Something Seriously Wrong is Happening Inside the Iran War

If the IAGC has in the realm of 100,000 to 150,000, forgetting the besieged militia, and of Tesh, or the conventional military, we're talking what, anywhere from 350,000 to 500,000 people who could be part of a defensive force. I'm not completely fully informed of the figures, but that's a sizable opposition to somehow have to galvanize Kurdish group and then a limited set of special— like, it doesn't speak to me as a viable option whatsoever.

The concept have been that with air support they would be able to maybe gain control over some territory and then use that as a launching pad, you know, similar to what happened in Syria. But again, I think it's more a mirage than anything that could be implemented on the ground. And by the way, the best way of turning the majority of the Iranian people against any regime change effort is precisely focus on the minorities, because the one thing that provokes the sense of Persian nationalism more than anything else is the fear of country's disintegration.

This is The Global Gambit. Welcome back everyone to The Global Gambit, a podcast that looks at the intersection of geopolitics, economics, international relations, and conflict. And we are returning to the situation in the Middle East, the Iran war with the United States and Israel, and the general global fallout. You will see much on the channel I've covered on the economic angle, the Russian angle, the China angle, but I wanted to look at the entire angle if that's even possible, with my guest today, who is Ali Vaez, who is the senior advisor to the president and project director on Iran at International Crisis Group, where I should be transparent that I was working with for a time as well. But Ali, you've been all over the media, and I'm sure conveying a lot of important perspectives to what's happening right now. What is happening right now? Are we seeing an off-ramp? Is this the continuation of conflict for the next several weeks or months? No one seems to have any clear time horizon.

It's good to see you and be on the program. Look, the reality is that I think we are in an attritional conflict now, in the sense that neither side is winning, neither side is really losing, and neither side knows how to get out. The United States went into this war, I think, with naive optimism that the Islamic Republic was on the verge of collapse and decapitating its political leadership and degrading its military capacity. Would result in it folding very quickly and capitulating. If you remember, in the first few days of the war, President Trump asked for unconditional surrender, which is what happened at the end of the Second World War when Germany was fully defeated or Japan had suffered two atomic bomb attacks. But in this case, at the beginning, President Trump expected a rapid capitulation of the Iranians. The Iranians went into it with a very different mindset. They were expecting another round of conflict with the US and Israel in the aftermath of the 2025 12-day war. And they had prepared themselves for a long war. They had put in place all sorts of mechanisms for succession, for continuity of government, to retain a retaliatory capacity and to also spread this conflict in time and in space so that the United States and Israel would pay such a high price for this conflict that they would never do it again. The problem the Iranians had after the 12-day war was that there was no ceasefire. There was no written ceasefire. President Trump announced that he's ending the war, Iranians accepted, it was unconditional, there were no terms. And of course, 8 months later, Israel and the US attacked again. And the Iranians don't want to end up in a position that, you know, Libya, Syria, Gaza, West Bank, or that at any point Israel or the US can go in and start bombing. So they really want to inflict a high price on their adversaries. And the way they're doing it is by, if you look at how at the initial phase of the war, they started attacking all of their neighbors in the Gulf states in addition to Israel and US assets, which is something that the US did not expect. I mean, you can see it by the fact that American citizens were not evacuated from the region. Anti-drone technology was not provided to the Gulf region. They had to ask the Ukrainians for help sort of halfway through the war. And, and also it was expected that maybe Iran would close the Straits of Hormuz where 25% of seaborne energy crosses every day. Towards the end of the conflict, it is sort of like last resort option, not at the beginning of the conflict. And so I think, you know, the game that the Iranians are playing, it is designed for endurance because the calculus is that they cannot outgun Israel and the US, so they have to try to outlast them. And this way they would be able to create an equilibrium. But that also means we're kind of locked in this dynamic now, because even if Trump decides tomorrow, and he can have a narrative of victory, he can say, I killed the Supreme Leader, I weakened Iran significantly, although it would be a porous narrative of victory, because in practice, he has only replaced one Khamenei with another Khamenei. Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium is still there. It still has the ability to reconstitute its missile program. So none of the problems are really fundamentally resolved, but he can come up with some sort of a narrative of victory. The problem is I don't think the Iranians would stop at that point because they want to continue to inflict a high price on the US and Israel. And the Iranians also don't have a clear sense of what does it mean to get some sort of a ceasefire with staying power. Does it have to be written? If it's written, would it be trusted? If it's enshrined in a Security Council resolution, would it really become binding for Israel and the United States? So I don't think even the Iranians have a clear sense of how to end this.

