Is the Iran War Over … or On Pause? with Vali Nasr

Summary

Summary of "Is the Iran War Over … or On Pause? with Vali Nasr"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Smart Girl Dumb Questions
• Host: Nayeema Raza
• Guest: Vali Nasr, Middle East expert, Professor and former Dean at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
• Release Date: June 27, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions, host Nayeema Raza engages with Vali Nasr to dissect the intricate and evolving situation surrounding Iran's involvement in regional conflicts, the status of the Iran-Israel war, and the contentious Iranian nuclear program. As tensions fluctuate, the discussion offers a nuanced exploration of whether the conflict is truly over or merely in a temporary lull.

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Current Status of the Iran War: Over or On Pause?

Naeema Raza opens the conversation by addressing recent military actions and the ambiguous state of war involving Iran. She references Israeli strikes and subsequent US actions against Iranian sites, questioning the true nature of the conflict’s resolution.

Nayeema Raza [01:56]:
"I'm so glad we delayed this conversation because we were emailing last week as Israeli strikes continued and over the weekend the US struck three sites in Iran."

Vali Nasr [02:14]:
"So now the war has stopped, but I think the war has established very clearly that for Israel, Iran is its principal enemy adversary in the region."
– [02:14]

Nasr asserts that while active hostilities may have ceased temporarily, the foundational adversarial relationship between Iran and Israel remains firmly in place.

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Iran and Israel: Principal Adversaries

The dialogue delves into the shifting perceptions between Iran and Israel, highlighting how mutual recognition as primary threats has solidified their antagonistic stance.

Vali Nasr [04:35]:
"If he actually arrived at a nuclear deal. If he actually arrived, was able to create a circumstance in which you could say, okay, he brought a certain degree of peace and stability to the region."
– [04:35]

Nasr discusses the complexities of US-Iran relations, emphasizing that Iran's view of Israel has evolved from seeing it as an instrument of the US to recognizing a more direct threat.

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The Iranian Nuclear Program: Status and Implications

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around Iran's nuclear capabilities, the effectiveness of recent US strikes, and the broader implications for regional stability.

Nayeema Raza [06:33]:
"Do we know if the US bunker busters on these Iranian sites in Fordo Natan Isfahan were actually successful?"
– [06:33]

Vali Nasr [07:31]:
"It's almost like an arms race between the bunkers and the bunker busters."
– [07:31]

Nasr explains the ongoing technological duel between Iran's fortified nuclear sites and the US's efforts to degrade them, suggesting that true efficacy can only be measured through thorough inspections.

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US Strikes on Iranian Sites: Success or Propaganda?

The effectiveness of US military actions in Iran is questioned, with Nasr expressing skepticism about official reports and highlighting the potential motives behind leaked intelligence.

Vali Nasr [08:48]:
"Ever since Trump was getting elected, they knew that war is a potentiality."
– [08:48]

Vali Nasr [09:19]:
"My experience with Washington tells me that leaks are never innocent."
– [09:19]

He suggests that intelligence leaks may be strategically orchestrated by neoconservatives to reignite conflict, casting doubt on the success claims made by US officials.

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Domestic Sentiments in Iran: Government vs. People

The discussion shifts to the internal dynamics within Iran, exploring the populace's feelings towards the regime and the impact of ongoing conflicts.

Vali Nasr [12:30]:
"Even among Iranian people, irrespective of whether they're pro regime, anti regime, secular or not, this is becoming a stronger argument because even if it's somebody like yourself, myself sitting there, they live in Iran, they don't like their government."
– [12:30]

Nasr highlights a growing sentiment among Iranians that prioritizes national sovereignty over ideological allegiance, especially in light of recent military aggressions.

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Prospects for Regime Change in Iran

Raza and Nasr examine the likelihood and potential pathways for regime change in Iran, considering historical precedents and current geopolitical realities.

Vali Nasr [50:28]:
"I don't think there will be a coup against the Supreme Leader. And I don't think there would be a coup unless there is chaos on the streets and the system begins falling apart."
– [50:28]

Nasr emphasizes that without significant internal turmoil or external military intervention, the entrenched leadership, particularly Supreme Leader Khamenei, is unlikely to be overthrown.

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The Role of Iranian Proxies: Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis

The conversation explores Iran's utilization of proxy groups to extend its influence, assessing their current strength and effectiveness amidst regional conflicts.

Vali Nasr [42:34]:
"The name of the collective name of Iraqi militias is also Hasht Al Shavi. So that also starts with an H, although in English we call him PMF."
– [42:34]

He explains that groups like Hezbollah and Hamas have historically served as extensions of Iran's strategic objectives, though their current effectiveness appears diminished due to recent conflicts and internal challenges.

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American Foreign Policy: Retreat or Shift?

Towards the episode's conclusion, Nasr and Raza discuss the trajectory of American foreign policy, debating whether it signifies a retreat from global leadership or a strategic realignment.

Vali Nasr [64:05]:
"Well, it's difficult to characterize it. I mean, it's definitely changing in a big way. It's in retreat in the sense that maybe in a good way, it's in retreat, that we're not trying to shape the world everywhere anyhow."
– [64:05]

Nasr critiques the transactional approach of recent US administrations, suggesting that stepping back from proactive global engagement might inadvertently foster greater instability by isolating America's influence.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reflection on the complexities of Iran's strategic position and the broader implications for regional and global stability. Vali Nasr underscores the necessity of understanding Iran's internal and external motivations to navigate the precarious landscape effectively.

Vali Nasr [66:28]:
"American foreign policy since World War I, since World War II, has grown up on a basis of a set of assumptions about America in the world. These have to do with American leadership."
– [66:28]

Raza and Nasr leave listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted issues surrounding Iran, emphasizing the importance of informed and strategic policymaking.

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Notable Quotes:

1. Vali Nasr [02:14]:
   "So now the war has stopped, but I think the war has established very clearly that for Israel, Iran is its principal enemy adversary in the region."

2. Vali Nasr [07:31]:
   "It's almost like an arms race between the bunkers and the bunker busters."

3. Vali Nasr [09:19]:
   "My experience with Washington tells me that leaks are never innocent."

4. Vali Nasr [12:30]:
   "Even among Iranian people, irrespective of whether they're pro regime, anti regime, secular or not, this is becoming a stronger argument because even if it's somebody like yourself, myself sitting there, they live in Iran, they don't like their government."

5. Vali Nasr [50:28]:
   "I don't think there will be a coup against the Supreme Leader. And I don't think there would be a coup unless there is chaos on the streets and the system begins falling apart."

6. Vali Nasr [64:05]:
   "Well, it's difficult to characterize it. I mean, it's definitely changing in a big way. It's in retreat in the sense that maybe in a good way, it's in retreat, that we're not trying to shape the world everywhere anyhow."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the episode, providing listeners with a clear and detailed understanding of the complex dynamics at play in the ongoing Iran conflict and broader geopolitical landscape.

Transcript

[Naeema Raza]

This is the way it feels to move through summer in Lululemon iconic aligned softness. Without the front seam for our smoothest look and feel ever, summer won't know what hit it. Stretch your limits in the non stop flexibility of the new Lululemon align no line pant in select stores [e-mail] if a person says Iran instead of Iran, do you feel like they're more likely to want to wage war?

[Vali Nasser]

I actually think they're asking a question. When you say Iran, I say where to?

[Naeema Raza]

I love it.

[Vali Nasser]

Yes, but actually if they combine Iran with going to war, that's actually most offensive because I say if you want to go to war with the country, at least bother learning the name of it.

