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Unholy: Two Jews on the News
War with Iran Week II: can the regime actually fall? With Ali Ansari
00:34:23
Watch us on Youtube: https://youtu.be/LhbZcQUOjts Subscribe to get bonus episodes, read more about the team, and catch us on every platform we're on! > https://bit.ly/unholy-podcast As the war between Israel and Iran enters its second week, daily life in Israel has settled into a strange and exhausting rhythm. Yonit describe what it means to live under constant missile alerts: sleepless nights, families moving between shelters, and a country running on collective exhaustion. They also unpack two major developments shaping the conflict. First, the mixed and sometimes contradictory signals coming from Donald Trump about how long the war will last. And second, the sudden leadership change in Iran, with Mojtaba Khamenei emerging as the successor to his father. To make sense of it all, they speak with Professor Ali Ansari of the University of St Andrews, one of the world’s leading historians of Iran. Ansari challenges much of the conventional analysis around the war and the future o...
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- [00:00]
A
This is a special update from Unholy. I'm Jonathan Friedland in London and I'm
- [00:05]
B
UNIT Levy in Tel Aviv.
- [00:07]
A
And lots obviously going on a change of leadership in Iran, some mixed signals from Donald Trump about the when this might end. And also just obviously day to day life is continuing under bombardment for you, Yonit. So we just thought we'd pull together all of that and we're going to have a conversation with somebody who I really, really rate extremely highly as an observer of Iran who has a very sort of dissenting view compared to a lot of sort of consensus that's formulating or forming around Iran. So lots to get into in this. Why don't we just start with you and how it is hour by hour. And I don't say day by day, but hour by hour.
- [00:44]
B
You know, I think this is a, it's interesting because there are moments over these two and a half years where I think the community outside Israel, inside Israel, felt the same way, right? I mean, throughout, for example, the hostage ordeal, we kind of felt we were feeling the same things. And perhaps throughout the sort of wave and incidents of anti Semitism where whether it be Bondi beach or Manchester, we kind of felt the same here. It's a different kind of experience because however much I will yammer on and explain to you what it feels like to be under this kind of bombardment, I think it's very hard if you're not here to kind of understand what that means. And I think we talked a little bit about that kind of the frequency and how frequent it is this time. There are basically two differences between what we're going through now and what we went through in June, the first war with Iran. Then one is again, the missile salvos are limited in size, but they're more frequent. So you will find yourself, you know, during the nighttime, every kind of hour, hour and a half, having to go either to a shelter, a public shelter or a shelter in your building or a safe room or anywhere else. And the other thing is the Hezbollah has joined the fray, which didn't happen in June. And when that happens because Lebanon is much closer to Israel than the the rockets being fired at Israel, you have absolutely no kind of warning signal. It's a very short kind of siren and then you need to find a cover. And I'm sorry, I know this image sounds kind of strange, but the unpr of your life is only akin to an example. I'm not comparing anything about this experience besides the erraticness and the unpredictability of It. But when you have a newborn baby for the first couple of weeks and they have a complete erratic sleeping pattern, right, you don't know if they go to sleep. Are you going to sleep for five minutes or for two hours? That is exactly the kind of feeling that you have these nights in Israel where you're like, I'm going to go to sleep now, but I will probably be woken up in five minutes or 20 minutes or. Or both, or not for four hours. I mean, it's completely, you know, unscheduled, unprepared. And that is kind of the feeling. Look, it's been a nation that did not collectively have a good night of sleep for the past 11 days. Kids are still at home. You know, my children obviously are perfect, so I'm not going to say anything about that. But that could, you know, be a challenge. Most Israelis don't have safe rooms in their homes. So they have to go either, you know, strangers will see them in their pajamas in the public shelter in the middle of the night, or they go live with their parents. So it is a nation, you know, a bit exhausted, yes, resilient, as we always are. But it's difficult to that extent. That is how I can describe it, I think.
