#428 - Iran's Grand Political Strategy: A Dialogue with Vali Nasr

Hello, welcome to Converging Dialogues. This is Xavier Bonilla. On this episode, I am very excited to bring the conversation I had with Vali Nasr. Vali is the Majid Khaduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He served as the 8th Dean of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies between 2012 and 2019 and served as senior advisor to U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Richard Holbrooke between 2009 and 2011. He received his bachelor's from Tufts University in international relations, and he also has his master's from the Fletcher School of Law in diplomacy and international economics and Middle East studies. And he also has his PhD from MIT in political science. He serves as the co-director of the School of Advanced International Studies Rethinking Iran Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, which is the leading hub for fostering comprehensive and nuanced understanding of contemporary Iran and its regional influence within academia and the public sphere. He's a member of the International Board of Advisors for Blavnik School of Government at Oxford University. International Board of Advisors at the American University of Beirut, Global Board of Trustees of Asia Society, and Board of Advisors in the School of International Studies in Singapore. He's been the recipient of grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council, and was named a 2006 Carnegie Scholar and holds the 2024-2025 Henry Alfred Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the John Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He's advised senior American policymakers, world leaders, businesses, including the president, secretary of state, senior members of Congress, and presidential campaigns. He's written for the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and many others. And he is the author of numerous books, including the most recent, Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History. And that's what we talk about in this conversation. We start by talking about an overview of Iran's political motives and strategy, the impact of the Persian Empire and Shia Islam. We talk about Reza Khan and Iranian nationalism. We talk about the impact of Kemalism, that's Kemal from Turkey, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, the rise of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's relationship with Syria, nuclear power, the future of Iran, and many other topics. I say this in the conversation, uh, and I absolutely stand by this. One of the things I love about his book is that it is talking about contemporary modern Iran, really since around— there's some, you know, kind of a preamble, but mostly from the '79 Iranian Revolution till present day. But the reason I like about, what I like about the book is that it's from Iran's perspective. It's not a US-centric book. Of course, the US is in the book, of course, but it's very much focused on Iran from the perspective of Iran. And I really, really enjoyed that and looked at other aspects of Iran. Again, not always involved with the US. So its relations with Syria, its relation with Iraq, uh, and so on. Um, it's a— it was a great conversation. Vali's wonderful, he's brilliant, and, um, it was nice to— in many ways it felt very conversational, but in many ways it felt really detailed and informational and just, just really, really easy to talk to, but covering so much. Uh, his book reads sort of similar. Um, I love how we started with kind of the historical impacts, but we didn't land too much which is history, ancient history. And I feel like he's, you can hear that he's so well-versed in these topics that he can keep having that macro perspective, but also get into details if needed, which I think is great. Sometimes, you know, this stuff is complicated, a lot of moving parts, and he keeps the big picture and is very, very concerned about Iran and concerned about where it's going. And it will be interesting to see where the future of Iran is headed. I really, really enjoyed this conversation. Learned a lot, of course. And hopefully everyone, all the listeners can see what I mean. And if you want more, absolutely go and get his book. It's fabulous. As always, you can find this conversation and all the conversations at convergingdialogues.substack.com. Thanks to all of my subscribers and, uh, keep them coming. I love seeing new subscribers every week, uh, so tell your friends, make sure you subscribe, uh, means a lot. Also on YouTube as well. And, uh, now I bring you Vali Nasr. I am here with Vali Nasr. Uh, Vali, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. I'm, uh, I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

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

Yes, yes, you are quite the writer. You have a new book out, which I kind of just tore through. I mean, I really couldn't put it down on a topic that's very, very important. The book is called Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History, out through the always wonderful Princeton University Press. So we're going to talk all about it. Before we do, could you just tell listeners a kind of brief snapshot of who you are professionally and academically?

So I'm a political scientist by training. I have worked on politics in the Middle East, issues of Islam's role in politics, and also on US foreign policy on the Middle East. By background, I was born and raised in Iran until I was about 17, 18. And my family migrated to the United States after the Iranian Revolution. So that revolution and everything that's followed since has played a big part in my academic intellectual imagination and in my interests. And most recently, I've been very focused on sort of where the United States and Iran find themselves after 45 years, where Iran's revolution has ended up after over 4 decades, and what I believe is this very critical moment, not only for Iran's history, that is on this sort of a cusp of a major change perhaps, but also that Iran and US are arriving at a very critical point after 4 decades of back and forth. And so I'm very focused on trying to decipher what has happened as well as what we might expect going forward.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I mean, obviously Iran is, well, you know, Iran's always been a powerhouse, right? Had the Persian Empire for many, many, many, many, many years. And, you know, Iran in the modern era has been, of course, a big player. So it's very important, you know, for the globe, but of course for, you know, Iranians around the world, the Iranians that are still in Iran and Iranians that are kind of scattered throughout the world. So it's super important. I was telling you before we started, one of the lovely things about your book, which I think really gives it its distinctiveness you know, at least in something that's come out recently, is most books that, you know, publish here, at least in the US, it's very US-centered, very US-focused. What's the US policy with Iran? What's been our misadventures with them? Or, you know, a lot of the kind of, you know, saber rattling or whatever it is. And this book doesn't really do that. Of course, the US is obviously mentioned in the book at various points, and there's some sections there, but for the most part, it's It's from the perspective of Iran, which I think is really important to kind of allow that story to kind of breathe and not just have filtering it through a very US or even Western-centered perspective. So I think that's what makes it really fantastic. So I guess the first question here is the book is, the subtitle is political history. So really it's about just under 50 years of the history with the revolution in the late '70s. I guess, how does your, in terms of the main thesis of the book, how does your book aim to show the logic, assumptions, and evolution of Iran's strategic thinking, both politically, geopolitically, and I guess even more so culturally as well? What's the main thesis there?

So, I mean, the starting point for me, as you mentioned, is to actually understand the country. If United States, yes, we do have a policy towards the world. We make policies or write books or analyze from our perspective. There are things that the United States wants, and the United States is very clear in terms of what is its national interest and what are its goals. In fact, we're right now in the middle of a debate with the Trump administration in and with the previous Republican Democratic administrations in terms of what is it that we want in the world? How do we pursue it? How do we get it? and we're intensely debating it. But we also understand that the core of it is this notion of national interest. What does a country want and how does it want to realize it? And I don't think we can make policies about other countries, particularly the ones that we don't quite understand and with the ones that we have problems with, if we don't understand how they formulate policy. So it's very easy with Iran often to say, well, it's a theocracy. These guys are religious. They just want to conquer the world. They want to destroy the United States. They want to destroy Israel. They have a kind of a messianic view that is drawn from the religion, and they're illogical, irrational. And I don't think that's very productive. We do not need to like our adversary. We don't need to like their policies. But it's very important to note that we're playing a game of chess. We're sitting on our side of the chessboard, and this is the way we We see the board. And what I want to portray in this book is how do they see the board? Why is it that they're so obsessed with the US? Why is it that they are following the policies that they are in the hope of realizing what their goals are? And in fact, what is Iran's goals? Right? And if you get away from these over-the-top explanations that they just want to destroy Israel and they want to destroy the US because they just don't like us. And they're too religious and their religion is opposed to the West. If you set that aside and say that Iran could potentially, like Russia, like China, like any other state, be a rational actor. So if your people are making national security decisions as rational actors, you have to know what are their assumptions, how do they calculate, and what are the roots of this kind of thinking. So that's really what the book is about. Why does Iran behave the way it does? And my core argument is that this is driven by a particular way in which they see their national security. And this does not come from religion or ideology alone. It has historical roots. And there's also 5 decades of experience with the US, which has basically locked them in, in a view in which they see the United States single biggest threat to Iran. And everything they do is about how do they manage that threat.

So you mean to tell me that the US views sometimes where they completely flatten Iran's politics out, you're telling me that's not correct, right? They're not just a theocracy, right? There's no way it could be more complicated. But of course it is, right? Of course it is. Of course it's with every country. And I, I totally agree I think when we flatten out religious groups or certain countries to just this very kind of reductionistic kind of form, this one-dimensional form, it really does us a disservice of understanding the intentions or goals of another country, adversary or not. But then also, how do you interact with them on a world stage? So this is a really important component here.