[Naeema Raza]

Smart girl, Dumb questions. I'm Naeema Raza, this is Smart girl, Dumb questions and today we're talking about the Iran war or not war. Is the war fully over yet? And is the Iranian nuclear program defunct, delayed or more on than ever? And what's up with regime change? And like that king dude in D.C. it's all very confusing and quickly changing, but the forces here are decades old and no one gets that better than my guest, Vali Nasser. He's a Middle east expert, a professor and former dean at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He's advised many American policymakers, including the U.S. state Department under Obama. Oh, and he actually used to live in Iran through his teenage years. His family left when the Shah fell. We spoke on Wednesday, which I guess would have been day 14 of a 12 day war, about topics that will still be relevant in a Wednesday in 2026. Vali Nasser, thank you so much for being here with me.

[Vali Nasser]

Thanks for inviting me. It's good to be with you.

[Naeema Raza]

And I'm so glad we delayed this conversation because we were emailing last week as Israeli strikes continued and over the weekend the US struck three sites in Iran. And then there was the Iranian would be response in Qatar. There's a ceasefire as we tape this. But is this war actually over or are we just getting started?

[Vali Nasser]

So now the war has stopped, but I think the war has established very clearly that for Israel, Iran is its principal enemy adversary in the region. And I think for Iranians it's now established that Israel is its principal national security threat. And that doesn't mean only for the Islamic Republic. But I think even Iranian people understand that the one country that can threaten them and threaten them in this manner is willing to take the kind of actions that he took against Iran is actually Israel.

[Naeema Raza]

And would Iran not add the US to that, because in some ways, the US has been Israel's most effective weapon.

[Vali Nasser]

I mean, if we go back to the whole history of the Islamic Republic, which the animosity with the United States and adversarial relations started at the beginning, the Iranians saw the United States essentially as the enemy. The foreign policy was arrayed against the US to protect Iran's independence from the US to break US Containment, to push us out of the Middle East. And they thought that Israel was basically an instrument of the U.S. just like, let's say they thought Saudi Arabia was or the out of alliances. I think in recent years, they have a greater appreciation that actually the tail may be wagging the dog.

[Naeema Raza]

I think what you're saying is Iran used to see Israel as an instrument of the United States, and now they see the United States as an instrument of Israel.

[Vali Nasser]

I mean, yes, I mean, it was that United States was the Great Satan and Israel was the Little Satan, and that they had this vision and still maybe some of it lingers, that the United States, with this great imperialist power, and a lot of this came from leftist literature of the 1960s and 70s, this sort of worldview that they're combating a global imperialist power. And so the United States was really the architect of the world that they were fighting against. Israel fit into that, but Israel by itself was not a concern to them. Now, increasingly, they've realized that they can't cut a deal with the United States as they did in 2015. Israel comes in and torpedoes it. That Israel has all this power in Washington to essentially deploy the entirety of American might, financial, diplomatic, military, in order to fulfill what is essentially Israel's national security policy.

[Naeema Raza]

In a moment, I want to get to, you know, the politics of this moment, because I don't think Donald Trump would particularly like your characterization that he's not the man in charge. In fact, I think Charlie Kirk has suggested that Donald Trump should win a Nobel Peace Prize for this. Do you agree?

[Vali Nasser]

He should, but he's not there yet.

[Naeema Raza]

Do you think he should win a Nobel Peace.

[Vali Nasser]

I'm saying that, in a sense, he could be a candidate if he actually arrived at a nuclear deal. If he actually arrived, was able to create a circumstance in which you could say, okay, he brought certain degree of peace and stability to the region. He hasn't done any of those things. A tenuous ceasefire in a war that he helped himself, helped start is actually not really grounds for a Nobel Prize, because, you know, he. You could in fact say this war was largely his responsibility.

[Naeema Raza]

By the way, before we dig into the more substantive topic of nuclear war and alliances, which 70s pre revolution comeback do you think is more likely? US Iranian relations like they were in the kind of heyday under the Shah or disco?

[Vali Nasser]

I think disco is more likely in the short. I think going back to that kind of a degree of a relationship, it may not happen in my lifetime, but I hope at least see baby steps in that direction. But I hope I stand to be corrected in a major way because I wasn't great at disco.

[Naeema Raza]

Well, I like disco too, so this is the thing. But I like peace more. Peace and security more. So do we know, on the topic of the US strikes in Iran, do we know if the US bunker busters on these Iranian sites in Fordo Natan Isfahan were actually successful? Obviously, there's intelligence reports leaked to CNN suggesting. No. Carolyn Levitt and the White House, the White House press secretary and the White House overall, Pete Hegseth, et cetera, deny this and say that they were an extraordinary, resounding success. What do we know?

[Vali Nasser]

I mean, you know, first of all, I have a problem with these leaks because I think they have been leaked by neocons and those who don't like this ceasefire. They want the United States to go back. They want to basically make a case for war again. I mean, I know it's very easy in Washington and in the United States that anything that makes Donald Trump look bad, everybody jumps at it. Look, he didn't achieve anything. Look, his own Pentagon is saying that he's lying may be true, but this kind of a leak has a purpose. And the purpose of the leak is to actually resume war. So I don't even know those who leaked it, how much of it is true or not. But I would say that probably the bunker buster bombs were designed with Iran in mind during the Obama administration. But I think the Iranians are also designed and redesigned Fordo with the bunker buster bombs in mind as well. So it's almost like an arms race between the bunkers and the bunker busters.

[Naeema Raza]

Like a literal race to the bottom.

[Vali Nasser]

Right? It's a literal race to the bottom. And the reality is that we won't know until you have, you have inspectors that can go in there, go inside, and then there are two issues. Did you destroy the site or did you destroy the site and the equipment in it? Right, they take out all their equipment and, okay, this was a really valuable underground, you know, facility that they had spent hundreds of, let's say, millions of dollars building. Okay. That's gone. But did they get, get to take out all of their enriched uranium, all of their machinery, all of their valuable centrifuges? Because that's a bigger question than whether just the site was impacted.

[Naeema Raza]

Right. It's the underlying infrastructure and the question of how quickly could they rebuild? Again, that is the question.

[Vali Nasser]

But my sense is that, you know, it's not, it's not that necessarily that the bunker buster bombs were duds or this site was particularly well built. It's that the Iranians have had a long time to think and plan for this moment. So ever since Trump was getting elected, they knew that war is a potentiality. Okay, maybe they miscalculated the moment Israel started the war, but it doesn't mean that they hadn't months to think that this possibly may happen.

[Naeema Raza]

Right? Yeah. Everyone knew everything was coming, down to Qatar and the Iranian strikes. Everyone knew everything was coming. It's kind of, it really is a theater of war in some ways. By the way, I just want to really quickly, for the audience and for myself, clarify your assertion that you think these are, that these leaks are leaks by neocons to kind of reinvigorate wartime. That's your, that's your analysis and opinion? That's not. Or is that based on some information that you have?

[Vali Nasser]

I mean, my, my experience with Washington tells me that leaks are never innocent. Somebody just doesn't drop a piece of paper out of their.

[Naeema Raza]

Of course.

[Vali Nasser]

So, yes, it's possible they just want to embarrass the president or they want to embarrass the president with a purpose. The purpose is to say the job was not done. I don't want to sound conspiratorial here, but I've seen this happen along a lot over the years that there are leaks about Iranians are doing or not doing or what IAEA report may be saying or not, end of the day, put out there ideas that then will support policies that you want to advocate.

[Naeema Raza]

Right. Okay. If the equipment is still intact. Right. Because the question was, do they take out the equipment or do they take out the material? Is that the question?

