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Hidden Forces
Iran's Counterrevolution & the Future of the Greater Middle East | Kamran Bokhari
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- [00:01]
A
What's up everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. What you're about to Hear is the 12th episode in a podcast series hosted by me and my co host Grant Williams titled the Hundred Year Pivot. In it we speak with some of the smartest, most plugged in people we know to help position ourselves, our organizations, our families, and our portfolios for the once in a century economic, political and geopolitical reordering that we believe is currently underway. In today's conversation, Grant and I speak with Kamran Bahari, a senior fellow at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and a leading expert on Middle Eastern geopolitics and security affairs, about Iran's nationwide protests, what they reveal about the power and stability of the Iranian regime, and what the state of Iranian affairs portends for the country's future, the region's geopolitics, and the strategic considerations and objectives of the United States. We spend the first hour of this conversation exploring the deeper historical context needed for understanding modern Iran, from the constitutional revolution of the early 1900s through the 1953 coup, the reign of the Shah, the 1979 Islamic Revolution and its aftermath. Carmen walks us through the evolution of Iran's dual military structure, explaining the critical distinction between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the regular armed forces, and how the IRGC grew from an ideological militia into an oversized parallel state controlling everything from telecommunications to Iran's nuclear program, while becoming increasingly corrupt and internally divided. The second hour is devoted to analyzing the current protests engulfing Iran, how they differ from previous uprisings, and the implications for a severely weakened IRGC following Israel's dismantling of its proxy network, the relentless targeting of its commanders, and its failure to secure the safety of its own citizens from Israeli reprisals. We explore the regime's internal factionalization, the role of the merchant class in these protests, the potential pathways forward for managed regime decay to military intervention to outright chaos, and the cascading effects that Iran's instability could have on its neighbors from Turkey and Azerbaijan to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond. Premium subscribers to the Hidden Forces and Grant Williams podcasts gain early access to all our podcast episodes in this series. If you want access to the transcripts and intelligence reports for this and other episodes, which include summary sections with key takeaways, you can access those by subscribing to our super nerd tier at HiddenForces IO subscribe if you want to join in on the conversation, become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q and A calls with guests, discounted access to third party research and analysis, and in person events like Earned him in dinners and weekend retreats. You can also do that on our subscriber page. If you still have questions, feel free to send an email to infoiddenforcesio and I or someone from our team will
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B
get right back to you.
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A
And with that, please enjoy this exceptionally comprehensive and in depth conversation about one of the most important topics of the day with our guest, Kamran Bahar Hari.
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C
Welcome everybody to another episode of the 100 year pivot. Joining me as always, my co host and good friend Dimitri Kofinas. Dimitri, how the devil are you, my friend?
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A
I'm good, I'm good. How are you?
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C
Hey, I'm doing great. Another week, another catastrophic situation unfolding before our eyes. So, you know, it seemed like you wait for buses and none come and they all come at the same time. It's the same with these podcasts. We have a couple of months of peace and quiet sitting there contemplating our navels and then suddenly all hell breaks loose. And it all kind of fits in with this 100 year pivot theme of ours.
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A
Yeah, I feel like we've missed some kind of gathering backlog that we're unaware of because the number of buses that keep arriving suggests that there was a delay way back somewhere that we all missed November.
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C
Yeah, it feels that way. You know, the conversation we had last week with Brian Winter about Venezuela was fascinating, and the feedback I've gotten has been great, which is nice. It's great to have a sane head to talk about these things. And we're going to try and do the same again today with the country of the Week, Iran, because the stuff unfolding there is again, truly extraordinary. And you've done a fantastic job in finding someone to talk to that will give us that same kind of balanced view that Brian gave us, based in experience rather than any kind of click grabbing motivation.
- [04:52]
A
Yeah, yeah, I love speaking with Kamaran. He's been on the show many times. He's been to a number of our Genius dinners as well. And we've covered this ongoing story with him as it's crescendoed. That story being, of course, the Islamic Republic's both external and internal deterioration, the deterioration of its proxy network and its capability to project power in the region, along with the deterioration of its internal political order and the weakening of the IRGC as a domestic political actor. And the October 7th attacks clearly served as a catalyst for both weakening the center of gravity in Iran and exposing the IRGC and its proxies and affiliates in the greater Middle east as effectively paper tigers. So this broader crescendoing story is obviously critical to understand, as is the US's own ongoing involvement, its own strategic considerations in the context of the most recent protests that have engulfed Iran, as well as the impact of any further deterioration of the Iranian state for other actors and countries in the region, in particular Turkey, Azerbaijan, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Kurds and Russia, just to name a few. And I hope that we will at least have a chance to talk to Kamaran as well about how this fits into the Trump administration's broader national security strategy and the new evolving multipolarity that the United States seems committed to exploit as a strategic advantage in various conflicts around the world. And I think this is an especially important topic, which has been the source of quite a bit of disagreement, in part because I think so much of what Trump says in public often contradicts what his own cabinet is saying, or in this case, the aims clearly stated in the National Security strategy. Because of the complexity of a multipolar world, developing a framework that incorporates as many of these new variables and agents with as much fidelity as possible without becoming overwhelmed by the nuances is, I think it's critical obviously for policymakers, but it's also critical for investors and pretty much anyone who wants to think critically about these topics.
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C
Yeah, and you're right, that is a big problem because the strategy has been clearly written, but it's contradicted every time the man supposed to be implementing opens his mouth. So people are left wondering, what the hell is it? I mean, obviously not that many people have read the strategy. Only those whose kind of job depends upon it have read it. So most people are going by what they've read in news outlets or opinion pieces. And then Trump does a great job of just confusing and muddying the waters every time he speaks. So it's really difficult to understand it. So that will be a useful conversation. I also want to chat with Cameron about not just the Shah, but the pre Shah Iran, because we've kind of had two revolutions in Iran, the 1979 one being the most recent, but the one back in the 50s I suspect was equally important. I'd be curious to hear Cameron's views on that, because the history of Persia goes back centuries and we have this Islamist Republic of Iran that's been the country that we've all talked about for our lifetimes, but the years before that. Equally important in trying to understand what. What it is that perhaps Iran is going back to in terms of its place in the region, but also the kind of power it was.
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A
Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, bringing historical context is actually very important. Who was it, Gore Vidal, that said that America can't remember anything before the Monday morning New York Times? But of course, no one even reads the New York Times anymore, so the situation is even worse, actually. I mean, it truly is worse. We live in a time where not only is people's memory more attenuated than ever, but the way in which we learn things today is oftentimes through errant texts or posts to various platforms. So much so that you don't actually know. Not only do you not know what exactly you heard because it was decontextualized, but you're not even sure where you heard it from or who said it. So you're kind of just left in the state of, like, I think I heard this, but actually I'm not sure. And so it's really difficult to understand how people are supposed to remain informed. And if you can be informed, I think it's a bigger competitive edge today than ever.
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C
Yeah, absolutely right. And we're doing the best we can to try and bring the right people on here to keep us informed, because that's the other problem. D you try and keep yourself informed, but there's so many places that are dying to inform you. You've got to be smart in choosing which ones you let in. And that's half the battle for me today.
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A
So on that note, why don't we bring in our guest? Let's do it.
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C
I'm excited for this. Cameron Bakari. Welcome to the Hundred Year. Perfect. It's great to see you. Thank you so much for doing this.
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B
Thanks for having me, Grant.
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C
We're both really excited to have this conversation because things are moving so, so fast in the world today. We just finished a podcast in Venezuela when that was the flavor du jour, and now we've moved on to Iran, and obviously we're seeing exactly the same dynamic that we saw with Venezuela, which is just this cacophony of certainty about what's going on when the more I read about it, the less understanding I have of what the hell's going on and the less sure I am of any possible outcome. So the chance to talk to you today about all the potential pathways and I guess to kick off with a bit of History is really welcome. Indeed. So, again, thanks for doing this with us.
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B
My pleasure.
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C
So I guess if we could, Demetra and I were chatting about this before you joined us to kick things off. I'd love to. If you could help us give people a quick history lesson, not just of the 1979 revolution, but the one in the 1950s that brought the Shah to power. And so people have some context about those kind of shifting sands of Iranian power that go back almost a century now.
