Interview with Iran Expert Ali Vaez

Hey, Ones and Twos listeners. I imagine a lot of you are following the war in Iran very closely. Everyone at FP is obviously as well, and I include myself in that group. And one of the most interesting things I've come across so far about the war is an interview that FP's editor-in-chief Ravi Agrawal did on his show with the Iran expert Ali Vaez. Ali is with the International Crisis Group. He has contacts with some pretty influential people in Iran, and he talks on the show with Ravi about why Iran might continue fighting this war even after Trump declares that it's over. And that's just one of a bunch of interesting points he makes. And yeah, I wanted to make sure our listeners got a chance to hear that episode, so we are dropping it here in our feed. If you like it, I'm sure you'll figure out how to find the show on your own and become a regular listener. That is FP Live with Ravi Agrawal. This episode was taped last week. Hope you enjoy.

Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policy's editor-in-chief. This is FP Live. The war in Iran has now entered its second month. It's worth remembering that some of Iran's senior-most leaders, including its supreme leader, were killed on day one. Yet the war continues. How long can Iran's current leadership keep this up, and how might they be thinking of an endgame? My guest this week has for years been involved in Track 2 dialogues with the Iranians and remains in touch with many lawmakers there. Ali Vaez is the director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group. He teaches at Georgetown University and he's co-author of How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare. Let's dive in. Ali, welcome to FP Live.

Great to be with you, Ravi.

So I have to start with this. Who's really running Iran right now?

Well, it is still the Islamic Republic, just with new faces. You have basically, instead of an 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a 56-year-old Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, his son. And other power centers who were in charge, the president is still the same president. The speaker of the parliament is still the same. And there are, however, new officials replacing those who have been assassinated. What is important to understand, and I think this is one of the misperceptions about Iran and one of the problems in Washington, is that people often end up believing their own rhetoric, that because Iran is framed as a terrorist state or the Revolutionary Guards as a foreign terrorist organization, or the Islamic Republic as a totalitarian system, that if you decapitate the top, the rest of the organization or the system will fall apart. Whereas the Islamic Republic, in the true sense of the word, is a system, is a network, is a multi-power center political structure. And therefore, if you remove one individual, the rest of the system can fill the gap. Currently, the most powerful figure within the system is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliamentary speaker, who's a former commander of Revolutionary Guard's Air Force. But what I think President Trump, who's seeking the equivalent of Venezuela's Delcy Rodriguez in Iran, doesn't fully appreciate is that there is no way that Ghalibaf could play a Rodriguez role in Iran. Because there are other power centers that would check him. And if he goes too far in compromising with the United States, he would undermine his own position. One of the most important figures now is the new national security advisor who replaced Ali Larijani, a relative pragmatist within the Islamic Republic structure, of course. The new individual is called Mohammad Bagher Zolqadr, who's also a veteran of the Revolutionary Guard, former number 2 in the Guards. And Ravi, he is so radical. And when he was appointed as deputy commander of the Guards in the late 1990s, the infamous General Soleimani resigned from the Guards because he said he couldn't be working with Mr. Zolqadr. And Ayatollah Khamenei brought him back and appointed him as the head of the expeditionary force of the guards, the Quds Force, so that he would still remain in service. So that's the cast of characters that we have now.

Yeah, and what I'm hearing from you here is that the system endures, the regime endures, but I'm also hearing that some of the pragmatists have been sidelined. And so what is emerging now in this new leadership of an older system is a more hardline group of leaders who are likely more vengeful even, and are more aligned with the IRGC or the military.

Absolutely. And in fact, not only they are much more hardline and radicalized, but I think they are much less risk-averse than the previous leadership. One of the most important criticisms against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the opening salvo of this conflict, was that he was too cautious. He was too careful. He was hedging all the time, spent so much time on Iran's nuclear program that neither produced energy nor a bomb. When October 7 happened and he had the ability to activate Iran's regional network to hem in Israel, he left each of the proxies to fight Israel on their own, allowing Israel to basically pick them out one by one and eventually come after Iran, or his symbolic retaliation for US strikes on Iranian territory or the killing of Soleimani basically signaled to the United States that there is no cost associated with going after Iran. And this new class has learned the exact opposite lessons. And this is why you see that they're so belligerent that they have attacked all of Iran's neighbors, even those with whom Iran had a good relationship. They closed the Strait of Hormuz from day one. So we are dealing with much, much more hardline people now.