[Vali Nasser]

I mean, all of it. In other words, if Iran is in a position to reassemble this program pretty quick, you obviously have know how. If they've saved their centrifuges, which means that they don't need to build new centrifuges, that shortens the process. If they already have a ton of 400 kg of 60% plus enriched uranium, and then the timeframe and the ability to get from there to a bomb shortens to weeks, then the question they just have to have a location to set it up.

[Naeema Raza]

So if, for example, the centrifuges are still in place, if they still have access to this kind of 60% enriched uranium, does this mean that we're going to be back in this exact same situation between Iran, Israel and the US Pretty soon? Like, is Donald Trump going to be Bill Murray on Groundhog Day? Like, is this going to keep on happening?

[Vali Nasser]

I think for a while we do. Unless and until the United States gets a solid deal with Iran, there is no incentive on Iran's part to stop its activity. Because if anything, Iran's nuclear activity for many, many years, I think, in my opinion, was not intended to build a bomb, but was leveraged in order to get the United States to the table to negotiate over sanctions. That's why Iran went to Geneva in 2015. They didn't ask the United States anything other than in exchange for X, Y and Z, we want these sanctions lifted. And then when they went back this time again, what was on the table for Iran was sanctions. So the Iranians understand that the United States doesn't come to the table for any issue other than nuclear issue.

[Naeema Raza]

Right.

[Vali Nasser]

Unlike you just send an invitation, say, let's have a conversation about Hezbollah or Hamas and the US Is going to show up.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, let's just go. Like in the 1970s.

[Vali Nasser]

No. So until now, the value of this was really leverage. But now Iran has been attacked by two nuclear powered armed countries and their argument is that you're defenseless, we own your skies, we can obliterate you, we can bomb you at will, anytime you want. And of course, Iran can hit back with missiles, but it has finite ability vis a vis the combined power of Israel and the United States. So from here on, it's going to be very tempting for them to say we need a bomb, not for offensive purposes, but because it's the ultimate deterrent.

[Naeema Raza]

Just to recap for the audience, you're saying your understanding of the Iranian grand strategy here, the Iranian nuclear program was intended as leverage to bring the Americans to the table, not as deterrent necessarily for any kind of foreign intervention. But now those incentives have changed as they have seen actual war in a way that we have not seen in this region.

[Vali Nasser]

And in fact, even among Iranian people, irrespective of whether they're pro regime, anti regime, secular or not, this is becoming a stronger argument because even if it's somebody like yourself, myself sitting there, they live in Iran, they don't like their government. But they don't like to be bombed. And they say basically this can't happen again. And if it means that you need to have nuclear deterrence to prevent me to have to escape Tehran or be told by President Trump that you need to evacuate your city right away, if avoiding that scenario means that Iran should be nuclear, then, you know, that's becoming a kind of conversation that I hadn't seen before this attack in the public domain.

[Naeema Raza]

What do Iranian people hate more? Domestic theocracy and dictatorship and isolationism or foreign intervention?

[Vali Nasser]

I think they hate them both, but they're not in a situation where they can choose. And if they put it, you put the choice on. I think what we saw was that overwhelming majority put their country above everything else. So I think the Iranians, end of the day at least majority of Iranians, I don't want to say every Iranian insider outside, but the majority of Iranians love their country more than they hate the Islamic Republic. They're not willing for Iran to be turned into Syria or Gaza or to be broken up or become Iraq as the price for getting rid of a theocratic authoritarian regime. Yes, there are those who are willing to pay any price to get rid of the Islamic Republic and they may put a very rosy picture, but majority of Iranians are not of that view, especially after they saw the consequences of the Israeli missiles.

[Naeema Raza]

I want to come back to these ideas of democracy, but just very quickly to close out on the nuclear weapons, some rapid fire questions. Do we know how close Iran was to having a nuclear weapon? Weapon? Because it felt imminent for a while. I mean, Jon Stewart recently raised this. He talked about this on his show. He had some cameos from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Maybe we can play a clip of that really quickly.

[Vali Nasser]

By next spring at most, by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage.

[Naeema Raza]

Iran is months away from having a.

[Vali Nasser]

Nuclear bomb, says Netanyahu in 2012.

[Naeema Raza]

And then John goes on to say this, seriously, why did we have to bomb Iran now?

[Vali Nasser]

Iran is so dangerous, weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs.

[Naeema Raza]

Holy shit. That's why Iran's only weeks away from having an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs, says Netanyahu in 2015. Were the Iranian strikes against Iran, you know, now 14 days ago, is that the boy crying wolf? Is this. You know, there's a lot of analogies here. Iran is just like 2003 Iraq Foreign War justified by false intelligence. What do you make of that? Was there an actual bomb on the horizon?

[Vali Nasser]

Well, I mean, you potentially could say, but. But Jon Stewart is right. I mean, he's been saying the same thing for 15 years. And it's a political argument he was making as Prime Minister of Israel to get the United States to support what was Israeli national security decision, that it has to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities or maybe even get the United States to remove the Islamic Republic through something like what happened in Iran. I mean, the problem, we talked about leaks earlier on. There's so many leaks that continuously come out into New York Times, Washington Post about, oh, you know, the intelligence community has estimated Iran is X and Iran is Y. Right. Nobody ever verifies if this is true or not. But one thing I know is that Israel could have waited two days. I mean, Iran was not two days away from bomb. That they had to actually torpedo the nuclear talks in Muscat with the bombing that they did on Friday. Which to me leads me to think that they actually were not interested in whether it's possible to stop Iran or genuinely how far Iran is without, but were actually not interested in the deal with Iran that Israel does not see to its benefit that the Iran problem is solved at the table. It actually wants a final solution to Iran, which is regime change. The regime gone. It cannot do it because it's too small to do that. It needs the United States to get involved in a big war in Iran. And so this is really about that, I think.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, I want to get to those concepts of how the regime is faring now and also the prospects for regime change and talk about other analogies. Is this Libya, is this Afghanistan, is this Iraq, is this Egypt? I mean, I lived through the Arab Spring in that region, so I don't think any of these are actually good analogies. But just to close off on the nuclear weapon, Iran says it's a sovereign right in a nuclear energy sense to enrich uranium. Is it their right or do they sign those rights away, you know, under nuclear proliferation agreements or otherwise?

[Vali Nasser]

No, actually the Non Proliferation Treaty guarantees those rights.

[Naeema Raza]

Beyond 60%?

[Vali Nasser]

No, no, not beyond. Not. No, beyond 20%. 60% is, is skirting the boundaries of what's allowed or is gone beyond what's allowed. But what Iran said is that if you sit down and negotiate a deal with us, we're willing to go back to 3.75% what we agreed to under JCPOA as well, which is within our rights as a member of npt. Non Proliferation Treaty.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. And do you take that at face Value that they're willing to go back to 3.7%.

[Vali Nasser]

Well, they did once. I mean, they got 11 bills of health by the IAEA that they were abiding by what they signed in 2015.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, this is under the Obama Iran deal. Yeah.

[Vali Nasser]

When they signed the deal, this was the deal that was on the table. The United States asked for certain things that later it said, oh, I didn't ask enough. The Iranians asked for certain things and later on they said, holy cow, we should have asked for better things. Like the United States didn't lift many sanctions actually in the two years because the Iranians didn't know how to negotiate. They didn't get any guarantees that when you say we're going to lift these sanctions, you actually lift them, that you don't come around and say, oh, actually lifting this sanction requires three years and 16 congressional meetings. And by the way, the Congress can reimpose it through a back door. So, you know, we didn't actually. The west actually did not really largely abide by its obligations under the nuclear deal. And the nuclear deal in 2015 was basically that we create a situation that for a period of 20 to 25 years, we know that Iran will not be very close to a bomb, that we'll get the right to inspect Iran very intrusively. In fact, every report that we read about Fordo that is the basis for why we want to bomb it came out of the agreements that Iran made in 2015.

