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- [00:00]
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- [01:06]
Iria Puyosa
People living in different regions of the country or even in the same cities, but in the different areas of the city can't communicate with each other. They don't know what is happening in other areas also that made more difficult to coordinate protests or even to protect themselves from police, security, repression. So that is what is happening now in Iran.
- [01:29]
Ariane Tabatabai
It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Ariane Tabatabai, Public Service Fellow here at lawfare, with Nate Swanson, Senior Fellow and Director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council, and Iria Puyosa, Senior Research Fellow in the Democracy and Tech Initiative, also at the Atlantic Council.
- [01:45]
Nate Swanson
This is different. You know, the government's inability to meet the needs of some people and then people who are affiliated or slightly outside the system now recognizing that reform is basically impossible under the current scenario.
- [02:01]
Ariane Tabatabai
Today we're talking about the protests in Iran, the brutal regime crackdown during their lengthy Internet shutdown, and the US Response to it. We're still learning what happened in Iran during the very extensive shutdown, and the picture that's emerging right now is absolutely horrifying. Since the protests started on December 28, thousands of people, with estimates ranging from about 10,000 to 30,000 people have been killed. These numbers, it's important to highlight, surpass the Tiananmen Square massacre. So Nate, I want to start with you and ask you to do a little bit of a sit rep Tell us about these protests. How did it all start?
- [02:43]
Nate Swanson
Yeah, thanks, Ari. Thanks for having me on. Look, I mean, I think you kind of can look at these protests in like three like unique phases here, right? So first you kind of had just the purely what was happening inside Iran, right? So they started on the 28th over, you know, they were sparked by economic protests. You know, the changing in the currency and the. And you know, you had the different merchants of the bazaar who were protesting, you know, that quickly. So it was very much about economic issues. But then, you know, quickly spread, right? It spread ultimately to all 31 provinces, you know, but pretty quickly. And it came much more widespread. And you know, as we've seen in past Iranian protests, it went from, you know, whatever sparked it, you know, in this case economic issues, to much broader political and social issues. And I think, you know, this protest, maybe like two or three of the past ones kind of had a different tenor than certainly what we saw back in like 2009. It had a much stronger anti regime focus. Right? You had a lot of, you know, death to hominy chance. And basically the people on the streets saying that, you know, they have don't want regime reform anymore, they want regime change. So that was kind of the unique focus. And so I think that was kind of phase one. And at that point it was unclear what the impact would be, right. I think was this different than 2017 or 2019? And at that point you couldn't say. And I remember talking some context and like, oh, I think this will be the same impact, 2022, you know, widespread, lots of fervor, but not really getting the mass numbers in Tehran that you would have seen in like 2009. Then I think you have kind of outside interventions, right? So like phase two, this is, you know, the president basically says, we're locked and loaded, ready to protect the protesters. And I think that added some fervor into people to the streets, you know, and then you combine that with Reza Palabi's call to protests on the 7th and 8th, and all of a sudden these took like a significantly different form. You know, the numbers are unclear how many came out on the 8th and 9th. You know, I mean, we could talk about that in a second. But you know, but clearly higher numbers and clearly more widespread than anticipated. And then that really goes into phase three, where you just see this unprecedented crackdown. As you said, the numbers are somewhere between 10 and 30,000 people, which is a massive difference than what we've seen in past protests. Masa Ami protests I think 550 people were killed 2017 and 2019. I think there was maybe up to 1500 in 2017, which is still very significant. But it was much more widespread across the country and not these high numbers. You didn't have these body bags strewn across the street, the same kind of images that came out. And if you want to go back, I mean, you had less than 100 for the green movement protests. And if you go back to the first big anti government protest in 99, or not the first one, but a really pivotal one, student protests had four casualties in 1999. So you're just looking at unprecedented in terms of crackdowns. So I think really at that point the protests didn't stop, but they fundamentally changed. You no longer have mass movements on the street. You have much more sporadic and often you have people chanting from their houses and stuff like that. And so from what they at that point now, you just don't have people willing to move and willing to mobilize knowing that the repression is so severe. And as I think of right now, so basically this is like phase three. They're like waiting on this miracle from President Trump to deliver them from the regime. And I think that's unlikely to happen. But I kind of think those three phases we're in and it is very different.
- [06:07]
Ariane Tabatabai
Yeah, that's a super helpful kind of breakdown of what we've seen so far. Now we've been talking a lot about crackdown and we've talked about numbers, but can you kind of unpack what that crackdown looks like with the caveat that we don't have a ton of information for reasons we're going to talk about with area in a second here. But from what we know historically or from recent reporting, what does that machinery actually look like?