That's a very comprehensive opening set of points. And I do have quite a diverse array of questions from Mojtaba's condition to US-Israeli goals. So I'll come to them all in a second. But just very simply on this point, what you're saying, I think, is how I felt from the very very beginning that the Iranians were ready for this. They knew that they wouldn't be able to outgun them. It's about inflicting as much relative pain as possible, hitting the pressure points— the economy, the Gulf states, tourist areas, um, certain points in the American military system in the Middle East. But is this essentially what it is now, a conflict that we all sort of become largely used to? Occasional flashpoints, occasional flare-ups here or there and everywhere dotted around, but largely it just sort of goes into the background?

Well, so it's hard to imagine that it could stay that way because of the amount of pressure that this is putting on the global economy. I mean, there are some Asian countries that now have rice or other essentials that are, you know, sitting in their ports and will go bad if they can't send it to their customers in the Gulf region. The other way around, there are petrochemical refinery companies in East Asia that have enough storage to continue functioning maybe for another few days, but then after that they would run out. And, you know, some of the Gulf countries have reduced production as of now because the storages have been filled and they can't— they have no more space. But, you know, for how much longer can you reduce production without affecting your ability to ramp up to previous levels? In a short period of time. There is also, of course, the human cost of this, which is rising daily on the Iranian side. There's already been at least several thousand people who have been killed. The United States just lost another 4 service members. And so, you know, the political pressure continues to build up. This is not a stable situation in which you can have the world attention focused somewhere else and you will see occasional flare-ups. So this would have to come to some sort of an end. But where I think you're absolutely right is that it is very likely to be a fragile ceasefire situation in which it would again flare up for different reasons a few weeks or a few months down the road. And I'll give you an example. This Iranian regime was obviously unable to provide for its people even before the war. They were really struggling to keep the lights on. They were dealing with water scarcity. And had very limited resources to address the country's underlying problems and pent-up frustrations of the population. Therefore, we would see repeated cycles of upheavals. And the only answer that the regime has is repression. And repression was exactly what triggered this new cycle of war, because President Trump threatened that he would go to the rescue of Iranian protesters, et cetera. So it's just a matter of time before we would have another round of uprisings in Iran under a regime that is now much more militarized, much more paranoid and violent and radical. So this is by definition not a stable situation, and it's bound to result in many more tragedies and instability for the region and beyond.

Yeah, I'm just writing some things down here which come to mind because we've got the Al-Quds commemoration. I don't know if that's the best word to use, but there's this been display of sort of Iranian loyalty. Now it's obviously always difficult to know how much this is state-sponsored or is a bit of a narrative being pushed, but what is the sentiment from Iranians on the ground? If you've spoken to people, have any sense of that? Are they all-out frustrated with the lack of improvement under the government, but they can't clearly be happy with the complete destruction of this country, of the economy, what's left of it, infrastructure, by America and Israel. So I feel it's pretty nuanced.