[Naeema Raza]

I guess what are other things you could do with 60% plus enriched uranium besides have a nuclear weapon as a deterrent or to blow up a city? I guess it could maybe get you through a Con Edison heat wave outage, but so could 20%.

[Vali Nasser]

No, no, no, I think it's a fair question. That's what I'm saying. I think the Iranians wanted this as leverage, decided to go to 6. The Iranians decided to go to 20% when President Trump came out of the nuclear deal and then put maximum pressure sanctions in Iran, essentially punishing them for abiding by the deal that the United States had signed.

[Naeema Raza]

Right.

[Vali Nasser]

So the Iranians waited several months. The Europeans didn't do anything. They said, okay, in order to put pressure on the US we're going to go to 20% enrichment. President Biden on his way coming into office and all the Democrats said, as soon as we come in, we're going to go back inside jcpo. Biden comes in and he backtracks. He says, you know what, I think actually Trump's policy is pretty good. Why would we want to lift sanctions on Iran? We would just leave it up. And in the United States, they don't want to talk to Iran. When Biden came, and at some point, Iran's supreme leader said, you know what? Let's go to 60%. As soon as he did that, the United States said, let's meet in Vienna.

[Naeema Raza]

Right. Okay.

[Vali Nasser]

Right.

[Naeema Raza]

So it's like.

[Vali Nasser]

Yeah, so it was leveraged.

[Naeema Raza]

It's like a thirst trap. But it's actually when they were meeting.

[Vali Nasser]

In, in, in Moscow, the offer Iranian put on the table is that we will not enrich to 20%, we will not enrich to 60%. As part of the deal, we can come up by a formula that you either buy our 60% enriched uranium or you pay us or somehow we. We dilute it. The issue was never the 6%. The issue was whether Iran has a right to 3.75%.

[Naeema Raza]

Right. And just so people get it, I learned this from my studies. Not at Madrasa for anyone doing racial profiling, but at Georgetown, where I studied under Dean Gallucci, who had a key role in setting up nuclear race. Yeah. Who you must know well, had a key role in setting up unscom, which is the Iraqi disarmament campaign. I think the lesson is, like, from 0.7%, 3.7% to 60%, very, very hard. From 60% to 90% could take a week. And from 90% to the core of an atomic bomb could take months. Is that correct?

[Vali Nasser]

That's correct.

[Naeema Raza]

I get that pretty right.

[Vali Nasser]

Technology, from enrichment to weaponization is a completely different technology. And from weaponization to being able to put it on a missile is also another technology altogether.

[Naeema Raza]

What stops them from just buying a bomb from North Korea or from Pakistan?

[Vali Nasser]

Bombs are not for sale. I mean, countries don't do that because they face consequences.

[Naeema Raza]

Didn't A. Q. Khan get in trouble for selling nuclear technology in Pakistan with.

[Vali Nasser]

Technology, but not this huge bomb?

[Naeema Raza]

Bombs are not for sale. You've just destroyed all of the Jack Bauer 24 episodes I watched as a child.

[Vali Nasser]

The only times that really nuclear technology in that way has been transferred is when the Soviets probably gave it to the Chinese and the Americans gave it to Israelis. And this goes all the way back to the 50s and 60s. And yes, bits and pieces has been bought, like Zulfaghar Ali Bhutto, you know, got pieces of the technology or gave piece of technology to Libya. But to get an entire bomb ready out of the box that you could actually shoot is such a huge strategic decision that no country will make it easy.

[Naeema Raza]

Got it. And North Korea obtained a nuke, I guess through its own development, not through the Chinese.

[Vali Nasser]

Maybe through the Chinese as well as. Well, exactly.

[Naeema Raza]

I believe it was around the aughts that they had this first nuclear weapon. Why didn't the US Stop them? Are we more scared of the Ayatollah than Kim Jong Un? Or I guess Kim Jong Un's daddy, Kim Jong Il.

[Vali Nasser]

First of all, North Korea sits in a place where it's surrounded by China and Russia and the US has to think twice about doing what he's doing with Iran, with North Korea. Secondly, there is no Israel in North Korea's case. There's no regional power with the kind of influence in the United States that can.

[Naeema Raza]

Don't they have a massive alliance with South Korea and Japan?

[Vali Nasser]

But South Koreans cannot move the US Congress or influence elections or have. You know, you don't have a circumstance that happened when the United States of America signs a nuclear deal or a deal, any treaty, and the speaker of the Congress invites the Prime Minister of another country to come and disrespect the President of the United States and shred his idea in front of the adoring Congress who claps on every word of his. That doesn't happen with South Korea. With Japan, regardless of how much, I mean, genuinely you think about it, is that for South Korea and Japan, their strategic issues are American foreign policy issues. So they don't really see very much that. Whereas Israel's issues are domestic issues in the US Right. In other words, there are entire constituencies that would basically go to bat for Israel, Evangelical Christians, et cetera, that are quite powerful. And as a result, even though Iran doesn't have a bomb, but the potentiality of it moves the United States a lot more than North Korea actually having a bomb. That's for the United States.

[Naeema Raza]

A dumb question here. Does striking a nuclear site cause nuclear fallout? Like, can you no longer go skiing in Isfahan now? And for anyone listening, you could actually go skiing in Isfahan.

[Vali Nasser]

Well, it could. I mean, so far the IA has said that they have not detected any nuclear fallout, which also raises the issue that they had cleaned out those.

[Naeema Raza]

So it supports that reporting that the reporting is correct? Yeah, it supports that leak. If they had a nuclear weapon or such, highly enriched uranium and it hit it, would it be like a Hiroshima? Would there be like a mushroom cloud or something? Or is that not what happens?

[Vali Nasser]

I don't know. Because, you know, some of the weapons also have safeties that. That prevents them from actually exploding unless they're intended to explode. But if the material is loose somewhere, or if it's in a container and those are disturbed, then it does disperse. It's very dangerous to hit nuclear reactors, to hit nuclear production sites, et cetera. And so, yes, that is always a threat there.

[Naeema Raza]

All right, so, Val, in your book the Grand Strategy, you talk about Iran as this existential state. Right? It exists out of a concept of threat. It's mobilized around narrative and decades of resistance. I guess there's nothing better for selling a book called Iran's Grand Strategy than a war against Iran that captures the headlines and imaginations and World War three concerns of people for, you know, a couple of weeks. Well, has it been good for book sales?

[Vali Nasser]

I hope so. And I. And I expect so, but. And it's unfortunate. It's actually the wrong reason. I would have liked people to be paying attention, but for a while, I had been thinking that Iran is becoming a bigger and bigger issue for the United States, for Saudi Arabia, for Israel, a central point of our foreign policy. And we really don't appreciate or know as a people, not only as policymakers, as people, how do Iranians calculate why they calculate their decisions? The way they. I mean, we're playing a game of chess with them. We have no understanding of the strategy of the other side.

[Naeema Raza]

And part of that is that because since the Carter era, there has been no diplomacy between these two countries and very limited intelligence. Right. Actually. But then you have things like Stuxnet, and you wonder, well, isn't there more intelligence than we think there is?

