Iran After the Regime: Vali Nasr on Collapse, IRGC, and the Vacuum

Angry people by themselves cannot erect a new structure. Right. And the political leadership outside of Iran does not have representation organization inside Iran. So what you're describing, if the Basij, if the IRGC, if the military fall apart, if cracks happen, we're going to have a vacuum in Tehran and across Iran. The question is what fills the vacuum?

In a recent discussion, there was a claim that parts of Iranian diaspora tried to distance themselves from Arabs and even identity as white.

A completely different regime is difficult to fathom without foreign troops in Iran, because ultimately political order has to be established on the back of, on the back of a military muscle.

Don't you think there would be a point that some elements within the IRGC say, okay, we are fighting for the wrong cause. We are sacrificing too much, our families, our lives. And they see that they're not going to succeed.

The system ended up creating these huge institutions whose psychology and very existence and budget and power was attached to resistance. The IRGC, the oligarchs in Iran, The many elements of these massive institutions of foundations and economic and political power centers grew under the sort of rubric of resistance and became very attached to it.

There is something that we can agree on, that it's insanity for any ruler to betray the very same people that they're ruling as the main and the most powerful source behind any system, behind any regime.

Iran has gone down through a different tunnel of now two wars, one of which we don't know how it will end, and a massive uprising and a very bloody crackdown in January, which is also in and of itself would have been a history-making event of great consequence. Now, I still don't think that the Islamic Republic in its current form is sustainable going forward.

The fact that Khomeini lied and fooled people, including intellectuals. He promised something, but something else came out of it.

I think there's a difference between Israeli and American interests here. I think Israel is more interested in breaking Iran completely.

As a result of these, these decisions and actions and policies, you know, and whatever they're doing and they've been doing for 47 years, they have destroyed the face of Islam as well.

I think they want Iran to be unshackled to be the great power that every, every Iranian believes that Iran is both capable of and deserves to be.

Welcome back. Today's guest is one of the most respected voices in understanding Iran, the Middle East, and the deeper forces shaping global power. He's a professor at Johns Hopkins University, former dean, advisor to U.S. diplomacy at the highest level, and the author of influential books like The Shia Revival and Iran's Grand Strategy. But more importantly, he is someone who challenges how we think about Iran, about power, about conflict, and about what really drives nations. Professor Nasr, welcome to Beyond the Sun.

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

Fantastic. You've spent decades studying Iran, but was this purely intellectual or did something personal drive you to commit your life to this?

Well, I'm of Iranian origin. I was born in Iran and my family left Iran when I was about 17, 18 years old at the time of the Iranian Revolution. I studied political science and initially I was very interested in studying the relationship of Islam to politics, which is, which is a phenomenon that exploded on the world stage with the Iranian Revolution. So I looked at Iran, but I also looked at other countries in in particular Pakistan and the Arab world, and was focused on explaining the way in which Islam interacted in politics. Then worked particularly on the tensions between Shias and Sunnis, the sectarian dimension of this question, which became very paramount after the United States invasion of Iraq. And then over time, I also focused much more directly on the issue of Iran. Which was, um, became a much more pronounced part of concern for American foreign policy after US invasion of Iraq.

Fantastic. And growing up between Iran and the West and your father, Sayyid Hossein Nasr, who is an intellectual figure, how did that influence your thinking?

Well, I grew up in a, in an academic family. My father was not only interested in Islamic philosophy and mysticism, but also was involved in government and, and, uh, at various levels. He was professor at Tehran University. Later on, he was chancellor of what was then Aryamehr University of Technology, which later on became Sharif University of Technology, Iran's premier technological university. Had a great role in expanding the purview of that university. And also through him, I encountered a lot of intellectuals, academics, both Iran and internationally. So, so I had a very keen interest in both politics and in academia. And also my upbringing had exposed me to Iranian culture, Iranian civilization, but also the history of Islam in Iran and abroad. And so all of these things were, were, were the basis of my own education when I went to university. But my formative years were in Iran. I went to primary school, high school in Iran for most of my high school in Iran. And so my cultural roots are back in the country. And when I lived in Iran and subsequently, I also studied a lot of Persian literature and Persian history, Iranian history. And so that attachment to Iranian culture, civilization, the fate of the country, the people of the country has been very strong in me throughout.

To ground this conversation. What is the most dangerous misunderstanding about Iran today, especially at the moment like this?

Well, Iran has had a turbulent history, and I have to admit that also Iranians themselves are not of a uniform opinion in terms of understanding what is happening in their country and how to interpret it. So I don't want to say there is a singular view of even what Iran is, what Islamic Republic is, what's the future of the country is, how to interpret Thanks. But I think the most important misunderstanding is that it's been a long time that the Islamic Republic is not driven by, by religion per se. And the image that we had of it in the first decade of the revolution, where it was far more ideological and far more driven by religion, has given place to what I would call a hardheaded right-wing nationalist, anti-Western, anti-imperialist worldview that has been driving the Islamic Republic. So a lot of its behavior is far more understandable if it was, we compare to the behavior of similar kind of regimes the United States has encountered, like in Russia, for instance, or in China or in Myanmar, except the language of politics in Iran remains Islamic. And part of Iran's leadership, particularly the Supreme Leader office in Iran, wears a clerical garb. But in a way, there has been a transformation that has not been appreciated. So in order to understand what motivates Iran's behavior in the region or towards the United States today, it's not very helpful to think in terms of export of revolution. Or some kind of a religious crusade, or think along the lines that Americans thought about Islamic extremism after 9/11. They just don't like our way of life, etc. That, you know, this is a— Islamic Republic is now a state that is driven by national security. It has a very peculiar, particular view of national security, that America is a threat to Iran's sovereignty. It's a threat to Iran's independence, that Iran has to protect its independence. From America, but as misguided as these ideas might be, and as costly as pursuit of this independence has been, it is a very secular idea that other countries in different periods of the modern period have also gone down that path. It's not a path that one wishes Iran did, but you cannot understand it. And even if you're an American foreign policymaker, it is not very helpful to think that your adversary is driven by ideas rather than by much more, by the kind of calculations that are actually fairly understandable in secular terms.

