely shocking. I mean, it's a shocking indictment, really. And they've been. The ex Minister of Agriculture in Iran has done a vast, long, lengthy interview, Mayor Culpa, about how bad it was, and then add to that the international crisis. And for me, until the last, you know, three months, the international crisis was really revolved around Iran's appalling decision, I think felt to bed down with Russia in the Ukraine war. And this was a cataclysmic mistake for them, which I'm somewhat sad to say I was right about. But I remember people at the time saying to me it was an act
- [30:23]
Thomas Small
of strategic genius, a cataclysmic mistake. You mean beyond the morality of the question. You mean just strategically mistake? Because I understand mainly Iran sent Russia, what, drones and things. But what was the strategic error there?
- [30:35]
Professor Ali Ansari
The strategic error was that they completely lost any sympathy they may have had with the Europeans. So when it came to the negotiations, when it came to relations with the United States, whatever, the Iranians always had this sort of balancing strategy where they sort of played the Americans and the Europeans off each other. And when the Americans and the Europeans could see eye to eye, that's when the Iranians were in deep trouble, as you got periodically when sanctions came in, and then the Chinese and the Russians would join in, too. But this was, to my mind, the European was so appalled in 2022. So you have to remember when people are looking at the JCPOA and whatever, I mean, some of them, this is the nuclear agreement. Some of the commentary now is so despairingly bad, I have to say, because it's all driven by, you know, either fear and loathing of Trump or fear and loathing of the White House or fear and loathing of so. And that's fine. All that has its own place. But that shouldn't justify our excuse.
- [31:29]
Thomas Small
I was going to ask you about the Iran nuclear deal because, yeah, you say there's a lot of people talk about, A lot of people say that. Actually the problem is that Trump, Trump sort of tore up the deal in his first term and now is trying to recreate it using war. But I would love for you to just sort of remind us all what that deal entailed and why its critics say it was bad and why its supporters say it was good. I think it's hard to see the truth through the smoke about that deal now.
- [31:57]
Professor Ali Ansari
I know, I know. Well, I think the agreement was pretty good for the west actually, in terms of arms control. I mean, and that's the difference. I think it was very, very difficult, in dangero, dangerous in terms of confidence building. And I think many people in the west and Iran to some extent, but mainly in the west try to sell it as some sort of new opening and some sort of confidence building measure that would lead to, you know, new opening in Iran. A bit like, you know, when Nixon went to China type model, you know, that we're going to open up, there's a young population, they'll all be, you know, the economy will get better and there'll be liberalization, so on and so forth. And you know, there were several flaws in that thinking. One is that they, they, they didn't really sort of think through. So the agreement, which took two years to get to resolution and the Iranians dragged it out for as long as they possibly could and of course lost some of the momentum. There was very good on the sort of the nerdy technicalities of centrifuges and uranium enrichment. It was much less good on sanctions relief or how the hell you were going to sort of like work with an Iranian economy and get it restructured. Now I remember the days when if you went to the World bank or the IMF and you took money, it often came with certain strings attached. Yeah, I mean, people would be very critical about it and say it's not right. But actually there is a purpose to that. If you're going to put money into this car, you've got to also encourage that it makes the necessary adjustments it needs to do so that this money can at least, you know, work properly and work for the people. You know, at this stage, this was not going to happen because the Iranian economy was so closed and corrupt that any money that went into it was going to go straight into the hands of those that didn't like you. So, I mean, I used to say to people, I said, why are you, you know, why is Obama releasing all this money, all it's going to do is fund proxies in the Middle east that are killing American soldiers. I mean, why are you doing that? But people didn't want to see it that way. They wanted to see purely as sort of a nuclear, you know, the centrifuge and parking the nuclear issue. But even that, you see the problem