Iran Is Playing the Long Game to Exhaust the U.S. — So Far It’s Working | Vali Nasr

And the longer time goes, the more obviously time is on Iran's side because Iran needs time to implement its strategy. And because the strategy relies not on munitions, bombs, etc., but really on inflation and recession and political pressure on Donald Trump and the Europeans back home, that is a strategy that only works with time. And so Iran has successfully bought itself time. To make sure that the pain works. And then we see that Iranians are saying that, if you read between the lines, that we're willing to negotiate, but we don't want a ceasefire, we want an end to the war. Or as their foreign minister put it to Al Jazeera, end of the war means end of the war in Lebanon, end of the war in Yemen, end of the war with Iran, that war will not return, that there's guarantees that this would be the last war.

Hello everyone, I'm Rania Khalek, and this is Dispatches. We're 3 weeks into the US-Israeli war on Iran, a war that many in Washington assumed would be short, controlled, and decisive. Instead, it's expanding. The Strait of Hormuz is essentially closed. Energy infrastructure is under attack. US bases across the region are getting pummeled, as are their allies that host them. And the Trump administration is escalating, deploying thousands of troops and requesting hundreds of billions of dollars more from Congress. What was supposed to be a show of force is turning into a prolonged and dangerous regional war. Did Washington fundamentally miscalculate Iran? Is this war now slipping beyond control? And what does winning even mean at this point for either side? Joining me again is Vali Nasr. Professor at Johns Hopkins, former senior advisor at the State Department, and author of Iran's Grand Strategy. Vali Nasr, welcome back to Breakthrough News.

Great to be with you. Thank you.

Well, it's a pleasure to have you on with us again. And, you know, I was thinking about how the last time we spoke, it was day 4 of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. And now we're approaching week 4, and instead of winding down, it seems to only be expanding. You know, as I'm sure you know, Trump is, you know, saying, you know, depending on what time of day you get him, that it's going to be several more weeks. He's deploying at least 2,000 Marines to the region. Not exactly sure what they're supposed to accomplish. And, you know, he's asking Congress for another $200 billion. And we now see energy infrastructure being targeted. There's fears of, you know, I mean, there's some fears about, you know, what if Israel uses like a tactical nuke and then the, you know, the entire region is just engulfed in war. So I guess to start us off, from your perspective, what has changed the most over these past few weeks? And, you know, what assumptions do you think that Washington and the Israelis had at the start of this war that have clearly been proven wrong?

Well, at the start of the war, the US expectation was that this would be much cleaner and would end much sooner, even though President Trump came out and said, 4 to 5 weeks, it's very clear that that's not what he thought. He thought that he would kill the Supreme Leader, some top commanders, they would bomb some strategic sites, and that would pave the way for the Iranian regime to either fall or to, in a Venezuela style, come forward and make a deal with the US. The Israelis had a different view. In other words, they thought that they need to break the regime. And that this would be a much longer sustained bombing. But neither one of them expected two things. One, that the regime would be this resilient and that we're in week four and the regime is not falling, is not showing signs of dividing. There is no popular uprising right now to bring it down. And the very fact that the Israelis are shifting more and more to large-scale infrastructure suggests that decapitation is not doing the job they hoped, and so they're going after institutions of the state to bring down the state by denying the government the ability to provide heat, food, electricity, those sorts of things. The second thing that surprised them, and particularly surprised the United States, was that Iran decided to fight the battle on a completely different battlefront, which is on global energy and the global markets, and take the fight to the Persian Gulf, first attacking US bases there and then attacking gradually energy infrastructure and creating a shadow of risk on the entirety of the Gulf economies. And by choking the Straits of Hormuz, not only spiking energy prices, but also disrupting all kinds of global chain that goes into global trade and could potentially impact large parts of the world and cause inflation, recession in different places. So week 4, Iran has not folded despite the massive pounding that it's getting, despite all the estimates of how many launchers, missiles, etc., has been killed, how many leaders has been It's still in the fight. US and Israel, the strategy that they implemented is not getting the job done. And right now their strategy is that maybe a little bit more force is needed, maybe some more assassinations, maybe escalating it a little further. But particularly in the Gulf, the US has no way of preventing Iran from counter-escalating. So we saw this on Qatar. It's really brutal. It's awful. But just in the pure sense of analyzing what's going on is that Israel escalated by attacking Iran's gas field. The US is threatening taking the Karg Island and already attacked it. So Iran's response is that we're also going to take out energy infrastructure that you and the West rely on. And of course, the collateral damage here are the Gulf countries and their infrastructure.