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B
Yeah, no, thank you. So, look, let's start from the 19th century because that's when the borders of modern Iran came into being. This is the age of the Qajar dynasty. This is before the Pahlavis, before the Shah of Iran and his father, the Qajars, had taken over from the Afsharids. That was sort of a short lived dynasty between the founders of the post Islamic Persian Empire called the Safavid dynasty. So the Qajars are losing wars to the Russians to the north, because the Persian Empire, pre modern monarchy, held territories in the South Caucasus, large parts of, I think all of Azerbaijan, pretty much all of or most of Armenia, parts of Georgia, all the way into the North Caucasus, which is today under Russian control. Places like Dagestan were part of the Persian Empire, and then east of the Caspian, large parts of Turkmenistan. And so these areas were lost to the Russians and the modern borders came into play. And this is the time of sort of the great game, if you will, between the Russians in Central Asia coming southwards and the Brits in the northern rim of the Middle east trying to push back spheres of influence. Iran found itself in the middle of that. As we move closer to the, I would say the interwar period, you have the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty, the father of the Shah of Iran. So in other words, the grandfather of Reza Pahlavi, who is now emerging as a figurehead of sorts for the opposition. And this is under British influence. The Americans are not on the scene just yet. And there's a series of, if you will, internal upheaval, if you will. So we have the constitutional revolution from, say, 1904 all the way to the early 1910s. But it was basically an all of society movement where you have the religious sector, the commercial sector, various parts of Iranian society, different ethnic groups, all demanding sort of a constitution for the country which was in keeping with the times because new countries were emerging on the map. There was this idea that empires are floundering and it would be replaced by a republican form of government that is more representative of its people. And it did not happen. It laid the foundation for a robust sort of civil society. But what it did was it didn't take away the monarchy. The monarchy existed. And then you sort of fast forward to post World War II in which, you know, you have sort of parliament, you have a elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossaddaq, and, you know, he is then trying to nationalize the oil industry. And that's where the United States first comes in. This is circa 1953. And you have sort of a coup that is backed by the United States. And it's basically to bring back the monarchy, give it more of a say, because monarchy was losing control because of parliament, because of an elected prime minister. So that brought the monarchy back center stage. And between the 50s and 1979, Iran was on the containment line that the United States had drawn from Southern Europe through all the way through, say, all the way to India. And this was sort of where the containment of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, and this is where we had the revolution in 1979 that then brought this current regime to power.
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A
Excellent summary, Kamaran. So from 1979, from the Islamic revolution today, what else do you think our listeners need to understand beyond the superficial headlines and simple narratives that Western audiences have been exposed to? And then let's get into these latest protests, what started them when they started, and some of the larger implications for Iran, the region, and the United States.
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B
So that revolution was basically again, a sort of Part 2 of the Constitutional revolution at the turn of the century, in the early 1900s. It was an effort by different ideological currents within the country, with Islamists led by the clergy. You had a vibrant liberal, democratic, if you will, segment of that movement. And then you had Marxist Communists. And there was an overlap between Marxism and Islamism in the form of the mek, the Mujahideen, the organization that now calls itself the National Council for Resistance in Iran. So these were different undercurrents that were pushing against the monarchy. The monarchy was seen as pro Western, corrupt. It was a regime that was seen as vertical, that had no relation to the masses. And this was the time of also Islamism sort of emerging onto the scene, into the region as a powerful force. So all these threads came together. And because the Islamists were far more organized, and they were organized because the clergy in Shia Islam has vast networks, and the clergy have a special place in Shia society. And in Iran, this dates back to the 16th century. And so those networks were very instrumental in organizing and mobilizing people. This was the age of the cassette. The VCR had just sort of wasn't still on the scene just yet. It was about to arrive. But cassette tapes were used by the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Rulah Khomeini, who would give sermons and these cassette tapes would be disseminated. He'd been exiled first to Iraq, and from there he made his way to France. But he was based in France when the revolution was taking place. His followers and whatnot, they were the most organized. And because communism was seen as the other, it didn't really take hold. Although there was a party called the Tudeh Party, and it didn't really take hold. Meanwhile, the liberal democrats, that segment of society, wasn't that organized, as were the Islamists. So eventually the Islamists just basically dominated the uprising and they were able to push the Shah out, as is the case with any upheaval in any country, mass unrest, agitation, the protests alone do not topple the regime. Parts of the regime have to sort of defect. And in this case, the regular armed forces of today, their predecessors back then called the Arteish, or army in English, they basically said, we're not going to fire on protesters. And that's where the Shah had to flee. And this is taking place in a broader sort of context. This is February of that year, and we're about to go into a sort of new world, if you will, because by December, the Soviets intervene in Afghanistan, send forces, and that kicks off a whole new dimension that opens up more space for Islamists of all stripes. So that world was very different in which this regime came to power.
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A
Kamaran. Actually, now I'm going to follow Grant's lead here and kind of dig into the history a bit more because I think it's important. So what is the distinction between the irgc, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the Artesh? And how have the power dynamics of those two entities within Iran been relevant? And how have those dynamics changed, especially over the last two years, as Israel and the United States have prosecuted their war against Iran and vice versa?
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B
No great question. So this sort of goes back to the moment that we were just talking about. So while the arteish basically turned against the Shah, refused to quell the agitation, the revolutionaries, the Islamists who led the revolution, and Ayatollah Khomeini comes back from Paris and to lead the formation of the new republic, this movement is deeply suspicious of the armed forces, and it basically engages in a massive purge of the armed forces, literally executing many top commanders and generals and officers. A Lot of them fled, including the father of my academic mentor, Professor Mehdad haqayagi. He was 18 when he left and came to the United States and did his PhD and became an academic. But the purge was something that the regime, the newly emerging regime, thought that was necessary because it wanted total control. It wanted to establish a new order. And it did not see. It actually saw the Artez as an obstacle. The problem with that was that by September of 1980, now between February of 1979 and September of 1980, this purge is going on. You see the rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, designed as a new military. I think if I had to speculate, ideally, the founders of this regime would have wanted to just completely do away with the artes and just have one military called the irgc, which would do external defense, which would do internal security, be guardians of the revolution, have constitutional authority to engage in politics and deal with the economy. So that was, I think, the goal. But that goal could not be accomplished because the IRGC was far more of an ideological militia than a professional military. And the regime ran out of time because In September of 1980, the Saddam regime in Iraq invaded Iran, and that kicked off the Iran Iraq war. So now you have a purged Arteish, you have an embryonic irgc, and you're trying to defend the country. So that's how we got to two militaries. So the leadership at the time decided now's not the time to sort of slice and dice, continue slicing and dicing. We need to just defend the country. And the IRGC does not have the experience. These guys do. They have the ideology. These guys have the professionalism and Iranian nationalism. So let's put it all together. Eight years went by. That's almost a decade. And both militaries learned more. So the irgc, from that sort of prolonged kinetic experience, battle space, you know, hardships, millions of people died, and Iran nearly lost that war. And so at the end of that war, you have two militaries that are pretty exhausted, but one is preferred, the IRGC. And I think it was in the late 80s or early 90s, I can't quite remember the exact date, that the new regime now is in reconstruction mode and is trying to consolidate. The founder of the revolution, Khomeini, dies in June of 1989. And before that, they agree to that ceasefire or peace agreement with Iraq. So the regime says, let's create a joint staff command where you have both militaries retain themselves. There's a division of labor of sorts, but there Is this general who they call the chief of staff of the armed forces, General Staff of Iran, who reports, you know, is appointed by the supreme leader. And, you know, the new supreme leader, the current one, who's been ruling the country for 36 years, that's when he becomes supreme leader. He was president for eight years prior to that. That's when this structure comes into play. But over time, while numerically larger, the Artez doesn't have the resources, the political influence. They are deliberately kept. Apolitical. In sharp contrast, the IRGC is deliberately kept, is politicized to where, you know, it basically ended up controlling everything from telecommunications to industry to oil exports to sanctions, busting anything you can think of in terms of a governance function the IRGC took over, including internal security. And they also started to develop the missile program and the nuclear program. So this was an oversized militia that had its own air force, its own army, ground forces, its own navy. The Arteish also had it, but you have this weird parallel military structure.
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A
One more quick question here about history, Kamran, and then I'd also love to just clarify the demographics of Iran. How many of the people actually living in the country, what percentage of the population was either born after 1988 or. Or was too young to have remembered the conflict in any kind of meaningful sense? So this is a very difficult question to answer. It's kind of unfair. But to what extent can we ascribe blame for the state of this relationship between, on the one side, the United States and Israel and on the other side, Iran to Iran for fighting the west as part of this Islamic revolution that brought her into power in 1979 and in some sense the raison d' etre of the state. And to what degree can we assign blame to the US And Israel for the current state of affairs and that Iran is essentially reacting largely to the insecure geopolitical position that it finds itself in, under threat from these countries. And this is why they pursued the nuclear program. This is why the IRGC has sought to develop a proxy network within the Middle east to project power and threaten, for example, Israel up until recently on both its northern and southern borders. How do we think about the assigning blame here, if that's even something that we can do?