- [06:33]
Nate Swanson
Yeah, no, that's a great question. Right. We don't totally know. Right. We know it's a combination of a couple different forces. Right. We have, you know, besieged militias, which are, you know, kind of federated movements of, you know, of different kind of like local law enforcement. You have the IRGC is a very, you know, state military and you kind of have the LEF law enforcement forces. I think you're really seeing all three of those who are involved in the crackdown and that, you know, that tolls up to over a million people right across the country. So I mean, it's a massive security apparatus and so that I think all three are being utilized in this crackdown and are playing a role. And of course, I think, you know, it's being there's clearly, we don't have any real good insight into how it's happened. But it's very clearly, you know, a strong political decision to change tactics on the 8th and 9th once, you know, Palavi and Trump insert himself to just kind of let this being kind of like not overreact to, you know, this massive crackdown. So, I mean, there's clearly a political level on top of that that changed tactics at that point. But yeah, the security apparatus is like all three of those functions.
- [07:38]
Ariane Tabatabai
And when you say a political decision, again, we don't necessarily have the specifics. But can you kind of talk about who, what actors you might be referring to here?
- [07:45]
Nate Swanson
Yeah, you would assume that it's, you know, the Supreme Leader himself who is making these decisions ultimately. And I think you saw, you know, his, you know, that cns, the Supreme Council for National Security, you know, Ali Larajani came out very, very clearly and said there was no tolerance for. I think that, you know, it's a first edition that this is all a foreign background coup. And so, you know, you kind of have him as a personal representative making it clear that this is a supreme Leader, you know, top of the government order, which is. Was a big shift because I think in the early week you saw both the Supreme Leader himself and certainly the president possession saying like, oh, you know, the bizaris are part of the system. They have, you know, legitimate economic grievances. We get it. But then they clearly there was the shift into, you know, from very clearly the Supreme Leader, there was this harsh crackdown. And then, you know, even over the last week or the last two or three days and supreme leaders come out and, you know, been very clear that he was behind this decision and, you know, blaming it on, you know, foreign influence, you know, US Western, et cetera. So, yeah, I mean, he's clearly the. The key person behind all this area.
- [08:50]
Ariane Tabatabai
Let me turn to you. The reason why we're just starting to learn what has been going on and what Nate has been describing this is over a month later is because of this really what folks have been describing as a very sophisticated Internet shutdown. I don't think we all, all of us have a very good sense of what that actually means in practice. Like, how does it work? So can you do like a little, you know, Internet shutdown for dummies for us? How does it work? What is it?
- [09:20]
Iria Puyosa
Well, Ari, an Internet shutdown is basically cutting off the connectivity for people inside at the A region, area, a country level. So that can be done by different mechanisms, different ways. Most of the times is an intersection of the connectivity from the user to the Internet service providers. In the case of Iran, that is facilitated because of the regime control of the telecommunication infrastructure and the access to Internet in general. So they are able to disrupt the network in several ways. In this case they started by trolling the connectivity. That means making it so slow. It's still there, but it's unusable. It's hard for people to use. For the the way people would like to use during protest is o loading video image live streaming the protest that scenes can be those type of communications can be done where they slow down the connectivity as levels who are not enough for all. Loading video that is a way to do it. It's not as the connectivity is still there. And Iran did that at the beginning of the unrest. But they moved to drastically disconnect all communications, even phone communications, SMS communications, people say test messages. So all these scenes who work in telecommunications network were disrupted in Iran in the case that is not necessarily sophisticated, but it's as a wide scale. It's a massive disruption of the connectivity. So basically people inside Iran have been completely disconnected of the Internet in the last month. That had implications for getting out news about what is happening in the countries. It allowed those human rights re election. The level of crowd down Nate was describing it allows to happen without people outside the country having the opportunity to comment and actually it affect the communications inside the country. So people living in different regions of the country or even in the same cities, but in the different areas of the city can communicate with each other. They don't know what is happening in other areas that make more difficult to coordinate protests or even to protect themselves from police, security, repression. So that is what is happening now in Iran.