with that was that the, the agreement itself had sunset clauses. So these sunset clauses would have been finished by now, by the way. We'd have been out the nuclear agreement agreement. And you know, after the sunset clauses, the Iranians had made very clear that they planned to have an industrial scale enrichment program. Now, you know, you tell me what that means, okay? And I have to say, you know, people in, in the Western sort of diplomatic community who are arguing this were guilty of some very bad wishful thinking actually when, you know, they could say, well, the Iranians don't mean it, something's been lost in translation. No, no, they made it very clear what they wanted to do. They wanted to mass produce enriched uranium and so sell it on the open market. I mean this completely absurd idea, you know. And you know, when I used to say to people, you know, this is what the Iranians think they're going to do, they'd say we'll have a, we'll have a supplementary agreement on top of it and we'll restrict it further. Whatever I, I thought this was all for, this was all wishful thinking on a grand scale. But on the Iranian side, the worst thing that the Iranians did, and I think Zarif and the others, we all think that the Iranians are fantastic negotiators and they're clearly not actually. I mean the agreement they signed or the agreement they agreed, I should say, because it was never signed, it was never a treaty, you see, basically didn't include access to the US dollar at all. So they had this sort of absurd notion that they had UN sanctions came off, EU sanctions came off, but American primary sanctions stayed on and the American primary sanctions stayed on for human rights and terrorism things. So the nucleus stuff basically came up with the other. And what this meant was that nobody could access the US dollar. So in actual fact the whole agreement from the get go was crippled, I mean it was crippled by this fact that the Iranians expected vast amounts of money to come into their economy and sort of re. Energize it. Now as I said to you earlier, there were problems even with that because people weren't going to rush into an economy that had no transparency to it. But setting that aside, we had this absurd situation and I, I witnessed it myself. You know, where you go into a meeting and there'd literally be a State Department or Foreign Office official saying to people, you know, you've got to move back into Iran. We've got to encourage trade and investment. And then they'd leave the room and then the US treasury official would come in after and say, you better do your due diligence because if you, because, because if you contravene the remaining sanctions left, we're going to really hit you with a big fine. Now, you know, most businesses were saying, God, it's difficult enough going to Iran to work. The last thing we want is US treasury down on X as well. You know, I mean, and as you said earlier, you know, the point was the US treasury would say something like, the Revolutionary Guard is a sanctioned organization. You cannot do business with any business in Iran with Revolutionary Guard links. So, you know, some would say, oh, well, let's go and do our due diligence on this company and work out whether it's connected to the Revolutionary Guard.
- [36:42]
Thomas Small
Lo and behold, what isn't connected to the Revolutionary Guard in the Iranian economy.
- [36:46]
Professor Ali Ansari
I know. I mean, this is the thing. Not only that, but, you know, there's no company's house, there's no records of companies, Nobody could check anything. I mean, it was just absurd. And I mean, you know, for me, for instance, a very simple example of how badly prepared people were is we had all this excitement about with publishers actually saying, oh, you know, Iran, very literate, sophisticated culture, educated people, we're going to sell lots of books. And I said, great. I said, you are aware that they're not signatories to the Bern Convention on Copyright, aren't you? And they went, aren't they? And I said, no. You know, I mean, and that's a relatively simple thing. You know, it's not difficult. I mean, the Iranians could sign up to the Bern Convention and, you know, do a. But they never did. And of course, immediately that gets known, publishers go, well, we're not going there.
- [37:29]
Thomas Small
So to return to the. So you said that at one point, the Europeans, I think around, because of the nuclear deal and the role that the, the E3 group within Europe had played in mediating that deal, they were sort of more sympathetic to Iran, but that Iran burned that bridge by backing Russia in a big way. So that was part of your analysis of where Iran was at the outbreak of this war.