Now, one question I have related to this new crop of leaders is how are they communicating? And you might have a sense, Ali Vaez, of how command and control is working. So these missile attacks are continuing, but there have been some reports that a lot of the military leaders are unable to really talk to each other. They're afraid that their comms might be compromised. What is your sense of the ability of various factions of Iran's leadership, the military, the lawmakers? How are they talking to each other? How damaged is command and control?

I see no sign, Ravi, of any kind of damage, serious damage to command and control. In fact, one has to remember that the starting point of this war for the Islamic Republic It is not February 28th of this year. It is June 24th of last year at the end of the 12-day war. And the Iranians expected that there will be another US-Israeli strike. They had contingency plans in place, which I can explain later. It was basically a three-pronged approach of stretching the conflict in time, in space, and also imposing economic costs on the United States and the global economy through the Straits. But also to preserve command and control and continuity of governance. And now you see that they had used the so-called mosaic approach, which breaks down the command and control among all the 31 provinces in Iran in case that the communication with the center is disrupted or cut off. But at the end of the day, they in fact were able to preserve communication, even though provinces are acting based on pre-designed plans. But you can see how, for instance, the evidence is in the type of retaliation that the Iranians are doing. If Israel or the United States target, let's say, a petrochemical company in Iran, then a petrochemical company in Israel is targeted. If a university in Iran is targeted, an American university somewhere in the region is targeted. So This shows that there is still a degree of centralized command and control. The way they communicate is probably not digital. I've heard that with the very top of the system, they communicate through basically couriers, but I'm not privy exactly to how they do it. Of course, they know that they're all very vulnerable to being targeted, especially by Israel.

Now, that question of the couriers is interesting because my next question is about diplomacy, and as there's all this reporting about Pakistan getting involved, for example, in brokering talks between Iran, Israel, and the United States, or potentially even China. And the question then is that who negotiates right now on behalf of Tehran? And does whoever negotiates have the ability then to communicate, say, for example, with the Supreme Leader, or the Speaker of the Parliament, to then corral some sort of message of this is what the country actually wants?

So there are a few people who still pick up the phone. One is Foreign Minister Arafchi, who's been the interlocutor for most of the negotiations that have happened in the past decade and a half. And the government in general, President Peshkian has had conversations with European counterparts, with regional counterparts. So the government still picks up the phone and they would be the intermediary with other power centers in the country. Now, the, the Mostaba Khamenei, there is no sign of life at this moment. We have not heard his voice. We have not seen any live photos or videos of him. He might be incapacitated. He might be dead. It's unclear. But at the end of the day, again, there will be this group of generals in all the key positions, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, the national security advisor, speaker of parliament. It will be this crowd that would make the final decision. And again, because they anticipated this, I think they have a plan about when they would be willing to accept a deal and under what circumstances. The timing, I think, is when they believe that the US and Israel have paid such a high price for this conflict, that they would be deterred from doing it again. The Israeli—

Are you able to add a little bit more detail on that? So what would constitute such a high price?

So if you look at the Iranian military strategy, it was aimed at starting with, as I said, stretching the conflict in space so that the US resources for defending its own assets and allies in the region would be really stretched thin. Because as you know, this was always a math about the number of missiles and interceptors. And we know that Israel is running low on interceptors now. The Gulf countries are running low on interceptors. The Iranians also targeted almost the entirety of the integrated U.S. radar system in the region so that the advanced warning, early warning, and basically coverage would be diminished. And that's why in the beginning they had a higher tempo of missiles and drones that they fired, but now they're keeping it at a steady pace because they're getting through with more efficiency than was the case in the past. And then the other element of this is obviously closing the strait, which has created economic cost for the entire region, for the global economy, political cost for President Trump. And the Iranian concept is that, of course, because they're outgunned by U.S. and Israel, they should try to outlast them. And they believe that the number of fatalities on the U.S. side still hasn't reached an intolerable point. The economic price of it, even gas prices at the pump in the United States, are higher, but they're not intolerable. The president's numbers have not fallen significantly, especially within his core base. So they actually would still, in my view, want to continue escalating to a stage that they believe either because the US and Israel run out of, or Gulf countries run out of ammunition, or because some sort of escalation results in much higher oil prices. For instance, if the Houthis close off this Bab el-Mandeb as well, then they believe they can extract, uh, better concessions from the United States.