Right. So you mentioned a great point, you know, considering US and Israel from the beginning of Islamic Revolution, they have created, I mean, Islamic regime created this so-called enemy Isn't it the strategy that they've been following to create a united front against a common enemy?

Well, that's true, but it's more than a construction. It's actually what they actually believe in. And I would say that in a sense, it is not just a tool. It is actually something that they firmly believe in. And so we shouldn't just understand it as an instrument. We should see it as an idea that is core to their statecraft. And this is not very different, let's say, from the history of communism in China or the Soviet Union as well, that they had an ideological view, that they had a sense of a common enemy outside, but it was also really the way they believed and actually operated.

Right. So that being said, you have argued that Iran behaves strategically, not just ideologically, but given what we are seeing now, do you still see a coherent long-term strategy or is the system increasingly reactive under pressure?

Well, that goes with strategy. In other words, I don't think Iran is acting ideologically, it's acting strategically. You have good strategies and you have bad strategies. That's true of everywhere in the world. It's true of the world of business too. You could have a good business strategy, bad business strategy. And every strategy is built on a set of assumptions and to achieve a particular goal. So Iran's assumptions starts with the fact that the United States is a mortal enemy and Iran can only develop if it keeps the United States out of Iran. It comes out of an exaggerated view of Iran's history. That Iran was brutalized in the 19th century, was under colonial pressure in the 19th century. And then in the 20th century, there was a military— first of all, Iran was occupied during World War II. Then the Soviet Union wanted to tear off pieces of Iran in 1946. And then most importantly for the revolutionaries, and not just the religious revolutionaries, but also the leftist revolutionaries, the moderate liberal democratic revolutionaries, All of them in 1979 had a belief that since 1953, because the United States and Britain helped a coup in Iran, that Iran had been a colony of the United States after 1953 and was not an independent country. And the Islamic Revolution was not just Islamizing Iran, was also liberating Iran. And Iran from this point forward would have to fight to maintain its liberation and develop only on the back of that liberation. Now, you and I can agree that this is a fantastical, unsubstantiated, wrong assumption. But every strategy, whether it's in business, in war, in politics, starts with a set of assumptions. And then you set a goal based on those assumptions. And then your strategy is basically how do you apply your means in order to achieve that goal. Now we can agree that Iran, that Islamic Republic's assumptions is based on an exaggerated view of Iran's history. And that the goal of protecting Iran from the United States at all costs, and even pushing the United States as far away from Iran's borders as possible, even out of the Middle East, was an exaggerated, and that Iran has basically depleted its resources. Arrived at economic ruin and now war as a consequence of pursuing this strategy. And countries do pursue wrong strategies. We could also say Russia is pursuing a wrong strategy today. It is also bringing ruin to it. Or China is pursuing a very good strategy since 1989. Or America's following a wrong strategy, or it did for 20 years in, in, in the Middle East. But this is a secular concept. This is not driven from the fact that because they read the Quran or because they're clerics that they're going this path. Iran has gone down this path because Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khamenei had the same view of the United States that Marx, secular Marxist Leninists had in Iran in 1979, that even some Democrats had in 1979. Iran basically has gone down a path since 1979 of dedicating everything in its, uh, national outlook and its grand strategy, which is what I outline in, in my book, into this singular pursuit of protecting itself from the United States. Protection sometimes means that you kick the United States in the shin, that you carry out terrorist attacks, you carry out asymmetric warfare. Sometimes you do varieties of things and the United States is retaliating. And Iran has not abandoned this strategy in the face of overwhelming American economic pressure, diplomatic pressure. And now, even in the middle of this war, Iran is doubling down on that resistance. Now, this President Trump attacked Iran in February 2026 in the hope that that attack, the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei, whom he thought was the architect and the singular most important advocate of resistance in Iran would snap Iran out of this strategy. And then, you know, the leadership in Iran would come and say, okay, we're giving up on this strategy of resistance. We're willing to open a new chapter with the US. But even now we're seeing that Iran has doubled down on that strategy.

So that's a great point and a great clarification regarding this issue. But there is a question. So having wrong assumptions and executing bad strategies, as you mentioned, you get to a point that you see the result is distraction, nothing else. So how come they, I mean, the officials, those decision makers, haven't they pivot and change their policy and strategy in order to avoid what we are seeing now, this total destruction?

It's a very good question.

Pure ideology?