- [37:50]
Professor Ali Ansari
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, they. So basically, you know, they had an opportunity before Trump came in at the end of 2016, to maybe sort of consolidate some of the gains of the nuclear agreement, maybe by offering a particularly juicy oil contract, for instance, to a European oil company. But they never did. I mean, they squandered a year squabbling amongst themselves. And then Trump comes in and the whole thing becomes much, much testier, and then eventually he pulls out. But actually, my argument about Trump pulling out is that actually it was a massive, you know, shooting oneself in the foot as far as Trump and the Americans are concerned, because an agreement that wasn't working suddenly became an American problem because Trump had pulled out, you know, and everyone said, oh, my God, the Americans have. But in actuality, it wasn't working anyway. So when people say it was working, yes, in part it was working for the Europeans, but it wasn't working for the Iranians. And there was a lot of discontent about it. And because there was no willingness on Khamenei's part, the leader at the time, although we now have Khamenei Jr. Obviously, to actually engage in any further discussions. You know, nobody could smooth out these problems because, of course, all agreements have problems and you can smooth them out. But I think there was no interest on Iran's part to get involved in any further negotiations. A lot of European and American negotiators were so exhausted by the two years of negotiations, they weren't prepared to get back into another set again. Then you have this whole period with Trump, then you have this tremendous push with the Biden administration to sort of restart the jcpoa. At this stage, the Iranians play, you know, very hard to get. Very hard to get, I have to say, and sort of say, well, you know, the Americans have to behave better if they want to get back into our club and all that. I mean, completely misreading it. And then you get the. The invasion of Ukraine. And the invasion of Ukraine is the nail in the coffin. I think it's the final nail in the coffin, actually. And I, as I said, what it does, not only does it mean the JCPO is dead in the. In the water, but, you know, siding with the Russians. The Europeans say, we're washing our hands of this ourselves and we can't be bothered anymore. And then, you know, it's. Last year, last summer, you saw snapback come back in, you know, and one of the interesting things about snapback, the restoration of UN sanctions, is that the Iranian negotiators were going, there is no such clause in the agreement. And people were saying, yes, there is you agree to it.
- [39:59]
Thomas Small
Now listen, Ali, everything you've said so far is sort of treating Iran as a normal kind of country now, corrupt, possibly badly managed, et cetera. But what we haven't discussed is that sort of ideological seam that runs through the Islamic Republic which might be informing some of this weird behavior, why they say one thing and do another thing or you know, why they don't get give negotiators any access to the actual decision maker, the supreme leader. So how would you characterize the salience of the ideological foundation of the Islamic Republic? Now you say, you know, since the revolution, the number of Iranians who identify strongly as Shia Muslims has gone way down. This is a talking point, it's very commonly heard. But the regime, I mean here on conflicted, the people that we, that we talk to and certainly my co host Eamon Dean, who lives in the Gulf and is an expert on these things, though he has his own angle, he insists that the west underplays the extent to which the regime is ideologically committed in an Islamist, Shia millenarian direction. What do you think about that fact?
- [41:09]
Professor Ali Ansari
So I would tend to agree with Eamon, but I'd say it is when you talk about the regime, it's a small, all core coterie group including some of the irgc, including obviously the leadership office and this sort of thing. And they're very tight there and the ideologies, I mean, I'm sorry, I've given the impression that they're sort of a normal country because I don't think they are. I mean, I think they're, they are very ideologically driven and that does sort of affect the way in which they approach things. And I'll just simplify it because it's very complicated the, the level of indoctrination that goes on in a very totalitarian way actually. But let me simplify it for you. There's two things that they cannot relent on. I mean they just simply cannot relent on. And it's one of the things that I sort of said in a piece that I wrote about even the current war and that is a sort of a deep, deep down, sort of ontological, I would say ontological hatred of the United States. I mean this is not the vast majority of the population, by the way, the mass majority of the population couldn't kill less, would rather travel to the United States, have a good relation with the United States, but the core have this sort of and harmony. Senior said it before, you know, about six months ago, he said, you know, this idea that we can never have relations with the United States. You know, our fight with the United States is, is intrinsic, he said, it's, it's, it's innate. It's got nothing to do with attitudes and behavior. He almost ruled out the possibility. And the other side of it of course, is Israel. So what people tend to forget is a deep sense of this ideology which is both Islamist and sort of quasi Marxist, if I can put it that way. It's a sort anti capitalist stroke, you know, Islamo Marxist type of double down ideology where they, you know, from both an Islamic perspective and an anti capitalist perspective, sort of third where they, they resent, you know, Britain used to occupy a much higher, I mean it still does in a way in popular imagination. But the coup, the two cause now are Israel and the United States. And you know, what amazed me is that in 47 years they simply couldn't overcome this. I mean, even when there were attempts to build bridges. You know, I remember and I've said this story far too many times, but for me it's a great metaphor of the, of the problem. And this was like 20 years ago. I was at Columbia University at a, at a conference and a guy comes up to me and he says, you know, we really need. This is 2007. So you know, the Iraq war was underway and you know, the occupation, I
- [43:26]
Thomas Small
should say Ahmadinejad as president, he, you know, Ahmadinejada's president.