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B
So instead of assigning blame, let's look at it from imperatives and constraints. So let's start with Iran. Now, we know that Iran and the Iranian political culture, strategic culture, has a long historical shadow. So going back to the Ahmanid empire, this is, you know, pre Christ and the Ahmanid Empire is sort of the largest Persian empire that has sort of exploded out of the Persian core, which we today call Iran, and goes into Central Asia, goes into the Caucasus, both sides of the Black Sea, much of the Middle East, North Africa, and it runs into the dominion of Alexander the Great. And the Greeks push back and ultimately the Persians lose and they lose on their western flank. So that begins sort of this strategic mindset that the threat to Iran comes from the western flank, which is modern day Iraq, the Iraq Iran border. You fast forward and you get to sort of just before the rise of Islam, you have the second largest Persian dynasty called the Sassanids, who are at war for decades, you know, more than a century, a couple of centuries on and off with the Byzantines who are hunkered down in what is now modern day Turkey. Again, they exhaust each other. There is no clear victor. But the threat comes from the west. Okay, Islam rises, Islam expands out of the Arabian Peninsula. The Arabs take over Iraq, and from there the Arab armies sort of insert themselves between the Byzantines in that buffer zone and the Sassanids. And so before they go towards the Byzantines, they go to Persia because they deem it as more weaker. So again, from a Persian point of view, it's the western border. We get attacked again. And this is we're talking, you know, mid seventh century almost. And between that time period and until the 16th century, the Iranians are dominated by Arabs, by Turks. They obviously the Persian language and culture influences both Arabs and the Turks, but political sovereignty is in the hands initially with the Arabs and then eventually with the Turks. So the Persians lose out. And so the Persians have this psyche that, hey, you know, we're under siege from this western border finally when the Safavid dynasty in 1501 re establishes the empire. And by the way, there's an interesting thing. The founder of the Safavid dynasty, the post Islamic largest Iranian empire that led to the formation of modern Iran is not founded by a Persian group. It's founded by an Azerbaijani Turkic group that claims leadership over everything Persianate and says from this day forward, Shia Islam is the religion of the state. So this is where you see this thing forming. As soon as it's formed on the west are the Ottomans and the Ottomans and the Safavids fight over Iraq and Syria. And so again, that western flank. So from an Iranian point of view, and then you fast forward to the 1980s, the latest war that they fight comes from the West, Saddam invades. So the Iranian strategy is we have to Push far out to the eastern Mediterranean. We have to have a contiguous sphere of influence. Here's where Hezbollah cultivation comes in. Support for the Assad regime, the support for Shiite militias that then by 2003 the United States toppled Saddam, makes it easy for the Iranians to expand their influence over Iraq and create that cont to the Med. Eastern Med. And so that's the mindset of the Iranians. Now if you look at from an American point of view, this regime, we thought the Shah was stable. And we weren't worried about the Shah or anything. We were worried about the Soviets. The Soviets were allied to the Iraqis, the Soviets were allied to the Egyptians, to the Libyans, to the Algerians, to the Syrians. And our allies were the monarchy in Iran, the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey. And so one pillar of that, major pillar of that falls not to the Soviets, but to this new force, you know, this new regime that is Islamist. There wasn't anything Islamist of this nature before. So obviously the United States is going to look at this as, you know, what the hell is happening here. And then this regime because of anti Westernism, because of the 1953 coup that ousted Mossaddaq, that history, that memory, what they do is they say we need to make sure that the CIA is not able to subvert our revolution. And they go in and they take over the US embassy, hold 52American diplomats hostages for 444 days and then cultivate Hezbollah in South Lebanon, taking advantage of the fact that the Israelis had invaded Lebanon. They work with the Syrian regime who are allies who hate Saddam and are also Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. So there is that sort of alignment there. And Hezbollah does a suicide bombing against the U.S. marine barracks, killing I would say 243 was the count or maybe even more than that. And that sets the stage for this hostility. And then Hezbollah is basically created from scratch by the IRGC and the Syrians. And so that sets the stage for hostility towards Israel. And this regime says that we're going to export the revolution. This regime says we're going to support the Palestinians. In fact, nobody's going to support them like we do. And so you can see how all of this stage is set for a long term hostility that will be with us for quite some time to come.
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C
Kamren, that's terrific background. Thank you. And I mean it just nails home just how complex a situation this is. But I want to go back to the IRGC if I can for a moment because I think in the west, they're seen partly as potential kingmakers and partly as this super elite barrier between the people and the clerics. And you've written in some of your writing that there's kind of an evolution going on within the IRGC and that they're evolving their place within the power structure. Can you talk a little bit about that and what that evolution of the way the IRGC sees their own position might kind of add into this mix that we're in the middle of at the moment?
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B
Yeah, great question. So look, anytime any institution becomes as big as the irgc, its sort of monolithic nature begins to wane and different people emerge. Different. This is a military organization, so different commanders with different perspectives. There is hyper institutionalization, and so there are subdivisions within the irgc. It's a complicated beast. It has two separate intelligence organizations, which is, you know, there is the regular IRGC intelligence and then there is IRGC intelligence internal. And this is separate from the Quds Force, that is the Overseas Operations Arm. And by the way, the Quds Force has their own intelligence organization as well as. So you can see how this complexity is. So when you have too many cooks in the kitchen, obviously there is, you know, factionalization camps begin to emerge. One of the things we have to understand, and this is something that gets missed in the public discourse, is the IRGC leadership, while highly ideological and it's conditioned as Islamist ideologues, they're not the same as the theocrats, the clergy. They are not theocrats, and they don't deal with sort of religiosity and what should be the law here, what should be the law there? They are doers. They make things happen. So they make sure. When you need to shut the Internet down, it happens. When you need to go build nuclear weapons, we do it. When you go need to do ballistic missile development, you do it. Asymmetric warfare, sanctions, busting, any practical function of any state has been the purview of the irgc. What that has done is sort of made them far more practical and then add in the element of mass corruption, because now sanction busting is also smuggling, you know, and their overlap. And once you get into illicit economies and you're operating below the radar, because that's what you need because you're under heavy sanctions internationally, then corruption comes in. So, for example, he's no longer the head of the National Security Council, but he's a former rear admiral who headed both the IRGC and the Arteish Navy. I'm talking about real admiral Ali Shamkhani, an ethnic Arab from the southwestern region of Ahvaz who rose in the IRGC but then established his own financial business empire in Dubai. And his son. I forget his first name because he's known by his nickname, Hector. Hector Shamkhani. He's running it for his father. So this is just one commander who had access to resources, siphoned them off, built his own personal empire, and they became wealthy. So you're not that ideologically committed. You are now, you know, millionaires, if not billionaires, multimillionaires, billionaires. So ideology is instrumental. You're not really sort of the true believers anymore, but they're still true believers because whoever becomes a commander is appointed by Khamenei. And Khamenei needs to make sure that he has control over this edifice. Eventually, he loses control, but he tries. So the IRGC evolved into multiple camps, multiple factions, and became too big for its own good. And it became sort of the symbol of public hatred, because while the clerics gave the orders, it was the IRGC that basically had to do things. And then in 2009, when the Green Movement happened, that uprising, Khamenei officially gave IRGC control of the Basij militia. Now, these are even less trained. They have uniforms. They have guns and motorcycles and equipment. Ideologically, far more hardcore than the irgc. And they're just young guys operating on zeal, and they're used as muscle for crowd control. The IRGC was given control over this militia. Estimates are between hundreds of thousands to almost a million militiamen who are part of the Basij. And so now they have control over that, and it becomes even more complicated. So you have the Basij, far more ideological irgc. Not so ideological. I mean, I have seen reports from Iran and heard from sources over the years that at one point, the irgc, and this is. We're talking the Obama administration era, when those crippling sanctions that Obama was able to put on where Iran was thrown out of the swift system, in other words, the oil that it could export, it could not sort of access the revenues that were generated from that. And so there was this internal debate, and many IRGC commanders said, look across the Persian Gulf. Here we are sanctioned, while our Arab rivals are exporting oil and gas like there is no tomorrow. And we are the ones making things happen. So why do we have to follow such an ideological script controlled by the clerics led by Khamenei? Why should we do that? We're making people unhappy at home. And look at what we've accomplished. We have sphere of influence all over the region and we could have done far more if we weren't under sanction. So I'm just giving you an example of internal dissension of how the IRGC should not be treated as this sort of one thing. It is internally divided.