[Vali Nasser]

Well, intelligence. I learned when I even worked in the government that raw intelligence is. Is like looking at one tree at a time. It doesn't necessarily give you a picture of the forest. And CIA can tell you exactly what was said in Tehran last night, but they're not necessarily very good at telling you generally what is the context in which this information is said or this information is received. The other reason is that we're mesmerized with Khamenei's turbid. It just deflects the attention that. Okay, because this guy's got a turban on his head. These guys are sort of fanatical, deranged, illogical, irrational Islamic robots. And that explains their hatred of Israel, hatred of America. And they just basically are on a bigger version of the caricature we had of fundamentalists after 9 11. Before 9 11. And what I'm trying to say is that don't be distracted by his turban. I mean, he's basically There's a strategic calculation there. It may be based on wrong assumptions, wrong analysis, wrong conclusions. I don't subscribe to the way he sees it. But you would be underestimating and deluding yourself if you didn't understand that he's making strategic calculations.

[Naeema Raza]

So you try to give a picture of the forest to the trees. And we spoke about kind of, what do Iranian people hate more, this theocracy, this dictatorship, this isolationism, this foreign intervention you gave me that. Is the Ayatollah more popular now, you know, 14 days after the Israeli strikes than he was a couple weeks ago or three weeks ago? Is there a rallying around the flag effect that we've certainly seen with, say, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, who was, you know, detested, protested by his people, and now very much, you know, at least supported through his war?

[Vali Nasser]

I mean, I don't know. I can't answer that because there's no sort of polling exact way or seeing it.

[Naeema Raza]

Is there any polling in Iran? There's no, like Gallup, they typically have.

[Vali Nasser]

Polling of their own, that's for sure. There are sometimes polling done, but usually polling is not about popularity. And Supreme Leader, that's kind of like an untouchable subject.

[Naeema Raza]

Right.

[Vali Nasser]

I don't think the Islamic Republic is more popular. I think the problems that the Iranians have with it are still there. In other words, that is too authoritarian, it's too rigid, it's too ideological. And it's foreign policy has one Iran, isolation, et cetera. And the Iranians really want a normal state. Most of them want a normal state that allows them to interact with the world. The poorer people want an economy that actually delivers to them. So they're not happy. The Iranians are not happy with the Islamic Republic. I don't think that's gone away. I think what's changed is that in these 14 days, it was not about the Islamic Republic, it was about Iran. And so in their mind, this distinction between the regime and Iran, which is so strong in the west, was sort of erased at this moment. They were all Iranian.

[Naeema Raza]

So there is a rallying around the flag effect. We don't know if it's going to carry Ayatollah KHAMENEI through his 87th or 88th birthday. I think he's 86 now.

[Vali Nasser]

But I think the Islamic Republic will be forced to change. He was already being forced to change, but I think that is going to accelerate.

[Naeema Raza]

For example, you know, like, think about a couple years ago, there were the riots happening over Mas Amini and the hijab and now we're seeing, I mean I hear from people in Iran that they're not having to wear headscarves or they're able to go out and about and it's not being enforced. Is that the case as a rules change?

[Vali Nasser]

They basically lost that battle contrary to what we think outside. But one of the ways they dealt with it was basically adopted don't ask, don't tell policy with women. So the laws are on the books but they don't enforce it. Majority of women basically don't wear it. And so they showed that they have to change if the size of the popular pressure on them is high.

[Naeema Raza]

So in that sense, I think a lot of people talk about dictatorship and democracy, but I think an interesting concept is what kind of legitimacy do you have for your government? Is your legitimacy because you were elected or is your legitimacy because you're responsive? Like a high speed train crashes in China, heads roll, things have to happen.

[Vali Nasser]

I think also I might read even before the war of what the Iranians wanted was a little different. Okay, yes, the trope of democracy sounds really good, but what Iranians really want is a government that delivers and is open and lets them be culturally free. So if you looked at who was becoming what leader outside of Iran was most popular to them it was somebody like Mohammed bin Salman or the Azerbaijani president Aliyah. And I think that Iranians would, a leader in Iran would get away with the social contract that Mohammed bin Salman or the ruler of UAE have with their population which will give you maximum cultural freedom and no political freedom. But I think also something happened in Iran the past 12 days which is significant, which is the Revolutionary Guard, the supreme leader. Everybody in Iran saw that there was a moment where all Iranians came together and that ultimately Iran was able to withstand these 12 days and going forward can only confront Israel and the United States if it has its people with cannot be fighting on both fronts. It cannot be fighting Iranians and fighting Israel at once. Particularly because Israel made regime change an issue.

[Naeema Raza]

We're going to take a quick break and when we're back we're going to get to where Iran is, where the regime is and where it goes from here with Ali Nasser. We'll be back in a minute guys. Today's sponsor Dumb Question is from me because I don't think Tarjay is going to have like an Iran like question, for example. So I'm gonna take the next minute to tell you a little bit about smart girl dumb questions and to ask you for your help in continuing to make independent, fact based and curious journalism. No, I'm not gonna ask you for money. Here's what I need. I would love you to tell 10 of your friends about the show or 100, I don't know, blast that reunion group that you muted. And definitely tell your mom. And tell your mom to tell her friends too. Even if you don't like the show and you're just like hate watching it or listening to it, tell 10 of your friends to hate watch it too. Numbers are numbers, people. And if you or they have just discovered the show, go back and listen to the awesome conversations we've had with economist Paul Krugman about tariffs, or Neil Degrasse Tyson about the space wars, or with Mark Cuban about capitalism and healthcare, or the many conversations I've had about why so many millennials and Gen Zers are still single. You should definitely send that episode to your mom. You can find them on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. And you can listen to them after you finish this conversation with Professor Vali Nasser about Iran. Not Iran. So let's get to regime change in a second. But before we get there, I think we need a little bit of like a 101 for anyone listening here. So can you kind of break down the key forces in Iran, the key political forces, the Ayatollah, the igrc, the military, the elite Quds force. Just give us like a one minute stakeholder map.

[Vali Nasser]

So like many other countries, Iran has military forces. The most important military force in Iran is Revolutionary Guards. They're the sort of elite force that was born up for the revolution. They are the ones that are closest to the regime. But Iran also has regular military as well. You put these two together, they will look to you something like Egypt's military, Pakistan's military. And they are intrusive in the economy and politics, just like those militaries in those countries are. Rules are a little different, but the idea is the same. And then Iran has this sort of Iran has a very big political class that is kind of very disjointed and has different factions. There are hardliners, there are reformists, there are moderates, some are clerics, and they have ties to religious centers. Some of them are not clerics, have ties to varieties of economic and other organizations. And then Iran also has a very amorphous state. So on the top you have the supreme leader then, but you also have an elected president which is kind of like the prime minister of France. In other words, he's in charge of the administration of the country. But he's not the.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, but he's not Macron.

[Vali Nasser]

Macron, exactly. The supreme leader is unelected and unaccountable. The president is elected and is accountable. You have a legislature which is elected and it's not just the parliament. You have another body that is elected that chooses the next supreme leader. You have another body that's elected that decides who can run and what laws.

[Naeema Raza]

What is that body called? The one that selects the supreme leader. And is it kind of like a politburo in China or Vietnam?

[Vali Nasser]

There is one which is called Council of Experts, which is only really, really important when he has to choose on whether a supreme leader is senile or who would replace him.

[Naeema Raza]

So he says, and how many dudes are on that? I assume they're all dudes.