It is. Look, in the run-up to the war, given the sheer degree of desperation and anger within the Iranian society, especially after the regime massacred a few thousand protesters in January, I was personally shocked by talking to people, including members of my own family, who were actually seeking intervention from abroad and were hoping that someone would rescue them from their tormentors. But first of all, I have no idea, and I don't think anybody else does, of what percentage of the Iranian population were in favor of military intervention. There were certainly those who would also out of patriotic feelings were against any kind of intervention from the outside, including some very prominent civil society actors like Nobel laureate Naguib Mohamadi or some other individuals who've really paid a high price for opposing the regime. And then there were those who are loyal to the system. And this system has somewhere between 5 to 15%, again, nobody really knows for sure, of its core constituents who believe in it for different reasons. They either have a financial vested interest or political vested interest or ideologically believe in this regime. And those are the ones that you see rallying in Quds Force rallies usually, or pro-regime rallies. But I do believe that usually in circumstances that this country is subject to aerial bombardment, it does create a rally around the home flag effect, not necessarily the flag of the Islamic Republic, but around the country. Especially when you see high number of civilian casualties. And this war started with killing of around 170 schoolchildren, girls in the city of Minab. When you see your historic monuments damaged or destroyed, which also has happened, when you see attack on infrastructure, Israel bombed an oil depot north of Tehran, which created a toxic rain the following day that made breathing difficult for 10 million citizens of, of the Iranian capital. So that's the kind of thing that I think even for people who were supportive of the war probably are now more against it. But again, what is the distribution of these different groups? It's anybody's guess.

Interesting. All right, so when we come to the regime itself, it's been battered, it's been bruised, but it's operational, it's functional. My first question on this area is simply, what is the condition of Khamenei's son, of Mojtaba? Is he alive? Is he awake? Because we've heard he's in a coma. Some people said he's been minorly injured. Some people said he's been severely injured. This is why we haven't seen him yet. Do you have any sense of that?

Look, so Iranian leaders are not, you know, strangers to being subject of assassination. In fact, his father was target of assassination and lost the functionality of his right hand. And there are videos of him in the hospital, the early years of the revolution, when, you know, when he was president and people do an interview with him and, you know, his hand is in a cast and, you know, he's there and he's talking to the cameras. So, you know, it's hard to understand that if Mojtaba Khamenei was very badly injured, maybe even disfigured or in a bad state, why couldn't there be at least an audio of him delivering that message? You know, why couldn't there be some sort of sign of life which we haven't seen? So it does make me wonder if he is alive. Of course, there are security reasons that, you know, he has a target on his back. Israel has threatened to kill him. There's no doubt that there are very severe security measures around him, but that still doesn't exclude why they didn't try to at least record some sort of an audio message that would prove that he's alive. And by the way, he has always been a very shadowy figure. As an Iran expert who lives and breathes Iran every single day, I have not heard his voice, uh, you know, never. Oh, wow. Uh, yeah, so it's— he's always worked in his father's office, uh, but from behind the curtain.

But that makes me wonder then, this— his relationship to the IRGC. Uh, a recent bit of analysis I, I did because I was very interested in it was what could Iran look like if he— let's assume that he is alive— what could the Iran state look like under him? Because his relationship with the IRGC seems a lot more complex. And, you know, from a few other Iranian watchers that I've chatted to, a lot of them worry about a sort of security state, a police state where the IRGC has much more of a say, and it's sort of more effectively like a military junta than a purely theocratic kind of system. Is that, is that possible, or does that kind of go against what the Islamic Republic was originally set up to do?

I think that has already happened, you know, because regardless of whether Mojtaba is incapacitated, alive or not, you know, he's not going to have as much power as his father did right out of the gate. It took Ayatollah Khamenei several decades to gain so much power. So he is going to be reliant on those who made him Supreme Leader, And that's the Revolutionary Guards. Those who safeguarded the system in this storm, and that's the Revolutionary Guards. And those who protected the country out of this war, and again, it's the Revolutionary Guards. So by definition, I think he is going to be subservient to them. And that's why I would argue that Ali Khamenei was the last Supreme Leader of Iran. His son is not going to be supreme. So the transformation to a military system running the show in Iran has already happened. Power now is in the hands of Ali Largeni, the National Security Advisor, and Mohammad Bagher Valibaf, the Speaker of Parliament, both of whom are former commanders of the Revolutionary Guards. They have long experience in statecraft as well, but nevertheless, they represent really the Revolutionary Guards. So, you know, this is another irony of what President Trump has achieved by engaging in this war, which is that he has made the organization that is responsible for repression, Iran's nuclear program, Iran's proxies in the region, Iran's missile program, is the most sanctioned entity in the world, designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, Europe. All that is now basically calling the shots in Iran.