- [38:44]
A
Kamaran, is it fair to describe the period between Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003, that 20 year period between 2003 and the October 7 attacks as coinciding with a strengthening of the IRGC's power and the perception of its power in the broader Middle east, as well as a strengthening of its factional influence domestically, and that this more or less peaked. Certainly the perception of its power peaked after October 7th. Is that a fair description of the last 20 years or so, do you think?
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B
I think I would sort of fast forward it to 2011, the Arab Spring, because the year the Arab Spring broke out in January, in December of that same year, the US forces pulled out of Iraq, leaving Iraq to the Iranians. And that to me was the peak of the irgc. But they did have a problem. They were peaking with, with post American Iraq in the Iranian orbit, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon. You have this contiguous sphere of influence to the eastern Med that they always wanted. But in March of that year, the uprising against Assad began. In the beginning they were struggling. Then by 2013 they were able to sort of stabilize the regiment. But by that time, Assad went from being an ally to being a vassal of the Iranians because he was so dependent on the Iranians for internal security. The IRGC QF was all over the place. As many as 100,000 Shia militiamen had been mobilized by the IRGCQF, which was then dismantled by the Israelis in 2024 when they did those consistent airstrikes in Syria and Lebanon. And so what I'm saying to you is that was the peak. Yes, that was the peak. Since then the IRGC has sort of been on a wane.
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A
The peak was 2011, I would say
- [40:46]
B
the peak was 2013. But then you also have two years later you have the nuclear deal. And that's when you see the rise of pragmatic conservatives under the Rouhani government trying to rein in the irgc, because their plan was, well, we need a genuine private sector in this country if we're going to benefit from sanctions relief. And the IRGC controls anything that falls under the economic realm. And so that's when the IRGC begins to have problems. I would say circa 2015, okay?
- [41:22]
A
So then just again, just to. This is incredibly helpful by the way. You've been, you've painted really a very detailed picture of Iran's history which I don't think most people can find anywhere else, certainly not this easily. But I want to make sure we also get to the current protests, which is really the current affairs topic that we wanted to cover today. So just from that period from the nuclear deal where we begin to see the empowerment of domestic factions that are more wedded to the performance of the economy and now that the sanctions are being lifted, there's an opportunity for those individuals to benefit, for Iran's economy to come out of this long period of sanction induced funk. So the IRGC are beginning to experience some internal factional competition. Bring us from that phase to the present and help explain the origins of these protests and how we should think about them in that broader context.
- [42:15]
B
Another good question. So there is a public expectation that is set. And I actually wrote a piece, I used to be at Stratfor at the time and In May of 2013 I wrote a piece predicting that the United States and Iran will finally negotiate and reach a deal over the nuclear issue, which happened. The interim agreement came later that year in November. Took another year and a half to get the final deal in July of 2015, the so called JCPOA. The reason why I predicted that was because I saw that Iran had sort of maxed out financially in terms of how much it could go further. Iran was investing massive outlays for its sort of aggressive foreign policy posture. You know, billions of dollars were being spent to protect Assad, support Hezbollah, support Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Shiite militias in Iraq. Now the Houthi become part of the constellation of proxies. So this had reached sort of a point where it became you could no longer continue to spend on the external front and still maintain calm at home in a political, economic sense. And so they needed to negotiate. Didn't want to mothball their nuclear program as Gaddafi had done in 2002, I believe, or three. And so they came into this, they saw the opportunity with the Obama administration and they negotiated that deal. What that did was created an expectation in the country. First, Rouhani's election in, I believe it was June or July of 2013. He takes office in August and his foreign minister, Jawad Zarif, he negotiates an interim deal with the then Secretary of State John Kerry in November. And the United States has sort of gone from saying we're going to that summer there was that whole chemical weapons use by the Assad regime. And the United States was ready to go in and bomb Syria because of that. But it held back because it saw that it could make progress on the nuclear front. And bombing Syria would complicate this effort. That created a lot of problems between the Saudis and the Americans. But there was sort of this coming together of, if you will, an understanding between Washington and Tehran on the home front. Everybody was seeing this as Rouhani's election, negotiations with the U.S. the nuclear deal and sanctions respite as good days are ahead. And people were really elated. And the expectation was that the miseries of this country are finally being addressed. And so what we have is a situation where there's expectation. But In July of 2015, the deal is made. In the 2016 election, the expectation was that Hillary Clinton would win the election and this would continue. President Trump wins that election and that sort of throws a massive monkey wrench into the strategic calculus of the Iranians. And he's saying, I'm going to nix this deal. And by 2018, he does that. And you see that in 2017, there are already problems because that's the year when President Rouhani, I think, yes, he had reelection, he got reelected. But there's angst that, hey, it's been a couple of years now. You've had the nuclear deal. So we aren't seeing the results in terms of our spending power, our economic conditions on the home front. And there's a reason behind that is because there's an internal struggle over how to address the economic situation. The IRGC is not willing to give up its control of the economy. The president is pushing for it, and it's locked. And then you see the first stirrings of protests. In 2017, you have the nuclear deal nixed in 2018. In 2019, you have those protests. I think they were triggered by a spike in gasoline prices. So 2019, you see a far more stronger response and probably the biggest economic driven response until this one, the latest one that we're currently seeing in real time. Then comes Covid. And Covid really devastates the country. The government does not have any plans. Lots of people die because of COVID And the government hasn't been honest as to how many deaths there have been. And that really sort of further erodes Public Trust. In 2021, you have the next presidential election. And after a pragmatic, conservative, reformist administration of two terms, you have Ibrahim Riesi, an infamous prosecutor, an ideologue who's known for running torture Chambers gets elected as president. So that really is a setback. And in that election you don't have any candidates and there isn't participation. I think that the turnout was somewhere around 20%. So public alienation is moving along. Then in 2022, in September, we have the report that this young lady, Mahsa Amini, the Kurdish Iranian girl who was arrested by morality police and then is tortured and she dies under torture. And then that whole thing comes out and we see massive protests all over the country. Those protests are the longest lasting. They start in September of 2022 and they go right into almost the middle of 2023. They were not uniform all across the country. Some places saw more disturbance than others. But it suffice to say that they were huge nationwide and they were organized by women. And what that did is put the regime on the defensive. So the regime's response was, you know what, we're not going to. We're gonna selectively enforce the hijab law where women are forced to cover their head. And you see sort of that situation developing. Then comes October 7th and October 7th. And you and I and Dmitri have talked about this, how the Iranians plan that and that backfires. And the whole strategy of having Hamas attack and then Hezbollah attack and then the Houthis start their rocket fire, drone strikes, that backfires. The Israelis come back, they destroy Hamas, they destroy Hezbollah. The destruction of Hezbollah leads to the collapse of the Assad regime about a year ago. And then the war between Israel and Iran in June of last year, the 12 day war, essentially, the IRGC's entire strategy for 40 years falls on its face. And now their questions are being asked. That you spent all this money and kept us impoverished for what you kept telling us. This is the sacred defense of the country. This is the strategy for that. This is forward leaning strategy. It didn't work. We could not defend ourselves from Israeli airstrikes. So the credibility of the IRGC is shot not just in the eyes of the public, but amongst the elite as well, especially those factions who are opposed to it, particularly the regular armed forces. The Israelis eliminating top, I would say at least a dozen top senior commanders of the IRGC created a vacuum. And Khamenei is forced to appoint the head of the regular armed forces as Joint chief, a position held long held by the IRGC prior to that. And so you see a shift and then the regime is trying to limp its way out of this crisis and they have this pending transition succession to a new supreme leader that's been in the making for a while and they're trying to sort of frontload that. And then December 28th happens where the rial plunges to 1.45 million to a dollar. And that for the first time brings the merchant community out as organizers of protest. The bazaar has never really, let's just say they've steered clear of protests all throughout the decades, but the pain becomes so much the financial, economic pain that they're forced onto the streets and the rest is the history of the past three weeks.
- [50:57]
C
Cameron, that's magnificent. It's brought us up to date. I mean, it's an incredible history. Listen, but before we get into today and what's actually going on, there's one hole in this I'd love for you to plug for me and that is the deal in 2015. What was it that arose from. Because theologically and ideologically it was a deal they were never going to make. What was it that that brought that deal about? Was it major concessions on the US side? Was it a rethink by the clerics? And if so, based around what? What was it that brought those two sides to the table?