No, no, I don't think so. I think that's exactly the mistake with Iran. We keep going down this path of ideology as if Islam or Islamic ideology explains people. I think Islam explained Ayatollah Khamenei far less than leftist third-worldist ideologies did. He was a child of the '60s. His mindset was like Che Guevara or Castro. You could ask the same question, Amir, about Cuba. I mean, now that Cuba is basically is completely without electricity, is decided to talk to the US. Why wouldn't Cuba change its ways? Cuba is probably the country, the only country that has been sanctioned longer than Iran, right? So ideology doesn't explain it. I mean, first of all, it's a question of leadership. There are sometimes leaders who could push countries in a different direction. Had Deng Xiaoping not emerged in China, and had control, maybe China would not have gone down the path that it did. So that person essentially changed China's direction. It gave China a new strategy, which was different from Mao's strategy. And so the leadership is important. Iran for the past, after Khomeini died for about 36, 37 years was ruled by or dominated by one leader. Who was singularly committed to this vision of anti-Americanism, of protecting Iran from America. Now, Khomeini's anti-Americanism was not religious so much as it was his understanding of the history of American imperialism. He was very well read in varieties of foreign literature. He understood the arguments that Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, all of those people made. And his arguments about the United States is immediately understandable by third world anti-American imperialists. Once you sort of look at the core of the argument, right? The other issue is that states also gradually get locked into the strategy and the cost of changing it becomes higher and higher. Like you train a generation of people, a military, a bureaucracy. That has been trained and built around these ideas. You create institutions around this strategy. And then that creates a sort of a momentum that change becomes more difficult. I mean, just imagine what does it take for a leader in Iran, given the complexity of the system that exists in Iran, can change the direction of IRGC, can change the direction of the bureaucracy, can actually change the direction of the country. Right? And so it becomes easier for politicians to continue on the path they are rather than adopt a new path. So at some point, the longer Khamenei stayed, the more this became entrenched. So, you know, we, we can look at periods under the Islamic Republic where a different direction was possible. For instance, early on, Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who was Iran's president for two terms, Essentially was favorable for Iran to gradually go down the path of Deng Xiaoping. You know, as we need to open to the West, we need to develop the country. He was essentially lost the battle for changing Iran's direction to Khamenei.

Right.

And the battle was not over Islam, was over the strategy. And then you had Khatami similarly, you had Rouhani similarly. So, and then in the process, the system ended up creating these huge institutions whose psychology and very existence and budget and power was attached to resistance. The IRGC, the oligarchs in Iran, the many elements of these massive institutions of foundations and economic and political power centers grew under the sort of rubric of resistance and became very attached to it. And so Iran did not have a leader that was at the very top who was committed and capable of redirecting the country. We didn't have an Anwar Sadat or we didn't have a Deng Xiaoping.

So you mean that the major part of this problem is because of the leadership at this point?

Well, leadership is very important because leadership can, as I said, like Sadat or like Deng Xiaoping, can actually imagine a different strategy. Then the leader has to be powerful enough to actually force the system to reorient.

But there is something that we can agree on, that it's insanity for any ruler to betray the very same people that they're ruling as the main and the most powerful source behind any system behind any government. So this is something that we can agree on.

Agree with you, but, but, but, but Iran is not unique in that. There are leaders and, and systems that believe what they're doing is in the interest of the people. So the leader of North Korea or the leader of Cuba or the leaders of Venezuela before Maduro was taken out also thought they are nationalistic. They also thought they are doing in the long term what is in the interest of their people. When Mao was—

How it is possible to keep people in misery, you know, so shortages of everything, you know, lots of social, economical, cultural problems.

But you see, yes, it's true. And you could say it's a wrong argument, but it's not unique to Iran. So we have to look at actually how, how is it that political systems end up justifying this? How is it that rulers see this? So when Mao or Stalin killed 20, 30 million of their own people, they saw it as a pathway to something bigger, as a short-term sacrifice for something bigger. We look back at history and say that was a folly. That was a mistake. But Iran is sort of, is exactly in the same mold. And it's very clear that the majority of the Iranian people started believing gradually and then gradually became bigger that this is a wrong vision and we don't want to pay for it. And the cost of it is too high, right?

Absolutely.

Much more so than we saw in China or we saw in Venezuela and we saw in Cuba. So the protests in Iran, particularly in January of, uh, 2026, were reflective of the fact that the Iranian people, much like you, are no longer believing in the strategy. Right? And so, and so, yes, I think the dilemma Iran is at, at this moment, is proof that, that the strategy no longer has popular support, number one.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. Number two, that the strategy hasn't worked in the way they thought. You know, it hasn't protected Iran. In fact, the United States has now come closer to Iran, as, and Israel has come closer than it ever was. and that Iran has ended up in a devastating war. But what I'm trying to say is that we need to analyze the strategy. Where does it come from? Why is it the wrong strategy? What have been the cost of it? Rather than getting fixated on Islam. That's the wrong way to sort of understand this because, okay, you have the Islam part in Iran, but you don't have Islam in Cuba. You don't have Islam in China.

You're right. But as a result of these decisions and actions and policies, you know, and whatever they're doing, and they've been doing for 47 years, they have destroyed the face of Islam as well. You know, how many people are converted? How many people do not like Islam, at least in Iran, because of the same thing that they've done? I mean, the government have done to them, you know. So the face of Islam is—

that's part of the cost of it, because the language of this state has been Islam, because the revolution was in the name of Islam. Its failures and its shortfalls obviously has blowback on Islam. But that's a consequence of their policy and strategy, which I fully agree with you. But if you're sitting across the table or you had been sitting across the table and you were trying to understand the other side, well, that's what the argument I'm making. The other side's driving points is not that there is this strategic view that they have. That they're in a war with the United States. That war is about a war of independence. It's a kind of a war that Mao thought he was fighting, Castro was fighting. And all of these countries also faced tremendous amount of economic consequences as well.

Professor Nasr, let's focus to the present moment because what we are seeing feels qualitatively different. We are seeing sustained pressure on Iran's military infrastructure, security apparatus, and key figures. Do you see this as temporary degradation or something that could fundamentally weaken the system's ability to maintain control?