Right. And in fact, we ought to think that in order to understand how do they interpret our actions and policies, we have to understand how do they calculate. Let's say President Trump is engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran. So when he puts things on the table, how are the Iranians going to interpret it? Right. How do they, how do they interpret threat? How do they react to threat? How does it change their calculations? So even if you want to be effective with the other side, you have to know how the other side is thinking. What are their theories and calculations?

Yeah, I'll definitely come to kind of the very modern context I have because of some of the recent developments. I am very curious for some of your thoughts. It's kind of very lightly touched on in the book at the end. So I'm a bit curious for your thoughts on that. So just real briefly, because I want to get to the Iranian Revolution, but the backdrop here for listeners that don't know is, you know, as I kind of mentioned in the beginning, you know, so you have the Persian Empire, which is much of modern-day Iran. I think it was much bigger, of course, you know, hundreds of years ago. But Iran, you know, since 1501 continuously, I think under the Safavids, you know, has been a Shia Muslim country. Most people kind of know this or have some idea of this. And, you know, it's a, there's a different lineage from the Prophet Muhammad and how, you know, Islam, of course there are many Islams, but these two big ones here, the Shia and the Sunni. So it's the biggest, one of the biggest Shia countries. How much does that, live in Iran and with Iranians? When you think about your heritage, your culture, your history, civilization from over 500 years ago and previously to that of being such a powerhouse. I mean, for 700 years, the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire were sort of at war with each other off and on for all, we're talking 700 years. And previous to that, it's such an important region, you know, very adjacent to the Levant and Mesopotamia. So there's so much history there. I guess how much of that in a modern state lives in that kind of cultural political impact of what it means to be, you know, an Iranian state now?

I think it has a very significant psychological role for Iranians, whether they're, leaders or people. Iranians have a very acute sense of the fact that they are an ancient civilization, that they are older as an entity, even whether this is imagined or real, but they are older entity than any other state in the Middle East. Because when there was a Persian Empire, there was not an Arabian Empire at that point in time. Right? There was the Roman Empire and then, you know, there was others, but Egyptian Empire, but these were not Arab Egyptians. But you can also see it in Egyptians that they have a sense that unlike other Arabs, they're, you know, 5,000 years old. And so the Iranians have very much, through their culture, literature, history, as well as modern education, internalized the fact that they are an ancient civilization. And it gives them a sense that they have to be given their due on a world stage, but definitely in the region. So in a way, the mindset of the political cultural mindset of Iran is not that different from China or India that don't see themselves as another Asian country, that there's this sense of grandness in them. And that's very important in many ways. But having said that, at least since the rise of Islam, and particularly since 500 years ago, where, as you said, Iran became Shia, and then it became basically— it was encapsulated largely in the geographic confines that it is today, with some shrinkage here and there, that it is also alone in this region. Because the Persians don't speak Persian. Their culture is Persian. They're not Arabs. They're not Turks. And they are also Shia, which means that they are not Sunnis like others, like many of the Arabs and like the Turks. So both by religious identity and by language, they are isolated. There is a strategic loneliness to Iran. So it is in this region, but you constantly, even today, hear the Arabs say, well, Iran has no business in our business, which means that basically it's not part of the family. Or that in Iraq, you know, Iranians support the Shias and we support the Sunnis, right? Now, the irony of this is that actually Iran's kings made Iran Shia the way, let's say, Henry VIII made England Anglican. By choice because they were afraid of Iran being absorbed by the rising Ottoman Empire. And they strategically decided that by changing Iran's religious identity from Sunniism to Shiism, that they would immunize it from being absorbed into the Ottoman Empire or being broken up. So this religious identity of Iran and its also its language, has both been the reason why Iran has survived, but also are a point of vulnerability in a region in which they are alone. And this very much plays in their psychology, because Iran's— I argue in the book that Iran has historically, even before the Islamic Republic, felt as an insecure state. That is threatened by its neighbors, that is threatened by its loneliness. And then ultimately, from the 19th century onwards, that also it was threatened by Western imperialism. And in the minds of the modern Iranians, is threatened by the United States. But this sort of, on the one hand, grandeur of history, longevity of civilization, on the other hand, this being lonely, strategically alone in this region. And so it gives you a sort of a, if you would, a paradox or a schizophrenia between being grand and being vulnerable at the same time. This is a powerful driving force in Iran's political language to this day.

It's interesting because you don't necessarily cover this in the book, but some other conversations I've had on the podcast about this stuff, which is fascinating, is there is a, it's interesting to bring up the Ottoman Empire because you could see it as somewhat of a threat at that period. You know, pre-1500, we're talking, you know, much later now, 8th, 9th century, but you had the, you know, out of the steppes, you had the Turkomans and then you had the Seljuqs and they have this relationship with Iran or Persia and modern-day Turkey. And so the Turks and the Persians have historically an interesting history. But at that point, as you're saying, the Ottoman Empire looked a bit different from what Persia was. And again, Persia had been as an empire much, much longer. And so there's this interesting though historical kind of familiarity, but then there's a difference. And then we see the split there of sorts. So it's a bit of a kind of a footnote here, but that's such an interesting way that history overlaps.

Absolutely, because the Turks that ruled over Iran became Persianized, but the Turks that ruled over Turkey did not become Persianized. So the dynasty that actually fought against the Ottomans and converted Iran to Shiism was an Azerbaijani, I mean, came from, today's Azerbaijan. They were Turkic, the Safavids. And if you look from 1501 to today, overwhelming majority of Iran's rulers during this period are Turkic Azeris, including the current Supreme Leader in Iran and the Iranian president right now. Both are Azeris. Of course, Persianized, they identify with Iran, But their ethnic roots are Turkic. And so it was a Turkic dynasty that shaped modern Iran around Persian, which they absorbed and adopted, and then around Shiism. And the Sabbavids kings made Iran Shia, adopted Persian, and actually often named their children after ancient pre-Islamic Kings, which told you that it's an outsider shaping the identity. So Iran was not colonized by the Turks in that sense, that the Turks became Iranian.

I remember the first time I learned that, my mind was blown. It's just such an interesting, it's a very interesting story over hundreds of years of how that happened. And yeah, kind of, you know, they kind of subsumed that and then, you know, became, you know, Persian, uh, you know, this, in this way where it was, you know, made that way and it wasn't this kind of colonization, which is— you usually see colonization in many places but not in this situation. So again, just a very interesting, uh, exactly, exactly. So fast forward 20th century, you talk about Reza Khan, uh, the counter-revolution 1921, and then a bit further you talk about Mosaddegh. Is this right? They have this long shadow over modern Iran today. Just kind of briefly give us who they are and what their significance is generally for Iran in the 20th century, but then how that builds us up to the Iranian Revolution.