- [03:15]
A
I mean, the analogy with a newborn baby is a very good one. The difference, of course, is when one has a newborn baby, not every single person in the country has a newborn baby at the same time.
- [03:25]
B
And also having a newborn baby is nice, you know, just generally speaking.
- [03:28]
A
No, of course there's a positive. But just to tell me about that, about the fact that everybody, like, we all know a lot a day where you don't get a night, where you don't get a full night's sleep. But when everyone has gone through that, are people amazingly irascible? Are people terrible on the roads? Are you know, is it that people are arguing with each other in the supermarket? Just what's it like collectively when the whole country is sleep deprived?
- [03:52]
B
I think you. You ticked all the boxes. I think everyone is a little bit more on edge, a little bit more irritated. You're not thinking 100 clearly. I gave you that analogy last time we talked. It's like you feel like your brain has become this sort of lifeboat in which only essential things can stay on it. And the rest is like, thrown away, discarded, because you don't have the energy to. To hold that up. And it. It is constant. I mean, it has been this way for 11 days with kind of no end in sight. I mean, you have these kind of Contradictory statements from the President, it's going to be over soon. It's going to take weeks, you know, and, and so it, it, it requires from you this sort of holding it together kind of feeling, which at times can be quite challenging. So let's, I'm using my British understatement here.
- [04:39]
A
Yes, no, duly noted and appreciated. I mean, just on the point of the mixed messaging coming from Donald Trump, in a way, we're going to talk about this a bit with our guests. But the overnight, on what was Monday night in the United States, he was saying it's more or less complete. And then in a later comments and later remarks, he then says, you know, we've, he says, having said we've won, we haven't won enough. He later says, and so it's not quite complete. And then, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu says, actually there's more we want to do. So the question is, is this a deliberate strategic ambiguity, deliberately sending lots of messages, saying different things, or is it that yet another sign that Donald Trump is, I would think he has, as I would say he has been throughout this war. He's kind of winging it out. You know, his mind is changing minute by minute. There isn't some grand plan here to sort of confuse the enemy. Rather, he himself doesn't quite know. And we're in just actual uncertainty where you are. How do you read that? Do you think this is, you know, a grand plan or do you think there is just, you know, indecision at the very, very top?
- [05:52]
B
I heard one of the Iran experts, Karima Sajadpour, saying that it's regime changed through jazz improvisation, which I thought was quite a, was quite a quote. Look, I think that first of all, in this kind of situation, ambiguity regarding schedules is actually a smart thing to do. But I'm not sure. I mean, what I kind of look at is the amount of journalists that Trump is talking to on the phone, which is, I think we can agree, very unusual for any American president. This is an unusual president to begin with. And kind of giving each an answer that either he thinks is the right thing for that moment or that he would, he thinks that that outlet would prefer. It's just really contradictory. I mean, remember in the very first day on Saturday, he said to Barack Ravid, he said, look, this can do, I can do this as short. It could be several days or it could be longer. And then a few hours after, they said to the Daily Mail, this can take four weeks or more. So again, there are people here, there's 10 million people here in this, in this country and of course in the region kind of waiting to see when this will be over and how it will be over. They still have a bit of, you know, leeway to, to give the, the leaders who are running this. But I would say that it's a combination of trying to, you know, use the fog of war to not say what the exact schedule is. I think we should be looking one thing more than any, which is the economy and the stats on that barrel of oil, all of that. And that will determine Trump's ultimate decision on how long this should run.
- [07:28]
A
Well, indeed. And it was that that huge spike in the oil price went through to $120 a barrel that prompted Donald Trump to start trying to soothe and calm the markets by saying, we're nearly at the end. We've achieved a lot, we're ahead of schedule. It's almost complete. I think I said on the podcast last time, the two things to watch are the two things Donald Trump watches, which is one, the markets and two, television. And I've, you know, he is obsessed with markets. That's when he pulled back from Greenland at Davos earlier in the year, he did that because the markets were taking fright. And then if there's just awful pictures of some kind of, you know, atrocity on TV that makes him look bad. That's the other thing that makes him pull the plug. And there were moments like that in the Gaza war. So those are things to watch. The other news development before we get to our guest, of course, is a at the helm of Iran, a new supreme leader announced by the Council of Experts who pick leaders in Iran. Out goes Khamenei, in comes Khamenei. The new man is the son of
- [08:39]
B
the younger, angrier version. Right.