So with regard to the kind of evolution of Iran's strategy as this war carries on, you know, you wrote, I think it's been about a week ago, but you wrote this piece for the Financial Times arguing that the longer the war continues, the more it actually benefits Iran. So I'm curious if you can maybe elaborate a bit on that with regard, I guess, to the way Iran's strategy has evolved, because what we're seeing now is really multi, like kind of a multi faceted war than from Iran's position than how it started?

Yes, there has been evolution in the war, but I would say this was Iran's strategy from the get-go. This is what they learned from the 12-day war last June, but it's also a strategy of a weaker country going against two of the world's most advanced nuclear-armed militaries with enormous amount of air power capability that Iran could not defend against and could not match. And so Iran in a classic sense of warfare, from the very beginning decided that it was not going to get engaged in a toe-to-toe classic war confrontation with Israel and the US, but rather it would wage guerrilla warfare, if you would, asymmetric warfare. And its strategy was based on three things. First of all, it has to organize itself in a way that the early punches and the massive blows and decapitation does not make it collapse. So it organized its governance and its military along what they call mosaic rather than top-down decision-making, so that if you kill the Supreme Leader, the system doesn't fall. You kill revolutionary commanders, they don't fall. You just elevate the next person. They know what they need to do, and the system would go on. So far, they've been able to sustain that. Nobody knows for how much longer, but clearly there is much greater resilience in the system That was the case. The second is that they calculated that US and Israel have enormous amount of offensive capability, but limited amount of interceptors and THAAD missiles and Patriot missiles that they could defend against Iranian drones and Iranian missiles, especially if the Houthis and Hezbollah also enter into the fray, which we, at least in the case of Hezbollah, they did. So over a 4-year period now, now this has become, if you would, a race between how many missiles Iran has and how many interceptors Israel has, how many drones Iran has and how many Patriot missiles the Gulf countries and the US bases have. And it's becoming a little bit more even. And in some arenas, like in the Gulf, they're running out of interceptors. And one dilemma the Gulf has is that if it attacks Iran and Iran expands the escalation against their infrastructure cities, they really don't have air defenses to protect them. And US is not able to protect them. And also the Houthis may enter into the war, which then they would have to defend against Houthi missiles as well. And the third was this element of guerrilla warfare against the global economy, which I mentioned, it was very methodic. Iran knew exactly what he was doing. Was planning for it all along, and it began to unveil it very, very methodically. So I would say what we've witnessed is not so much evolution of Iranian strategy, but rather that Iran managed to buy enough time to implement its strategy. And the longer time goes, the more obviously time is on Iran's side, because Iran needs time to implement its strategy. And because the strategy relies not on munitions, bombs, etc., but really on inflation and recession and political pressure on Donald Trump and the Europeans back home, that is a strategy that only works with time. And so Iran has successfully bought itself time to make sure that the pain works.

Yeah, I mean, the Strait of Hormuz has really been its core leverage, and it really is kind of fascinating to watch. And I think, you know, will be looked back up on after this is long over, regardless how it ends, because we've definitely entered a new era, that's for sure, with the way that Iran's used this kind of asymmetric economic warfare, if you will. And the US response to that, of course, has been, okay, how can we militarily deal with this? And so we hear a lot of talk about seizing Karg Island, about forcibly opening the Strait of Hormuz. How realistic is that militarily? Would the US, from your perspective, actually be able to reopen the strait without triggering, well, first of all, a lot of casualties on its own side, but also a much wider and more uncontrollable war?