So I think the backdrop to understanding the significance of these figures in 20th century is that Iran went through a long, painful 19th century of dealing with imperialism. Unlike India or many other countries, it was not directly colonized, largely because Britain and Russia could not agree on how to divide it, and each— and the British wanted a buffer between India and Russia, but they deeply penetrated and took over and infiltrated all aspects of Iran's society, particularly economy, pressured the court into all kinds of concessions. Iran was among the very few countries, like Ottoman Empire, like, let's say, Siam, which would then become Thailand, that were never directly colonized. But the Iranians developed a very bitter taste. Towards imperialism. And this obsession with the nefarious hand of Westerners that mean ill for Iran and always are up to no good became deeply ingrained in Iran's political psyche. And then when World War I comes, Iran barely survives because during World War I, Britain and Russia finally agree how to divide Iran along a horizontal line, north and south. And the only thing that prevents that is the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which gives the British pause. And obviously they were not going to cut a deal with Lenin at that point in time. And they begin to actually think that Iran needs to be shored up in order to really be a buffer against communism in Russia. But Iran was a mess during World War I. I mean, the country was about to disintegrate. The best way of thinking what Iran looked like was like, let's say, Afghanistan after the Soviet Union left and the Taliban took over. What we call warlord here, warlord there, drugs, no security, no central government. Iran in the 1920s, kind of a bit in the World War I and immediately after looked like that. And in this melee, you have a military officer who comes from nowhere. He's been trained in a regiment that the British were running by the name of Reza Khan, who was a historic figure, a historic figure on par with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who actually created modern Turkey and prevented Turkey from disintegration after World War I. And Reza Khan takes over Iran, and he does actually the improbable, which is without any foreign support, without any financial backing, with very little resources, he consolidates the Iranian nation-state and prevents its disintegration. He, for instance, defeats all of these local separatists and lawless warlords, prevents the British from carving out Iran's oil province and creating another Kuwait, which the British wanted to do. And then even puts his shoulder to industrialization. And, you know, it begins a lot of things in Iran, begins of a healthcare service, begins of, you know, road networks. He establishes the first university in Iran, Tehran University, which is still there. He basically lays the foundation foundations of a modern nation-state, which is still there. And he emulates next door Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in enforcing secularism on Iran and adopting a sort of a westernized notion of Iranian nationalism, which is around language and ancient Iranian history, and even changes the name of the country from Persia to Iran. To sort of have a new beginning. And then World War II happens. And in World War II, Britain decides that he's just too much of a pain in the neck because he's been fighting against them and pushing them out of Iran. And he's constantly needling them and giving more royalties of Iran's oil back to Iran. And they want an Iran that is pacified. And actually, they look at a railway that Reza Khan, and by now he's called the King, Reza Shah, has built from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. And the British look at this railway and say, this is vital for supplying Stalin's army to withstand Nazi Germany. So they persuade America and the Soviet Union that jointly the Allies should invade Iran and occupy it. And pacify it, even though Iran was neutral in the war, and make sure that it would be, it would be inaccessible to Germany and it would serve as a supply route to the Soviet Union. They removed Reza Khan from power, but they agreed to put his young son, who the West comes to know as the Shah, on the throne. But essentially, Iran becomes an occupied country during the war, which again, you know, as much as people had grown tired of Reza Shah's dictatorship, etc., this was direct foreign interference in Iran, removing its ruler, occupying the country, taking Iran's food and giving it to the Soviet Union or to their own soldiers. The Western troops in Iran were not policing the country. They were just policing the supply network to Russia, which means that All kinds of lawlessness came back to the country, and Iran actually fell into famine. There are historical disputes about how many Iranians died during the famine, but the country was really in a bad shape. Now, World War II finishes, and Roosevelt and then Britain abide by the promise that they made that at the end of the war they would leave. But Stalin won't leave. He sits on two of Iran's provinces, Iran's Kurdish and Azerbaijani province, and basically provides cover for local communist separatist forces to declare independence, much like what he was doing in Eastern Europe. Now, in this particular case, finally Britain and the United States decide that enough is enough. It was because of Iran that President Truman issued his Truman Doctrine. And then it was in response to what was happening in Iran that Prime Minister Churchill in Kansas gave his famous Iron Curtain speech. And Stalin decided that he had too many eggs at play in Eastern Europe and he didn't want to make things more complicated, he withdrew from Iran in 1946. Now, you know, Iranians came out of World War II with two preoccupations. One was that all the bad taste that they had about imperialism in the 19th century and during World War I had become even worse during World War II. And there was very relentless anti-imperialist nationalism in Iran. And then there was this Soviet threat, which was also significant. In other words, Iran in 1946 pretty much had the same feelings that Ukraine has now, right? You have this big vicious bear next door who wants to take your territory away. And much like Zelensky during the Biden period, relied on the West to protect them, the Iranians were looking to America and Britain to protect them. Now, these two trends would play out all the way to the Iranian Revolution. So the monarchy, for the young Shah of Iran then, who was 20 years old when he became monarch in 1941, the formative event in his life was the Soviet occupation. All of his life, he lived next door to the Soviet Union. All of his life, he thought that the biggest threat to Iran is not what happened in the 19th century, imperialism, the United States. The biggest threat to Iran is the Soviet Union. And Iran, whether it likes it or not, has to stay close to the West to protect itself. But there was another strand in Iran that was more focused on anti-imperialism than it was focused on the Soviet Union. And this was represented by the nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who in 1951 would make a big issue of the fact that the British were unfair on the issue of oil with Iran. They were not paying royalties. They were abusive imperialists in dealing with Iranians on on the issue of oil. And they wouldn't negotiate in good faith or didn't want to negotiate at all a new deal with Iran. And so, Mossadegh took the nuclear option here. He basically said, I'm going to nationalize all of Iran's oil. Now, that Mossadegh's calculation was that, Mossadegh's view was that the greatest threat to Iran is not the Soviet Union or not communists, are not Soviet sympathizers in Iran. The greatest threat to Iran is Britain and imperialism. The Shah believed that the greatest threat to Iran— yes, the British are bad, they are doing bad things. In fact, they removed his father from office. But they are not the greatest threat to Iran. The greatest threat to Iran was Stalin, was the Soviet Union. And the entire 1953 debacle, in my opinion, and I articulate this in the book, was not about democracy. You know, or dictatorship. It was really about what is the biggest threat to Iran. Mossadegh thought it's Britain and imperialism. The Shah thought it's communism and the Soviet Union. And the Shah and the Iranian military and the United States increasingly came to believe that the path that Mossadegh was going was going to nowhere. And it was only going to create a circumstance in which the Soviet Union and communism will become triumphant in Iran. And I believe that actually the coup was not hatched by the United States. It was actually hatched by Iranians who viewed Mossadegh as a danger. And it was supported by the Shah, by the Iranian military, which hatched the coup. And then it was backed by the United States and Britain. But the coup was not micromanaged from— or there's a coup that succeeded, was not micromanaged And I think partly we have to accept that Iranians were not just puppets being managed by Washington, that they had a view here. There was a segment of Iranians that saw a national security picture here. But many Iranians over time, and particularly the intellectuals and politicians that would shape the Iranian Revolution, ended up interpreting 1953 as a martyrdom of democracy and as a triumph of imperialism. Right? So for Khomeini, even for today's Supreme Leader in Iran, the lesson of the 1950s to 1970s is that the United States and Britain and imperialism interfered in Iran in 1953 to deny Iranian nationalism and then supported an authoritarian monarchy in Iran. And somehow the Iranian Revolution has now liberated Iran from what imperialism brought to Iran in the 1950s and '60s. And they completely discounted the threat of the Soviet Union. And so, you know, this overhang of what happened in 1953 is still there. It's still in the language of the Islamic Republic. They refer to it greatly. But it's a particular reading of 1953, which I don't think is quite true to what was really at stake at that time.

I mean, obviously the revolution is super critical, but this backdrop gives a lot of context here.

Well, it is important because if gradually between 1950 and 1979, the intellectuals, the political opposition, and increasingly large numbers of middle-class Iranians accept the narrative of the fact that 1953 was an imperialist intervention in Iran, then in their mind, the Pahlavi monarchy had no legitimacy, right? So, you know, here is where we have to understand history matters, not only what happened, but how history is interpreted, right? And there was a particular interpretation of 1953 that took hold, which was not really true to what was at stake in 1953.

Let me, let me— I'm just curious. So here's, here's my— we can talk about the revolution, uh, now, but here's my question. I understand the imperialism thing. I, I get some of that, or at least that view or interpretation of it. But not to directly compare, but you have Atatürk in, in Turkey who, who literally created modern-day Turkey today. They, you know, created, you know, reformed the language and made it different from the Ottoman Turkish. They, you know, all these things. And the idea was to make a secular state, a very cosmopolitan, modern, secular state. That was the idea for Turkey. And to this day, well, granted, it's a Muslim-majority country and they have a, you know, Erdogan is very authoritarian in a lot of ways, There are still a lot of modern secular Turks in Turkey today. And it's, it's, um, it's, it's quite unique, uh, in that regard. And you mentioned, uh, as well, a sort of analog to that, if you will, sort of. Each country is different, of course, different history. But, you know, in, in the '20s, Reza Khan trying to do an idea of this. And even so much so that in the region, people talk about, you know, Kemalism, right, for Atatürk, right, that he created this idea of how do you— post-World War I, the age of empire is over, more or less, quote unquote— but how do you— when you have these nation-states, how do you have secular states? And, and seeing some of the similarities here with Iran, with, with Reza Khan, and then with, uh, Pavli Nasr, the, the Shah, how— what Why did Iran turn one way and a country like Turkey or other countries go other ways when there are similar things at play? It's curious to me why something such as a secular state works in one space and it doesn't appear to in another space. Because again, many people know what Iran was like before the '79 Iranian Revolution. You know, it was more cosmopolitan. It was modern in some ways. The Shah did have a lot of that modernism. Why was there this rejection? And we have since '79, '80 into the current state, a totally different way of how people live in Iran. Tell us about that kind of rejection in the sense of Kemalism or secularism in that region. Why do you think it went that way, I guess?