So what does this then tell us about the, uh, talks that took place in Islamabad in Pakistan over the weekend? And a proposal was put together to send on to the Iranians, and the Iranians have yet to respond. Is that because they just don't want to, they want to delay, or is it something else?

Well, I think it's two factors. One is that, yes, as I said, I don't think they are still at a point that they believe that they have been able to teach the lesson that they want to teach to the US and Israel and reach a new equilibrium. The worst-case scenario, Ravi, for Iranians, much worse than continuation of a hot war, is to freeze in a cold peace. Because if they end up in a situation that they don't get economic reprieve, that they don't they end up being in a model that Israelis call, and the rest of the region, mowing the lawn, meaning that every few months they would target them again. This is not something that the regime can survive. It might be able to survive this war, but it would not be able to survive without economic reprieve and under constant cycle of aggression. That's why they want to be able to get the kind of deal that is sustainable. And so that's one. The second is what the US is still putting on the table, is pretty maximalist. It is still, as you have seen in the 15-point plan that has been reported, it is still similar to the 12 points that Mike Pompeo put on the table in President Trump's first term in office. It still requires Iran to completely abandon its nuclear program, curb its missile program, stop supporting its proxies. And from the Iranian perspective, that really amounts to surrendering, which from their perspective, again, is more dangerous than the continuation of this conflict.

You know, as we think about Iran imposing all these costs, not only on Israel and the United States and the Gulf allies, but to be clear, the whole world, I mean, the price of energy disproportionately hurts poorer countries in the Global South than it does the price of the pump in the United States, and therefore the American people. But as Iran thinks about all of these costs it's inflicting, I'm curious how they gauge the costs that they are bearing. So immense infrastructural damage, civilian loss of life, their own abilities to shoot missiles has been degraded. As you think about the calculation they're making, at what point do they feel like they've lost too much and they can't go on? Or are you saying there is no such point?

Well, this is not a conflict that is calculated in terms of costs for the Iranians because they always knew that they are going to be absorbing significantly higher costs than the US and Israel. For them, the main objective is not to win, but not to lose. Survival for them is victory. This is the objective at any price. And of course, you know, the view is that at the end of the day, because A lot of what they have is indigenously built. The knowledge of their ballistic missiles, of their nuclear program, this is not something that they have imported, that they have developed themselves. They can always try to regain that. They also have external support. That is one thing that one has to consider. Iran has been selling more oil during this war and making more money than before the war. And in fact, the Trump administration has granted Iran sanctions relief by allowing a country like India to purchase Iranian oil that it never allowed Iran to do in peacetime or when Iran was negotiating with the Trump administration. The Russians have also been sending military equipment through to Iran through the Caspian Sea. And this is another element that I think is important to understand. I think both Russia and China are now looking at Iran in a different way, similar to how the Europeans look at Ukraine now in a David versus Goliath battle. The weaker party that was able to stand up to much more superior military power and basically becomes a bulwark against that adversary. It is quite possible that during or after this war, Russia and China would grant Iran the kind of benefits that so far they've been reluctant to give Iran. So this is why the Iranians believe that at any price, if they survive to fight another day, they will figure out a way.

So in other words, this war is going to plan from Iran's perspective.