Well, it's very difficult to predict because we're now not looking back at history like we were until now to look at how things have evolved, but we're trying to sort of read the tea leaves, if you would, about where things are going. I don't think even before this war started, even before we had the, even the June war or the uprisings of January, my view was that the Islamic Republic was no longer sustainable in the way that it had arrived even in 2024, that the economic pressures domestically, the popular unhappiness, the restrictions on Iran's growth, etc., would not be sustainable. Now, at that point, you might have assumed that change might come more organically, like in, like in China or like in the Soviet Union at the time of a leader's death, that then the system may decide that we need to go down a different path. And they, they would, that option would be at that point. But then Iran has gone down through a different tunnel of now two wars, one of which we don't know how it will end, and a massive uprising and a very bloody crackdown in January, which is also in and of itself would have been a history-making event of great consequence. Now, I still don't think that the Islamic Republic in its current form is sustainable going forward. Now, the question is for how long and in what shape. So the outcome of this war may either be a complete collapse of the regime and the state, sort of a Syria-Libya phenomenon, which would be catastrophic. At many levels for Iran. And we've had it in our history. We had it at the time of the Constitutional Revolution. We had it during World War I. We had it at the time between the Safavids and the Zand period, between the Zand period and the Qajar period. You know, there have been periods of complete collapse of order. The other solution, the other outcome might be that the Islamic Republic would, would, would come out of this war and completely change direction. In other words, might not even be called that, or it might be called that, but it would come out and essentially decide that the era of, Khomeini, Khamenei is over and we need to basically create, recreate the state, everything and go in a different direction, kind of like Germany and Japan, end of World War II or, or something like that. Or alternatively, that Iran would be greatly weakened and the Islamic Republic would stay in place. And I think then it would be a slower death for it. I just don't see it be able to sustain itself under economic pressure, under social, political pressure internally, and then trying to support and implement a strategy that has failed and is no longer viable. Iran would not be able to push back against the United States the way it did in the 1980s, '90s, in the 2000s. A completely different regime is difficult to fathom without foreign troops in Iran. Because ultimately political order has to be established on the back of a military muscle. And the scenario we had with the Shah leaving and his military abdicating was a scenario of voluntary departure by a state. I mean, the Shah decided he's just going to abandon the Pahlavi state to its own fate, leave the military to do whatever they do late in the game after a lot of soldiers had left. The military was demoralized without a plan. And the other side did have military muscle. There were 20,000, 30,000 armed Marxist MEK Fighters in Iran, you know, other kinds of guerrillas associated with the religious faction. I mean, I was young. I remember there was an episode and there are pictures of it when units of the elite Immortal Guards tried to go and quell a protest at an air force base south of Tehran. And on the road there, they were met by armed guerrillas, Marxist and MEK guerrillas. Who killed them all. I mean, there are pictures of Iranian soldiers that were burned in their, in their vehicles. So the other side had a muscle, right? So I don't see that muscle in Iran outside of the state. Maybe it will be created at some point, but right now it doesn't exist. Yes, there are Kurdish militias in Iraq, but maximally they can hold Kurdish cities closer to the border. But the only muscle, whether it remains intact or it breaks down into different militias, is IRGC and the Iranian military. And, and so if there is another state that's going to be created in Iran, outside of the Islamic Republic, it would have to be on the back of whatever military muscle is available. Either there will be a single state or multiple, uh, you know, autonomous territories. Or somebody out of the military comes in and declares a new state. But that is a, to me, it's a little bit of a more improbable scenario right now, unless you have a total state collapse in Iran. But none of the outcomes right now is clear because we don't see direction. We don't see quite how this war would end. And right now we don't see the kind of cracks in the system that would give us a clue about the direction it might go.

You're right. You mentioned—

The opposite, I would say, has happened, which is the cycle of assassinations of both IRGC commanders, Supreme Leader, et cetera, has only— it has not brought to the top people who actually want to negotiate and move the system in a moderate direction. It has brought to power the kind of IRGC leaders and now a Supreme Leader who actually signal the wrong direction, if you would, of much more hardline resistance.

You mentioned a great point. One of the main factors of any regime change is defection of military forces. So many of the regime's traditional tools of control, security forces, suppression mechanisms appear to be under restraint. Last night, you know, head of Basij, along with hundreds of Basiji commanders were killed. So these sort of things, does that meaningfully change the internal balance of power between the state and society?

Maybe, I don't know. It's too early. I mean, so far it hasn't. I mean, maybe right as we finish this podcast, we'll begin to see signs. Right now we're seeing all sorts of predictions without actual signs that it's happening. So we're saying that if these people are killed, something may happen, but we're not seeing it. On the other hand, there is not, to me, there is not the level of military and political organization that could actually take over even if the system began to fall apart that existed in 1979. Angry people by themselves cannot erect a new structure. Right? And the political leadership outside of Iran does not have representation organization inside Iran. So what you're describing, if the Basij, if the IRGC, if the military fall apart, if cracks happen, we're going to have a vacuum in Tehran and across Iran. The question is what fills the vacuum? I can see the candidates to fill the vacuum most likely are first, where it's possible, separatist forces, because there is armed presence there. Kurdish and Baloch and maybe Arab, whatever territory they can assert control over, take over the police, take over the mayor's office, put up, put their own flag, begin to govern those territories. We saw this in Syria as well, right? Then you have these units of Revolutionary Guards and, um, military who may fall apart, but they are units and they are men with guns. And we see this, we've seen this in countries. They may take over different territories of the country. I mean, the IRGC in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani territories of Iran are by and large Azeris. They're all Azeris. So they could actually basically conceivably become Azerbaijan of Iran, right? There is no Azeri party. That you would say would actually be able to take over Tabriz and, and, and Rezaieh and Ardabil and build a, the political system there. The biggest, the first candidates for doing that are the Azeri civilian and particularly military elements of already of the Islamic Republic. So this idea that there is a military force from the outside and a political leadership that can fill this vacuum. To me is the least likely because they're the weakest, least present force on the ground, unless there is foreign troops that would give them that presence as they did in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in Iran in 1941 with, with removal of Reza Shah.