- [51:31]
B
Yeah, so the regime, as I mentioned earlier, had come to an inflection point where it could no longer continue to pay for this massive forward leaning strategy on the foreign policy front and keep the domestic economy going at the same time. The hope was that they weren't expecting like all the sanctions would be gone, but if they got, not sanctions relief but respite, if they got some respite from the sanctions, money could come in that could get them by. And society was evolving. I mean, after I would say two terms of Ahmadinejad and the split between the conservatives, the country was ready and the system needed somebody who was a reformist. And the reformists and the pragmatists who are not disloyal to the regime, they just think the regime doesn't have to be that hard line ideological. They can be far more pragmatic. They gained ground amongst the public. And that was sort of the last time, the last sort of moment in which the Iranian public reposed any form of confidence in the political system. When they voted twice for Rouhani, that sort of set the stage for the 2015 nuclear deal. And then of course, the way the negotiations were done and the way that the Obama administration approached the nuclear negotiations by saying, okay, we won't talk about your proxy network, won't talk about your ballistic missiles, let's just focus on the nuclear issue. And even on that, the Iranian regime was able to leverage its way to where it didn't have to mothball anything. There were sunset clauses that basically said, you can't do this part of the nuclear activity for 10 years, and this can't be done for 20 years. But ultimately there would come a time when the Iranians, if that deal lasted and we went through that sort of timeline, the end of that timeline would leave an Iran 20, 25 years down the line with the ability to just weaponize nuclear technology. And so they didn't lose anything. They just sort of delayed their nuclear thing. But keep in mind that while the nuclear weapons is a nice to have in the here and now, it's more of a bargaining chip because it's used to gain sanctions relief. And that's what this government right now is still doing, is using that same playbook, but it's not working because Trump doesn't want any part of it.
- [54:09]
A
Kamara, was there a specific spark that ignited these latest protests? If so, what was it? And how do these protests differ from the previous ones?
- [54:21]
B
So, great question. First, the regime has never been this weak. In all prior episodes, the regime was not weak. And why? Because the last bout of mass agitation was 2022, 2023, you did not have the IRGC weakened, you did not have the war with Israel, and the regime was still in control. And at that point in time, things weren't as bad. If you want to go into sort of the numbers, if you just go by the devaluation of the currency, it wasn't that bad.
- [54:58]
A
It was bad.
- [54:58]
B
It would have been bad. I went to Iran in 2011, and for one American dollar, you could get 11,000 rialts. And now that figure is at 1.45 million. So it wasn't that bad. So that's one thing. Second of all is that the merchant community had not participated in any prior, so, 1999 student protests. 2009, the supporters of former prime minister and presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousevian, who is a reformist candidate, they come out and they protest against an election fraud. They're not saying, to hell with this regime, they're saying, regime don't do election fraud. You Fast forward to 2017, and then 19, you're getting into economic pain. And so lower income classes are coming out in smaller towns and protesting. By 2022, 23, it's women and civil society activists outraged at the killing of this girl. And now with IRGC weakened, its inability to maintain internal security has been weakened. I think it was inevitable. And in fact, in one of my writings or I may have said somewhere that we can expect the protests because if you're the public and you're suffering, you're angry and you're waiting for an opportunity, there's going to be no better opportunity. The IRGC got clobbered. The regular armed forces are now dominating the policy making, decision making circles. They don't want to open fire on protesters. The regime is trying to ease out Khamenei and have another successor frontly loading another successor. And these conditions couldn't be more ripe. But like every protest, there needs to be a spark. And the spark was when the merchant said we've had enough. I can't do business anymore. We can't do business anymore with this devaluation of the currency. Keep in mind the devaluation of the currency this last year. Suddenly it didn't get to 1.45. It was 875,000 rials to a dollar in January of 2025. By December it went to 1.45. So it was a slow building, if you will, metastasizing movement. And you need a spark and people come out. And now you have people from all walks of life, even in the smaller towns. And you also have nationwide, there's no province that is not reporting protests. If the regime is saying 2,000 people have been killed, they came out two days ago admitting 2,000 people are killed. They're blaming terrorists for doing that, not security forces, but whatever. If 2000 people is their figure, then you can expect that this figure is much larger as to number of deaths. And so that shows you how different it is from all previous bouts of unrest.
- [58:03]
C
So Cameron, just zooming in on that now, the difference between these protests and the ones that have happened before because I remember the protests of the last kind of 20 years and I remember there never being a real sense that any of those might topple the regime. This one feels different though. And I don't know whether it's the media coverage, I don't know whether it's the time it's happening amongst the Venezuela situation and all sorts of other kind of frictions around the world. Can you give us a sense of what's happening on the ground and the kind of threat level that this particular uprising poses to the regime in realistic terms.
- [58:44]
B
So look, definitely the regime is much, much weaker. But, but I don't like, and I've written a couple of articles on this one was published this morning. I don't like this binary of survival versus collapse. Look, collapses don't happen. Let me Give you an analogy. On January 25, 2011, the Arab Spring went to Egypt from Tunisia and Libya and then to Egypt. Okay. By February of 15th or 16th, the protest movement had grown considerably. It had paralyzed the local law enforcement, the police service, and the internal security forces and the intelligence community. And the ball was in the court of the Egyptian military. What did they do? They refused to open fire on the protesters. Instead, they went to Mubarak and said, game's up. Here's your retirement package. You're out. He was removed. His vice president was appointed interim president and a Supreme Council of the Armed forces took over. Now, obviously, the situation is very different from Egypt than in Iran, most prominently because Egypt has one cohesive military force, Iran has two military forces. And so I think that we are in a long term situation of regime decay. And I think that this could play a number of ways. It just depends on how bad the situation gets. And a lot depends on how the President of the United States decides to intervene. In theory. In theory, and I say this very carefully, every major town in Iran has a nearby IRGC base. Those bases are peacetime realities. That's where you position your missiles, that's where you have your exercises. But they're also for internal security. So you're dealing with potential terrorist organizations, rebel groups, any sign of dissent within the regime, any sign of public protest. If we did airstrikes on those facilities around major towns, I'm talking Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, Tabriz. What you do is you cripple the ability of the IRGC to do crowd control. At least you shock the system. What that does is that that creates a vacuum, security vacuum, and that gives the protesters more space to operate. That puts pressure on the regime. And now you have a vacuum. And the extent to which you bomb and you're successful, how good is the intelligence? We have to factor all of that in. And I think that's why the President of the United States, despite his public statements, is pursuing a very cautious path, if you will. All of these things have to work in order for the IRGC's ability to do crowd control weakens. Then the ball is now in the court of the regular armed forces. The regular armed forces first move will be to sort of say, we're stepping in, we're not firing on these people. We're only going to go after people who are violent. And even then it's difficult doing that because how do you parse that out? But let's say it becomes successful. The first order of business is that There have to be some changes in this regime. So is the Supreme Leader removed, or does he sort of come out and say, hey, I'm old, I'm this, I'm that, and I'm appointing a successor. And that successor becomes a puppet in the hands of the regular armed forces. As I predicted in my April 2024 report on evolutionary regime change. This is prior to the war with Israel. We don't know that, but that's sort of the pathway. So that pathway means the regime is more or less still there. The new Supreme Leader is a figurehead. The government of Massoud Pazashkian, who's a reformist, is strengthened. The IRGC is weakened, and it's kind of in the process of being absorbed into the regular armed forces. I mean, all of these things are hypothetical, but I'm just sort of gaming out. So that's one pathway. Another pathway is that the situation cannot be salvaged, and situation gets to a point where the regime cannot be preserved any longer. But then you need to preserve the state. And I make a distinction between the regime and the state. The regime is the ruling structure, the laws and whatnot. The state is the hardware. Think of this regime software, state hardware, state institutions are there. So do the regular military come in and say, hey, we're having a new order, we're declaring martial law, we're appointing a new temporary government, we're going to have elections, we're going to lift restrictions on whatever the social restrictions that people hate. But this has to be simultaneously done with a negotiated understanding with the United States that provides for sanctions relief. And if that doesn't happen, then we're going into worst case scenario, where is utter chaos in the country and different parts of the country with different ethnicities doing different things and rival groups within the regime duking it out. That scenario is just very messy.