- [11:58]
Ariane Tabatabai
You know, a lot of experts have been talking about this. As you know, you said not necessarily sophisticated, but certainly as unprecedented in terms of how at least how long this has been. You've done a lot of work in other regions, Latin America, Africa, et cetera. Can you talk a little bit to us about whether this is actually truly unprecedented or not? And do we have any kind of historical precedents or similar examples elsewhere that we're not aware of? Certainly Iran has done this in the past, but where else have we seen this?
- [12:29]
Iria Puyosa
Yeah, we see Internet shutdowns in other regions of the world. We have seen Internet shutdowns in Latin America and in Africa. There are ongoing Internet shutdowns at the moment in India for instance. India is the country of the world in which we more often see international downs not related with protests, but for different reasons. It's a very complex situation in India because there are very different reasons for ongoing regional shutdowns. But we had the case of Ethiopia in which the context of an armed conflict have been almost three years, an Internet shutdown in a region of the country. We saw recently during presidential elections in Uganda where the Internet was shut down for four days. So that we have seen shutdowns during protests in Venezuela or Cuba. So Belarus is another country who has seen that kind of government overreach cutting population for the connectivity in moments of political unrest. So that is not unprecedented. Iran had done it. Iran did it in 2019. Iran did it in 2022. But what made this particular showdown interesting is not this unique. It's not the first time Syria did or other countries did it is the organization around each other now they are not thinking about each other. That has something just in time. People are protesting, we cut off the Internet. The Internet is going to get bad. When the protesters are repressed and people go back to their homes. That is usually the logic. This is what the repressor attempt to do. When they do shut down, they wait until the repression do their work. People get too afraid, too fearful of being killed. In this case the number of killings is substantial. So they expect people to get back home and then the connectivity is restored. That is what usually happens is not what is supposed to be happening here. Because the Iranian authorities had already said very explicitly they are not thinking about restoring connectivity to the normal levels. They have been allowing some connectivity in the last few days. But the idea, according to the information we are getting is that there is no coming back as a normal Internet connectivity free for everybody in the future. That is not the plan. The plan is to have a sort of intranet for Iranian people in which they can use some of the services. We are facilitated by the Internet connection, but within the country so they can visit government, sanction it, allow it for the government to use websites, I guess banking for instance, public service, e government services. That kind of things are supposed to be allowed in the future. They are talking about Mars as the moment in which that connectivity, that restricted connectivity will be back. That is not very common. There are very few countries who have that kind of system. But that we call it the national Internet. We have seen that in China, of course China, with the great firewall, they allow it to do that. We see that in Cuba in which they had some sort of. And Korea had that. So we're talking about very Highly repressed closest societies. The issue is Iranians are already connected. Iranians are the global digital economy. Even though this is a repressive regime, it's a regime who had trade with other countries. People of Iran had communications with people in the Iranian diaspora, but also with people from other countries in which they do business, they exchange knowledge, they enjoy cultural goods from other countries. So that is way more harder when people are really used to the connectivity, to lose that connectivity. And that is what Iran is trying to do here. And that is what is considered unprecedented. And it's really different than what we have seen in other shutdowns in other places.
- [16:35]
Ariane Tabatabai
And Iria, you mentioned this notion of the intranet. I guess the regime has been talking about this for a few years now. Is it just more feasible now that they have been effectively engaging in all of the activities that you described over the past few weeks? Or basically how much weight should we put on this notion of an intranet actually being feasible this time around? Because I remember going back over a decade at this point where they've kind of on and off talked about this notion.
- [17:04]
Iria Puyosa
Yeah, they have been talking about this notion. I think they are being preparing technically to make this possible. And as I mentioned earlier, the control they had, all the Internet providers, the telecommunications, the control a large amount the connectivity where state provider. But they also are kind of forcing foreign companies to provide Internet access to comply with these rules. So they had a strong control of that infrastructure and the potential for connectivity. So they had the legal elements, the technical elements to do that. The issues is more of they don't have these services. As I mentioned, China can do that because China is a huge economy. They have their own providers for whatever you needed. And they can have that digital economy with China. And allowing only certain connections with outside is not the case for Iran. Iran really is more in need to have a change with other countries. So it's going to be more difficult. Also the, the ecosystem applications people are used to social media, AI had similar offer. So China had. So those more social cultural factors and economic factors are the barriers for this to be really effective for Iran to be able to maintain that blockage of the connectivity with the outside Internet. So the open free global Internet and restrict the people to a national Internet.