How probable do you think it is?

I think it's improbable because Iran is extremely difficult. I mean, it is a reality. That Iraq was a, is a sort of a very straightforward territory. You can drive in 2 hours, 3 hours directly on a highway from Kuwait to Baghdad. It's a flat country. Tehran is 2 mountain ranges away from the nearest port.

Geography and train is very different. You're right.

And not only the train is different, the size of Iran requires an order of magnitude larger military force. And that's why President Trump keeps saying, I'd much rather work with somebody inside who wants to work with me rather than to imagine what it means to control that. Now, one thing is that the US can break Iran and then leave it alone and let a broken Iran deal with itself. But then, you know, it's not a question of who you like. It's a, it's a very sort of a generic way of looking at it. When there is a vacuum, what forces have the greatest capability of filling the vacuum? And what is it, what is it that they require to fill the vacuum?

So what you mentioned, you know, those separatist movements that are armed, you know, in different regions in Iran, if they are supposed to fill the vacuum, there would be a civil war. That's the worst case scenario.

Yes. And that's actually a very likely scenario. We've seen it in other countries. We've seen it in the case of Syria. We've seen it in Libya. So yes, that definitely is a possibility.

And so if you were advising—

that's what we're talking about.

If you were advising policymakers right now, what would be the solution in your opinion to avoid that kind of thing?

Well, you know, it requires a set of things. One is that it requires actually, it requires essentially the war to end before it reaches a point where the Iranian state would break. And I think there's a difference between Israeli and American interests here. I think Israel is more interested in breaking Iran completely because I think that would, that would remove Iran, not just the Islamic Republic, but Iran as a major Middle East player that could challenge Israeli authority in the Middle East, at least for a generation. So that benefits Israel's ability to wield power in the region, exercise authority over the Arab countries, decide the fate of various Middle East countries without having to worry about a large country, even if it's fully democratic, pro-Western, et cetera, standing in its way.

Let's assume what you say, let's assume what you say is true. Let's look at the opposite side of that. If Israel finally wants this endeavor to help Iran to be liberated and having liberated free kind of Iran, thriving economically, socially, culturally, wouldn't it be better for every nation in the Middle East, including Israel?

It is better than what it is now, but what is better for Israel while it's expanding and trying to actually shape the Middle East in terms of security the way Israel wants is Iran not to be a factor at all. Not that Iran be a prosperous democratic force like under the Shah, who again would be able to assert what it accepts or doesn't accept in Persian Gulf. You want Iran basically to have no voice if you're Israel. And this is not about, I think very generically looking at it, what is Israel's greatest desire right now? It's basically to shape the Middle East the way it wants. Yes, liberating Iran, having it democratic, etc., is preferable to what is there. But even more preferable, and if you can't get a liberated democratic Iran, the preferable thing is for Iran not to matter to the Middle East at all. Right? To be infighting, to be in civil war, not to have a government or a military that can actually exercise force outside of Iran's territories. And then Israel can actually settle Lebanon the way it wants, settle Syria the way it wants. It can dictate terms for regional security to Arab countries in the Gulf. It can dictate the future of Iraq even, if Iran is no longer a factor. Now, the United States, on the other hand, I think is is not interested in a broken Iran because the blowback to the United States would be much higher. And the blowback to its interest in the Gulf would be much higher. But none of them want the Islamic Republic. But that's why there is a difference between the language that President Trump uses and the language that Prime Minister Netanyahu uses. President Trump had been saying until recently, well, I want somebody inside who I can work with. A Venezuela situation would be fine with the US. A Venezuela situation would not be fine with Israel because it would have kept the Revolutionary Guards. It would have kept the system the way it was. Okay, they would sign a few deals here and there and they would sell their oil to the US, but Iran would have still been a major regional actor.

So as you mentioned, absolutely, I agree 100%. So Israel and United States interests so far seemingly they're aligned. At what point do you think they diverge? Because there would be divergence in my opinion.

So one divergence could be over the course of the war. In other words, for instance, if Iran doesn't quite fall the way they expect, which right now it doesn't look like it is, or at least this war has gone far longer than President Trump anticipated. Despite the assassination, decapitations, they are in the war and they have been able to implement a strategy that has taken the US by surprise, according to President Trump, namely close the Straits of Hormuz and put pressure on the Gulf countries. Now, you could say that there might be a point that the US basically decides that this war has to stop, that there is not a total victory here, that you can't break this regime. You just have to find a way to stop this war and open the straits and let the oil flow, et cetera. So then Israel and the United States, I think, will have a divergence. Because Israel wants a final solution here. Israel calculates that if you leave an enemy wounded on the battlefield, you will have to deal with it again. And it wants basically either Iran broken or this regime completely gone. I mean, it's short of that, that the regime stays, especially under the current leadership that has come to the top, ultimately means that the headache stays. And so, uh, it's basically kicking the can down the road. So, so I think then you might have a divergence in what happens.

Right. This is great, great points that you mentioned. Some unfolding news, the national Iran National Security Council, you know, chief Ali Larijani is reportedly killed. When someone like him is killed, does that disrupt continuity or does the system simply replace and move forward? Because some people are hard to be replaced.