- [64:44]
A
Can I ask a question here and jump in first of all, real quick, there's so much speculation about what's actually going on in Iran. How many protesters have been killed, the number of protesters, I mean, we really don't know. A lot of this is driven by releases on social media. How do you assess this? Because you threw out some numbers here. You said 2000 was the regime's official number. We can assume that it's much higher than that. What is the ballpark figure that you're working with and why?
- [65:12]
B
Several thousands. I can't put a number to it. I know a lot of people are saying 12,000. You shared that social media post with me earlier, Dimitri, and you asked the right question, how do we know. How do we know anything that's happening? Because of the fog of war, the Internet blackout. And this is like looking under the hood. And it's like looking under the hood of a black box that you can't sort of penetrate, you don't have sort of access into. So it's really hard to tell. We have to assume. I'm going by the regime number. If the regime is saying 2000, and I don't doubt that at least that many are dead. But then I also know the regime has an incentive to downplay the numbers from that. I say it could be much worse because I don't have a number. Then I say several thousands, just to be on the safe side.
- [66:02]
A
And we're operating also with the assumption that the protests are broader this time. But again, it's hard to know that from the social media footage because you don't have wide aperture, you don't have some kind of drone footage of protests. Presumably the United States with its web of satellites, should have a much better idea what the actual size of those crowds are, shouldn't it?
- [66:26]
B
The United States has satellite imagery, and we could triangulate and estimate the. And do all of that. But the issue here is that. And this gets into sort of the technical image intelligence and geospatial intelligence tradecraft that requires its own conversation. Bottom line is it's still very difficult to know what's happening. Now, obviously, the President was put on the spot last night by the media saying that when he said, look, you know, there are no executions happening and the. And the violence has calmed down, and the media asks, well, how do you know that? Well, we found out through our sources. I'm not gonna tell you those sources. So I think this is a struggle for the administration as well, to figure out just what is really happening on the ground, what is the magnitude of the violence, and then calibrate, triangulate whatever move the President needs to make.
- [67:24]
A
So these two questions were leading to. This is the question that I really wanted to ask. So what do we know, or think we know about back channeling between washing and the artes? Because it sounds to me like what you're advancing here is a theory that the administration is attempting to drive a wedge between the IRGC and the army. And that of those three scenarios you described of the army stepping in and preserving the regime, of the army stepping in and declaring something new or total chaos, that Washington would probably prefer scenario two, but either one or two, to the extent that he can collaborate with The. The army are preferable. The calls for bombing Tehran seem to me somehow counterproductive, though. I guess you made the case that if they bomb these IRGC bases, that could assist. But that again, depends on the degree to which Washington has back channeling going on between it and the Army. So what does that fill in that gap to help us understand one, what can we know? What do you think we know? Why do you think we know the what you think we know? And what is it that you think we know about the level of infiltration on the part of Washington?
- [68:30]
C
It's like talking to Donald Rumsfeld. All the things you know and the known unknowns. And the unknown unknowns. God knows what's going on.
- [68:35]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rumsfeld really confused people with that, though. I would say that it was a really thoughtful exercise in sort of the unknowns and knowns. But anyway, to your question, Dmitri, it
- [68:48]
A
was just the context of the fact that it was Rumsfeld saying that after the recklessness of his military campaign with Tommy Franks and all those. I remember those New York Times images of them sitting around the war table coming up with these ridiculous theories about taking over the country.
- [69:05]
B
Yeah. So to your question about the back channels, what do we know? We do know from both the Trump White House as well as the Iranians, that the conversation between the President's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his Iranian interlocutors, in this case the Foreign Minister, Abbas Arakchi, has been continuous. These are their words. It was happening even as the US Was bombing the nuclear facilities in June. And those conversations continue. The Iranian foreign Minister came to Al Jazeera 3 days ago saying that our conversation has not ended. It was happening before the protests, it's happening after the protests, and it's continuing. So we have enough evidence to suggest that there is not just a back channel, but a formal channel discussing what needs to be done. We also are not seeing the White House write off this regime saying, we don't want to talk to these guys. He suspended talks the other day. He said, for now, until they do. Xyz. Why is that? It's because the president and any president could. Donald Trump today could be somebody else tomorrow. Could have been Kamala Harris in his place. Who knows what could be? The reality is no administration wants to get involved, especially in the post Iraq, post Afghanistan situation, does not want to get involved in this chaos. Why? Because there's this old adage, if it's not broken, don't fix it. Let's modify that and say even if it is broken, don't fix it, because it creates more problems. And so what is the US Interest? The US Interest is. And especially for this president who wants to. Who's a deal maker, who wants to sort of say, can we get to those people who we can talk to? Now, there is the artes. There is this administration of President Peseschkian, but then there is a supreme leader in between. There are elements of the IRGC who want to talk. There are elements of the IRGC who don't want to talk. And the IRGC right now isn't a cohesive unit in the sense that it was certainly not after the June war with Israel last year. So, yes, there are conversations going on. And those conversations, I mean, think about it. The United States bombs the nuclear facilities. The Iranians strike at Qatar, but say, hey, guys, we're coming. This is when we're gonna attack. It's choreographed. So how are they choreographing it? Because there's communication going on. I think that even now, the United States, as it prepares to intervene, there is conversation going on with the other side. And the conversation is, we don't want to come in. You don't want us to come in, but you're doing certain things that are forcing our hand. The president becomes under pressure. It's an election year, and he has people saying to him, and there's a sizable segment of his political base that is saying, people are dying, and this is a regime that's evil and it needs to go. What are you going to do about it? So the president is saying to the Iranians, can you fix this situation somehow? But the president also knows that the Iranians are not in a position to fix this situation. The Iranians shoot back and say, well, you know, you are supporting these guys. And notice that while Steve Witkoff met with. With Raza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah, last Sunday, this was leaked by the White House. The president very overtly said, I don't want to meet him just yet. Why? Because he doesn't think the guy has influence in the country, and he needs somebody to control this country. I mean, what do we want? I mean, this is the same thing that would happen. Let's say, do we want pressure on Russia to go to a point where Putin falls? And then we have a regime that there are loose nukes out there, okay? So we don't want chaos in any country. We want those countries to manage themselves, especially under the new US Geostrategy that says, we're not going to do much for the rest of the world. There has to be burden sharing and burden shifting. So in that context, do we really want to go into a country of 93 million people the size of Alaska with a quarter population? That's Azeri. There are, you know, in the northwest, there are Kurds who, by the way, are preparing for, you know, an insurgency. There are Arabs in the southwest, there are Baloch in the southeast. In the northeast, you have the Turkmens, who are Sunni and so are the Baloch. I mean, this is a messy place. And so we need somebody to hold the center and preferably somebody that can find a way out of this crisis. So this isn't something the United States can do and there are no good options is what I'm saying. So we talk, we threaten, we press, maybe we go down the route of limited intervention. What does that produce? Outcomes cannot be neatly calibrated. So the theory that I laid out of attacking those bases, that assumes a lot, that things will fall into place as we think or expect they should. And at the end of the rainbow, there's the pot of gold. It doesn't work that way. And so this is massive uncertainty.
- [74:56]
C
Cameron, I guess just coming back to this idea of the binary outcome that you dislike, and I completely understand why that is, but I'm curious and it's a very simplistic analysis, but it seems to me as though the regime, in order to survive it has to maintain this iron grip that it has on the country. It doesn't feel to me, and I'd stand ready to be corrected at all times in these conversations, it doesn't feel to me as though there's kind of regime light and there's a compromise here that can be made in terms of finding somewhere in the middle ground. Either it's successful in cracking down and restoring the iron grip, as in the country. Help me understand what the middle ground is, how the regime can maybe soften but stay in power, because I struggle to see that pathway.
- [75:44]
B
So let's step back and say my first piece that I wrote after the December 28 protests, My argument was everybody within the regime, each faction knows something has to change for the regime to endure. They deeply disagree on what that something is. It ranges from significant reforms and a negotiation with the United States to a mix of, if you will, heavy handedness and some modifications. We don't know if that'll work. And let's say those who want significant change are. Emerge as more dominant in this struggle and they start to go down that route from the perspective of the public. This is sort of saying, oh, you know what, if the government is conceding, then we can demand more. So you can quickly spin out of control this dynamic once you start making changes. So again, status quo cannot endure, but change is dangerous. So what's that formula? That's the struggle of this regime. So I don't think that. And that's why I think that move away from collapse versus survival because I think we're looking at longer term decay. How long? It's very difficult to say. Bear in mind, despite the fact that this regime is far more weaker than it ever has been, critically weak. But this is a regime that overthrew another regime and regimes that overthrow other regimes. The first order of business is let's make sure nobody else does that to us. And they've had 46 years on this. And this massive infrastructure, both physical and in the sense of the irgc, the Basij, the National police service, the intelligence community, all the apparatuses that are instruments of coercion, you add to that lots of resources as well. I mean, this is not a poor country in that sense. It's an impoverished country because of corruption, mismanagement, sanctions and its own decisions. But they still have resources. So does the Basij just collapse? Certainly I don't see that happening. Does the IRGC collapse suddenly? No. There are so many layers here that it's very hard for me to see that this regime is just going to fall flat on its face even in several months time. Now I could be completely wrong and that does turn out to be the outcome. But I'm having a hard time knowing everything I've known about this regime, that it will just quickly dissolve that way.