- [08:42]
A
Well, right. I mean, we'll put this to our guest, but this thought that, you know, regime change means the regime changes, the dial down version of that is okay, you might get, you know, regime 2.0. It's very hard to brand that that way when the guy Mujtabal Khamenei has the same name and if anything could be a younger, fitter, angrier version of his father having been seen so many of his members of his own family, including his father, killed by the American Jew. This doesn't exactly speak to a guy who's going to be speaking peace and reconciliation with the enemy. Maybe, though, we should, you know, leave some of those questions for our guest who we've brought in.
- [09:32]
B
Yes. And our guest is someone who is not only an expert on Iran, but also, I think, goes against some of the kind of leading trends in the world of Iran analysis.
- [09:47]
A
Professor Ali Ansari is one of the world's foremost authorities on Iran. He's a historian at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he directs the Institute for Iranian Studies. The Wall street journal called his 2024 book Iran, the best primer available on the nation's modern history. He's also the son of a former Iranian ambassador and a distant cousin of the widow of the former shah. He has long been, I confess, the man I turn to for gu on all things Iran. Ali Ansari. Welcome to Unholy.
- [10:24]
C
Very good to be with you and
- [10:25]
A
great to have you with us. Others have assumed that if the goal of this war is regime change, then it's doomed, partly because it's never happened before with just air power alone and so on. In a recent interview, you took a different view. And I just thought as a starting point, it'd be really useful if you set out for us. Why you take a. A less sort of, you know, it's all doomsday view of this.
- [10:51]
C
So. So my argument is this, is that all sort of political developments of this nature and revolutions are contingent and contextual. And I think this is, you know, the point I'm taking is that we've got to move away from the rather rigid dogma I think, that you get from social scientists who sort of basically tell you that until a particular checklist has been fulfilled, nothing will happen. Now, part of the problem with that, of course, is that our information on the ground is quite limited. We don't have access to people on the ground. We get very patchy accounts of what people are thinking and doing on the ground. Everyone tells us, and they remind us that Iran is a vast country. So, you know, how. What do we know of what's going on in wider. In the wider part of the country? And, you know, the information that most of the major news outlets are getting are basically fed to them by the. By the state, you know, media and the government. So I, I always think that my call is really one for one, of humility. I'm not saying that things are going to happen. I think I made that clear in the Wall Street Journal piece. I'm just saying that this idea that you go into something like this with a sort of a predetermined conclusion, in that sense, that this is not going to work, and then make all your facts fit that conclusion is not the best way to do things, because things may turn out differently. But of course, you know, that's not to say that these things are easy. I mean, I sort of paraphrase, and I should say it was a paraphrase really of Hannah Arendt's comment, really, about the, you know, the impossibility before you go in and the inevitability as you come out. I mean, this is a sort of a comment that many historians and political thinkers have, that what we've done in academia, in a sense, is we've become, our thought is so structured to these sort of templates and models that we can't think outside of them anymore. I mean, this is, you know, it's become quite perverse. And, you know, I say this to students all the time. You know, I say if you apply a concept or a theory, that concept or theory should liberate the way you think. It shouldn't restrict the way you think. And this is my central argument. So, you know, we had the very same mistake in 1978, by the way. I mean, people first of all did not foresee the revolution and then secondly, completely misunderstood what the revolution was about and sort of started pretending that Khomeini was some sort of Gandhi like figure. I mean, this is sort of stuff that you're not seeing things right in front of your face. And I, I could make the same point about Mod Sabah, by the way. I argued that