- [18:49]
Ariane Tabatabai
Thanks Iria for at least clarifying all of these for me because I've been really struggling with kind of understanding what this all actually means. Nate, let me come back to you. So you know, with all of the caveats that we are still learning a lot and we don't have a full picture because of everything Iria just talked about. But to the extent that we do know, where do the protests stand now? I feel like the issue of the protest has been essentially buried in the headlines. Between domestic things going on in the United States, NATO things, but also when it comes to Iran, the attention has sort of shifted from the protest to a large extent to the nuclear issue, to tensions between the US And Iran. So what's going on domestically?
- [19:35]
Nate Swanson
Yeah, thanks. I mean, it's, it's a really good question and it's hard to totally know. I think we're in this phase where, you know, Iran is like retaking control of the streets. Right. The regime has, the government clearly feels confident in their ability to manage this current crisis, but it's done nothing to actually address any of the longer term systemic problems. It's pretty staggering, you know, how bad it is for the average everyday Iranian. Right. I mean, so just coming into the protests, and I probably should have touched on this earlier, you know, we're looking at, you know, food prices were up 75% last year. Inflation, I think was above 40% last year and it was above 30%. Like six or seven straight years, you know, you just can't buy bread, you know, literally anymore. You know, I mean, or a bag of rice. I mean, it's just, you know, like this is not sustainable. And so, you know, the protests have been quelled for the moment. I think. It doesn't seem like there's large tail demonstrations. You know, the Iranians have control of the streets. You know, despite Trump's, you know, urging, no one has taken over control. Government buildings we're aware of, but we're kind of back where we were on like December 27th, where this is like, this is just a powder keg waiting to blow again. And so I think that it's the, the time between protests is probably going to be lower at this point, even with this killing. Right. You know, these things used to happen every like 10 years and then, you know, like, you know, 1990, 1999, 2009. And then all of a sudden, you know, it was like, like 2017-2019-2022-2526. So I mean, I think that if things don't radically change with Iran's foreign policy and domestic policy, which I don't see happening in the short term, this is going to happen again. So I think this general dissatisfaction is going to continue and I think it's noteworthy, although I know this is somewhat controversial in some corners. I mean, to see who's in the Iranian system who's like, come out and just said, like, this cannot continue. You see, you know, look at Mousavidi, you know, the Green movement leader of 2009, he's in prison. You know, he basically said, you know, like, this is it. There's no legitimacy left for the government. They need to step down. You know, And I know he's. Some people in the opposition in Diaspora here, you know, discredited him and say, subside, be quiet. But like, this is, this is different. You know, the government's inability to meet the, the needs of some people and then people who are affiliated or slightly outside the system now recognizing that reform is, is, is basically impossible under the current scenario. And so I think that that is the current lay of the land as I read it. But look, if we were in government working together, I'd be asking you this question. So, I mean, why don't you tell me? I mean, you know better than I.
- [22:21]
Ariane Tabatabai
Do because I'm interviewing you.
- [22:23]
Nate Swanson
Yeah, I know. That's what worries me because I'm telling you answers. I'm like, wait, no, Ari would know better than I do. So.
- [22:28]
Ariane Tabatabai
No, but I agree with you. One of my questions for you was going to be, you know, you've watched this from until recently from within government for years. How different do you think this is? Because from my perspective, what we're seeing is really different this time around. And, you know, the fact that you have a regime that is willing to kill, it's not that it's never been ruthless before, it has been, but it's tried to at least de. Escalate to some extent. Whereas this time around, not only did they kill, you know, thousands and thousands of people, arrested thousands and thousands of people, you have a. You have regime leaders who are talking pretty openly about it, Right. Are not hiding it. So, you know, the Supreme Leader on January 17 came out and said, yeah, we killed thousands of people. I mean, he didn't say it quite in so many words, but he might as well have said it in so many words. And that seems a little different to me. How do you, how did you see that kind of, that comment that has strike to you as.
- [23:22]
Nate Swanson
Yeah, extremely.
- [23:23]
Ariane Tabatabai
Right.
- [23:23]
Nate Swanson
I mean, it almost feels there's no coming back from this. Right. And I think that. And to some extent they're owning it. The fact that they can't reform in a way that's going to meet the needs of their people, I think like matters. Right. And so it does feel different and it does feel like in The Islamic as we republic as we knew it is no longer to be the same. Right, Whatever. Like legitimacy that was there in a social contract between Iran, its people is gone now. I mean, that doesn't mean there's still not supporters within the system. I just think it's, you know, it's a much, much smaller number than it's ever been. And that small number, though, seems to be very willing to kill the same place, to be frank. And I do think that that is different. And, and yeah, the fact that the Iranian government is acknowledging 5,000. I mean, these different numbers, different places, but at one point they acknowledged 5,000 people that were killed. I mean, there's just staggering. And yeah, and I think it's definitely different. And yeah, and I don't see really how they recover from this long term.