Well, I think this cycle of attack on the gas fields was a very strong message to the US, and that's why Iranians took the risk of alienating Qatar and doing the damage that they did, which in the long run could be costly for them. But in the short term, which is where they're focused on, was a very powerful message to the US that you could take the next escalatory step, but you could not prevent us from taking an escalatory step. And yes, US is trying to bomb Iran's facilities that produce and launch drones, missiles, but so far that has not prevented Iran from doing so. So yes, the US could attack Kharg Island, But then the Iranians could potentially attack a vast number of oil installations in Saudi Arabia, in UAE, in Kuwait, and really create a much longer, if you would, energy crisis. Because right now the Straits of Hormuz can be opened by agreement or otherwise. But if you damage installations, that's a much longer problem. You know, already Qataris are saying repairing the damage that Iran has done can take 2 to 5 years, which is significant. And if you replicate that across a larger set of installations, then you really could be impacting energy supplies and energy prices much more gravely. And then on capturing the Straits of Hormuz, yes, the US ultimately has the capability of doing many things, including going all the way to Tehran, or as you said, using tactical nuclear weapons, but everything comes with a cost. So for the Iranians, it's not a question of what the US can do or cannot do, but it's a question of raising the cost of the next escalatory step for the US to such an extent that the cost and the attraction, let's say the attraction and then the cost that goes with it, of actually sitting and negotiating an end to the war becomes more palatable for Donald Trump. And we see that Iranians are saying that, if you read between the lines, that we're willing to negotiate, but we don't want a ceasefire, we want an end to the war. Or as their foreign minister put it to Al Jazeera, end of the war means end of the war in Lebanon, end of the war in Yemen, end of the war with Iran, that war will not return, that there's guarantees that this would be the last war, and we also want economic relief. It's a tall order. And it requires also the US to manage Israel, who has very different expectations in Lebanon and in Iran. But the Iranians are not saying we will never negotiate. They're saying that we're going to continue the war until negotiation over these things becomes acceptable to you and you get serious about negotiations.

You know, since you mentioned Lebanon, I'm mostly, I'm also asking you this because I'm here, but a lot of people here are very curious because they're, as you mentioned, there have been statements from the Iranians saying that Lebanon, as well as the other countries you mentioned, would be a part of a sort of comprehensive regional settlement as they would see it. So, you know, if Iran does come out of this in a position of strength and there is some sort of negotiation, do you think that's a very serious talking point that Lebanon would in fact be part of this broader regional settlement where the Iranians would say, well, then Israel can't, you know, just bomb Lebanon anymore? That's a part of our demands.

I think they're serious about it. It doesn't mean that they can get it. That's a whole different thing. But it's very serious about it. It's not just what the foreign minister says. I've heard it in discussions, varieties of discussions by the political class in Iran, that A, that Lebanon is suffering as a consequence of this war, and that we We have to include it in the settlement. And secondly, also, you have to note that Iran is now run effectively, is now an IRGC state. And the ones that are in charge are people who have deep roots in the Levant. I mean, the class of generals that have taken over, colonels, are veterans of wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. Many of them are native Arab speakers. As a consequence, they have deep ties. And they look at this not just strategically, but as a sense of responsibility. I've even heard this word often bandied about, that it's a responsibility for Iran to also end that war. And also Iran's view is that strategically speaking, Israel cannot end up larger than when the war started. And it's not just a ceasefire that I've heard. I think I've also heard that Iran has to demand Israel withdraw back into its own borders and completely evacuate South Lebanon. So again, these are very tall demands. It might be maximal positions, but it's definitely on the table. I think the Iranians are of the view that this has to be the last war for the region, that either they all go down or they will actually arrive at a moment of peace.

That's certainly the view, I think, of a lot of Iran's allies across the region as well, which is probably why Hezbollah entered the war to begin with, to be a part of a potential settlement. It's a war of— it's basically an existential war for them as well.

That's right.

And so I just, I wanted to, while we're on that topic, I wanted to ask you, since Hezbollah has entered this war and also there have been some coordinated attacks between, in cooperation with Hezbollah and Iran on Israel, I'm curious, you know, how significant is their entrance into the war? I mean, I don't think it necessarily, you know, Iran's pretty strong on its own. I don't know how much more Hezbollah adds to that, but it certainly add something. And then a second part of that question I wanted to also ask, you know, how significant has the participation of Iraqi groups aligned with the Iranians been in this war? And then do you foresee the Houthis entering soon, as they're claiming they will? I know that's a lot of questions, but take that where you want to.