Mujtaba was going to succeed his father about a decade ago. And I argued it on the basis of various sort of historical conditions. I didn't know he was going to do it, but I thought that my historical training and my understanding of Iran would lead us into that direction. And I can explain, and I will explain, you know, why I came to that conclusion. It wasn't a guess. But, you know, this idea that Mujtaba has become his father's successor, you know, because Trump killed his father, is complete nonsense. I mean, it's just, you know, it's just an excuse by people who didn't actually make the right conclusion trying to compensate for the fact that they didn't actually think about it or thought that genuinely the Islamic Republic is a republic. I mean, this is, you know, I mean, you know, where hereditary succession doesn't work. I mean, this is as it, you know, I used to say to people at the time, you know, I said, so you think hereditary succession is strange in Iran? I mean, is it, is it unusual? And they say, oh, well, yeah, but it's an Islamic republic, you know, and the other, the other one you get is that I've seen this today, actually, in a number of papers, conference where they've said, but. And I think actually a number of journalists have said it as well. They said, oh, but, you know, harmony denied, you know, two years ago, that he was going to look for hereditary succession. And not a single one have come to the conclusion that he may have lied. I mean, you know, this is, you know, I mean, it's not, you know, it's not rocket science. They're all sort of saying, you know, do you see what I mean? I mean, it's. It, you know, it's obvious. You know, just get the obvious conclusion. Stop. Stop trying to overanalyze things. And I think that's basically my argument. I'm sorry, Very, very long winded, but you can see what I'm trying to get at.
- [14:38]
B
But let's hold on to Mujdaba as an idea. And you said you predicted it many years ago, long before this, this war started. And we spoke to Suzanne Maloney, who said the regime will simply replace itself. And we see a younger version, probably you know, as radical as his father, vengeful as he comes to, you know, rule Iran now that parts of his family have been killed. Is this to, are we to see this as a sign, any kind of sign, that Iran is being weakened, that the, that the ayatollahs are weakened or the opposite is true?
- [15:10]
C
Well, I mean, to my mind, of course, it's a sign that it's weakening. I mean, here you have a sort of a revolution predicated on a hatred of hereditary monarchy, and they've suddenly decided they're going to have a hereditary monarchy. The reason why most people denied that this was a possibility is because they thought it would be an outrage, which clearly it is on many different levels. I mean, you know, here you have a hereditary system where they're assuming Khamenei had charisma which has passed on to his son. It's classic monarchical succession of some sort. But, I mean, you see it with presidential republics throughout the Middle East. I mean, it's. Beg your pardon, hereditary, you know, these presidential monarchies, I should say.
- [15:43]
A
So.
- [15:44]
C
It's, you know, of course, it's a, it's a weakening of the ideology. I mean, it's. It's. Or it's certainly a shift of the ideology in a completely different direction, which I think many people will find quite difficult to sort of. To justify. Many people, people certainly on the left of the spectrum who argued that the Islamic Republic was some sort of like, you know, wonderful Postmodern, I don't know, hybrid of Islam and, and republican system which was going to break the mold of 2, 500 years of Persian monarchy, are now going to have to, you know, chew over their conclusions a bit and sort of try and work out that actually, you know, are we actually going back is, is normal service being resumed? I mean, you know, this sort of thing. And again, you know, I emphasize.
- [16:23]
A
Sorry, just one thing. I was going to say Ali, on, on this point, just specifically about the successor there.
- [16:27]
C
What?
- [16:28]
A
And again, the reporting may be just as flawed, but the idea was that the father was skeptical of the nuclear program and the son is quite gung ho for the nuclear program. And if, first of all, if that's true as an assessment, but second, if it, that would also then count on the debit side in terms of the achievements of this war that they've just replaced an anti nuke guy with a pro nuke guy.