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Iria Puyosa
Hi, this is Jonathan Fields from Good Life Project.
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- [28:44]
Ariane Tabatabai
So you know we've talked a lot about so far what the shutdown has Internet shutdown has meant for people and the creation of the intranet. But I want to understand from you, how does you know when the government so going back to the regime here, when it shuts down the Internet for the people, it's also presumably shutting it down on itself. How does it continue doing its business?
- [29:09]
Iria Puyosa
Yeah, typically it's not what happens and this is one of the reasons why authoritarian regimes are worried to go to an Internet because they are also affected. Government business are affected. People who are part of the regime, their families are also affected. That is what usually happens. It's not happening here. And that is what made this case particularly troubling and particularly interesting for people studying Internet and speak about that idea. They've been preparing organizationally to make this status quo. Iran have been working in creating a sort of two tier system in which the Internet is shutting down completely for the majority of the population. The majority mean 99% or more of the population had access to the global Internet in these systems. But a few people who are part of the core elite of the regime does and that is what happening here. They envision a system in which some users, some of the information have been flowing around say 16,000 people. I don't know for sure how this number came out. If it has exactly 16,000 is 20,000 is 10,000. We don't know for sure. But the fact is are a group of people who are part of the elite in the Iranian government who did have access to Internet at the moment, technically they have been provided SIM cards for their phones whitelisted to bypass the current blockage. So they are being able to access the global Internet as they normally had done in the past. But that restriction, that idea that you can keep a connectivity for an elite and the rest of the population is cut out is kind of novel. So having that two tier system, thinking about making this the status quo, making this the permanent solution to this problem of yeah, the government also needs Internet to conduct business. So they are trying to solve that. How stable is a system in which it's so a small part of the population had access and the rest doesn't. I don't think it's very stable, but technically they have proven it's possible and they are putting their efforts on make this war as an organizational as something part of the way the Iranian state conduct business national and international.
- [31:54]
Ariane Tabatabai
Thanks, Yuri. I want to turn to the United States and US Policy and US options here for a bit. Nate, you talked a little bit about this earlier. The President made some threats that he would go in militarily if Iran didn't stop the bloodbath. For a brief moment, Iran seemed like it was the regime was essentially saying, yeah, we're not going to carry on the executions that we had planned. It doesn't seem like it actually did follow through on what it said and it seems like executions are happening. And then the President shifted his attention and threatened military action again. But seemingly completely unrelated to the protests to get Iran back to the nuclear negotiating table. As of recording today, Wednesday, February 4, it seems like the negotiations were very short lived and have kind of at least paused for now. You and I have been around the block enough to know that these things do start and stop pretty frequently. So I don't want to read too much into this, but if you were still in your old jobs at the National Security Council, at the State Department, how would you think about this moment and what's going on with regards to human rights and the protests? And would you recommend that we continue doing what we've done for a really long time now in U.S. policy, which is kind of silo those issues from the nuclear issue and pursue these different tracks? Or do you think, going back to the point that this is really different, that we should be maybe kind of doing all of those things at the same time and not kind of creating those divisions, these different lanes that have typically existed?