So what is the power of the IAGC? Give me a sense of just how far their power goes, because they seem to be the ones giving the statements over the Strait of Hormuz. They seem to control a lot of the money and the institutional frameworks, aside from before the assassination of Khamenei and his inner circle.

Look, the IRGC is omnipotent because it's not just a military force. It's not just men with arms. First of all, it has its own air force, navy, ground force, intelligence, But also it's an economic conglomerate. It controls a lot of the black market, which was developed to go around US and international sanctions. So these guys actually made billions and billions through circumventing US sanctions. It's a little bit like the Russian oligarchs. It's the same concept. And then they have media, media empire. They have television networks, newspapers, social media, cyber companies, startups. Whatever sector of the Iranian society that you put your hand on, whether it's the political system, whether it's governor's office, whether it's the parliament, whether it's, you know, again, the military security apparatus, they are everywhere. And so the Guards itself is about 250,000, and they have about a million-strong militia known as Basij. And that's in addition to other men under arms and security forces, etc., that are aligned with them. They were always number 2 in Iran after Ayatollah Khamenei, but they were totally subservient to him. And now they have the top position.

How much did that change after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani?

It didn't change that much because Soleimani was really focused on the foreign projects of the Islamic Republic. So he was the head of the Quds Force, which is the expeditionary force of the Revolutionary Guards. And it's a small force, it's about 500 people. It's like special forces in the US. And And they were effective because they worked on really personal relationships with a lot of these groups in the region. And he had a strategic vision and was, was good at implementing it. But he wasn't really that much involved in the domestic political scene. That's more, you know, individuals like Ali Vaez and Larijani that I mentioned to you.

Okay. So they're definitely two people to watch, which I will look into myself. One of the things, and it comes back to the broader coalition strategic picture, in a second. But before this, Trump has obviously been tinkering with the idea of ground forces, this idea that maybe the US were to send some kind of limited land operation, which I think is absolutely bizarre, but also doesn't seem very well thought out. This idea of arming the Iranian Kurds as some kind of source of— to stimulate, what, an uprising amongst the Iranian people? That seems to be the mindset here, is it How— talk to me about this scenario, because I think it's rather ridiculous, but I don't even know how to phrase it as a question, to be honest.

Yeah, look, none of, none of, none of this was very well thought through. You know, it's, it's, it sounds and looks like the definition of mission creep, right? You go in and you talk, you think that through the use of air power you can achieve all of your objectives, and then you realise it's not possible, and then you have to put boots on the ground, and then you start thinking by maybe special forces, and then no, it's ground forces. It's a slippery slope, but You know, I do think that there is no way that a land invasion could be on the cards. Iran is, you know, bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan combined. It's a very difficult terrain. It's a country of 90 million. It would really make US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq look like a walk in the park. So it's just not possible. Trump doesn't have the stomach for it. There's no support for it in the US, and the US Army is not ready. I mean, usually you prepare the this kind of operation 6 months in advance, and there is no evidence that they've done that. Now, what I can't rule out is the possibility of using special forces in very specific operations. Several ideas that have been discussed is one, for instance, to put troops on the ground to recover the missing stockpile of highly enriched uranium. That sounds a lot like science fiction because, you know, this, this material is buried underground and it's in an area that there might be some unexploded ordnances, and we're talking about massive bunker buster bombs here, so 5,000-ton ordnances that have to be neutralized. You have to have heavy machinery to excavate the stockpile. Then you, if it's damaged, it actually enriched uranium mixed with air could create very toxic gases that could kill anyone at first contact. So you need to have even specialized equipment. It's very difficult to do. I don't rule it out, but again, And that's the kind of thing that I think people have in mind when they talk about special forces, or that the US would do, or Israel would do what Israel did in Syria in January 2025, which, you know, they sent special forces into a tunnel, which was a factory for building missiles in Syria. And they neutralized it and took a few people from there to question. And, you know, the whole thing took maybe 4 or 5 hours and it was over. The arming of the minorities, I also think it's probably a bit hyped because first of all, this is not the kind of thing that you would leak if you want to do. You just make it happen. If you're leaking it, it's because it's not delivering the result that you want. So you're either trying to force arm the Kurds into doing it, or you're trying to scare the Iranians or distract their attention. The reality is the Kurds would be against very, very difficult odds because they're a small number. The Kurdish minority in Iran is about 10%, and not all of them are separatists. And even some separatist groups hesitate to get involved in this because one of the key figures that Israel has been supporting is the former Shah's son, and the Shah actually stabbed the Kurds in the back. So there is a lot of bad blood there. So the Kurds are very skeptical of Israel's intentions here. Then they would be dealing with Turkey coming in because Turkey doesn't want to see another Kurdish entity controlling territory in the region. And Iranians have also mobilized Shia militias in Iraq to go after the Kurds, and they have their own forces. So it would be an absolute pincer operation against a very small number of Kurdish militants. It really doesn't stand the chance of becoming a successful project. And then you go at the other side of the country, the border with Pakistan, with the Baluchi groups who are also being armed by Israel. Again, the problem there is Pakistan is absolutely against Baluchi groups controlling territory. So even if the Iranians don't do anything about it, Pakistanis will try to take care of that problem. So this is why a lot of these things, I think, are not very well thought through or are kind of like wishful thinking, really.

Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong. Also, from just a numbers perspective, if the IOGC has in the realm of 100,000 to 150,000, we're getting the besieged militia, and of course, the Artesh, or the conventional military, we're talking what, anywhere from 350,000 to 500,000 people who could be part of a defensive force. I'm not I'm not completely fully informed of the figures, but that's a sizable opposition to, to somehow have to galvanize a Kurdish group and then a limited set of special— like, it doesn't speak to me as a viable option whatsoever. But they seem to be—

that's absolutely right. But I mean, the concept could have been that with air support, uh, they would be able to maybe gain control over some territory and then use that as a launching pad similar to what happened in Syria. But again, I think it's more of a mirage than anything that could be implemented on the ground. And by the way, the best way of turning the majority of the Iranian people against any regime change effort is precisely to focus on the minorities, because the one thing that provokes the sense of Persian nationalism more than anything else is the fear of the country's disintegration.

Well, I do want to just touch on this spillover effect for a second because you've obviously outlined a scenario that I've been fearful of, which is if you see a greater set of separatist movements or movements led by separatist organizations, that triggers the, um, relative nation states to get involved, and then suddenly we do have a theoretical World War III in the sense that if Pakistan gets drawn in additional nuke, nuclear, nuclear, nuclear, nuclear capable country that heightens tensions with India last May, we shouldn't forget the border clashes there. It suddenly becomes a lot more complicated. And then on the other side, you meant, but the Kurds and Turkey, does that pull in NATO in any way? I mean, you could argue NATO's already somewhat involved, but I just would love you to unpack a little bit more those dimensions.