- [16:49]
C
So almost all the comment we've had is we haven't seen a single speech with Mujtaba apart from one speech where he said he was, he was not going to teach his courses or something. And he's always acted behind the scenes. What we do know about Mujtaba and what we know about him from his critics inside the country, Karubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi and others from 2005 onwards is that he was very active in the repression of dissent in Iran. I mean, and he was a strong supporter of Ahmadinejad and we know nothing about his views on nuclear weapons. Where has this been drawn out of? I mean, this again is purely an attempt to sort of make a case for the fact that, oh, you've made things worse. I can tell you a lot of Iranians will tell you that no, this is a continuation of a process and it hasn't made things better. But you know, on that particular, on the point of nuclear proliferation or not, there's no evidence at all that Mujtaba is more pro nuclear with his father. Personally, I never believed that his father was necessarily this great paragon of, of virtue as far as weapons of mass destruction were anyway. I mean, I think that's again, it depends if you believe in the nuclear fatwa. I've never been a convinced believer in the nuclear fatwa. I mean, and as anyone who looks at Shiism and fatwas and stuff, they know they can change them. You know, I think harmony, the harmony Senior I should say, was probably more cautious on that front. I mean, that's probably the sign of it. But I don't think, you know, he was as reticent as people say. I mean, if he was as reticent as people say, why on earth were they building the infrastructure? I mean, it's basically the policy that they adopted was the policy, actually that the last shah had adopted. But they adopted it in a much different circumstance with no allies and much more reckless, actually, in the way they approached it. The shah was a lot more, certainly subtle about it and much more careful about it. And also, of course, the environment in the 70s was quite different. This sort of thing that, you know, people are read. You know, for me, again, it's amazing that people say we don't know anything about this guy because he's never been around, but suddenly they know a lot about what he thinks about nuclear weapons. I mean, you know, okay, evidence.
- [18:51]
B
I mean, perhaps this is a perspective of someone sitting in Tel Aviv and hoping that the rocket salvo, missile salvos would end at some point. When we look at examples of what happened with Pizzaskian, the president saying, you know, we're not going to attack the Gulf states, and then having to apolog for the IRGC's decision to, yes, attack Gulf states. I mean, are you seeing, you know, this country so well, any kind of cracks in. In the regime after 11 days of this war?
- [19:20]
C
I think. I think you are. I mean, I think that there is. But again, it's very difficult. I mean, I can't say to you we have definitive evidence of it because at the moment, it's really difficult to see inside. But there are indications. I mean, quite apart from the fact that they've got complete command and control incoherence, I mean, you know, that's a fairly obvious. I mean, okay, so classically, you know, the spin on this is that this is called Iran's Mosaic Defense. So it's a bit like the culture of resistance that, you know, some American politicians seem to sort of like, absorbed and digested as if it's some sort of like, deep political thinking or something. You know, I remember during the whole JCPA negotiations, John Kerry got up and said, you know, you don't understand. They have this economy of resistance. And I, you know, I said to someone, I said, this is a slogan. It's not some sort of economic theory. I mean, I mean, why is he talking about it as if it's some sort of deep, profound theory? And it's the same with this Mosaic Defense. I mean, basically, Mosaic Defense is the other way of looking at it. Let's put it this way. I mean, maybe they're right, but my reading of it is that command and control is collapsed. I mean, how can you have a situation where they're attacking Oman, apologizing the next day, and then attacking again? Or the same with the uae? And why are they attacking the UAE more than tenfold that they're attacking Israel? You would sort of expect that they would be attacking Israel. But why are they attacking the UAE so much? What? It's to diminish, you know, obviously to cause economic pain. Yes, I understand that. But you can cause economic pain and doubt and sow doubt and whatever with a slightly less, you know, intense volley of missiles and drones towards one particular Arab country. If you look at the rate of fire that's going on now, it's diminished quite a lot. I mean, I know there are different assessments of it, and I appreciate you