- [33:30]
Nate Swanson
Yeah, thanks. Let me, Let me. I'm going to answer those separately. Right, so on the first part about, you know, what would we have done to date, Right. I think it's important to, like, look at Trump's actions. Right. So his first tweet on the second, you know, I, I think pretty clearly was aimed at domestic audiences in the U.S. right? I mean, he was saying, you know, we support you. We're locked and loaded. But really, I think fundamentally that was, you know, directed internally, and it was really directed at Obama. Right. For, for, you know, not being perceived as supporting the protesters in the green movement. Right. And so he did this in 2017 and 2019 as well. And so I think he went back to that playbook, really, with domestic purposes in mind. And look, I mean, there's, and there is some value and, you know, like, expressing support for the protests. You know, Obama came out, you know, a couple years out of office and basically said, you know, if he had to do over again, he would have done differently. So, okay, but that was primarily what that is. And I mean, it was very clear at that point there was not a readily available military option to support the protesters. He surged assets into the region. I still don't think there is a readily available option to support the protest militarily. And there is a lot of people advocating for military action, but I have yet to hear a compelling case for how that actually tangibly helps the protesters. Right. There's like, well, you need to do something symbolically to follow through in your red line. Or I guess what the Israelis are saying is like, okay, follow through on your red line and take out the missile program. I think those are really big actions. So it doesn't surprise me that the president is now looking for a diplomatic offering because I think the military options just weren't that good, to be perfectly frank. And they clearly lacked an obvious military objective. So the fact that he's looking for the off ramp I don't think is necessarily a bad decision because I think if you put yourself in a war with no points, you know, that's just two wrongs don't make a right now look what he should be doing though that doesn't mean you stand pat, right? I mean like clearly, I think as you're alluding to here, we, there are definitely things we should be doing, including anything we can do on the Internet side would be huge right now. Right. I mean, and historically this is something that has been a bipartisan and I think it's success for the US government and you know, a long term investment, especially coming out of the green movement. Right. So there was more stuff that could be done now in this protest. You know, there was, you know, a satellite to sell idea the things we can make easier. You know, I mean, so there was stuff they could and should have been doing this whole time. I would also argue that engaging in negotiations right now didn't help the protest movement. Right. I think very clearly some people thought it was a worst case scenario betrayal. But then even less than that, you took the error out of the momentum anyway, Right? I mean on the 8th and 9th you have this brutal repression. On the 10th President's calling for negotiations and then he reverses course and on the 11th he wants terrorists and on the 12th he tells people to go back to Elude street by which that point, you know, like all the massive killing had been done. And so, you know, I think that wasn't the way to do it now. Okay, so that's where we are. And so I think the reason you're seeing this diplomatic outreach now is I think he's looking for an off ramp from a military option. And I understand where that's coming from because I think like I said, the military options aren't good. But to your bigger question is no, I don't think we can silo human rights off from the rest of the Iran policy. And the administration is grappling with this. This is something you and I have talked about for years, right? I think what was acceptable diplomatically in 2013, 2014, 2015 when the JPOA JCPOA happened is different now. Right? I mean, I think there was a credible argument to make that the, the most pressing issue at the time was Iran's nuclear program was the one that was Most tangibly addressable. And at that point, Iranian protesters were now on the street calling for regime change. They're calling for regime reform. And I think that's changed now. Whether it represents the mass plurality of Iranians or not, I don't know. I mean, I just don't. If there's a million people on the street, there's a million people security apparatus. I don't know what all 90 million of the others think, but there's clearly a sizable portion that just is that with the Islamic Republic. So I do think that changes. And if you're engaging in diplomacy, you do have to think about the Iranian people and how this impacts them. And I think, you know, post October 7th in the Hamas attack, I don't think you can ignore the region as a part of the public. So, no, I would say, you know what, what has really changed from 2013 to now is the priority order. Right. I mean, it's not that Iran nuclear is not important. It's still important. It definitely is. But you just see these other issues rise up to equal, if not higher than the nuclear issues. So, no, this has to be at the core. And I think it's the core part of American values. Whether the president views that way or not, I don't know, but it should be. You just don't see killings like this really anywhere. It has to be a core part of what we're thinking and what we care about.
- [38:39]
Ariane Tabatabai
Nate, I know you kind of talked a little bit about military option and said that is not really a thing that is either viable or feasible or that would necessarily reach the objectives that we're looking at. But what other options? So you mentioned the Internet piece. I'm going to go back to area on that in a second. But what other options does the President have? If you were doing the thing you've done for years in government and doing options memos, what would it look like right now?
- [39:05]
Nate Swanson
Yeah, so, I mean. Yeah, Internet one, I think two. I mean, just this. I mean, this really was the core moment. Could do multilateral diplomacy aimed at like, shaming, naming and shaming Iran. Right. I mean, rarely have you seen such a blatant use of repression. And Iran's essentially off the hook now. Right. I mean, there is, like, no repercussions. And not that we were perfect in how we handled this in the Biden administration. We certainly weren't, but we were pretty good in 22 and 23 about making sure that, like, this was the core focus on Iran and the Masamini protest. And we you know, we used, you know, our multilateral relationship to kick Iran off the Commission on the Status of Women, like make them pay a price for their behavior, to let them know this is not acceptable. And look. Yeah. Is Iran afraid of the military attack like more than anything else? Yeah, probably. But they care about this stuff too. And I think it sends a symbolic message to people that like we tangibly are with you and are trying to do things to help and you know, I'm not sure all Iranian support. Okay, so I mean that. So, yeah. So multilateral diplomacy would be two just focused on naming and shaming. And then look, I mean I think big picture, if you're going to engage in diplomacy right now, I think you can only do it in one of two ways. You can do it in the very symbolic, transactional, small deal for small deal which was maybe where we land on Friday anyway, it's hard to say. But if you're contemplating big significant sanctions relief like that was given in jcpoa like Iran Fund frankly needs to save their economy, then you have to see fundamental changes in the way Iran treats their people and in their foreign policy. And that is very different than where we were, you know, at least through, you know, when we stopped JCPO return negotiations in 2022. So I think that has to, it has to have that longer term impact on your policy. And maybe the Iranian people don't feel that right away, but it makes it clear that like this the status quo of the Islamic Republic is not acceptable long term. So I think those are like the, you know, so it's like a tangible, you know, symbolic in a long term approach. So basically what I would recommend, Ariane.