No, no, it's a good point. I mean, I think that there definitely has been coordination between Iran and Hezbollah. But also there is a sense that, you know, if Iran folds, if Iran collapses, if Israel and the US get what they want with Iran, either to break the state completely, turn Iran into Syria or Libya, or that the Islamic Republic is broken and becomes something else, then it's an endgame for these groups as well. Houthis, Hashd al-Shaabi, and Hezbollah. And so whether purely military sense or to protect their communities, They have an interest in the outcome, I think, independent of their own. Now, the bet that Hezbollah has put down is quite enormous because Lebanon is paying a very, very heavy price for Hezbollah dragging Lebanon back into a war that on the face value had nothing to do with Lebanon. But potentially, I think if Iran doesn't collapse in the next 2-3 weeks, if the war drags on, then I think, you know, the regional picture can become quite different. First of all, as you mentioned, the Iraqi militias may enter in a bigger way than they have already, particularly against US interests and potentially against the Gulf, against Kuwait, for instance. And then the Houthis is really the big, big issue. First of all, not only can they put a chokehold on Bab-el-Mandeb and in fact accentuate already the economic crisis that the Strait of Hormuz is presenting by adding to it in the form of another chokehold on the global economy. But they also can attack the Gulf states from their rear. In other words, I think that's one very big reason why the Gulf states have not entered the and sort of even in a sense symbolic way attack Iran as a consequence of being attacked, which would have been natural for any nation-state to do that. But they're calculating what's the escalatory cost. But I have to say also that the Houthis have a very direct relationship with Hezbollah, which independent of Iran matters to them. And so there is a tipping point We don't know where it is. There's a line after which, if the war does not wind down, if there's not a pathway to a broader ceasefire, that the Houthis may enter as well.

And then I want to bring it back to the Trump administration. You know, apparently this administration did not think the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz. I think I had read somewhere that the energy secretary said that they didn't think that it would close because, well, they didn't close it last year during the 12-day war. Why would they close it now, which is just completely insane that they didn't plan for that. And now you've got the Treasury Secretary floating the idea of unsanctioning Iranian oil that's at sea to try to deal with the shortage in oil. I think it just seems to most of the world incredibly shockingly dumb the way this administration has behaved. It's almost like they're just improvising a war as they go. So I'm curious, are you surprised? Surprised by the level of incompetence that we've seen and that we continue to see from this administration?

Well, yes and no, I would say. Partly, I think the Israelis probably had a better sense of this, but they don't really care about the Strait of Hormuz and they really don't care about what happens to the Gulf countries. In fact, they might calculate that the more dangerous behavior Iran has in the Persian Gulf, the more the US may likely invade Iran and topple the regime, which is exactly what the Israelis want. And in fact, many of their supporters in Washington are now peddling the idea that now that the war has happened, we have to go all the way and topple the regime, and that we cannot contemplate stopping. But the administration itself clearly, either the president didn't hear proper briefing on this or dismissed it. That in other words, there was a bias towards going to war. And so you had a case of minimizing all the costs and dangers and accentuating a rosy picture. Now, this is partly a facet of how decisions are now made in Washington because you really don't have the bureaucracies that CIA, State Department, Pentagon, Homeland Security, etc., are really grappling with. What is the problem the US wants to solve? What are the costs? Etc., and then going up the chain and presenting the president with, you know, solid options, and then debating the benefits and the dangers of each option. It is more like the president decides to go to war, and everybody now has to prepare for war. And there's not much pushing back against a president who has made up his mind and is quite intolerant. Of being challenged on having made up his mind. So I would find it very, very difficult that the United States in its bureaucracy didn't know because the Iranians at the highest levels, that's when, you know, when their foreign minister was touring the Gulf before, had told many Gulf countries that they will make this a regional war, that they will go after energy markets, that the Gulf countries could not be immune to the war. I mean, all of these things were said explicitly to them. So I could not see how the US, either through eavesdropping or being told by the Gulf countries or doing their assessment, didn't know. It is just that perhaps the president dismissed it as being irrelevant, short-lived. And I think really that's because deep in his mind, he believed the war wouldn't last more than a few days, that this would be a very easy victory.