- [43:29]
Professor Ali Ansari
Yeah, all that sort of, you know, situation was reaching another one of its dips, shall we say, in the, in the road. And guy comes up and he says, you know, we really need to reduce tension between the United States and Iran. And you know, I somewhat wearily sort of said, yes, we do, don't we? Type thing, you know, And I said it would really help, I said, if you said death to America a little less. Now I emphasize that. I said say death to America a little less. And he looked at me in a sort of a bathe, in some sort of pathos actually, I always remember it. And he looked at me sort of somewhat hapless. And he said, he said, but Dr. Ansari, it's part of our culture. Culture. You know, I sort of looked at him and I said, if it's part of your culture, you know, there's not much I can do about it. First of all, I found the whole concept that such a thing should be part of Persian culture, to go back to that, completely offensive. I mean I, I found it an astonishing thing to say. And yet, you know, for me it Summed up what the problem was, why are we hustle? You know, why am I busting a gun? To try and build a better relationship between Iran and the West? And your only answer to me is that I can't stop saying death to America because it's part of my culture, you know. And you know, I suppose at the end of the day I said there are consequences for this attitude. There are consequences ideology. And of course, I think Eamon is probably right in saying that when you look at the millenarian aspects of this sort of ideology, which is built really from the time of Ahmadinejad onwards, although it predates him to some extent and
- [44:54]
Thomas Small
it was supercharged when Ahmadinejad and the IRGC became much more central in the day to day operation of the country.
- [45:01]
Professor Ali Ansari
Yeah, that's right. But the idea, the ideologue behind it was a gentleman called Ayatollah Misbehazdi. And he was very sort of like, he's a very authoritarian. You know, people used to joke that actually when the Shah was alive he was quite pro Shah, you know, but then he switched loyalties to the supreme Leader and he was very into the autocracy. And you know, he didn't. These people do not believe in democracy at all. I mean the idea that you'd have an Islamic republic and yet there are
- [45:26]
Thomas Small
elections in Iran, so it's a very confusing constitution.
- [45:30]
Professor Ali Ansari
Well, you see, this is where to going to have to stop here. Okay. Because this is, this, this is where the Islamic Republic of Iran is genuinely weird. Okay. And I, and I, I want to emphasize that because a lot of this now, certainly now in the last 20 years is window dressing. And people talk about Iran as if it does have a functioning constitution. Oh, according to art. So let's take the, the appointment of Mujtaba. You know, this, I mean, hilariously, you know, 47 years after the overthrow of the monarchy, you know, Iran has become a monarchy again. I mean that's basically, I mean, let's not beat around the bush. Here's hereditary succession, which everyone said couldn't be possible. I said about 10 or 15 years ago that in my view Modestaba was being set up to succeed his father. And I made the point because Harmony Sr. Was being portrayed in the media and, and the Iranian media as the alley of the age. Now, now think about that.
- [46:23]
Thomas Small
Yeah, interesting.