- [78:42]
A
Kamaran, you mentioned earlier in the conversation, you described the ethnic complexity of the country. I think about a quarter of Iran's population is Azeri. It shares a border with Iraq, it shares a border with Turkey. The Kurds, of course, have a large presence that spans across Iraq, Syria and within Turkey itself. They represent a security threat to the Turks, which if we remember, Turkey went into Syria in order to address that threat amidst its collapse. So similarly, in the event of a weakening of the Iranian state, that now presents a problem on Turkey's eastern border. Iran also borders Afghanistan. The Taliban have taken over Afghanistan since 2019. They also are a theocratic state. I don't know how that that sort of factors into that. Does that make that more or less stable a border? I mean, so how do we understand the effect that a weakening of the Islamic Republic, not a collapse But a weakening, a slow deterioration, what effect does that have on regional actors and Iran's neighbors? And how should we think about the kinds of geopolitical changes to expect in that part of the world going forward?
- [80:02]
B
Great question. Look, if you are Iran's neighbors and you're looking at the United States and you're seeing that the United States is struggling with this problem on how to manage this crisis, well, the United States lives very far away. You are there right smack on the border. Then you have to be worried. And not only are you worried because you could have refugee flows. This is, we're talking 93 million people. I'm not saying everybody will leave. But you know, when upheaval happened in Syria, Turkey ended up having 4 to 5 million Syrian refugees. So Turkey is looking at this as, oh my God, you know, we're already dealing with, you know, we were dealing with Kurds in Iraq, then we're now dealing with Kurds in Syria and now we're going to have to deal with Kurds in Iran. So that's one way of looking at it. But the Turks are also an ascendant power trying to fill the vacuum left behind by a weakened Iran, both in the South Caucasus and the Levant. So a weakened Iran is not such a bad thing. The big thing is how do you get an Iran that behaves but doesn't sort of fall apart? And that's very hard to achieve. So at one hand you want a weakened Iran because that allows you space to project influence and it removes a competitor. Remember this part of the world stretching from Central Asia through the South Caucasus to the Levant. This has been sort of the stomping grounds in the battlefield for multiple Turkic and Persianate dynasties going back to circa 1000. So they've been down this path many times. So the Turks are looking at this and saying, this is probably a good movie. How do you manage it? First, first order of business, let's sort of make sure we understand what's happening and then pre prepared for worst case scenario and then sort of build upon it. If you're Azerbaijan, you're looking at this and saying A, we don't want these refugees coming northwards. You know, fellow Azeris, ethnic Azeris, ideally we want these Azeris who are reform minded and many of them are even very liberal, to take over and have a big stake in the next order, whatever that looks like. So that gives us a friendly regime in Tehran. It's a complete sea change from the current regime which has been hostile to Azerbaijan. And it opens up Azerbaijan's pathway to the Middle east, an organic connectivity. Same thing for the Kazakhs. The shortest route out of their landlocked state. And Uzbekistan, which is double landlocked, is run through Iran. So there is opportunity that the regional players are looking at. There's also threats Now, Iraq. Iraq has been sort of another vassal state of the Iranians with multiple Shiite factions that largely are the handiwork of Iran playing various factions off and building new ones to manage this landscape and keep it within its orbit. What's going to happen to us if the patron is no longer what we think it was or what it used to be? And so this is the same thing. Hezbollah can't protect Assad, Assad falls. So the Shiites of Iraq are looking at this and saying, does this sort of where it all ends that began after the fall of Saddam. The Kurds of Iraq are looking at this and saying, Baghdad has been a pain for us. They haven't allowed us to export oil from our territory because we're a regional government and the federal government has been dominant in this relationship. All of a sudden, a weakened Baghdad because of turmoil in Iran and resulting turmoil amongst the Shiite principles in Iraq gives room for the Kurds. Sunnis, who've been at the receiving end of this Shiite dominated, Kurdish dominated system since the fall of Saddam, are suddenly looking at this and saying, this is an opportunity. And now in Syria, we have an allied government that's Sunni and the Turks are our allies as well. And so Iraq begins to sort of once again go into this internal struggle. Afghanistan, as you rightfully pointed out, the Taliban are looking at this, at least the pragmatic elements within the Taliban saying if Iran, with all its resources after 46 years, could not maintain a theocracy. We just got started on this process in 2021. We have no oil, we have no resources. We're sanctioned. So does chaos and public agitation in Iran spill over into Afghanistan? We speak kind of the same language and there's connectivity between the two countries. So what does this mean for us? So that's a threat. But there's also some opportunity. The border areas, the Turkmen in the northeast and the Baloch in the southeast are Sunni and they sort of share sort of the Deobandi Sunni Islam of the Taliban. And there are rebel groups inside Balochistan that the Taliban can sort of, you know, work with. So again, threat opportunities. Pakistan. Pakistan has a huge Baloch insurgency on their side of the border. It's, you know, become acute in the last 34 years. Those guys have sanctuary on the Iranian side. On the Iranian side you have different Baloch who hate the regime and they're Islamists. Not just ethno nationalists, but Islamists as well. And then there's this organized crime syndicate that runs through this tri border area between Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. So this is a messy space that we're talking about. And so the point that I'm trying to make. And lastly, the capital of Turkmenistan is 15 miles from the border with Iran in the northeast east of the Caspian, Ashgabat. The Turkmens are looking at this and saying we just don't deal with the world. We are sort of our own closed society. We know far more, the world knows far more about North Korea than it does about Turkmenistan. That's how closed of a society country that is. They're also worried. They want to be left alone and do what they do, but they can't now because of this, what is happening. They have to be concerned. They're already concerned about the Taliban being on their border. Now you have this thing happening. So whatever happens in Iran will not stay in Iran. There will be shock waves, reverberations that leap beyond Iran. How far, we don't know, how intensely we don't know. But this, what I just said are sort of the potential pathways.
- [87:02]
C
Cameron, there's so much here my head's spinning with all this information. It's terrific. Thank you. I guess all that's really left to try and do is to get some insight again for people. And I asked a similar question of Brian Wintour when we talked to him about Venezuela, but to help people filter out what is an incredibly noisy situation in terms of understanding what's going on and the bombardment of information we're getting, again, all of it absolutely certain about the outcome. Can you give people a sense of either what you're looking for, the signs that you're looking for to suggest a definite outcome, or the places people should go and the sources people should try and focus on, or even things they should try and completely ignore because it's such a war for attention and it's difficult for anybody to try and make sure that they focus what little attention they have in the right direction. So any help you could give them would be, I'm sure, greatly appreciated.
- [88:02]
B
Yeah, no, Grant, look, I will just identify things to watch for.
- [88:07]
C
Terrific.