Well, you know, the two cases are very similar, but no two cases end up being identical. And there are, you know, minor factors that matter. For instance, after World War I, Ottoman Turkey was shattered in the war, but it still had a lot more bureaucracy and institutions than Iran in the 1920s. 1920s had. Iran was a far more backward place in all senses. They didn't have as many roads, as many educated people, as many hospitals. I mean, even Ottoman Turkey was more industrially, et cetera, advanced. After all, it was sufficiently advanced to be a party to a major war in Europe, right? So you could say Kemal had a lot more to work with. Secondly, You could say that Kemal himself, because he was credited with saving Turkey from disintegration, which was the plan of the British and Italians to give Constantinople back to the Greeks and break up Turkey, and he prevented that. Perhaps he had more, more power over the population. You could say that in Turkey and in Sunni Islam, the clerics don't have that degree of autonomy and institutions, right? So, they're more like, let's say, American or European Protestant pastors, right? Whereas the Shia clerics are more like the Vatican, right? And also, they were outside of the control of Reza Shah. A lot of them were in Iraq. They had always played a very popular anti-imperialist role in Iran. On, even in the 19th century, they were a big voice. So the balance of power between Reza Shah and the clerics, Shia clerics, was very different than the balance of power between Kemal and Sunni clerics. And I have to say that Kemalism, we forget, was a very bloody affair. I mean, it killed a lot of people, a lot of people were put to the sword, etc. Thirdly, I would say that Reza Shah's experiment in Iran was interrupted because midway the British took him out. And during that, we forget that during those war years, a lot of the secularism that he was imposing was undone. Like he forcibly made women remove their veil. I mean, 2, 3 years ago, we had Iranian women protesting the veil. In 1935, the shoe was on the other foot. I mean, it was not that Iranian women then wanted to remove the veil. He made, like, Autoturkey made a decision that men's clothing was going to change, women's clothing is going to change, and he deployed the police and the military to forcibly remove veil from women. Okay, it worked, and then the British remove him, so women start wearing it back. The clerics come back. All the political forces that he had put in prison or he was suppressing, they all come back. And they're perfectly free to organize because the British and American and Soviet occupying forces are not really, you know, governing Iran. They're just governing— it's a military occupation. So the genie was back out of the box. When a 20-year-old king comes to power, the young Shah, He cannot reinforce the same things. He's much weaker than his father at the point that he was removed. So had the same thing happened in Turkey, like let's say Atatürk had been taken out without putting a secular successor in his place with full powers, but rather foreign forces occupy, allow all the religious groups to reorganize, all the anti-Kemalist groups to reorganize, perhaps Turkey would have lost its direction. So that intervention was pretty important. Thirdly, the Iranian Shia clergy, going back to the 19th century, always had performed an anti-imperialist function. Whereas the kings were seen to be complicit or permissive of French, Russian, British interest in Iran, the Shia establishment had always stood against foreign interference. And this was not just a theological view. This actually was the political role that they performed as protectors of the Shia community. And increasingly in the 1960s and '70s, their political popularity is ahead of their religious popularity. So one of the reasons they become such an effective force during the Iranian Revolution is because they speak to the political anger that was brewing, and they positioned themselves as anti-imperialist. I mean, look at the current supreme leader in Iran. His anti-Americanism is out of the 1960s. I mean, you know, he's closer to Che Guevara and Fidel Castro than to Shia theology, right? I mean, he's actually read these works very well. That's the mindset. Yeah, right. So, so Iran embraced Kemalism, although Iran is very different from Turkey. But even in the best of circumstances, history interrupted it. Yeah, World War II interrupted it. And it, and it never went back to the sort of vigilance that it existed under Reza Shah.

Yeah, that's very, very helpful the way you lay it out. And it is interesting because, you know, then we You know, we get to the revolution. So, you know, in the United States, we know about the hostage situation. We know about, you know, everyone says this is part of the reason why, you know, Carter, you know, didn't get reelected. You know, we have the US version, we have the US-centered version, which is fine. What I want to know though is the Iranian perspective.

Why—

you, you claim that it ended a monarchy with the Shah. Ended a theocracy, enshrined Islamic ideology, which I think is one of the biggest components there, and really just made the West, so to speak, particularly the United States, an enemy. So what was it about Khomeini that wanted to build this Islamic state politically, culturally? I mean, was it trying to kind of have this renaissance of Islamic civilization of sorts? What was What was that piece of it that he was trying to do there, and how much of Iranian independence was such a critical component of it?

Well, you know, Iran's revolution was a great revolution, let's say on par with Russian Revolution or Chinese Revolution. And these revolutions have utopian views of the world and also dismiss the political order. Overthrew completely. They also dismiss regional orders. They dismiss world order. You know, it's kind of like a volcano, right? It's just raw lava spewing out. But they also try to then consolidate their vision in a new political order. So in the Soviet Union, was in the Soviet state. In China, it was in the Maoist Chinese communist state. So the equivalent of that in Iran was the Islamic Republic. Now, parts of it was Khomeini's thinking that the way he saw it is that the perfect political order is an Islamic state. So the state part is modern. I mean, Khomeini never preached that this is an emirate like the Taliban said, or is somehow a caliphate like ISIS said. He basically, you know, said Iran is a modern nation-state, but its ideology would be Islamic, just like the Soviet state is a state, but it would be defined by communist ideology, that Iran would be a state and it would be defined by this idea of Islamic state. And I think he was as much an Iranian nationalist as you would say Lenin was a Russian nationalist. A Russian nationalist, or Stalin was a Russian nationalist, or Mao was a Chinese nationalist. I mean, for them, these things were not separable. It is not like I'm disowning my country and my nationalism and my national identity, and I'm a citizen of the world. No, my country is my country, but my country is going to be the center of a much larger global movement. Although in time, I think they shrink back into nation-state mold. So, Khomeini, in that sense, conceived of the Islamic State as essentially what would be the product of the Islamic Revolution. But the constitution of the Islamic State, et cetera, was much more a compromise with secular leftists and secular democratic forces who were very active at that time and were very powerful. So in the Constituent Assembly that organized to define the Islamic State, they had a big voice in a way. One thing they all shared, particularly the far left and Khomeini's camp, was this animus towards the United States. And they actually competed with each other in terms of who would be the bigger anti-American force. And in a way, the communists were at the beginning even more emphatic in expelling the United States from Iran in their own way than Khomeini was. But here is why does this make sense to them? Because here is, Here's the overhang of 1953. The Iranian Revolution represented the anger of 1953, represented the worldview of Mossadegh in 1953, that everything in Iran was a struggle against imperialism, right? And the Shah was basically a puppet of imperialism. So the Iranian Revolution was this great drama that had removed the puppet of imperialism and had given Iran true independence. And basically it was a reenactment of what happened in 1953. Then Mossadegh failed. In their mind, the Americans and imperialists brought the Shah as a puppet regime. And now the Iranian Revolution, the Islamic Revolution, had undone that. So it was a reenactment of 1943 with a very different outcome. This time, the anti-imperialists had won, right? And part of the thinking of the Islamic Revolution early on was to prevent the United States from doing what it did in 1953. In the early time period of the Islamic Revolution, it was almost an obsession. The United States is bound to do what it did in 1953. How do we avoid that fate? And all of this sort of culminates in the hostage crisis, if you would.

Yeah. That's, yeah. So tell us about, that's very interesting. I like the backdrop of '53, kind of spelling it out there. I mean, how does it culminate with the hostage crisis? Obviously it's not the whole thing. It's sort of a representation of it, How is that though the last nail in the coffin, so to speak, of any pragmatic engagement with the US, including really until today? Now maybe it's a little bit more different past 10, 15 years, but I mean, Iran government and the state has had some of the most strongest words against the United States even until today. So yeah, how did this kind of just reach the boiling point, the hostage crisis of all things? It could have been anything, but it was this.