There are always people who are hard to be replaced. That's absolutely true. But, but the experience of even history of Hamas, history of the Taliban, suggests that decapitation is not a short-term solution. In other words, especially the Islamic Republic organized itself in a way that it could survive a lot of decapitation. We saw that in even June of 2025, Israel attacked Iran. With the expectation that if you kill 30 Revolutionary Guards commanders in one night, Iran won't be able to fight and it would collapse. And it didn't. And it started fighting back. And then since June, they actually even further diffused authority in Iran. In fact, one of the reasons why the Islamic Republic is so dysfunctional is exactly because it's, it's run like a federated entity. Because decision-making is all over the place. It has been even at the best of times. That's why you could have the president say one thing and then the commander of the Revolutionary Guard saying something else. And then, and then the business community does its own thing. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a system that was built to not be dependent on one decision-maker or one decision-making body. Yes, the very, very big decisions always goes to the Supreme Leader. But say for that, uh, you have a very diffused system. Now they diffused it even more between, uh, June of 2025 and February of 2026, to the point that you could kill the Supreme Leader and it didn't impact the regime. It would be very different if you, if we went back to Iran of 1979, it was the opposite. Nobody drank water without the Shah's permission. So when he basically, for whatever reason, stopped making decisions during the revolution, the entire system was paralyzed. The military didn't know what to do. The intelligence community didn't know what to do. The technocrats didn't know what to do. And so a system that looks very powerful was able to, was brought down because it was dependent on one decision maker who wasn't making decisions. So the Islamic Republic has been designed the opposite. Now, every system ultimately has a breakpoint. I don't want to say that it continuously can survive. But clearly, the way Iran has organized itself means that the threshold to get to that breakpoint is much higher than Israel and the U.S. anticipated. So they are trying to continuously kill Iranian leaders. I don't know when and whose killing would destroy the coherence of the system. But these killings have been meaningful. It's very ironic to say that the leaders that have been eliminated, including Khamenei Sr., are compared to the ones that have replaced them were more prudent and maybe comparatively less radical. So Larijani is likely going to be replaced by somebody like Jalili.

Right. Far, far right.

Right. So the Revolutionary Guard, leaders that have been eliminated in June and in February were replaced by much more hardline, risk-taker, unrestrained commanders. Khamenei Sr. was replaced by a worse Khamenei, by Khamenei Jr., who is much worse than his father.

Where do you think he is right now? So there is nothing about his whereabouts, even if he is alive or not.

Yeah. Well, it's a very good question. We don't know. To be honest with you, I would have assumed that given that Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah's successor immediately, that it's not surprising that he wouldn't show where he is. But the fact that his first statement was not read by him, but was rather issued in written form, of course raises a lot more questions. So I don't know whether he's severely injured, whether there's a game that the Iranians are playing with the outside and with their own constituency. But yes, and if this continues, in other words, if he, let's say, doesn't show up, at some point this is going to become politically very significant.

Right. You know, the way he has been elected, the way his statement has come out, you know, and everything together. So there is a strong argument that Iran is run by IRGC right now.

Iran is run by IRGC. He is IRGC. I mean, you know, he was a veteran of IRGC. He had a hand for 3 decades in actually shaping IRGC. I mean, I think his own father, Khamenei Sr., in my opinion, didn't see himself so much as an ayatollah as the commander-in-chief of IRGC, in the way that the Shah was not a general, but he saw himself as the commander-in-chief of Iran's military. Khamenei was far more comfortable with IRGC commanders than with ayatollahs in Rome. He gave his most important statements, the most affectionate statements, always with IRGC commanders. And his son was even more embedded. In fact, he's an IRGC veteran. The notorious henchman that he had, Hossein Taeb, the head of IRGC, intelligence for close to 3 decades, who was responsible for the crackdowns of 2009 and a lot of other heinous acts against the Iranian population, including the arrest and prosecution of dual nationals. And he was only removed in 2022 by the older Khamenei, was a war comrade of Mushhtaba. And was Mojtaba's instrument in IRGC. So the IRGC played a very prominent role in Mojtaba's selection. With the killing of Larijani, I believe the IRGC will appoint Larijani's successor. So to the extent that Larijani was independent of IRGC or could have an influence, now that's removed. Now the IRGC is going to appoint that. This is, IRGC doesn't need to occupy the office of the Supreme Leader or the presidency. This is now much more like the way Pakistan military runs Pakistan. They're sitting in the barracks, but the government is in their hands. So yes, no, IRGC has taken over. It already was in charge of a lot of things, but during this war, we could basically say that the assassinations that Israel carried out essentially ended up being an IRGC coup.

So, and If we take that one step further, so under what conditions do military forces, especially IRGC and elements within the IRGC or security apparatus begin to defect or distance themselves from the system?

I don't think they will. I think this is based on a reading of militaries elsewhere where this, where they're very, very different from Iran's military forces. You know, in other countries, the militaries have no respect for the constitution and have no respect for the civilians. And so they sit outside the constitution. They think they can violate the constitution anytime they want. They can change it and dismiss the civilians. Pakistan, Turkey in old times, as well as when they tried to stage a coup in 2016, Egypt, you can go down the list, Latin America. IRGC is the protector of Iran's constitution. It is the system. It is the Islamic Republic. It is not like it's sitting out there and it's going to come in and change the constitution like other militaries. So in a way, uh, the dynamic between IRGC and the Islamic Republic is very, very different. So I think the question is not if IRGC breaks apart, it's not like it's breaking from the system. It's going to break apart when the state breaks apart. That's the only way in which IRGC and even the military would break apart. And then they would break apart into factions or they might then do something else. But it is not like somehow IRGC is going to say, okay, the mullahs and Mujtaba are on their own and we're going to separate out or a faction of them will separate out. No, that's not the way it's going to work in Iran. Because Mujtaba belongs to them. They are the system. They are, they are the Islamic Republic. Now, the bigger question is that, let's say, if Iran breaks apart or the IRGC breaks apart, there's a different scenario like we discussed, like Syria, that's a very different scenario. Then you have many different commanders, they could be in charge of different parts of Iran, they could compete with one another, they could fight each other, and one of them may be more moderate and liberal, one may be more hardline. Kind of like Afghanistan was, Syria was, Libya is, etc. But if, if, if things don't break up, if the Islamic Republic comes out of this war, then the real question is, how will IRGC decide to rule over Iran for the period that it can rule, right? Does it decide to reinvent itself? Like, um, basically wake up one morning and say, we're going to change direction completely. We control everything. But now we're going to open up the borders, we're going to make a deal, etc. Or they become like Myanmar or like North Korea and they basically try to lock themselves in and make Iran would become a far more closed, oppressive society inside, economically poor, and then at war with its neighbors and the U.S. until such time that that regime falls. It could be like Iraq between 1991 and 2003.