I want to ask you something that you said about you think like inside the bureaucracy there was more of an understanding. And that reminds me of the fact that Joe Kent, the— I believe he was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned this week. And that was a pretty— it seemed to be a pretty big deal. He resigned in opposition to this war in Iran. And he stated there was no imminent threat, which we already know there was no imminent threat from Iran to the United States. And he also said that or suggested that the Israelis and their allies in Washington helped play a role in influencing Trump to go to war. So I'm just curious, you know, what do you— what's your reaction to that resignation and its significance? You know, do you think it shows perhaps some fractures inside the national security establishment over this war?

Well, I think it shows more a fracture within the MAGA movement over this war. Because it is not so much that his resignation was a senior national security person resigning. He was a political appointee from the MAGA world. And essentially he verbalized two things that perhaps are truths lying in plain view that nobody talks about. One is that the president never made a case why Iran was an imminent danger in February of 2026, that there was not a discussion of first what the threat is, and then let's find a solution to the threat. Rather, the war was launched essentially as a solution that is now looking for an excuse for the problem. The problem was never expressed. And so he verbalized that, can't verbalize that issue. And secondly, everybody knew that Israel has been wanting to go to war with Iran even after the June war ended. It didn't want to— it believed that it hadn't achieved its aims in the war. The Islamic Republic didn't fall in June of 2025. Its missile capability was there. Its 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium was there. And so Israel was going to go back to the war. It was a question of when. And it was very— everybody knew that Israeli Prime Minister leaned very heavily on President Trump on the lead-up to the war to get him to the war. The only difference is that Kent actually verbalized this. And Tucker Carlson and others had said it too, but he's verbalized it from within the administration. So the way this has become significant is that if this kind of dissent combined with the fact that the war is not ending soon, and the US president is asking for $200 billion more, and the price at the pump is going up, will become politically material enough with the elections coming up for the president to decide that I just cannot— either I cannot carry this war, I'm going to sit down and talk to the Iranians, or that I need to escalate to something really, really big to break their back.

If you have a conscience, it's unbearable to be plugged into the corporate media machine right now. These outlets are accomplices in genocide, running cover for the war machine. Breakthrough has become the go-to outlet for those who want something different, but the funds we've used to start this platform are starting to run out. We'd never dream of turning to mainstream corporate funding. So we're turning to you. Become a patron. For as little as $5 a month, you can become an essential part of our fight to not just break through the mainstream media, but create something that can challenge it. We have to become completely viewer-supported, or this platform we've built could go away. Don't just watch us, join us. I've been thinking about this so much as it unfolds. Folds. It's not clear to me what a US victory would look like here. Regime collapse is always possible, I guess, if it goes on long enough. You could destroy a country anywhere. No country is so resilient that it couldn't be collapsed, but that takes a really, really long time to do. Iran's a lot more resilient than other governments that have been collapsed before that I think it would take longer than it took, let's say, a country like Syria, for example, because these are very different places that are structured very differently. And so I think that would maybe need years, maybe, I don't know. And I don't think the US has that sort of time. So I'm just curious. Okay, so like, let's, let me, let me ask you it this way. What does winning actually mean here? And by that, I mean for the US, what would winning mean? For Israel, what would winning mean? And then for Iran, what would winning mean?