- [41:15]
Ariane Tabatabai
This question of US government and allied government options, Europeans, others, what do you see in your kind of world of, you know, Internet access, flow of information that the U.S. and its allies can do to help the Iranian people in this moment?
- [41:35]
Iria Puyosa
Well, at the moment we haven't seen much actually just the Freedom Online Coalition, who is an organization the democratic governments worldwide are part of, just released a statement solidarity that with the people of Iran calling the Iranian government to stop the shutdown and restore the connectivity, asking the United nations to take in consideration the situation and that is it. So that is the diplomatic response. You put a nice statement out calling that this is a violation of the Iranian citizens rights, this is against human rights standards, but there is no policy action as we use sadly joke. They are deeply concerned, but deeply concerned doesn't help to people on the ground to solve the issue. And that is the problem Similar to what Nay was saying about military auctions. There are not many auctions. There is not much other countries can do to solve the problem of connectivity. For Iranians, it's a very restricted space. So there are some proposals about providing connectivity using satellite, but that would be a palliative. It's a small action who made a little bit easier the connectivity for a group of people, not for the whole population, but won't solve the problem or the restriction since it won't solve other human regulations who are enabled by that connectivity. So it is really a difficult situation when you had a government who is not responsible to diplomatic pressure. Iran having a response even to sanctions, to economic sanctions, to military sanctions. So no, the usual policy instruments are working for this. So the only thing we can do is try to support ways of connectivity like the Rexel initiatives to allow connectivity via satellite, electrical smartphones. There are people on the ground huts. But that is going to be a limited solution. It's not a real solution to the problem. Beyond that, very little you can do is you don't persuade the people in power they need to either step down or go for reforms or make some stakes toward the normalization of the country. So understanding that this cannot be normal. So there had to be some sort of escalation of pressure moving from these statements to real action. And it's hard to find an action really. But the men, when they are decided to became an estate who really is taking being close and repression as their identity. As you say, they are no hiding, they are killing thousands of people. They are no guiding, they are disrupting connectivity. They are no hiding, they are prone to massive human rights violations. So when you have a state who is in that position, the auctions are better. They need it.
- [44:50]
Ariane Tabatabai
There's been a lot of conversations around Starlink specifically, and I think part of it is because people viewed it as being fairly successful in the Ukraine context. So there's been some discussions about providing Starlink terminals to Iran, although we've seen some jamming of that as well. Can you talk specifically about Starlink and how much of a solution it can actually provide?
- [45:14]
Iria Puyosa
Yeah, the situation in Iran and the situation in Ukraine are fundamentally different. In Ukraine, you have some infrastructure problems, but the government of Ukraine wanted the connectivity. So they allowed Stalin to operate in their airspace and provide that connectivity to people inside Ukraine. So that works. In the case of Iran, the Iranian government is actively jamming the signal from Starlink as preventing those satellites for providing connectivity to the people. Starlink have been trying to find ways to Overcome that jamming, that they provide updates on their devices firmware to be a way to technically circumvent the jamming. But it's a game. So they, they provide. Iran put in place a destruction Stalin tried to address. Iran put another layer, another. So it continues to be an issue. Besides that, the level of adoption of that technology is very limited. No, everybody had a satellite device. Those are expensive, they are difficult to hide. We have seen in Iran and has seen in other countries in which in case of unrest, the security forces go after the people who had those devices and it can be penalized, it can be criminalized to have that device. So it's more part of the population who had access to this. It presents security risk, is easily disrupted using the jamming. So, so it really is really not a solution. It doesn't escalate, it's not permanent. So people may have access for a few minutes. The people Polish have been doing that when they had a chance. They connect, they send some information or gather some information, but it's not a permanent solution. The idea of the direct to cell satellite technology is a little bit more have a further reach because more people will be able to get connectivity to the web because that work not with a specific device as the case of Starlink, but with the cell phones people already had, but had to be high end cell phones, relatively newest news, usually less than five years old. High level smartphones will work with this technology, but that technology is probably also will be also disrupted in some ways. So it won't be a solution either. It's a little bit better, but it's still not a solution because it depends of the control of Iran had or their space, their territorial, their connectivity networks. Completely different to the situation of Ukraine in which Ukrainian wanted that help. Iran doesn't want that help. The people want it, but not the government. Right, Right.