sitting in Tel Aviv. It's not great. And many people in the Arab world, but clearly, you know, from what I understand from centcom, who I still, to be honest, would take as more a more credible account than, say, some of the stuff coming out of Iran or even some of the sort of ad hoc statistics that have been put together online, the level of Iranian firing of missiles and drones has diminished dramatically. Now, why is that? Partly because of attacks, partly because they lost their launchers. But I suspect part of it is also because people aren't really firing them. I mean, it's, you know, people are basically getting out the way. And we see that also in terms of the barracks and stuff. Now, again, we're 10 days in. I, you know, these things, you know, while a country is under attack on this sort of nature, you're unlikely to see an uprising. I said this back in the 12 day war. You know, people said to me, then there's a national solidarity flag waving. Everyone's rallying around the flag. And I said, I wouldn't trust it, to be honest. And then six months later, you get the bloodiest uprising and repression that you've seen in the Islamic Republic's history. And this was coming and what I would emphasize with that, and as much as I admire and like Suzanne Maloney, I would say that one of the problems that people have is they're not looking at the internal dynamics of the country and the fact that it is economically basically going down the tubes. Okay? I mean, this is a serious problem for it, and it may declare victory depending on what Donald Trump decides to do in the next few days or weeks. But the problems it's had over the last couple of Years will continue to be problems, and they'll be much, much worse. And these are the fundamental weaknesses of its political economy. So, you know, I, I cannot see a, a way in which the Islamic Republic comes out of this and declares victory, other than some sort of rather grotesque Pyrrhic, we're here, which, you know, is fine on one level, but it's, I think, for the vast majority of people, they'll be, you know, they'll be sort of questioning whether this is sort of victory they really won. Let's see.
- [23:00]
A
So let's just walk through that scenario, which is, okay, doesn't. The uprising doesn't happen while the country's under bombardment. The bombardment eventually stops. Walk us through the steps that you could imagine, and I know it's not a prediction, but could imagine that would see a change of power, particularly addressing the point that is made by skeptics of the war, that there isn't an entrenched. This is the phrase used opposition, that the regime itself is deeply dug in that, for example, if there were defectors from the military, Donald Trump said, lay down your arms. They don't have anyone to lay down their arms, too. So addressing those skeptical counterpoints that are made, how do you see that it could not will, but could unfold into a conservative regime?
- [23:44]
C
So if I was to describe the events, I'd say that you're not going to see a sort of a unified uprising in terms of. It's a bit like what you saw in January, by the way. You'll see something emerging somewhere. You'll see copycat protests in other places, and you'll see what I call these bushfires. These bushfires emerging with people sort of like rebelling, and then they'll start to merge, and then leadership will come out of that. Of course, there are plenty of leaders in Iran, by the way. I mean, some of them are under house arrest, some of them under arrest. The question is also what the elite does and whether the elite begins to split then. And of course, you know, what we're talking about is a whole range of options. I mean, it depends what, you know, when sometimes people talk about regime change, they take a very maximalist view of this, as if somehow you're going to sort of pull everything out from the roots and replace something completely new. I think that's unlikely. You know, what you're going to find is people like Rouhani and Mir Hussein Mousavi and some of the others are going to start saying, we cannot go on like this. I mean, it's simple as that, and they're going to start moving the country in a different way and they may challenge what happens. We don't know where Mujdaba is, by the way. I don't think we've seen him. And he might be injured, as far as I'm aware. I don't know what the situation is in terms of defections. Of course, it's not a question of people handing their arms to someone. It's basically people saying, we've had enough. We're not going to be shooting on the population. I put money on it, of course, that there are people who will be willing to shoot the population to their last bullet, by the way. I mean, that's true, but I don't think there's this sort of million strong army of Iranians all determined to shoot their fellow