It is, I think, more going to plan for Tehran than it is definitely the case for Washington. Now, the opening act of this, I think, was a serious setback, not because of the elimination of the Supreme Leader. He clearly was not trying to hide. He was doing more and more public events, and he was in his office when he was killed. But a lot of other senior military leaders who were killed in that opening act of the conflict as well, I think that was a surprise for them because they didn't expect a daytime attack at the beginning of the week. And obviously that was a serious blow to them. But other than that, yes, I would say if you look at the escalation ladder, the way that they have incrementally increased the pressure on the US and Israel, how their allies in the region, whether it's Hezbollah or the Houthis or the Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq, have come in at specific points in the course of the conflict and how they still have additional cards to play in case the US puts boots on the ground or Israel targets energy infrastructure. It does appear to be going to the plan. And this is why I believe that the Iranians have the sense of overconfidence and could potentially overplay their hands. Yeah.

What would that look like? Because, you know, on the other side of this, of course, the United States seems to have, you know, two broad options here. One is to find ways to just get out of this as quickly as possible, declare victory, whatever reality is, but to just declare victory. But the other, which a segment of the American media, the right-wing media, has been pushing for, is to quote unquote finish the job, however you define that. And that could take the form of either trying to seize Kharg Island, which is where most of Iran's oil exports flow through, or boots on the ground and a much more dramatic U.S. intervention that could get very bloody. What is your sense of how Iran is gaming out those possibilities?

So when it gets to unilateral ceasefire imposed by the United States, as it happened in the 12-day war last year, I don't think it's an option because the Iranians know that they accepted that ceasefire only to be a subject of aggression again 8 months later. And that's why, again, as I said, it would be one of their key priorities is to not commit that mistake again. So if the US withdraws, it is quite possible that Iran will continue attacking Israel, and the US would have to then serve in a defensive position to help out Israel. Iranians are still very likely to continue to impose control over the Strait of Hormuz, which would be very humiliating for President Trump. So I don't think that option really exists, but everything is possible with President Trump. But that wouldn't really end the war. And the other side of the coin, as you said, if he doesn't exit and instead decides to escalate, would be very costly. Whichever option the president would choose, the Iranians are very weak when it gets to air force. Their navy was really nonexistent, to be honest. Their air force is a museum. The one thing that they have going for them is their ground forces. So putting boots on the ground, if it's on the mainland, also given the geography and the terrain that is in the favor of the Iranians, is going to make the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan look like a walk in the park. If the objective is to basically take over some of the Persian Gulf islands, That is also easier said than done. The US troops would be basically sitting ducks on these islands. The shoreline is mountainous, overlooking the islands. And as we have seen in the case of the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, you can even fire drones and missiles from much more inland onto these islands. And, you know, there is a reason that the US evacuated all of its bases in the Gulf Arab states, and all of these bases were pretty fortified and had air defenses. It was because the objective was to minimize the risk to American lives. If we end up putting boots on the ground, there will be a very high number of casualties. And as I told you, that plays into Iran's hands because they want to increase the cost of this conflict for President Trump. And again, even holding these islands, how long is the U.S. going to be there? And, you know, again, as I said, Iran would have other options. They would mine the Strait, which would basically block it physically, whereas now it's open, they're just controlling the traffic. And the Houthis would also close Bab el-Mandeb, where two-thirds of Saudi and Emirati oil is now going out to Asian markets. That would push the price of oil to above $200, $250 a barrel, which would result in a global economic meltdown and a political disaster for President Trump in an election year. So this is why in the piece that you refer to, Baba and I wrote for FP, we basically say the president is in an escalation trap and there is no good option for him to get out of this.

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If this war ends without regime change in Iran, which I think is your likeliest scenario here, what kinds of steps do you think what's left of the regime? What will they try to do? I mean, will they rush to redevelop their ballistic missile program? How long would that take? Would they rush to develop a nuclear bomb and try to be North Korea? How do you expect them to emerge were this war to end in 2 weeks, 3 weeks?