Yeah, look, this can draw a lot of other countries in and also sort of emanate outwards in more than one way. So you already have, of course, we know Russia has been helping Iran and targeting US assets in the region. I think China is starting to think about Iran in a very different way than was the case in the past, kind of the reverse of Ukraine, you know, that the West started seeing Ukraine as this bulwark against, you know, an an arch-adversary, a smaller, weaker country that, you know, proved to be much more resilient than expected. I think the Chinese are now starting to look at Iran in that way. And so this has long-term implications. You know, if you have further instability in Iran or the US goes, you know, all out, uses nuclear tactical nuclear warheads, or, you know, in a way dismantles the state in Iran, then you would have a failed state which would create waves of refugees that would make anything else that the Europeans have seen so far pale in comparison. And then, you know, the political implications of that for European states would be, you know, unbelievable. And nobody is really thinking about that at this stage. You have, of course, the risk that at a certain point, the Gulf countries who have been now more on the defensive to decide to go on the offensive. This might happen if there is a high casualty event. This might happen if vital infrastructure is targeted. And then you would have, you know, the Brits and the Germans, the Brits and the French are now protecting the Gulf countries. We've already had several French service members killed in Erbil, you know, so you might have Europeans involved in the middle of a shooting war. Iran has, as we know, targeted Cyprus, the NATO base in Turkey. And so in a way, you might have NATO involved in this in a much more serious way, which again brings up the question of what Russia would do, etc. So, and all of this obviously has, you know, a lot of other countries looking and thinking about the implications. And I give you one example. You know, South Korea, which has now been thinking about getting its own nuclear weapons for some time now, has now seen the US removing the THAAD air defense system, which was based there, moving it to the region. Because the US is running out of interceptors to shoot down Iranian missiles. And, you know, but that— what the signal that that sends to South Korea is that the US is an unreliable security partner, because if it's distracted somewhere else in the world, it would abandon you, you know, or the Gulf countries now have seen the US prioritize defense of Israel over defending them. That's why they've asked the Europeans to come in. So, I mean, like, this is throwing so much in the air that when the dust settles, I think we would have a very different world.

So my last question for you, Ali, is simply one of the key considerations of this is the growing divergence, I think, of the strategic objectives of Israel versus the United States. Operationally, they're largely on the same page, but strategically, there seems to be a growing divergence there. Is this something that Israel really wants to just keep going and sustaining for a while versus the United States that does want this off-ramp, even if they claim to be wanting this for the next few weeks?

Yes, I do believe that there is serious divergence there. For Israel, the end goal is to defeat Iran as a regional adversary in whatever form that takes. If it means that the regime collapses and Iran descends into chaos and civil strife, that's totally fine. If it results in, you know, a sort of post-First Gulf War situation in which you had Saddam remain in place as a wounded regime that has still had the ability to repress its own people but couldn't really project power beyond its borders that's fine too. If, you know, magically you can get the former crown prince to restore the monarchy in Iran, that's also okay. It really doesn't matter what kind of Israel gets, as long as Iran can no longer challenge Israel's dominance in the region. I think that's a good enough outcome for Israel. Trump just doesn't know what he wants. He wanted to try to say that he dare to do what other US presidents have not done without having a clear objective. I also don't think he wants to go as far as creating a situation that would suck the United States in for the foreseeable future. And like state failure, state collapse, those kind of things would create consequences, as I said, you know, waves of radicalization, refugees, instability. That does affect the US interests in the region, does worry US allies in the region other than Israel. And if the current, if Mojtaba is alive and is willing to pick up the phone and give Trump a big, beautiful deal, he would take it. It doesn't matter for him if it's Mojtaba Khamenei or Ali Khamenei or a democratic government. It's just the optics that matter. So there is a divergence. And so, you know, my sense is that after the 12-day war, Trump really felt that he had resolved the problem with Iran for the foreseeable future. But then it was the constant nagging of Bibi Netanyahu that, you know, now they're developing their missile program and, you know, I have to go in and take care of it. It would be best if we could do it together. And Trump finally fell for it. The problem now is that if he ends this war, which has been a costly one for him. And then we'll see what political implications it will have. He probably would be reluctant to do this again in 3 months or in 6 months. Whereas if the regime survives, that is exactly what Israel will want to do. And so, you know, even if they get through this war more or less on the same page, differences might emerge in a few months when the question comes up again.

So either the Islamic Republic is significantly altered, in a much more comprehensive way than it is already, which means that we see this again, which I find impossible to imagine. Or there is a significant disintegration of the system where both sides can claim— but as in Israel and America can claim that they've achieved a comprehensive impact, and therefore we see an Iran that is legitimately no longer competing for that regional hegemonic position like it has been considered to be.

That's right. Yeah.

All right, well, quite the, uh, stark endpoint there to conclude with you, Ali. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure, and, uh, I hope we can have you back in more favorable circumstances. But everyone, do check out Ali's work at International Crisis Group, and do drop the video a like and subscribe if you enjoyed it, and we'll see you all in the next one. Take care.