Well, that became more happenstance. In other words, an event happens, and if I can borrow a sort of a term from a popular children's book, a series of unfortunate events. That sort of culminates in a major historical shift. So actually the first attack on the American American Embassy happens very soon after the success of the revolution and is carried out by Marxist guerrillas who attacked the American Embassy. And the United States still had an ambassador in Tehran, Ambassador Sullivan. And there's a picture that they are holding a knife to his neck in the courtyard of the embassy. And then the revolutionary government formally, including Khomeini, orders the Marxist guerrillas to leave the embassy. But already the issue of attacking the United States' presence in Iran directly was on the table. And it's not the religious guys that put it on the table. It was the secular Marxists who put it on the table. But the issue was on the table. Now, then I think the The key events that happen is that the United States tries to engage the moderate faction of the revolution, which was basically the prime minister's office. These are people who are leftover of the 1950s democratic forces. Tries to engage them to see whether there is a way to build ties with the new revolutionary government in Iran. The moderate revolutionaries welcomed this because their view was not like Khomeini's or the Marxist guerrillas. They wanted to say, okay, we overthrew the Shah. Now, how do we get back into the international community as a sort of a democratic Islamic government? I would say these are the equivalents, if you're familiar with the Russian Revolution, of Kerensky in Russia before Lenin took over. Now, they meet with the Americans. The United States, still at an embassy, The United States was very interested in CIA gaining access to listening posts they had on the Soviet-Iranian borders that were monitoring Soviet nuclear testing and deployment. The sensitive listening posts they had in Iran. And in exchange, they basically are offering Iran intelligence aid, varieties of things. Now, the revolutionaries, Khomeini and the Marxist left, but Khomeini basically disapproves of this. To him, it looks like the US is trying to find a way to bore into the revolution and corrupt it and basically find a footing in Iran. So he's very suspicious of this. Now, in the middle of this, there is a funeral of the president of Algeria, And both this moderate Iranian prime minister and national security advisors Bigniew Brzezinski are attending. And Brzezinski meets with this Iranian prime minister in Algiers. That to me is the single biggest reason why the hostage crisis happens. Because among the revolutionaries, they say, aha, that is how the Americans are trying to redo 1953. They basically are busy recruiting operatives. They're trying to recruit a faction of the revolution to basically become theirs. And then in the middle of this, the Shah falls ill with cancer. And Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller persuade Jimmy Carter that he's been a friend of ours, he's dying, he needs medical care. We want to take him, bring him to New York for treatment. And Carter says, fine. Now, with the Shah coming to New York, again, the sort of the antennas go up in Iran. You know, these guys have been reaching out to the government. Brzezinski has met with the Iranian, moderate Iranian prime minister, and now they're bringing the Shah to New York. There definitely is a coup plan. And they react to this by essentially a group of students With the blessing of Khomeini, as I articulate in the book, it was kind of like a don't ask, don't tell. Don't ask Khomeini point blank, just go get the embassy. And then they take over the embassy. And the takeover of the embassy basically has a number of consequences. One is that effectively the American embassy is shut down. So the Iranians think that if these guys were were busy planning a coup, and their embassy would have been ground zero for managing the coup. We've taken over the ground zero. And then they basically gradually begin to bring more and more people into the streets to chant anti-imperialism and anti-Americanism, right? That as a way. And what they find out is that they hit a gold mine. They hit a gold mine because the United States now, and then we used to have only 3 television channels and it was not much option. And all 3 of them after like 8, 9 o'clock was just coverage of Iranian Revolution. And yes, they were saying nasty things about Iran. Like these guys are nutcases and they're fanatics. But at the same time, they were repeating the 1953 '53 story from an Iranian revolutionary perspective, that you brought the Shah, you did this, you're up to no good. So in a simple explanation of why they hate us, the media basically kept saying, well, it's all because in 1953 we staged this coup. So they found it actually very beneficial that their narrative is being broadcast for free every night in the United States. For 444 days, for over a year. There was no news blackout. There was no sort of saying we're not going to cover them. We covered them copiously. And then at the same time, they began to organize more and more crowds in the streets for the media to have something to broadcast back home, right? So we were seeing these frenzied crowds in the street, but But 444 days of continuously drumming anti-Americanism into the public had two consequences. One is that the Islamic Republic managed to mobilize its population around the hostage crisis. And it actually found this to be good because it was inoculating its population against any kind of American ability to operate in Iran and change the regime by this frenzy. So the frenzy was not just for the fact, for show. It was actually a strategy of making Iran indigestible by the United States, make the United States not think about possibility of a coup, of a regime change. But also they found that it was a fantastic way of organizing the public in support of the Islamic Republic. And it's in fact during the hostage crisis where we're only focused on the hostages and the sins that we committed in 1953, that there is a massive street civil war between religious militias and the Marxist and leftist militias, and they get vanquished. So during those 444 days, you also have a consolidation of the revolution revolution under the control of the Islamic faction of the revolution, which also becomes more radicalized as a consequence of the entire episode. Now, when the dust settles, when the hostages are released, there are certain facts on the ground. The Americans have become enormously bitter about Iran. It's a humiliating experience that changes the direction of American politics. I mean, Reagan comes to power out of that humiliation with very different consequences. Jimmy Carter is defeated. There's a generation of Americans that hold grudge with Iran over what happened in 1953. And in the meantime, in Iran, you basically have now dug in the system into virulent anti-Americanism. Islamism that has been, you know, put on the streets on a daily basis. It becomes part of the language of the Islamic Republic. It becomes, after drilling it in your population after 444 days, then it becomes something they can't back away from. And also it gives them an ability to tell their population, look, we defeated America. They wanted to carry out what they did in 1953, but this time we prevented from doing it. And so it becomes also a moniker of power and capability by the Islamic Republic, for the Islamic Republic. And so it's a decisive moment in which America's hands are cut off from Iran. Anti-Americanism becomes a fact in Iranian politics. And also, the United States gives up on the idea that it can change the regime in Iran or change the Islamic Republic, at least for a generation or two. And the Iranians feel also supremely confident in having, in their minds, survived what might have been an American attempt to overthrow the revolution. And they feel they can come out of it much stronger with their people and organize the people much more actively and aggressively around the Islamic Republic itself.

Based on '53, you could see why there's such a paranoia from Iran. But was there actually a coup the US was trying to do in '79? No.

No. But you see, this is—

But it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter because it's in the minds of the intellectuals, of the political elite of— and these are young political elite who've just taken over— and their minions, like Khomeini's older man, but, you know, Khamenei and all of these people are much younger people who are actually believing in their reading of 1953. And they believe in that this is a struggle against imperialism and that imperialism will never tire of removing you. These are all sort of myths that they have built themselves, and they are prisoners of it. But at the same time, it's also very obvious that we shouldn't look at 1953 as, sorry, in the hostage crisis, as only an ideological issue or a theological issue. This becomes basically a national security issue. Issue, because in their mind, they're protecting Iran from American interference. But the more they make it about the United States, the more drill this into the psyche of the revolution that the single biggest threat to Iran is the United States.

Well, I mean, and I can, I could see kind of boots on the ground, if you will, how that's a convincing argument. I mean, the United States in the '50s and '60s, I mean, and even after, has, you know, nation-building, very imperialistic. I could see for the average Iranian how that could be convincing. It's like, yeah, look, look how they do things around the world. Yeah, look what happened in '53. I could see that propaganda taking, taking hold. I guess I, I was— I had like kind of remembered this, but then like you— I read about it in the book shortly after and it just kind of blew my mind. You immediately pivot us to the war between Iran and Iraq from 1980 to 1988. I mean, this is a wild time. You got all this stuff with the hostage crisis, with the US, with the Shah, with all these things, and then immediately— now granted, nobody knows that a war is going to be 8 years, which is a very long time, But there's this war with the neighbors in Iraq. And again, there's all these complications, politically, religiously, ethnically. There's a lot of mess here. How is this also bubbling on the sidelines as well? People don't just start a war overnight necessarily. What was kind of happening also in Iraq while all this hostage stuff in the United States, anti-American thing was happening as well? What was the story of how this happens in 1980?