- [88:08]
B
I'm looking at what does the armed forces do, you know, the regular armed forces, the arteish. Because ultimately they're the last line of defense, whether for the regime or for the State of Iran. They are what stand between anarchy and, you know, the status quo, or, you know, between sort of Iran falling apart and remaining coherent. But they can't do it alone. We have to see what happens to the irgc. I know from my own sources and my own research that there are elements within the IRGC that share the pragmatism of the armed forces. But bear in mind the disequilibrium of power between the two. The regular armed forces are somewhere between 350 to 400,000 strong. Numerically, IRGC is somewhere between 150,000 to 225,000. So numerically smaller. Add in the Basij, who are also at the disposal of the irgc, you add several hundred thousand potentially to a million more additional soldiers. So these two militaries have to come to terms with each other. The clergy is gone. The clergy is just waiting to be sort of shown the door, the last vestiges of it. They'll probably still have some role in the judiciary, but they don't have that. The reason the IRGC became so powerful is because the clergy lost. In order to continue ruling, sitting at the top of this edifice needed their muscle power and their ability to actually do things in terms of good old fashioned governance and whatever it takes for a state to continue functioning. So somehow the military and the IRGC have to come to terms on the future. If they can't, then I see a scenario in which the IRGC sort of breaks up and there are elements that align with the regular armed forces. But that process is also difficult because if you stick by the Constitution. The Constitution says the army has to be apolitical. It says the very opposite for the irgc. So if we're going by the book, that's already a disadvantage that the regular armed forces have. But let's just say we're not going by the book. We are in times that require out of the box thinking, to say the least. So let's set the book aside. Let's say somehow the IRGC and the regular armed forces reach an understanding. What about the Basij? I mean, these are zealots and these are very loyal to the revolution and ideologically highly conditioned and motivated. So I guess we need to look at these three security components. We also need to see what the United States does because that's sort of the one external determinant that will shape or at least shape some of the outcomes. So we need to see how this all plays out. It's very complicated. I'm hearing conspiracy theories of all types. Largely from Iran. And Iran is one of those countries in that region rife with conspiracy theories on any good day. And so what I'm hearing is that somehow the United States will do some strikes that will then allow the regime to stabilize the situation because it will say countries under attack and it will give them far more leverage to go after the protesters. Of course, this assumes that these are going to be symbolic strikes and the United States will then not do more strikes. But, but as conspiracy theories go, this one doesn't make sense. But there's a certain logic here that's interesting. And then after that, once the streets are calmed down, there's going to be a deal between the United States and the regime. The regime pushes out Khamenei, A new supreme leader comes in. Supreme leader says it's time to hug the people or something like that. And he sort of removes the restrictions on that people hate. And the economic deal with the United States on the nuclear issue creates hope, and that kind of like stabilizes the situation. Sounds like a movie. It may very well be a script for a movie. But, you know, I just thought I'd share that. That's sort of some of the conspiracy theory that I'm hearing. And some conspiracy theories are, you know, there is a certain method to the madness, if you will. And so maybe there's something there. I just thought I'd, I share that. But those are broadly what happens to the irgc, what happens to the regular armed forces, how does the US Move forward, What happens to Khamenei, what happens to the Basij? These are the things that matter. And then of course, are there groups that come out, like, for example, we've had reports of, of Kurds sending in fighters, Iranian Kurdish groups that have sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan, that have moved fighters into Iran to foment an insurgency to try and take advantage of the current moment to advance their cause. There are four factions of those Kurds, so that's a messy thing. And does Israel stay out of this? If Iran gets airstrikes, then does it hit Israel and then Israel gets involved? So these are all the things that we should be watching for.
- [93:53]
A
I feel this is like only part one in a multi part series of interviews with Kamran Bahari. Now you can probably see Grant, why Kamran has been on the podcast five times in the last two and a half years. I'm going to let you sort of end this, Grant. I don't have any other questions because I feel like, I mean, I do have questions, obviously, but then we're Just going to be here indefinitely, which is why I say that. But. But in parting, it would also be great for Kamran to give out his contact information, where he publishes, how people can follow him, et cetera.
- [94:22]
B
Yep.
- [94:23]
C
Well, Cameron, look, this has been, as I said, it's been a whirlwind, but an incredibly useful one. I'm so grateful for this kind of deep background and the understanding you can give to us of what is clearly an incredibly complex and deepeningly so situation. Before we let you go, would you let people know where they can read your writing? Because everything I've read of yours has been absolutely fascinating. So the more people get a chance to avail themselves of it, the better.
- [94:50]
B
So that's where it gets tricky. So I work for New Lions Institute for Strategy and Policy. I publish some stuff there. I'm a regular contributor to Geopolitical Futures. That's behind a paywall. If people are interested, I'm happy to share a PDF so people can sort of ping me on that. But I'm also a columnist with Forbes and that's. I think it's largely free or there is more free access there and I'm pretty active on X. So come talk to me on X.
- [95:19]
A
What's your handle on X?
- [95:20]
B
It's my name, Kamran Bakari. No spaces, no ones, no crazy symbols.
- [95:26]
A
And Kamaran is spelled with a K and Bahari is B O, K, H, A, R, I. So people should take note of that. Kamara, this was wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on and doing the 100 year pivot with us.
- [95:39]
B
Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored that you invited me.
- [95:43]
C
Thanks, Cameron. Oh, boy, Dee, that was. Geez. I mean, I knew it's a complicated situation, but boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Anyone hoping for a nice, tidy resolution to this situation? I mean, I guess most people are rooting for the regime to fall in the west, certainly, anyway, but it sounds like that could be the beginning of chaos rather than the end of it. I mean, it's such a complicated situation.
- [96:08]
A
You know what I was thinking about? I did an episode some years ago with Daniel Markey titled, I think it was titled China's Western Horizon. And we're just describing how China orients itself and views its relationship to the Greater Middle east and its interest there. And I just keep thinking, man, does this not just make the Chinese less interested than ever in getting involved in the Middle East? And that was one of my thoughts. And just thinking, man, are they happy. They've invested in nuclear and My second thought was, what have we been doing in this part of the world? Why on earth did we ever think that we could get involved in nation building? I mean, you look at the challenges that a native government has.
- [96:48]
C
Oil, man.
- [96:49]
A
Well, there's the incentive of oil, sure, controlling the resources, but. Yeah, but I mean, and what I'm saying is the idea, you go back to the thing we talked about, Rummy, talking about the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns, but at the same time feeling confident that they could keep a multi ethnic society together that was held by an iron grip and introduce elections and they're going to ink people's thumbs.
- [97:14]
C
I mean, it's crazy hubris, the hubris of empire. I mean, it really. I don't think it's much more complicated than that. Anyone that bothers to look at this stuff, even at a reasonably shallow level, can see how rife with difficulty is if anyone that reads any of Cameron's work. When you get into the weeds on this stuff, just dig into the various ethnic groups in and around, not just Iran, but because of those shifting borders over the last few hundred years, the fact that these ethnic minorities straddle both sides of every single border that Iran has, and each of them, proud nationalists, are looking to reunite the former kingdom. I mean, it's remarkable, Dee. It's such a quagmire. And I really don't know which way this breaks, but it was great to get the chance to ask Cameron about that because that binary outcome has been my base case, certainly for the start of what happens next. Either regime fails or it, it gets its hands around the throat of the country once more. But the new, softer, more gentle theocracy, I can't conceive what that looks like, to be honest with you. I really can't.
- [98:25]
A
Yeah, I mean, these are always useful conversations to have. I'm now reminded of our most recent conversation with Brian Winter where he talked about, he cautioned us when thinking about how confident we can feel about any prospective collaboration between the Chavista government that remains in Venezuela and the United States because of the skepticism that they have and the fear they have of ending up in a supermax prison, and that therefore they're going to try to do just enough to stay out of trouble. And yet that doesn't comport. And these types of more nuanced takes don't comport with the simplistic narratives that you tend to hear being spouted by parties that have vested interest in keeping the conversation simple.
- [99:08]
C
Yeah, no, amen to that. My friend. Well, this has been an absolute barn burner again my mate. We will do it again. God knows what our next topic's going to be, but I can't wait to find out because this is fascinating stuff. Thanks to Cameron Bakari again. You can follow his work on Twitter Amron Bakari. That's K A M R A N B O K H A R I. He does write Forbes and if you search him you will find bits and pieces of his writing scattered around and I would recommend you download and read each bit you can, because he does offer a fantastic perspective on this stuff. Dmitry, my man, where can people follow your work?
- [99:43]
A
They can go to hiddenforces IO, they can look at our library of episodes. We released the first hour for free. The second hour is paywalled for premium subscribers. They can also learn about Genius Tier, our Genius subscription community where we have host in person events and dinners around the world. Kamran has been to many of them, as have some of our previous guests, and they can follow me on Twitter Cofinas with a K K O F as in Frank I n a sfinas.
- [100:12]
C
All right my man, well I will see you again soon and we'll do this again.
- [100:15]
A
This is awesome man. Thanks.
- [100:17]
C
All right brother, take care.
- [100:18]
B
Bye bye.
- [100:20]
A
If you enjoyed listening to today's episode and want to join in on the conversation by becoming a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q and A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis in person events and dinners, you can do that at hiddenforces IO. Subscribe and if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to infoiddenforcesio and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by Stylianos Nicolaou. For more Episodes, you can check out our website at hiddenforces IO, you can follow me on Twitter Cofinas and you can email me at infoiddenforcesio. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.