So look, if the regime survives, it will be a massive victory for them. Uh, the world's sole superpower, the region's strongest military, threw everything they had at them and they survived. And I think they are going to be pretty confident in their control internally. They are not going to allow any kind of dissent movement to challenge the rule when they have survived war against a superpower and the regional power. They are most likely try to rebuild and recover their military capabilities as quickly as they can, and again, trying to rely on Russia and China. I wouldn't be surprised if they would do things that so far they've been reluctant to do. For instance, give a naval base to China on their shoreline, give a naval base to Russia in the Persian Gulf. And the most important thing, of course, is that they still have a pathway to nuclear weapons because almost half a ton of highly enriched uranium is still unaccounted for. And if this war ends without resolving that issue, it is quite possible that they would decide, with the military now in charge, that that's their pathway to ultimate deterrence. Now that the regional deterrent has been weakened, now that it would take time to restore their conventional deterrent, their quickest pathway is to a nuclear weapon. They have the know-how, they have the machinery, they have the material. And the religious edict, the fatwa of the previous Supreme Leader, died with him. So I think the intent is higher than it has been at any point in time. Wow.

You know, just to flip this for a minute, as we were discussing the costs that Iran is imposing on the United States, the global economy, every party has a different sensitivity to costs. And one imagines that US President Donald Trump's, uh, sensitivity is much higher than, for example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's. Is there a scenario in which the United States pulls out but Israel decides that it wants to continue to degrade Iran's military capabilities? And how do you imagine Iran has gamed out that side of things?

Yes, I do think that there is a scenario in which, uh, the US and Iran can get into an traditional conflict. But having said this, there are also other considerations when it gets to the threshold for pain tolerance. Every time there are missile strikes against Israel, the objective is not necessarily to hit a target or to kill Israelis. The objective is to send several million Israelis in a small country into shelters multiple times a day. The impact that that has on the economy, on the psychology of the population is so much more devastating to Iran as a very vast country where in some areas people really haven't really felt the effects of the war. So if Israel is to increase the pain level, it would have to target infrastructure. And it is precisely what it is doing now. It is not doing it in a shock-and-awe manner. It is doing it in an incremental way. But at some point, again, the Iranians would also start retaliating against the regional infrastructure. We saw just the other day water desalination plants in Kuwait being targeted. In the previous weeks, water desalination plants in Bahrain were targeted. So at some point, again, this would spill out from just the Israel-Iran conflict into the rest of the region. The strait would remain shut. So this is why I have a hard time imagining that this would go down to a simmer that wouldn't really affect the rest of the region. And then there is the Hezbollah dimension here as well. And what's really fascinating, Ravi, is that if you look at every war that Hezbollah has fought with Israel, It has always fought them alone. Iran had provided logistical support, maybe military advice. But now you see that Iran and Hezbollah fire missiles and rockets at the same time, at the same target, in a way to make sure that it overwhelms Israeli defensive systems and hit the targets. This is why you see in the second month of this war, not only Iran can still fire missiles with cluster munitions and heavy warheads, but it can actually get through the multi-layer Israeli defense system and hit the targets very effectively. This is because they're actually working with Hezbollah in an integrated manner. So I don't see really a scenario that this war could be isolated into a bilateral conflict between the two of them.

Wow.

In imagining the region after some sort of end to this war with the regime intact. I'm curious how Iran's remaining leaders, how they think about the rest of the Gulf countries— Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia. They've sent missiles there, drones there. They've bombed them. They've hurt their citizens. How damaged will relations be in the future? Between these countries?