Well, Iran and Iraq had been rivals in the 1960s and '70s. They had border disputes. There was an arms race between them. The Soviet Union supported Iraq and the United States supported Iran. Iran's arm buildup in the '70s was justified by the threat that it faced with Iraq. And then in 1975, Iran managed to to get the upper hand with Iraq, supporting the Kurdish rebellion there. And Saddam Hussein came to the table and signed the peace treaty with the Shah. But then when the Iranian Revolution happened, and I covered this in the book, a sort of bunch of motivations emerged in Saddam's mind. One is that, you know, Khomeini is executing Iranian generals. Iran's military is in a mess. The country is in in a revolution, and whatever ambitions he had about Iran, taking its territory, settling scores, et cetera, this is the perfect time to do it. And we all know from even later history that Saddam had Napoleonic ambitions.

Oh yeah.

To be the great power in the region, eat Kuwait, but this starts really with Iran, that he basically says, this is the moment for the Arabs to defeat the Persians, for us to take chunk of territory from Iran. But added to this is that he's really afraid of Khomeini. We found out after we invaded Iraq, after the US invaded Iraq, that majority of Iraq's population are Shias. And here you have a Shia revolution in Iran. When the Shias are looking at Iran and they're seeing somebody with a turban running the country, and they may actually get ideas of their own which could destabilize Iraq. And he becomes really worried. That secular Iran, everything would be about Arab versus Iranian. But a Shia Iran, the boundaries of identity would be confusing for Iraqis, and Iraq may succumb to this. And he decides that the best thing is to preemptively attack Iran and hope that Khomeini would fall from power. So in September 1980, he invades Iran. So this invasion happens. The interesting thing is that the invasion comes during the hostage crisis. And the Iranian conclusion is, at the elite level of the revolution, is that, okay, the Americans don't have an embassy. They can't do what they did in 1953. They're trying now to overthrow the revolution through Saddam. So they actually see the Iraq War, whatever Saddam's motivations are, to be really an American project. That's the way they see it. So yes, it creates anti-Iraqi feeling, but it plays into this again that the greatest threat to Iran is America. Is the West. But there are things about the Iraq War that are very important, which I argue in the book, that ultimately, you know, the revolution gave birth to the Islamic Republic, but it's really the Iran-Iraq War that shaped the Islamic Republic. You know, every leader, major leader of the Revolutionary Guards, the Supreme Leader of Iran today, et cetera, came of age during the Iran-Iraq War. The war came very early in the revolution. These guys had not yet got their feet wet in statecraft. I mean, imagine the current Supreme Leader in Iran, you know, yes, he'd gone to prison under the Shah for demonstrations, et cetera. But, you know, when he became a statesman, quote unquote, after the revolution, his first encounter was with the Iran-Iraq War. He was head of the parliament's defense committee. He was deputy minister of defense. And then he becomes president of Iran between 1980 and 1989, during which time he is overseeing the war. The formative period for him becoming the ruler of Iran is during the war. You could say this about all the major commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, like the famous Qasem Soleimani. You know, he was a 17-year-old war volunteer. For 7, 8 years, he fought in the war. He learned his craft during the Iran-Iraq War. So in very sort of basic ways, The structure of Iran was shaped by the Iran-Iraq War. For instance, the Iranians very early on learned that the Shah's army was a classic army. It was based on tanks and artillery and battle formations that required continuous supply of weaponry and war material from the West. And that supply wasn't coming anymore, right? Because Iran was under sanctions. So they had to resort to guerrilla warfare. So the Revolutionary Guard was born out of necessity in Iran.

This is where you say that there was trench warfare that was still used during this war, which was— I didn't realize that. That's very surprising.

Well, yes. And then there's the whole magnitude of the war. So when you look at the 8 years of war, I mean, these are facts that in the West sort of went under the radar. The largest trench warfare since World War I, the largest tank battles since World War II. The most open, prolific use of chemical weapons since World War I, which was used by Iraqis. Iran lost something like 250,000 to 300,000 casualties, people who died in the war. You know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands more were maimed for life. Over 16,000 civilian Iranians died in aerial bombings or during the invasion. Large numbers of Iranians were displaced from the border areas to other parts of Iran. Iran lost probably about $160 to $180 billion, and that's the 1980s dollars, in infrastructure damage to the country, and perhaps much, much more in terms of opportunity costs of being cut out of the oil markets for a period of 10 years. So it was a humongous war that impacted the country in large and small ways. In other words, relationship between the state and its core constituencies was shaped during the Iran-Iraq War. The welfare systems, the entitlement programs, the overwhelming reliance on creating ideological vigilance because they needed volunteers for the war. So they had to keep harping on ideology. And then the mindset of the leadership, for instance, Iran came out of the Iran-Iraq War believing that it was alone, that everybody supported Saddam. Europeans, Americans, Arab neighbors, they all bankrolled him. They all gave him money. And that they learned that they didn't win the war because of everybody supporting Saddam. And also they learned that everything they got to do, they got to do on their own. Nobody's going to sell them anything, which we now see that they build their own missiles, their own drones, their own nuclear program. This all comes out of the psychology of the Iran-Iraq War, that they have to rely on themselves to do things. And so The war basically shapes Iran in very critical, very critical ways. And the main institutions that are running Iran now, their understanding of national security, international affairs, relationship of society to state, organization of the economy, they all come out of their experience of the war years.

You mentioned the big thing is this sacred and strategic defense for Iran and that that sacred defense becomes a part of their identity, their Shiism, this idea of zealotry and sacrifice, which are big themes. And curiously, Khomeini dies, and then we have the current leader at the moment who becomes into power. How did things start to really look different? So this war shaped kind of modern Iran, but It's really the current Supreme Leader. He goes from clerical scholar and jurist to him above religion and state. And so he completely restructures. So he becomes the Ayatollah. He becomes a Supreme Leader and this mix between politics and religion. Talk about that transformation, because that's literally how it still is today. Explain this.

So, I mean, you know, he was never a very senior cleric. In terms of accomplishment, I mean, in a Catholic, if I can say, parallel, he was never a cardinal, or at least cardinal that deserved that position. He was a bishop, a priest. But then, you know, he's elevated to supreme leader largely because Islamic Republic is a state. It cannot be run by academics and scholars, et cetera. It needs people who actually can run things. And I think Khamenei, consolidates more powers in the office of the Supreme Leader because unlike Khomeini, his own charisma and authority doesn't cut it. So he's powerful by virtue of the office that he holds. And that office basically has command over government, military, economy, judiciary, and all the other sort of parastatal institutions like entitlement programs, foundations, et cetera. But I think in his own mind, and I argue in the book, he sees himself more as a commander-in-chief of Revolutionary Guards and security forces than he sees himself as an ayatollah, right? But his vision of Iran's national security forced before the revolution, but particularly during the Iran-Iraq War, is that Iran is under a national security threat by the United States and its neighbors, who are mostly puppets of the United States in his view. And that what allowed Iran to survive the Iran-Iraq War was this tight relationship between the people and the state. And that relationship was facilitated by ideology. So the fact that hundreds of thousands of Iranians volunteered and died in the war was because of ideological religious commitment. And therefore, I think under Khamenei, ideological commitment is not ideological commitment that is shaping national security and national behavior. It's national security that necessitates being ideological. I give you an example that recently when we had these protests in Iran against head covers, etc., some of Khamenei's supreme leaders as allies said, well, if we allow libertine behavior among the youth, then Who is going to go defend the country? It's a very interesting justification for why you should maintain hijab.

Yes.

You know, the reason why we shouldn't give up on hijab and these Islamic dictums is not because it's written in the book, because it's a matter of national security. Because during the Iran-Iraq War, it was faith that led 17, 18-year-olds to go fight. And so So Khamenei is basically created, when the war ends, there's this debate in Iran that whether Iran should begin to normalize gradually. This is captured by generations of Iranian moderates and reformists, down to the ones that are negotiating nuclear deal today, who basically say, we need to be less vigilant on ideology. We should talk to America. We should have relations with Europe. We should become more like Deng Xiaoping's China rather than Mao's China. And Khamenei basically said that, no, that would compromise Iran's national security. Because two things happens. Once you open up, first of all, the Americans will be back in, right? And that the whole purpose of what we've done is to kick them out. That's what has protected us is that they don't have a base here. If you let them have a base here, then we're back to 1950s and '60s. And they'd be up to no good. Secondly, if you open up and you give in on your ideology, who's going to defend us next time when we come under attack? So in a way, the Islamic Republic we see today is an Islamic Republic that national security has created, not ideology. Ideology is necessary for this kind of vigilant national security posturing.