[Vali Nasser]

They're all dudes. Yes, they're all dudes, because that one all are clerics, actually, because supposedly this is a clerical, this is a theocracy on paper. So they're all. I know there are dozens on that. But then they're elected. And then you have a Guardian Council which is actually has also members of supreme leader points to who's on it. The Guardian Council decides, vets all candidates who run for office, from low level mayor to parliamentarians to president. And then it also has a veto power over legislation that comes out of the, out of the legislature. And so basically you have a level of state functioning and democratic voting and decision making which kind of looks very Western, but it's controlled and overseen this other layer on top of it, which is authoritarian and is not accountable and sometimes not elected.

[Naeema Raza]

We gotta send Doge to Iran.

[Vali Nasser]

I think you have to connect Doge to Iran for varieties of reasons. But you see also because this kind of plumbing makes also the economy look like that these different things can have their own relationships. In the economy. It becomes who knows who what the networks are, who has relationship with whom.

[Naeema Raza]

And I've heard you say this elsewhere, that the flow of information is actually happening in Iran. It's a relatively informed and liberal place for information flow, which always kind of shocks me because Iran ranks 176, I think, out of 180 countries on press freedom when it comes to, to the report from Reporters Without Borders. There's also Internet blackouts that we've seen at key moments. I mean, I Remember one in 2010, I think 2019 or 2020. I mean, we see them in key intervals of, you know, important democratic or activist moments in Iran. So is it really like, is it relatively well Informed. I mean, how do you think about that?

[Vali Nasser]

Well, first of all, Iranians have access to information outside. So much so that exile television stations were extremely important in disturbances that in the riots and revolt that happened two years ago. So people watch them. People watch varieties of outside sources. But even within the press in Iran, yes. If there are red lines and they don't criticize the Supreme Leader, there are no go places.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, you can't poll about his popularity. There's no approval rating.

[Vali Nasser]

There is plenty of discussion of corruption in government. Corruption here, corruption. And then you have a population that is 90% literate and is fairly sophisticated. So. And it's very online. In other words, you know, this is a highly digital society. Iran's entire economy is pretty much digital. Nobody uses cash in Iran.

[Naeema Raza]

Right. And until there's Internet blackout. But even then, there are ways.

[Vali Nasser]

Well, no, you're right. Internet. The reason they need Internet blackout is exactly because short of shutting down the Internet, they cannot control information. The censor cannot just basically say, okay, there are five newspapers and three television stations and we can control this. So when they get overwhelmed, the only option they have is to pull the plug out of the wall.

[Naeema Raza]

Did they shut down the Internet this last week?

[Vali Nasser]

They did, but not for that reason. The reason was because they actually believe that Israel could locate people and locate operations using. Because the belief, for instance, in Iran is right or wrong, that like Israel used telephone signaling or WhatsApp to know where Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, was right.

[Naeema Raza]

And I mean, the pager attacks were extremely sophisticated. And I gotta say, I don't wanna be conspiratorial, but the early. Was it early 2024 helicopter crash that killed Raisi, the former president, and I think seven or eight other people that seemed.

[Vali Nasser]

I don't want to be conspiracy with Iranians. No death is ever natural because it's not interesting if people die of natural death. So there must always be a conspiracy. But nobody.

[Naeema Raza]

Helicopters are also unsafe for anyone listening. Don't take them.

[Vali Nasser]

No, no, no. But also the pager attack and then also the assassinations of commanders in Iran. Tracking people suggested to them that actually their telephone system, mobile system, Internet was a vulnerability in the middle of the war with Israel.

[Naeema Raza]

Got it. So we've just painted a picture of all these forces in the state of Iran and also in the society of Iran. But then there's external forces that are proxies. You know, we've talked about some of them. Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis. By the way, do you have to have an H To be an Iranian proxy like Harlem Globetrotters could be eligible.

[Vali Nasser]

The name of the collective name of Iraqi militias is also Hasht Al Shavi. So that also starts with an H, although in English we call him pmf. But.

[Naeema Raza]

Well, that's actually conspiracy here about the letter H. But yes, that's right, that's right. But how are the external forces, Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis doing right now? How strong are they? Particularly with everything that's happened in Gaza in the case of Hamas, in Syria and Lebanon in the case of Hezbollah and you know, Houthis in terms of their kind of checked out ness, I would say of the Iran war of.

[Vali Nasser]

Late, it seems, well, Iranians are not using them in this. First of all, Hezbollah has been diminished. Hamas is being battered. So yes, Iran's position collapsed in Syria and Lebanon recently, but that doesn't mean that it didn't work for a very long time. Look, in every case that Iran set up in militia, the opportunity was created by others. Israel went into Lebanon in 1982, destroyed PLO, left a vacuum, and occupied south Lebanon, which annoyed the Shias. It gave Iran the opportunity to stand up Hezbollah. The United States went into Iraq, destroyed Saddam's government, created chaos. And that chaos helped, first of all, a Sunni insurgency in the north, which was supported by Syria, who was also an ally of Iran. And that provided an opportunity for Iran to organize militias and organize the politics and basically operate in Syria. Then you have the Arab Spring, which destroys the central governments in Yemen and Syria, allows Iran to also move into those places. So there was opportunity. But the logic was that when Iran went into Iraq in particular, it came up with this idea of forward defense. In other words, it is best for us to defend ourselves inside the Arab world against Arabs and Americans rather than inside our own border like they're doing right now with Israel.

[Naeema Raza]

People might hear what you're saying and say, okay, there are opportunities for all of these groups to be created through other foreign policy that created or even domestic revolt that created vacuums. People might think, oh, that's kind of victim blaming volley or you know.

[Vali Nasser]

No, no. I mean, they said it was a real strategy. You could read discussions of it in Iran, right? Was it a wise strategy? Was it not wise strategy? Why couldn't Iran set up a militia in Jordan?

[Naeema Raza]

Why not?

[Vali Nasser]

Because it had a state. It's not penetrable. Right. It's not like you could actually go get a group of angry Jordanians, organize them around the movement.

[Naeema Raza]

You're not endorsing the strategy or saying it's a non belligerent one. You're just saying, hey, these are opportunistic. And by the way, Vali, I think the question about why didn't they do that in Jordan is kind of a smart guy smart questions episode that I did not know the answer to myself. I have to say no, no, but.

[Vali Nasser]

But actually now it's very clear. First of all, any kind of a military strategy ultimately is not innocent because it's designed to inflict pain, kill, intimidate. That's what, you know, military is. It's just that to think about what where does Hezbollah fit in? Iran's strategic thinking is yes, it's an ally, yes, we want to help him, but Hezbollah is important deterrence tool against in fact it is the reason it is the collapse of Hezbollah that leads Israel to say Iran is weak. But the reality is that with Hezbollah and Syria gone, then Israel no longer feels deterred from attacking Iran.

[Naeema Raza]

Directly to one, I just want to give a quick side note that I'm told that another kind of outcome of Hezbollah being cleared from Beirut is now Beirut airport lines are actually moving because all these intel collectors are out of the ports and airports where they had so much control. And as someone who stood in those lines for a long time, I'm happy to hear that.

[Vali Nasser]

Silver lining to everything.

[Naeema Raza]

I once landed in the Beirut airport and it was such a long queue and one of the women that was in the line says in Arabic to the guy, like oh, you know, I have four children. You should have a for women who have children. And he says back to her, you know, he says if I had a line for women who had children, it would be the longest line in this place. A bizarre experience. But while we are here, how does Iran keep making money, keep funding this kind of harem of h militias and proxies despite years of sanctions, years of economic sanctions that you're saying were even hard to come off in the agreement because they were so bureaucratic. So how is the money kept rolling?