- [46:24]
Professor Ali Ansari
Okay, if, if in a Shia environment you describe the leader of your country or whoever, El Ali of the age, you are giving him a sort of prominence that no one else gets. And of course the First Shia Imam Ali has a hereditary succession, right? And that's where it goes. And the whole business of this and the way they were puffing up the cult of Khamenei in this light made it more and more likely that ideologically they were preparing for this idea of hereditary succession. They then, interestingly enough, started to buy into, and I've written about this, by the way, quite, you know, they started, started to toy with the idea of monarchies and, you know, the, the Sasanians and the art, you know, Cyrus the Great suddenly became popular again. But of course, this was also to say that hereditary succession is acceptable. I mean, this is the sort of thing. They're going away and then finally, of course, you get the irgc, which you're absolutely right about. And I used to say, if you ignore all the ideology, let's put the ideology to bed for a minute. Let's put it aside. There is still an interest by a sort of a. The multinational conglomerate that is the IRGC today, the business interests, all the things. Do they really want a different supreme leader who might come and, you know, decide that they, they want to come and sort of investigate what all these business dealings are. Much rather to go with the son of the previous guy because there's a degree of continuity there. He'll be more junior, he'll be a bit weaker.
- [47:47]
Thomas Small
And Mujtaba has very deep connections with the irgc. He came up through IRGC connections in the Iran Iraq war, and then he was involved with the KUDZ force in Syria. He's an IRGC man.
- [48:01]
Professor Ali Ansari
Absolutely right. It's been cultivated. They know, you know, they know they know him, he knows them, but they, they, you know, they also know that he will need them more because he's not got the sort of gravitas of his father. He's coming in young, he needs a bit of help. The RGC be there. It's a marriage made in hell, shall we say. You know, I mean, that's the little thing that you know is going to work.
- [48:19]
Thomas Small
You know, Ali, speaking of hell, Iran is now being bombed to high hell by the United States and Israel. I mean, you know, I understand that it's sort of a dangerous question, but I would like to hear your thoughts on this war. Can you determine or maybe people you've talked to have helped you to work out what the strategy of the United States and Israel really is? Can you see at this stage big mistakes they might have made? Where do you think it's going?
- [48:46]
Professor Ali Ansari
Well, I mean, first of all, I Mean, I should state for the record that I have always thought, and I continue to think that when we get involved in conflicts like this, it's a signal failure of politics and diplomacy. I mean, that's basically one of the things that we have to accept. And it comes from misunderstandings and the misunderstandings others go both ways, by the way. I mean, there's always this view that the Iranians like to put out that we were negotiating and then we were bombed and that's half the story. I mean, there's plenty of blame to go around and I certainly wouldn't exonerate the Iranians from it. I think on a military side of it, I think America and Israel's goals are fairly clear, actually. I mean, they know what they want to try and do, and that's to basically degrade the military establishment in Iran, which is what they're doing at a fairly systematic and methodical level so far. One has to think that they've accounted and planned and war game for, because this has been something that the Americans have been thinking about for a very long time. I can assure you it's been war gamed on a very regular level. But whether those lessons were adopted or not, you know, we'll have to see. But, you know, when we talk about the Straits of Hormuz or the economic pressures and whatever, I think they must have realized. And it was very interesting when General Kane, I think when he was asked, he said, do you. Have you been surprised that the reaction. And he said, no, I'm not surprised that they're fighting. And he said, I respect the fact that they fight, but we're not, you know, we're not surprised in a sense by, you know, what's been going on. We obviously had factored all this in. So on that level, you have to think about where we got a bit of a problem. And I think, you know, this is where you're heading, is what exactly the political objectives are. And this is more opaque. And I think because these political objectives are opaque, a lot of people are very worried. And there are sort of different variations of worry, if I put it like that. There are those people, I have to say, principally even in Iran, I should tell you, I mean, dissident opinion in Iran who sort of think, oh my God, Trump is suddenly going to decide that he's had enough, turn back and go home and leave us to the mercy of these people. So that's one, you know, that's one issue where people sort of say, you know, what are his aims? I mean, what is. Is he doing? Is he going to help us or is he going to dump us? That's one thing. There are others, of course, who on the other side of the divide go, oh, my God, is he going to go all the way? And does that mean he's going to plunge the world into this cataclysmic economic catastrophe? I mean, that's another problem, right? I mean, what are we doing? I mean, where is that going? I mean, and I sort of am inclined to feel, actually, that we are into an escalationary sort of crisis here, because Trump's position is that, let's say, for the sake of argument, he decides that I've had enough and I'm going home and I've declared victory and whatever. Unless that victory is very clear to all and sundry, including to the Iranians in Iran, it's not a good result for him. I mean, he's going to come back badly damaged, and his political career, if nothing else, is going to be mud. And I suspect there are quite a few people in the United States and elsewhere who are quite looking forward to that anyway. But I have to say, when you look at. Get that, I always like to look at it from the perspective of the Iranians on the ground in Iran. You know, I mean, I'm not principally looking at whether Trump is going to succeed or not. I'm not as bothered about that, even though perhaps I should be. But, you know, my perspective is slightly different. So there is a, you know, there is this view that what does he do? You know, how does. How does he declare victory in. So the sense I get is they've got to maneuver themselves into a situation where the Islamic Republic as a political system is damaged enough, that it is apparent to all that it is damaged enough and weakened enough. Now, that doesn't mean all this sort of guff about unconditional surrender and this. That the other.