- [48:27]
Ariane Tabatabai
Okay. I think this is a good place to start to wrap it up. So Nate, let me come to you for the last question here, which is where do we go from here? What is next for these protests, for the regime? What happens now?
- [48:42]
Nate Swanson
Well, I mean we've been talking for 45 minutes. So in this time it's quite possible Trump has declared them a federated state of the U.S. so look, look, I don't know. I mean, I think what it means long term is that the Islamic Republic as we knew it is not sustainable. Right. If you can't meet the basic needs of your people economically, politically, socially or even militarily at this point, this can't continue. On long term. And so Iran has a couple options. They can make radical changes to their foreign policy and their domestic policy, and maybe the regime would survive in some form. There's no indication that's happening. Every indication that we see in this negotiations, there's no changes. Iran won't meet directly, has to be in Oman, which gives me ptsd. So it doesn't seem like it's happening. So this is going to come again in some form or another. And I think, you know, from a US perspective, you have to realize that and, and be realistic, right? I mean, if Iran's willing to kill this way, they can kill, quell future protests to some extent as well. But it's basically in a death spiral, right? And so how fast that goes is really hard to predict. You know, maybe it's like a couple of weeks, maybe it's like 10 years. And both seem entirely possible at this point. You know, there is an inflection point coming at some point, right? When Hamidi dies, if he dies, you know, who knows at this point? But you know, at some point, you know, when I started working on Iran, you know, 17, 18 years ago, someone told me, you know, he could die at any point. So I think that's still true at this point, hopefully. But, you know, he is old, he is sick. And yeah, so it's going to happen at some point. And frankly, you know, who knows between the US or Israelis whether they, you know, accelerate that time frame at this point. So this is really hard to predict, but I think that's an inflection point. Right? What comes next? Post hominy and I think, you know, it really could go in a number of different scenarios where it's better, you know, better take care of their people, better foreign policy, or it could get worse on all accounts, right? And so to the extent we can, US should be getting ready for that scenario and trying to help sway it in a positive direction by making clear what we expect, what we want to see by saying, look, we have all this pressure on you. This is actually the real off ramp. This is your key to a functioning country. And then I think this is very hard to do and very bad at it, but keeping space for an opposition that emerges. I mean, Rubio has some really interesting comments on the Hill about this last week. They actually were quite sober. He's like, I have no idea. He's like, I have no idea what happened happens if Harmony were to die. And I actually thought that was kind of a sober and accurate statement. But then he also said, you know, they expect the change to come from within. So I think we just need to keep that in mind. As you know, I mean, clearly there's a role for the diaspora play. Clearly there's a role for people on the outside to play, but there's also going to be people within the system are going to have to have a role as well. Right. And I think, you know, the end goal is clear. How we get there will be up to the Iranian people, people. But you know, for us the end goal should just be different foreign policy, different treatment of your people. And like how we get there. We'll try to support, we'll give you the tools, but fundamentally it's going to have to be a change driven by Iranians.
- [52:14]
Ariane Tabatabai
All right. It's a good place to leave it all. Thanks area. Thanks Nate.
- [52:19]
Nate Swanson
Thank you.
- [52:22]
Ariane Tabatabai
The Lawfare Podcast is produced by the Lawfare Institute. If you want to support the show and listen ad free, you can become a Law LawFair material supporter@lawfaremedia.org support supporters also get access to special events and other bonus content we don't share anywhere else. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for our other podcasts, including Rational Security, Allies, the Aftermath and Escalation, our Law Fair Presents podcast series about the war in Ukraine. Check out our written work at Lawfare Media. The podcast is edited by Jen Patya and our audio engineer for this episode was Kara Schillen of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music. As always, thank you for listening.
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