So I understand what you say, but don't you think there would be a point that some elements within the IRGC say, okay, we are fighting for the wrong cause. We are sacrificing too much, our families, our lives. And they see that they're not going to succeed. I mean, the states or the IRGC in general. So they defect. Don't you think that that's coming?

No, I don't see that. I don't see, first of all, they see that they can protect their families or themselves.

At least those who do not have blood on their hands directly.

They all do. I mean, this is all sort of theoretical. I don't think they see it that way. Either IRGC as a whole makes a decision that we basically negotiate with the US for a different future. We stop this war, negotiate for a different future à la Venezuela, or they go down with it, or that the country breaks apart and then IRGC may break apart along the lines that the country breaks apart. I don't see, I don't see fissures within the IRGC that somehow if a general moved away, that somehow he can save himself and would have a material impact. I think partly it's, as I said, we're not, we're looking at models in other countries that presuppose that A, the militaries don't have internal coherence. And B, that somehow they see themselves as separate from the state. So this is the bad state. These are all bad civilians. Let them go down. We're going to, we're going to step aside. And it's not going to happen in a way, even under the Shah, we didn't have that point. I mean, the military declared neutrality at the end when its boss abandoned it. Had the Shah stayed in Iran, The military would not have broken regardless of the pressure that happened. Now, he has already staged a coup.

So, are you sure to say by leaving Iran, he saved thousands of more lives, if not more?

No, no, absolutely. In long duration of history, and I fully agree with you. I think one has to look at it in all dimensions, but we're not looking at that dimension. We're looking at why did the military collapse? The state collapsed because the state was him. He was the only decision maker. I mean, my father was a chancellor of university and he was head of the Queen's Special Bureau towards the end. I saw this up close. Nobody would drink water without the Shah. Nobody dared give him an opinion. I mean, the control was absolute and everybody trusted that he would make the decision and the right decision so they can abdicate decision making to him. So when he decided not to make a decision or to go, they were paralyzed in a way. So it's a very different system. And I, yes, I do agree. And he said so actually when he, when he left, in fact, in one conversation he had with my father, he said, I'm not General Pinochet and the Iranian monarchy cannot survive by on bloodletting in Iran. So that, that obviously gives him credit in history, but it doesn't explain, but it also explains why did the monarchy fall. Right? So, so, you know, it is what it is. In other words, his decision not to kill a lot of Iranians was also the decision why the state failed. Or there were other decisions he could have made. He could have left much sooner and let the military stage a coup, which he didn't do that either. He didn't unleash the military when the military had the capability to actually do something. But in Iran today, I would say IRGC has already staged a coup. IRGC is the state. So whatever decision IRGC makes, I think it would be about the future of the state now, whether they want to change direction or they want to, you know, double down. The pressure that you're mentioning of assassinations and killing their people and killing Basijis, etc., I don't think necessarily it will break them so much as it would force them to make a fateful decision. Which is what the United States wants. It wants to bring enough pressure on them that they would do what the Cuban president has announced he's doing now. He's willing to talk to the United States because Cuba is completely dark now.

Right. So regarding revolution time, there is something, it would be unfair if I do not mention it. And, and that's the fact that Khomeini lied and fooled people, including intellectuals. He promised something, but something else came out of the box.

I think they all wanted to be fooled. I mean, these were all educated people. None of them, I remember these conversations then in Iran, my father, for instance, had with them. None of them wanted to acknowledge what had happened in French Revolution, in Chinese Revolution, in Russian Revolution. I remember a conversation he had with Marxist intellectuals who were family friends at Tehran University who were saying that Khomeini is like Gandhi. He's a liberator. He's going to retire to Qom. He's an enlightened liberator. And my father would tell him, your understanding of a religious leader is the priest you encountered at Sorbonne in Paris. You have no idea who you're talking about. And so they wanted to be fooled. Their hatred of the Shah at that point was so much that the argument in Iran was just that he leaves and then we'll think about everything else afterwards. And it was across the board. It wasn't just political leaders. You could sit in any party in Iran. It's very similar to today in a way. And you couldn't argue with people. It was such a visceral hatred of the Shah and everything about 1953, about SAVAK torture. And it's not like the way Iranian exiles think it was just a bunch of leftists who thought like that. Everybody in Iran did. Everybody in Tehran did. I don't remember a family gathering in which every family member, regardless of whether they were doctors, businessmen, etc., were not saying this man needs to go. We need to be liberated.

The main takeaway here is they wanted to be fooled. Thank you for that clarification.

No, I mean, it's true of, it's true of, uh, it was, it was a massive tragedy for Iran. I think it was a wrong decision they made. But I think as a people, Iranians cannot get to a better place unless they own up to mistakes and not constantly say it's either all foreign doing. I mean, the foreigners brought the Shah. It's not true. The 1953 coup, in my opinion, was an Iranian coup. Americans benefited from it and supported it. There were people who wanted to overthrow Mossadegh, and I argue in my book what was their logic.