It does now seem that kind of way of thinking very antiquated. I mean, the way it reads now is it's very, like you were saying earlier, very stuck in the '60s. I do want to come on to the nuclear question, but real quick. So there's been a few alliances made, and it's very relevant right now, so you can just give the brief snapshot, but I'm curious about this. What's this relationship between Iran and Syria? It's a very interesting dynamic between both Khomeini and Khamenei right now, and the relationship with Assad the dad and Assad the son, who recently was, who just was, you know, taken out or, you know, removed or whatever it was. What was that? What's the relationship been like with Syria? Because I mean, the two, the dad and the son, have basically ruled in a dictatorship over Syria for, oh goodness, 50-plus years. So yeah, what was that like? And with recent developments with an interim government, it's a very fragile state at the moment, and the Syrian people are trying to decide for themselves how they want to do things. But it's a sensitive time in Syria. What do you think is the current situation in Syria, how that impacts that relationship with Iran? What's the story here?

Well, you know, Iran's relationship with Syria goes back to 1970s under the Shah. And it's the most, it's the longest sort of period of strategic relationship Iran has had with any Arab country. And the basis of it was the enemy of your enemy the enemy is your friend. Both Iran and Syria viewed Iraq as the enemy. And in the 1970s, when the Shah had problems with Saddam, Hafez Assad, the father, Assad the father, also had problems with Saddam. There was this Ba'athist rivalry between Ba'athist Syria and Ba'athist Iraq. And Syrians became close to Iran. And that closeness with Iran also created, even under the Shah, some kind of a relationship between Lebanon, Iran, and Syria, a sort of a tripartite. And then when Khomeini comes to power and the Iran-Iraq War happens, Syria doesn't want Iraq to win the war, because then they would say, then Iraq will become unmanageable for Syria. So throughout the Iran-Iraq War, the Syrians maintained large numbers of troops on Iraq's borders, preventing Iran to focus on Iranian border. And then Iran creates Hezbollah, supports Hezbollah, and this sort of a tripartite relationship between Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran strengthens. And this continues all the way until the Arab Spring in 2010, when you have these uprisings in Syria. So Iran then basically tries to save Assad, fully well understanding that if Assad falls, that then, you know, the strategic landscape changes. And they're successful. They're successful in defending Assad. They're successful at defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq. But then I think they overplay their hand. They basically— it's no longer a relationship just between Damascus and Tehran, but they try to actually use Syria as a base of operations against Israel. And that creates a situation where they begin to lose control. And then everything in Syria changes. Now, Syria, as you said, is in a flux. But, and also the same argument no longer holds. In other words, there's not an animosity between Iran and Iraq would justify Iranian-Syrian collaboration against Iraq. In fact, it's the other way around now. Iran and Iraq are very close. And now, Syria is with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. So the strategic landscape has changed. But, you know, this whole latter chapter of this goes to, again, the way in which Iran viewed having a foothold in the Arab world, in Lebanon first and then in Iraq, as a way of protecting itself, not fighting on its own borders, using the methodology of the Revolutionary Guards fighting during the Iran-Iraq War, war to create these militias that don't need tanks and aircraft and large equipment, but are versatile and could be very effective. Now, you mentioned that the Islamic Republic's strategy is out of date. And that's exactly the case. So in a way, it's not only that Iran has overstretched itself with Israel and with Hezbollah, et cetera, and it's all unraveled. I think the Achilles heel, the real Achilles heel for Iran is that the national strategy that Khamenei conceived after the Iran-Iraq War, which was based on a national security that relies on ideological vigilance of the population, is not there because the Islamic Republic has lost its population. It cannot follow a strategy that requires ideological commitment to the state. And so the population's exhausted. The state can no longer manage what it did in the 1980s and 1990s and even the 2000s. And so even if it's going to be anti-American, even if it's going to continue in viewing the United States as a threat to Iran, it cannot follow the way in which it tried to contain American presence. And that actually is what makes the nuclear deal very critical. 'Cause they have been trying to use the nuclear deal, both in the first nuclear deal and in the current nuclear deal, as a way of arriving at a de-escalation deal with the US.

Yeah, so tell us about this. This is the last kind of topic I wanted to touch on towards the end of the book. Is, you know, I remember, you know, so Ahmadinejad comes into power in 2005, I think is what it is. A very interesting person, I have to say, he's very interesting. He said some strong words against the United States and all these things. But, you know, some pragmatism in Iran. But I remember in Obama's speech, what did he say? It was a very nice way of saying that he He said, "We'll outstretch our hand if they unclench their fist," or whatever it was. It was very nicely said. So we get this nuclear deal in 20— was it '14? I think that's right.

It's 2015.

2015, excuse me, yeah. And I remember it was, I think, the defense minister in Iran or whatever it was, and it was the Secretary of Defense and Secretary Kerry and everybody. Everyone was trying to get it to go, and we did. We did have some deal there. And then Trump comes in and says, you know, we sold the house to them, we didn't get all these things, and rips it up and all these things. And then, you know, literally Trump 2.0 is literally doing the same structure of the deal that was there, the one that he criticized and torn up. I don't know if it's just a rebrand like he does most things. I don't know what's going on, but tell us this story. Why did Iran open up? Was it Ahmadinejad that was trying to push this? Was this, you know, the ayatollah saying, okay, fine? Like, you know, if he's had this such an anti-American stance, was it something about Obama and his stance of how he was trying to do things? And then, yeah, tell us about the details. Why was it such a controversy? Why did it get so much criticism from, from people on the right? You know, because historically people see Democrats in the United States, or people on the left, as, as more dovish, and obviously people on the Republican side is more hawkish, right, on certain things. So yeah, what was the details of it? And then, yeah, and then just bring us to the current moment where, like, what— I, I was very surprised. I was like, am I in the Twilight Zone here? Like, what is happening? Like, with all that stuff. So yeah, what's the story with nuclear arms with the US and Iran here?

So, you know, the origins of an Iranian nuclear program goes back to the Shah. He's the one who actually first created it, then he was in abeyance. And then when Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran, even after the war ended, the Iranians came to the conclusion that Saddam will be back, and next time he might use even more dangerous weapons or use more chemical weapons. Lucky for them, Saddam decided to first go into Kuwait and put himself in trouble with the US. And so that was actually a very important breathing space for Iran. But the program was there. Now, the program came to light when the United States went into Iraq in 2003. It became revealed. I think from that point on, initially, the Iranians were always willing to deal on their nuclear program. In fact, in 2005, '06, 3 European foreign ministers went to Iran and negotiated the deal with the government then, which was still, I think, the Khatami government. It was before Ahmadinejad came in. And the Europeans signed the deal. Iran had very few centrifuges then, no more than 100. Than, I don't know, 20 centrifuges. The US said, no, I don't accept the deal. He said something that President Trump's team has been saying. Iran should give up the right to enrichment altogether. Zero. Zero enrichment. And we're not going to accept the deal. I think the Iranians decided that the reason that the United States was so dismissive is because the program is too small. They were not, I don't think Iran even to this day has decided to build a bomb. If they wanted to build a bomb, they would've very quickly built it and we would've not known about it. I think they see the nuclear program as the only thing that captures the US attention and brings it to the table. And if they want to lift sanctions, if they want to back the United States off, if they want a de-escalation, the only thing the US may budge on is the nuclear issue. So the Iranians throughout the Ahmadinejad years began to aggressively expand their program. More and more centrifuges. Meanwhile, Israeli saber rattling. Israeli prime minister says Iran is 6 months away from a bomb, a year away from the bomb, which actually was not a bad thing for Iranians because it made the Iran issue more urgent. Now you have a president Obama, who got elected on essentially an antiwar ticket at a time when the Iranians— sorry, the Americans have soured on the experience of the Iraq War. They don't want another war. Obama wants to focus on Asia. So he basically says, okay, you know, I need to deal with this Iranian nuclear program because the only thing that could take us to war again in the Middle East is Iran's nuclear program. Iranians are not being sensitive First of all, I'm going to escalate sanctions on them so the Iranians realize that, you know, the pressure is going to go up. They have to come to the table. But at the same time, they did look at Obama and find him as trustworthy. Obama said a few things in speeches. First of all, he used the name of the country, like called them Islamic Republic of Iran rather than the regime or the mullahs. He very clearly in letters communicated with the Supreme Leader, said he's not after regime change. He wants to talk about only this issue. And so the Iranians thought, okay, we have leverage. We have 120,000 centrifuges. Why don't we go and negotiate with the Americans? So they negotiated for 2 years, marathon negotiations. The outcome was JCPOA, or this first nuclear deal. The Americans thought it's a bad deal, or at least The opponents thought a bad deal. He had opponents in Iran who thought it's a bad deal. The Iranians didn't lift sanctions. In fact, even during the Obama years, not many sanctions came off. And then Trump comes in and he comes out of the deal. So for the Supreme Leader, this was proof that America's up to no good, right? It sort of validates everything he feels, like we can't trust trust them. They're not after the program. They're after the regime. They don't want a nuclear deal. They want to, you know, you give them a nuclear deal, then they're going to come after something else and something else. And then ultimately nothing's going to change until they topple the Islamic Republic, right? So the Iranians, you end up in a period of maximum pressure sanctions on Iran, but at the same time, Iran becomes more and more defiant and expands its program further. And again, you know, the lessons learned by Iran is that the US only pays attention when they make their program bigger. I mean, that's what brought Biden to Vienna talks is when Iran went to 60%, right? And so I think for Iran still, the nuclear program is leverage to achieve de-escalation with the US. To get some economic breathing space that would allow them, allow the Islamic Republic to continue. They're not looking after a peace deal normalization of relations. They're after an arms control deal that actually addresses their national security issues, right? And helps regime or country survival, however way you want to cut it. So now they have even a bigger program. They're negotiating again. Again, the issue is that the US is worried about a bomb, and Iran says, we don't, we're not building a bomb, and if you want us to have a smaller program, you need to lift these sanctions, right? And so—