citizens until, you know, hell or high water. I think some of them will say, I've had enough, I'm packing it in, I'm putting my gun down and I'm going home, you know, or I'm going, yeah. So this is the sort of thing that I see. And of course, where I'm trying to get at is that these things, things, you know, people always say it hasn't happened and this. And that's true, of course, but in a very sort of Hemingway sort of type of way. You know, how do you go bankrupt very gradually and then very quickly? And this is the point, and I think this is the point that Arendt is also trying to make, that, you know, what, what you're seeing here is that things are pretty difficult. Let's not have any illusions about it, that political change is difficult, but when the crack happens, and it could be quite small, by the way, I mean, I'm not saying it's a big crowd, it can widen pretty quickly. I mean, it can turn into a sort of a snowball out of control. And that's what the regime, of course, is worried about. I mean, why in the height of this bombardment, are they maintaining, you know, street checks at night and trying to keep control of the crowd in one way or another? It is something that they themselves have said, by the way. It's not something that I've said or any. It's they themselves have said it, that we have faced a series of existential threats to the regime, you know, over the last five years, six years, actually, I'd say to 2019, okay, and they're acknowledging it. And they acknowledge also that their economic situation is dire, their environmental situation is dire, not made much better. I Have to. Has to be said by the attack on that oil dump, which I think is a mistake, but it's happened. You know, these are things that I think are going to create a certain amount of, you know, discontent in a country, by the way, in a population that is already unhappy. Okay, think, you know, Russia, 1917. I mean, this is basically, you know, people are fed up, okay? Now, anyone who tells you they're not fed up isn't reading the historical evidence. I mean, that's all I can say, you know. You know, yes, the regime will do what it can to retain that position, and. But there will come a time when both in the elite, and that's what you got to look at. You got to look at a double. A double knock, as they say, elements in the leadership of the regime, mainly on the more moderate wing of what's going on, plus what's going on on the street. And I mean, judging by what happened in January, the level of the violence inflicted upon the population and the anger that generated, you know, again, people sort of say, oh, that's crushed it very much. Again, the Tiananmen Square model. But there are two mistakes with that. One is that January was the latest in the succession of sort of like, of protests. And we kept saying previously, oh, people won't come out again because it's just too bloody violent. You know, I mean, why would you. And yet they come out and they came out in extra numbers, and the, the regime felt it was an existential threat, such an existential threat that it probably massacred. You know, I, I'm going to be conservative here, but I certainly above 10,000, okay, probably 15,000 or so. But it's not even the way they killed. It's not even a number. Beg your pardon? They killed. It's the way they did it. They're going into hospitals, shooting people in hospital beds, beheading people in streets. I mean, for goodness sake, you know, I mean, it's a horrendous situation which currently is actually being lost in a bit of the haze of the war, by the way. And I think we need to be aware that, you know, the mood music in Iran and the attitudes in Iran are shaped fundamentally, I cannot emphasize it more, by the way, fundamentally by what happened in January, that the fact that people who would never, never have called for outside help in this way or any other way, by the way, suddenly start calling for outside help, responsibility to protect, all these sort of things is a product of January 8th and 9th. I mean, and we cannot lose track of that because it was an inflection point and it moved the country further. So the idea that, you know, the regime is strong and stable is for the dogs. I mean, it's a nonsense. It can survive. Of course it can survive. Assad's regime survived, you know, for a while, but it survived because the Russians and the Iranians piled in.
- [29:00]
B
If we have the optimist version which says the regime will crumble, we don't know how long it will take. Iranians will take their fate into their own hands. But another, I mean, the Middle east teaches us that sometimes it's the worst scenario than a very bad scenario. You're already living, that might transpire, which can be the country disintegrating, which could be ISIS or other violent groups taking over. Do you see that as a possibility?