- [52:18]
Thomas Small
Well, weakened enough for what? For what exactly? For an uprising from within the country?
- [52:23]
Professor Ali Ansari
Well, two things. I mean, the uprising is the third part, shall we say. But principally, if he wants to cut and get out, he's got to be in a situation where, principally the actual. His Arab allies and stuff don't think that he's basically made a mess in the region and just sort of left them to basically clear up that he's got some sort of stability restored. And I use that term very loosely, because it's not going to be stable for a while. But let's say stability restored, that Iran certainly cannot then inflict damage on its neighbors. That's the first thing. The second thing would be, yes, certainly, that the internal apparatus of repression is so badly damaged that it is unable to able to go out of its way and sort of take. Because, you know, the big worry, I think, of many Iranians in Iran is that a badly bruised and wounded IRGC and Basij militia without the ability to flash out at the Americans or the Arabs or whatever will then just take it out on them. You know, we'll just go after them. And that will be truly catastrophic for Iran and for the Iranians. So there are these problems. And I would be the last person I think you should ask to sort of, what is my solution to all this? I mean, it's not an easy one. And I think we have to accept that none of this really would have happened. I think, certainly, mind you, not on the scale that it's happened, certainly, I think the Israelis are all on the cards to do a sort of a second round of missile attacks or whatever. But this scale of the attack, and I think you're right to highlight it, I mean, it is extraordinary. I don't think people have fully appreciated it, partly because I have to say the casualty figures are still relatively low for the scale of the attack. I mean, that's. That. That's also quite interesting. I mean, the Iranians themselves are saying about 15. I mean, let's take the date of when this was recorded. Yeah. I mean, on the 11th of March, you know, they're saying about 1500, 1600 deaths. But 1500, 1600 deaths is a fraction of what the Iranians killed themselves back on the 8th and 9th of January, you know, using machetes and guns and machine guns.
- [54:26]
Thomas Small
Well, and given the sheer amount of armament, armaments that have been dropped on the country in the last 12 days, I mean, that is really a very
- [54:33]
Professor Ali Ansari
small number when you look at it. It sort of disguises actually the extent of the damage that has been inflicted on the country. I mean, and I think the real worry for many of us observing in is we can't really understand the scale of this attack and what Trump's got up to without really understanding or appreciating the scale of the repression that took place in January. And I think often we lose sight of that because it's that that has turned the Iranian people. I mean, one of the most astonishing things I've found over the month has been the complete sea change in attitudes that has taken place in Iran. And this is not something that's just sudden, by the way, not simply on the basis of the 8th and 9th of January.
- [55:09]
Thomas Small
Well, I'm glad that you've returned to that dimension of it because I know we have to bring this conversation to a close now. And I did want to ask you about this, that in your New Statesman article, you argued that really the regime there has lost its political legitimacy. And I suppose the question is, first of all, what is the evidence for that? But also, also, what about the war itself? Will that have slightly changed that? Will Iranians rally round? I mean, if I was watching all these bombs drop in my country, I might think, well, who are you to do this to me? But also, I wonder, the average Iranian now, after all of these decades of an Iranian foreign policy that has provoked such a strong reaction from its neighbors and from the great global hegemon, America, do Iranians realize, realize that to some extent at least, what they're going through now is a consequence of their government's decisions?