Why do you think Trump has changed his tune from, you know, Trump, first-term Trump, it was, this is Obama's thing, we got screwed on this deal, we tear it up, whatever, You know, okay, you know, 10 years later it's the same deal essentially, and then he's trying to, you know, do his rebrand. Why do you, why do you think?

Well, I don't think he's changed his tune. I think he always wanted to do it. He just didn't want Obama's deal. I mean, there are a couple of things. First of all, uh, he, he campaigned against the deal and then he came in and then he was much weaker vis-à-vis the neocons and opponents of the deal. All of these senators who were his buddies, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, Pompeo became his, you know, Secretary of State. And he was under pressure that you need to undo the deal. Secondly, President Obama had two major legacies. One was the healthcare bill and one was the nuclear deal. And he was committed to undoing them. But he wanted his own deal. As soon as he came out, he wanted his own deal. He said, I'm gonna put maximum pressure until they come back to the table. And then he continuously wanted to meet the Iranians. He sent the French president to the suite of the Iranian president at the UN. I want to talk to him. He invited Iran's foreign minister to come to the Oval Office, right? But the Iranians, number one, didn't trust them. In fact, it raised the distrust. Secondly, I think they thought that they needed to rebuild their leverage before they went to the table. So when he came back in, He wants to talk again. Now the Iranians want to talk because they've lost Syria, they've had these protests inside Iran, but also because their nuclear program is even bigger. So they have more to negotiate with, right? In their mind, they're not as weak as they were in 2018 when Trump came out of the deal, because at that point they'd done their part, they dismantled a lot of the program, and then Trump basically did a turnaround. But I think in the mind of many average Iranians, They want relations with the West. Even some of their politicians want— they hope that this is a beginning of change, massive change in Iran and relations with the West. But even for the Supreme Leader, I think the nuclear deal is a point at which, as I said, they can manage the United States and this relationship better. They can get less sanctions, more economic engagement with the world. A de-escalation of tensions with the US. So I think the nuclear deal for Iran is not right now about weapons. It's about addressing all the national security issues that we talked about. It's a lever in the hand of the regime to stabilize itself.

I could totally see that. That's very interesting. So my last question is, what does a post- does, you know, Khamenei world look like? You know, is there a space where we see a more secular Iran? You know, he's 86. I mean, he's, you know, is there a third Supreme Leader in the wings, or is Iran going to decide, look, we're done with that, we're in a modern place, let's do it differently? I'm not saying necessarily a democratic state, but do it differently. And do you feel like these, you know, these 22 protests that are still more or less ongoing, you know, women cutting their hair, taking off the covering. You know, there's been some— this is— I, I read this from, from some activists, you know, horrible things, you know, uh, artists and journalists and women, they disappear, they're killed, they're murdered. I mean, it's horrible things that happen inside Iran to many people, you know. Do you feel like that motivation that's been going on in Iran is like, we're kind of tired of this, this generation, we're kind of tired of this antiquated way of doing things So yeah, what do you feel is the future of Iran?

So I would say, you know, the Iranian people, and in fact many within even the Islamic Republic's bureaucracy and leadership, believe it's time for fundamental change. I mean, first of all, the Iranian society is already very modern. I wouldn't use the term secular necessarily because that makes it always about religion, but they're very modern, you know, in their taste, in their cosmopolitanism, in their knowledge of AI. They're very different from the Chinese population or the Soviet population when Gorbachev came to power or where Deng Xiaoping came to power, where the leadership was more modern and understood the future and had to bring the population. In Iran, the population already is is ready to engage the world. I mean, there are counterintuitive things about Iran, like Iran is a totally cashless economy. Everything is already digital. It's a highly digital society. Everything that you have in the West, from Amazon to Uber, has an Iranian version, right? So this society is ready. In fact, it's more ready to be engaged be integrated in the global economy than some of its neighbors are, the society of a lot of the neighbors are. But, so I don't think the Islamic Republic can continue in its current form because the population not only is already ready to be part of the world, it's no longer ideological. It also no longer subscribes. There's a constituency that does, but it no longer subscribes to sort of that the greatest national security threat to us is the West, or that we need to be isolated to protect ourselves from the West, or we need to be ideological to protect ourselves. They don't buy into these things. They don't support it. They want, even if the West is a problem, they want it to be solved the way the Turks, the Russians, the Chinese, etc., have solved it. Talk to them, have embassies, You know, you don't need to be, look at China, it doesn't need to be pro-Western, but it doesn't need to be anti-Western, right? There is a happy medium. Now, the key question is what's the mechanism and what's the modality, right? Is it when Khamenei dies, it's kind of like when Mao died, when Brezhnev died, that you have a period of gradual opening? Is it going to be all of a sudden? Is it going to be gradual? So I think many Iranians think that they want to transition to something better. I don't think they necessarily want democracy. Yes, democracy would be very good, but I think the top priority is they want a normal state in which they're not sanctioned, that they're open to the world, they can travel, they can interact with the world, and they can basically be governed by rules that are not that are not the ones that they are there. So that's why, for instance, Mohammed bin Salman or these leaders actually have more popularity than necessarily democratic leaders, because what they want is basically that kind of modern engagement. And many of them sort of envision a China model. See, in China, you still have the Communist Party, but it's not the Communist Party of Mao. So it's not— the future may be no longer Islamic Republic, a completely different form of government, but it may very likely also be still called the Islamic Republic, still even have a supreme leader, kind of like a Queen of England, but it fundamentally transforms. But for that transformation to happen, its national security outlook has to change. It has to come out of this bunker mentality that developed after the revolution, that we're in a bunker defending ourselves against the West, right? And in my opinion, the nuclear deal is the pathway to that, because in order to open up the bunker, you have to open up Iran's economy. You have to engage that country to give voice to the Iranians that actually want that change, which right now are not engaged. And so, yes, I do think that, I don't know if it's gonna be 2 years, 5 years, 7 years, but that the Islamic Republic is on a path to change. And it may still be called Islamic Republic, but it's not going to be this. It's going to be something radically different.

Yeah, it's very, very fascinating. Well, Vali, this has been such a wonderful conversation. I really, really obviously learned a lot, enjoyed your way of talking about details, but so easily and effortlessly, so easy to follow. I really, really appreciate all of your hard work and for coming on here and letting me download your wisdom for almost 2 hours. It was quite a treat. So, so big, big thanks.

Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. It was great to be part of this program.