[Vali Nasser]

Well, I mean Iran sells some oil, it's a very big economy inside. And also some of these groups like Hezbollah or the Iraqis started basically making money where they were. Towards the end, Hezbollah became involved in the drug trade with Syria or there's extortion in Iraq and Iraq is a rich country, government contracts, et cetera, et cetera. So it's not all from Iran. But actually that's part of the very interesting question because in this recent war Iran went up against Israel. A military that basically enjoys western technology is armed by Germany is armed by Britain, armed by the United States with a state of the art technology. And everything Iran has in this war is homemade. Nobody sells it anything. And so, you know, 40 years, the.

[Naeema Raza]

Chinese don't help it out, the Pakistanis.

[Vali Nasser]

Not with giving them out of the box weapons. Like for a long time they've been waiting for Russia to give them more advanced air defense systems. Or, you know, the Russians have promised them the 25 jet fighters, first time since the revolution for them to get modern jet fighters. And they haven't delivered.

[Naeema Raza]

Why haven't they delivered them? Presumably Russia needs all the cash it can get right now. They've just seen that very sophisticated Ukrainian attack.

[Vali Nasser]

They play games under the table with Americans, with Israelis. They have other sets of things to watch. And so in a way, after 40 years of being on the one form of sanctions or another, Iran basically, and this is part of its grand strategy which I go into, that comes from Iran, Iraq war, it's learned that it's alone and it has to stand on its own feet.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. Okay, in 60 seconds or less, can you explain why the Iranians and the Arabs have beef? Explain Sonicia and kind of the history here.

[Vali Nasser]

Well, it's kind of like saying, why did the French and the Germans have beef? I mean, recently I asked somebody, like, if the Germans rebuild an army because the US Is leaving NATO, aren't you afraid? You said, yes, but this time we have nuclear weapons, which means that, yes, it's always on the card or you just need to scratch the surface to discover how much the French and the British love each other. It or the British and the Germans.

[Naeema Raza]

Love each other, or the Indians and the Pakistanis at least have a live.

[Vali Nasser]

Issue that still hasn't been resolved. But in reality, you know, these ethnic groups as rivalries in the region go a long way. Shia and the Sunni are like Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Periodically, you know, these things can be part of identity politics or be used by identity politics. So it's not that mysterious to the outside. I just need to look at their own history.

[Naeema Raza]

But I want to get into now on what happens next. Right on Polymarket, the betting site, there's a bet that the Ayatollah is going to be out by July 31st. I think there's 20% odds on that. These are small bets, like there's 50 million on the New York City mayoral primary or 3 billion on the US 2024 elections. But people are betting on this. What's going to happen actually?

[Vali Nasser]

I mean, I don't think There will be a coup against the Supreme Leader. And I don't think there would be a coup unless there is chaos on the streets and the system begins falling apart. Because coups happen either when you really want to redirect politics in a country completely, or that the military thinks that the civilian government cannot maintain law and order or manage the economy, and things are falling apart. The military steps in to restore order. None of those things are happening in Iran.

[Naeema Raza]

And in this case, the military, the broader military, of which there is a subsection of the ijrc. The IJRC is very closely aligned with the Ayatollah.

[Vali Nasser]

It is very closely aligned with the Ayatollah. But also, this Ayatollah is somebody who's ruled over Iran for 36 years. The IRGC cannot rule Iran without him. But if they remove them, they're gonna create so much chaos that they can't control.

[Naeema Raza]

And the military, the other military, they're just not good enough.

[Vali Nasser]

That's not. They're not positioned in a way that could. They could stage a coup.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, right. But this guy is no spring chicken. I think he's, like, seven years older than Trump, four years older than Biden. You know, he's got those good Persian genes.

[Vali Nasser]

They don't have a Biden situation.

[Naeema Raza]

They don't have a Biden situation. Yeah, he's got those Persian genes. But what is the succession plan?

[Vali Nasser]

Everything in Iran is about the succession, including this war, the nuclear deal, et cetera. Khamenei has ruled Iran for 36 years. That makes him, like, I think, maybe the third longest ruling leader of Iran in the past 200, 300 years. Right. You have to go. Right. So there was one in the 19th century, which is 49 years, and the Shah was 37 years. So next year, if Khamenei survives, he would be the second longest and on par with the Shah.

[Naeema Raza]

But that makes me feel like his time ahead is shorter, Vali, not longer.

[Vali Nasser]

I'm not sure about that. Okay, I think, first of all, the read is that Iran lost this war. I think that's much more the Western narrative than necessarily the way they see it or the way that Iranians see it. They see it that they went against the world's greatest superpower and the most advanced military in the Middle east, and they held their own. The military didn't collapse. They have their nuclear. Most of the nuclear things intact. They're still standing. And they actually forced a ceasefire in Israel. I mean, they don't need to look, they don't need to you know, prove that. Just listen to President Trump and Steve Bannon. They're making the case that Israel was getting a beating. Steve Bannon, for instance, said today, yesterday that. That this ceasefire was as much to bail out Israel as it was to bail out Iran. And I'm not saying this is a factual thing that you need to. Factually.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, you're saying it's the narrative, the understanding.

[Vali Nasser]

Victory is a political narrative. Victory and defeat is in the eyes of the beholder. So, first of all, he hasn't lost the war. He basically has come through. The Iranians will have a lot of questions about why were we at war, how the war was conducted, and where do we go from here. But there is not a crisis of leadership in a sense. Right. I mean, this is much more the regime change narrative abroad and this expectation that, okay, the whole military must be angry with them, the conduct of the war is failing, we should take over. That's not the case. Then they will say there's going to be tens of thousands of Iranians on the street and the IRGC will feel compelled to stage a coup, either to lead the. The people to something better or to put them in prison and shut it down. That's not happening either. I mean, you have a picture today which is the commander of the Quds Force, which was reputed to actually have been assassinated by Israel, is walking in the middle of the crowd in Tehran in the celebrations of the end of the war and Iran's victory. That doesn't give you a sense that these guys feel humiliated, they need to take. Maybe they should. I'm not saying they shouldn't, but as I said, conception of victory and defeat is in the eyes of the beholder.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. What about this? Okay, there's this dude in DC who has become a meme. The heir to the Pahlavi fortune, the son of the last Shah. What about him? Because people seem, you know, kind of obsessed with this story.

[Vali Nasser]

They are. But that. This story, yes, I think he did have a. He did have a lot of following in Iran, but he had no ground game, no coalition. I mean, just to be liked makes you an influencer. It doesn't make you a political leader. You could have one and a half million followers. Everybody may dote on you, love you, but to be a political leader, you have to have a ground game. You have to have a political organization. Polygamous. Not only he doesn't have it. Which doesn't tell me exactly how would he become leader of Iran unless there are American troops in Tehran. The way they were in Kabul or Baghdad. If you have troops in Tehran, you could decide who's on the throne, who's off the throne, and then you could keep your troops there like we did in Afghanistan for 20 years to keep the regime that we set up in power. Most of this picture is before he became a collaborator with Israel. Right. I don't think his reputation would survive this war because he didn't have the political acumen to, off the bat, come out and say, I condemn the violation of my country's territorial sovereignty. I condemn an invasion of Iran. And I'm standing with my people and I feel they're suffering because civilians have been killed. And I give my condolences to all of those innocent civilians who've been killed. So he came out, didn't condemn Israel, said it's Khamenei's fault, but I'm not condemning Israel. No civilians have been killed. All the people have been killed. Has been essentially regime people. And he said that he doesn't believe that Israel is actually targeting Iranians. He didn't say anything with Israel or Trump, said that Tehran has to be evacuated. So essentially, he looked like the Vichy government in France after Hitler took over. And I don't think he can survive that. I think this is yesterday's news now.