- [56:03]
Professor Ali Ansari
Oh, yeah. I mean, there's no doubt about that. And you can see many, many accounts coming out of Iran even now where people hold the Islamic Republic responsible for the war. I mean, nobody is sort of saying, great, great, drop a bomb on my head. I mean, let's look at absurd. But when they say, you know, who are we annoyed with? They may say we're annoyed with Netanyahu and Trump, but they say above all, we're annoyed with the Islamic Republic. Republic. They have brought all this upon themselves and, and upon us. And I think this sort of political legitimacy, I mean, that was lost many, many years ago. I mean, we've seen that also in the level of the election turnouts and this, you know, you were talking about elections earlier, but actually the turnout in these elections is extremely low now because people say, well, there's no point voting for people. We, you know, we don't want to vote for these people. And I'll just go Back to the 12 Day War last summer. You know, there's all this talk, talk, and if, if I have one bee in my bonnet, I have to say that, if I may say so, is all the sort of COD analysis that takes place, which, you know, seems to be from people who've done, you know, an undergraduate degree in IR or an undergraduate degree in political science and, and basically come out and they say when people are attacked, people have a rally around the flag effect. Now, it's a very basic model and I sort of understand it. Of course, I understand where people are coming. Of course that in some ways it's true. But what you're not Factoring in, there is actually the situation in Iran itself and the deep antipathy society has for the state that's operating above them. So during the 12 Day War, there was all this sort of guy, whole rally around the flag and people, and I said to people, then I said, listen, when you're having bombs dropped on you and what, you get an adrenaline rush and people will react in different ways. People will react in different ways. The key moment will be, is when the dust settles and then there will be a wreckage reckoning because people will look at that and say, why didn't our government defend us better? Where were the air raid shelters? Where were the air raid sirens? What the hell is going on? Why is it that we've chucked all these missiles at Israel but only 12 people died? I mean, if they only 12, it's because the Israelis have much better air defense, but also shelters and stuff like that. The Iranians had nothing. And then lo and behold, of course, after this great monumental cheering around for rally around the flag and they were bringing ancient monarchs out, Sasanians, just to circle around where we started, you know, the great Sasanian monarchs and all this to rally people around the flag. That didn't last very long. And then in December you get the most appalling uprising that I think we've ever seen with the most appalling, I mean, when I say appalling, upright, I mean the most appalling repression that we've ever seen. Do you see what I mean? It's, where is that national solidarity? I mean, I think people, people far too much when they look at Iran actually believe that what you see is what you get. And what I would like to sort of perhaps even end this is this, this, this podcast with is, is a plea, a plea to people to show a little bit of sort of like analytical depth and lift the bonnet off that car and have a look at the engine that's driving it. Don't just look at the shape of the vehicle. It may be be a splendid looking Porsche, but It's got a 2cv engine. Okay? And this is the, this is what you've got to, this is what you've got to appreciate. But if you don't lift up the bonnet, you'll never know. And all due respect to two CVs, by the way, yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to give the Citron a hard time, but you know, you get my day that what you're basically seeing is, is, is people. The level of analysis they have is limited to the surface, what they see.
- [59:34]
Thomas Small
Well, here on Conflicted, we do try to bring a little bit more analysis.
- [59:39]
Professor Ali Ansari
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
- [59:40]
Thomas Small
We do try to lift the bonnet and see what's really going on there. And we are grateful to you, Professor Ali Ansari, for coming on the show and giving us the benefit of your wisdom, your knowledge, your wit. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
- [59:54]
Professor Ali Ansari
Thank you so much.
- [59:57]
Thomas Small
That was Ali Ansari, professor of modern Middle Eastern history history at the University of St. Andrews. Remember, for deeper dives into the ideas we explore on this show, including extended conversations and Q&As with my CO host, Eamon Dean. Check the show notes for details on how to join the conflicted community. I'm Thomas Small. Conflicted is a message heard Production. Our executive producers are Jake Warren and Max Warren. This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.