It reminds me, it reminds me of a quote, a famous quote, correct me if I'm wrong, by Ahmadinejad, who said, you know, so Iran owes a government to mullahs, to clergies. Is that the right quote?

I don't know this quote.

Because it lets people to know, so what kind of people are these clerics? Authoritarian.

Well, no, it's true. I mean, in the end, in the end, and had the clerics lost, we would have had a communist dictatorship in Iran, which might have been very different and might have maybe mellowed sooner, et cetera. But, but I don't believe that revolutions produce democracies. And, and the kind of uprising that we saw in Iran, you know, you make prom— you promise democracy, but in the end, it ended up being a dictatorship. Wasn't a leftist Marxist dictatorship. It was a religious dictatorship. And let's not forget that between 1980 and 1982, there was largely almost a civil war in Iran between leftists and religious faction over control of the revolution. And the leftists lost that battle and they paid. It was a very, very bloody battle. But in the end, The people who thought that the revolution would bring democracy were very quickly disabused of that expectation. Literally in the very first months, the women were told to wear hijab. There was no likelihood of Iran becoming democratic. You know, so in a way, I think Iranians have to accept responsibility for the decisions that they make. The decision not to question where the revolution was going to take Iran before it happened. The responsibility for exaggerating everything that was wrong with the Pahlavi era without ever acknowledging what was right with it, what had it accomplished, not putting this in a balance. I think it's a responsibility of Iranians. They cannot either say it was foreigners who brought the revolution or that it was only the fault of the mullahs. Yes, the mullahs were the beneficiary. but who empowered the mullahs?

Absolutely.

The millions of Iranians who went into the streets against the Shah that empowered the mullahs, enabled Khomeini to actually carry out that revolution. So I think that's where I think Iranians have to accept responsibility for everything.

Right, absolutely. We would be naive to think that Khomeini could take power without support of people. Absolutely, 100%. So Professor Nasr, I want to shift to something more cultural. In a recent discussion, there was a claim that parts of Iranian diaspora tried to distance themselves from Arabs and even identity as white. Do you see that as identity insecurity or something rooted in deeper historical narratives? Because your video, you know, went viral and everyone is talking about it.

No, well, you know, the, the, that video was also taken out of a context of a larger conversation in that. In that podcast. But I would say, first of all, there is roots to this, obviously goes to the Pahlavi period where, you know, there was also much more emphasis on ancient Iran as well. But now, particularly in the diaspora politics, that element of Iranian nationalism that sees itself as divorced from Iran's Islamic history has become much more politicized. I mean, in the end, whether we like it or not, I am in a way I'm 65 years old. I'm a 65-year-old Iranian, but in a way, I'm a 5,000, 7,000-year-old Iranian. I inherit the entire historical DNA of Iran. That DNA has an ancient Iranian history. Some of it is Aryan. Some of it is other groups that goes to the 7th century. And then there is Arab, Turkish, Azeri, Mongol, Persian, varieties of other mixes that is in our history. And politically speaking, you know, since the 7th century, rulers of Iran have been Muslim dynasties, and much of what we celebrate about Iran's culture, history, has happened during that period. Hafez, Sa'di, you know, literature, arts, etc. So to imagine that, you know, Iran only is the ancient Iranian period had advocates even during the Pahlavi period in Iran. People who imagined Iran as being, being only ancient Iran, in other words, jumping from 7th century to 1920s, and then sort of saying that history in between either is irrelevant or is a history of occupation, which is not correct. It's an imaginary history. I think that has now become much more politicized. Because Iran's government is Islamic and because of this anger at the Islamic Republic has translated into sort of imagining an Iran that, that is basically forgets about 1,400 years of history. And, and, and then in the West, it obviously, I do think it has a utility because there is a yearning, particularly among many Iranians, to belong to the West. Not be associated with all the negative images that they think comes from Iran or has come from the Middle East and to align itself as an Indo-European people who belong to the West. And so that's very prominent. And I said, even some of the politics they're adopting, they could provide any kind of justification for it. But at the bottom of it, it really goes to this fact. The roots are not new. There is a scholar of Iranian studies, Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, who has written a whole book on this, on the, on the, on the, on the role of identity and on the identity formation in modern Iranian nationalism. But again, you know, this is just as Iranians are, are, are, are, are very divided on politics. This is probably the most divisive era I've witnessed in my own life in Iranian community. I've never seen either at the time of the revolution, after the revolution, Families, friendships, community be so divided and antagonistic towards each other. But this issue of identity is also at the heart of it. How do you define Iranian nationalism? How do you define Iranian identity? It's not about castigating. Again, it's about trying to understand what's at play.

Professor Nasr, lastly, you have studied power, religion, and politics for decades. What does freedom mean to you today?

I mean, freedom to me is a freedom, is to everybody else, is freedom to prosper, freedom to have your own ideas, freedom of choice, freedom of life. And I think for Iran and particularly Iranians inside Iran, that's what I wish for them. Freedom, political freedom, freedom of expression, freedom to prosper, freedom to engage the rest of the world and for the country as a whole to be to be not entangled in an economic chokehold, in military chokehold, that it would basically be able to, as I said, to realize its rightful place in the world. I think that for all Iranians, aside from individual freedoms, I think the most important thing, the thing that they aspire to, whether they are, you know, want to be part of mainstream West or attached to their culture, regardless of where they fall on this, I think they want Iran to be unshackled, to be the great power that every Iranian believes that Iran is both capable of and deserves to be.

Professor Nasr, this was a rare conversation. Thank you for your depth, your honesty, and your willingness to engage at this level.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.