- [29:24]
C
So let me take that head on as well. I mean, there's been a couple of articles as well in the press about this. Iran is not Iraq, it's not Afghanistan, it's not Syria. Iran is not a country that was invented in the 1920s. It is not a patchwork of different peoples that were put together, you know, enforced them together. It's got a cultural continuity on that plateau that goes back at least. You know, certainly nationalists will tell you millennia, but certainly the boundaries of that country have not really changed since 1639. Okay, name me one other country in the Middle east whose boundaries had not changed really until 68, and if anything, they shrunk a bit, obviously because of Russian aggrandizement, you know, the formation of Afghanistan in 1856 and whatever. Now, the point is, even if you look at, historically speaking, at the weakest position that Iran was in, say in 1919, after the great War, occupied by Ottomans, Russians, British and others, the cultural cohesion of the Iranian plateau remained stable. Doesn't mean the politics were good, by the way. There was no central authority. It had broken down. But in terms of the cultural cohesion, it had remained. And I think that you do have, and I will say this, that I think that people who think that you'll suddenly go into some sort of velvet revolution and it's all going to be, you know, people. No, I think it's going to be rough in places. Let's be frank about it. These things are not easy, and these things are going to be difficult, and you're facing an opponent that really doesn't want to give way. Okay? So I don't want to give a sort of a rosy picture of this is going to be a halcyon, you know, move towards democracy or whatever. It's a tough road. But the interesting thing is a lot of Iranians have sort of said they're willing to try it because they've tried everything else and it hasn't worked. So that, you know, they want to have a go. Now, I'm not saying, and I think, you know, again, with all humility, you know, I, the reason why when I opened up this podcast and I said, you know, I'm sort of suffering from grief. It's a very stressful time. Of course it's a stressful time. No Iranian can be happy by what's happening to the country. Nobody can be happy about it. It's a complete fiasco. But, you know, this is something that the Islamic Republic in some ways, in my view, certainly has brought on itself. It's been idiotic in the way it's handled it's affairs. But in the victims of this, of course, are the Iranians themselves. The interesting thing for me is the Iranians themselves are saying, we're going to take this punishment as far as, because we want to get out of this morass. That. But I'd be the first to say that, you know, it's, it's not going to be easy. People who think that there's a, you know, a peaceful, you know, this sort of, as I said, some sort of Arab Spring, Persian Spring, I should say, or Persian summer, whatever we used to call it, it's, you know, even I'm more skeptical of that. You know, I mean, I'm not gonna, it's just that the idea, on the other hand, that the regime comes out of this stronger and more established for me is it doesn't bear an ambassador.
- [32:05]
A
So does it mean taking with all the caveats you've just said, does it therefore mean that you come to the conclusion that Trump, Netanyahu have actually done the right thing here?
- [32:15]
C
I, I would hesitate to go that far because, I mean, I think there are all sorts of other things that can be done. You know, it's difficult, you know, and, and don't ask me, in a sense as an E, to say that they've done, you know, but going down that route is, is necessarily the right thing. I think time will tell what the consequences are and how that works out. And I think ultimately at the moment, you know, that the problem is, is that, you know, the odds are that we are in for a very, very difficult time. All I will say is that, you know, even if nothing had happened, the country was on a downward spiral anyway. I mean, this was the conclusion many Iranians had come to. And this is why they were more willing to accept the fact that there might be foreign intervention. But, you know, whether they've done the right thing or not really depends on what their aims are. And I'm not entirely convinced, you know, at the moment what their political aims are and what they plan to do and whatever. And so, you know, one has to be very care about going, about going that far. And I, I would certainly be reluctant to do so.
- [33:08]
B
Professor Al Ansari, thank you so much for talking to us today. We feel smarter. Thank you for that.
- [33:14]
C
I don't know, to be honest. Who knows?
- [33:16]
A
Anyway, we're really grateful for you to, for me. Thanks, John. Sally, Bye.
- [33:22]
C
Bye.
- [33:28]
A
Well, our thanks, as you heard, to Ali Ansari of St. Andrews University. Really interesting, different perspective on things. And like Easter es not predictions, but just showing how things could unfold in a different way. We're bringing to you these conversations and episodes at a different frequency from usual. Greater frequency, obviously, because of the events that are going on between Iran, the US And Israel. And we'll keep doing that as things stand. We plan to be back with you for our regular episode on Friday, but of course, we will be watching these events and we have a thank you,
- [34:03]
B
as always, as always, a big thank you to Michal Porat. And we shall see each other very soon, Jonathan, one way or another.
- [34:10]
A
Yeah, very soon. See, you're being strategically ambiguous, just like Donald Trump being vague on the timing. We will see each other very soon.