So first of all, if you're looking at it from Tehran's perspective, it's a very different view than how the Gulf countries perceive it. The Iranians are basically saying you have US bases on your territory. These bases are being used for intelligence collection, for air defense coordination. They have, if you look at the Twitter account of Foreign Minister Araghchi, They put out evidence of how HIMARS missiles are being fired from residential areas in Bahrain, how there is evidence of US preparing staging ground for land invasion of Iran and Kuwait. So the Iranians are saying, you know, their airspace, their territory are being used for hostilities against them. And so what they're doing is their right to self-defense. Of course, the Gulf countries do not see it this way, and the relationship is more damaged than ever before. But there are two scenarios how this could move forward after this war is over. One is a repeat of the after-Iran-Iraq War period, because yes, in that period, Iran was not really fighting the GCC, but the GCC were fighting Iran in a proxy war. Iraq was being funded by the Gulf countries to fight Iran. Throughout the 1990s, the relations started improving, de-escalating, détente, rapprochement, and they really, towards the end of that decade, at the end of the day, they're neighbors. They have to, by the force of geography, they have to live together, and the relations improved. So that's one scenario. Another scenario, which is what I'm particularly worried about, is the one that I mentioned to you, that the region becomes a battleground for great power competition, that Russia and China will conclude that now that President Zelensky is traveling in the Gulf states and is helping them defend themselves against Iranian drones, that the Russians would draw a line, would put their entire energy and focus on Iran. The Chinese would conclude that Gulf countries at the end of the day are in the US camp, and if China ends up in a conflict with the United States a few years down the road, it can't count on these countries providing it with energy. The only country without a US foothold in it is Iran. And so you see the Gulf being basically torn apart in great power competition. There could also be further fragmentation within the Gulf states. Now you see a country like the UAE talking about the fact that the problem with the Iranian regime is not just its behavior, it's really the nature of this regime. Whereas Qatar or Oman talking about the fact that at the end of the day, there has to be a modus vivendi because they're going to be neighbors forever. And Saudi Arabia actually going to Islamabad and being part of these mediating countries that are trying to to find a mutually beneficial solution. So there could be even more fragmentation within the Gulf countries. But again, it's very hard to say which one of these scenarios would materialize because this war is not over. And depending on how it ends, I think that would determine the future trajectory.

Yeah, indeed. You know, we've been getting a lot of subscriber questions from people around the world. And one question many of them have had so far is just the issue of trust and how much trust has been destroyed in recent months. This war, of course, began amid diplomatic talks. So let me name-check Zilu Chaudhry, Vedant Bilgotay, and many others who've been asking a version of this question, which is what conditions would signal to Iran that it has successfully established deterrence against the US and Israel and is willing to trust some sort of discussion around ending this war?

It's a very good question. Look, I think the condition would be for the United States to accept the kind of concession to the Iranians that the Iranians can actually count on. And this is where the question of the Straits again comes in. The Iranians have concluded that they cannot trust the United States to deliver on sanctions relief. Therefore, they need to have a new order in the Strait of Hormuz so that they can use it as a source of revenue. That doesn't mean that the GCC can't use its own pathway into the strait as a source of revenue as well. But the Iranians believe that this is the only thing that they can count on. And if the US recognizes not just their sovereignty, but also their control over the waterway, which they could share with the GCC, then this is a sign that the U.S. has come to terms with the fact that not only it has not been able to dislodge the regime, but it has to find a way of accommodating it. So this would be, I think, the most important factor. Now, there is additional elements that the Iranians have brought up, including the fact that they want a great power to be involved as a guarantor. And this is why you see that when Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia went to Islamabad over the weekend and had conversations about what kind of a pathway they could design to end this war, I mean, get to a ceasefire and then to a sustainable, peaceful solution, the Pakistanis have now taken this proposal to China and have got China on board with it. Because they know that the Iranians would require a degree of an external guarantor for any kind of agreement with the United States because they don't trust the U.S. And the final element of this is that you've seen that the Iranians saying they don't want to talk to Steve Witkopf and Jared Kushner anymore because from their perspective, they have no credibility, especially with Witkopf. They have negotiated now twice in the course of the past 2 years. And twice in the middle of negotiations, the US has bombed them, despite Steve Witkoff's reassurances that this was not going to happen. So they also would want to have a different US interlocutor, and that's why the name of Vice President Pence has come up.

Ali Vaez, we'll have to have you back, but for now, we'll leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us.

Great pleasure. Thanks for having me.

And that was Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International International Crisis Group. As always, stay abreast of everything we're doing on our website, that is foreignpolicy.com. We're also leaving some gift links to pieces discussed in today's episode. FP Live the podcast is produced by Rosie Julin. The executive producer of FP Live is Dana Schern, and I'm Ravi Agrawal. I'll see you next time.