[Naeema Raza]

So, yeah, you're saying not only is he not hooked up enough to make it happen, he actually fumbled and is showing himself to be a traitor.

[Vali Nasser]

Look, moments like this war make you or break you. It's like when Yeltsin, who was the mayor of Moscow, was a Communist Party leader at the moment, where the pro communist Russian military wanted to stage a coup, went out of the parliament and stood on a tank. And that moment made it right. And this was a moment that could have turned him into something much bigger, but it actually basically ended up supporting an aggressor. I mean, look, one thing I know is that at this moment, this second in Iran, anger at Israel is running at fever pitch. You cannot have pictures with Didi Netanyahu not denouncing his attack and also expecting that you could become. Your popularity in Iran would increase.

[Naeema Raza]

Right, that makes sense. So let's talk about this idea of regime change. I mean, you're kind of saying you can't have regime change without a ground war.

[Vali Nasser]

Well, regime change, Naima, is hope. It's not a policy. It only becomes a policy if you can implement, and you can only implement it if you actually have the muscle to do it. So we had regime change in Baghdad and in Kabul, in Berlin, at One point in Tokyo at one point, or the British had it in Iran in 1941. But each time it was after occupation, which you had a troops that could basically enforce regime change. Otherwise, you could stand back and say, I hope, I hope that this war will topple Khamenei. I hope that Iranian people will do X, Y and Z. But this is hope. This is not a policy.

[Naeema Raza]

If it became, even when it is a policy, even when it, you know, becomes the end objective of administration, and certainly in this case, the Trump administration is saying, we don't want that. We are not getting into that. We've done what we've came to do and are brushing our hands of this. But if it were to become the policy, what would be the right analogy for regime change in Iran? You just talked about a couple that have Iraq, where it changed, it took a ground war, took ton of intel. Afghanistan, Kabul. You're right. There was regime change and then there wasn't. The Taliban's back in power 20 years later, Deja vu. Libya, they wish they could go back to the old guy. They were hoping Sayf Al Islam could run for office. They could have him in. And Egypt, they went back to Mubarak. If there is regime change, will there always be a lust for the, for this ayatollah, who you've said is the third longest serving to date.

[Vali Nasser]

Well, it depends. I mean, it's kind of like the loss for Stalin when Putin became president that all of a sudden Stalin looked like a hero to Russia. They didn't live to. They hadn't lived under him. They had no notion about him. Yeah. I mean, you could have this kind of historical revisionism in the minds of a population depending on where they are. But the reality is there's also other kinds of regime changes. The way regime changed in China is the way that the regime changed in the Soviet Union, which is more regime transition from where it is to somewhere different. But it's not with the personnel that you parachute from the outside. Same people. I mean, it's still the Communist Party that rules China. We had good times with them. Now we're not having so many so good times with them. But it's basically the same people who used to work for Mao, came out and wore suits, parked their bicycle somewhere else, bought cars, started getting engaged with the world. The same thing. Everybody in Russia, Yeltsin, Putin, they all came out of the old system. It's not like the Romanovs went back to. So something like that could happen in Iran, but that's not the Way we're thinking about it, we're thinking about something radically, radically different. Which then raises the issue, yes, you can give money to exiles, you could spend money on uprisings, et cetera, but first of all, you don't know the outcome. Secondly, you may not like the outcome. Like right now, you need a nuclear deal. Same thing with Obama. You want to put your hands on that 400 kilograms of enriched uranium. You want to make sure that there's nothing else. You need to have a government that actually you need to make this deal with. If you go down the path of undermining the government that you're going to be dealing with, it's counterproductive in that sense.

[Naeema Raza]

And actually, I mean, I think about this a lot. In some ways, the least democratic thing, what you're talking about, this regime transition, not regime change, is organic. It's often domestic. It comes from the country itself. And I've often thought that the most undemocratic kind of result you can have is an imposed democracy, a democracy imposed by a foreign nation.

[Vali Nasser]

Actually, ironically, Iran is the best case for this. And where the United States could have helped, even in 2015 and even now, it's actually opened up. You have this massive middle class business class, which is highly digital, who's highly educated. You need to empower them. You cannot empower them by impoverishing the country and close them off. The more they are integrated into the world economy, the larger their influence, the more they will have the power to change the state. In other words, our policies, we want a miracle in Iran that somehow this government would evaporate and something else takes its place. But in reality, every successful velvet revolution that we've had has been accompanied with globalization. When economies of countries integrated into the world economy, the middle classes became wealthier, they became a bigger voice, they had a vested interest in relations with the rest of the world. And it gradually sidelined those who said no.

[Naeema Raza]

Right. This actually makes me think about your penultimate book. I'm reading your book, the Grand Strategy now. I just almost finished it in time for our interview. But I did read your book that was published, I think 10, 12 years ago, called the Dispensable Nation. And you talk about American foreign policy and retreat, I think is the subtitle of it. You know that that is such a powerful subtitle. I mean, I think about growing up in the 90s abroad and America having such a soft power. And, you know, I have an American passport, was born in America, and so I felt that soft power. And now when I'm outside of the US Right now, I certainly haven't felt it. I haven't felt it probably since the Iraq war is really when that decline started. Is American foreign policy in retreat right now? Is it back up under Trump? What's happening?

[Vali Nasser]

Well, it's difficult to characterize it. I mean, it's definitely changing in a big way. It's in retreat in the sense that maybe in a good way, it's in retreat, that we're not trying to shape the world everywhere anyhow, preaching to countries that you must become this and that. So in some ways, I think people around the world will be more comfortable that their relationship with America is not always about changing your culture and changing your women and changing your men and changing your education. And, you know, that level of it was actually also was problematic. So to the extent that we're not doing that, we are retreating. When Trump says, I don't want to change governments here and there, there's a problem I have with them. I want to talk to them about that. I want to deal with that. In other words, give up your nukes. I don't care what your government is with the Taliban. You do this one that. I don't care what your issues are. In a way, that's a retreat, because we're used to an American foreign policy that is a spectrum. You start with heart issues and you just keep going. It starts with something, then it ends up with, why are your women wearing a scarf? And why aren't you doing this? You would tell them, they would say, why aren't you democratic? We have democracy.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. This infusion of liberal values into the aid packages or the strategic settlements.

[Vali Nasser]

Right. So we backed away from that. Right? Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

I mean, they're literally defunding a lot.

[Vali Nasser]

Of these programs, and we're backed away from economic development. We backed away from soft power. So, yes, you could say that we are in retreat street. We have a set of issues that we want to address, and those in President Trump's mind is often transactional. He wants to withdraw from Europe in large ways from engagement with European Union, trade engagement, economic integration, NATO. He wants to withdraw from the kind of integration we have with China. He wants to withdraw from that. So, yes, we are in retreat. And actually, this time, the American foreign policy establishment is very, very unhappy with that. They call it either isolationist, transactional, and. Yes, and there are a lot of faults with it.

[Naeema Raza]

By that you mean by the foreign policy establishment. You're not talking about Marco Rubio and Pete Seth. You're talking about the Council on Foreign Relations and these kinds of organizations, Right?

[Vali Nasser]

It's the intellectual parts of it, it's the political class, but it is also senators and congressmen, et cetera. I mean, after all, American foreign policy since World War I, since World War II, has grown up on a basis of a set of assumptions about America in the world. These have to do with American leadership.