So for Israel, I think the winning means that Iran as a country basically is taken out of the Middle East calculation. So if regime collapse is the price or a state collapse is the price, essentially when Prime Minister Netanyahu, even before the war, said we are finishing off the Shia axis and then we're going to now focus on the Sunni axis, Essentially, what he's saying is that, yes, Iran and its allies have been an obstacle to us. We need to finish them off. And then, yes, there are these Sunni states that we also need to get out of the way. And so what he's envisioning is really an Israeli-defined security political structure for the Middle East. So when we talk about Greater Israel, there's obviously a territorial dimension to it. But Greater Israel basically means a greater Israeli sphere of political security influence, which goes all the way to Pakistan, that, you know, the Gulf countries would have to accept that, or that they would also be dealt with, that Turkey would need to retreat from the Middle East, Syria, etc. So basically, Iran as a country of 92 million, as a two-ton gorilla that has been standing in the Middle East, in the middle of the Middle East, not only blocking Israel, but for the past three, for decades, in many ways also shaping the Middle East through Hezbollah, Houthis, etc., to the annoyance of the Arab world, will basically be removed. Now, what does removing Iran mean? It means that Iran needs to be internally focused and its government can no longer be led by Oods Force type people who are focused on the Levant. And if Iran collapses into something like Syria, it's not a problem because it's not on the borders of Israel. And anyways, Syria was a far greater threat to Israel when it was a state than when it was a failed state. And so a divided Syria is also what would benefit Israel. So Israel wants to continue the campaign until then. But the problem for Israel is that Israel cannot do that on its own. It needs the United States for munition. At some point, it needs more than air power. Ultimately, if it comes to breaking up the regime completely, it would need some kind of ground operation. And that needs the United States. Now, for Iran, the meaning of victory is to bring the US to the table to negotiate over what we already discussed, is that to prove to the United States and potentially Israel that war will not work. All options cannot be on the table because war is too costly, too difficult with Iran, and you just don't want to go there. So if you want to deal with Iran problem, you have to take diplomacy seriously. And put something on the table that would be a final peace rather than a Band-Aid on a conflict. So that's their aim. And the Iranians are of the view that, you know, one of the dangers of a war that ends now is that with Donald Trump, after Donald Trump, the US may ultimately resolve to do what it did in Iraq. In other words, may take 2, 3 years, build a force to invade Iran and remove the regime, which is exactly what the pro-Israel voices are expressing in Washington. And that's why the Iranians want this war to be costly enough to get the US to do a final peace. What Iranians don't want is the way Iraq War ended up in 1991. So that's not victory to them. Ceasefire is not victory to them. And I don't think they will actually accept a ceasefire the way the US thinks. For President Trump, I think at the beginning, the definition of victory was that he's the one president since 1979 that has finally solved the Iran problem. He has brought Iran in from the cold. They've given up their nuclear program, are willing to give up their missiles. They're going to be a nice country, you know, have beautiful conversations on the phone with President Trump, a version of Venezuela. Iran's oil is now going to be sold and developed by Exxon. Its gas is going to be developed by Exxon. And this would be a really legacy moment for him. And he thought he could get that at the table. He saw it's not going to happen at the table. Iran is on tough negotiations, not going to give things up. So he decided he's going to go to war. And then he had this notion that it's only the Supreme Leader. He's the problem. Once I remove him, the layer below him will see the light and come forward. That hasn't happened. Now he doesn't have any clear ways in which he can declare victory other than essentially opening the Strait of Hormuz. So Iranians have shifted the definition of victory for him from collapse of the regime or regime transformation essentially to the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. And that is now a very, very tall order for him. And so I don't think he has a definition of victory. At some point, there may be an unofficial definition of victory, which is this wound is causing too much bleeding for him, and he needs to close it. And he cannot come out and say something really big, but he has to find a way essentially to stop the bleeding. So there are very interesting parallels with Vietnam. When President Johnson escalated in the sense that, you know, we need to break the back of the Viet Cong, it took many years. This may not be as long, but eventually the US definition of what victory is went from defeating North Vietnam you know, South Vietnam winning to basically how do we get out of here? That's victory. How do we get out of here? And I think that's what the Iranians are driving at.

And I guess it's all a matter of who can last the longest. And you think, given the way the economic leverage or Iran's use of economic leverage, you think that time is on their side?

I think they're assuming again, you know, they may collapse tomorrow morning. There might be a tipping point, there might be a catastrophic event, and all of a sudden they fall apart. But the logic of the strategy that they're following is that from the very beginning, in the 6 months they had between June and February, where they believed that war would be coming, is to basically be able to survive and carry on for 6 months, a year, or above. That's the language that they're speaking. That they are confident they can keep doing this. At a low level, they don't need to fire 500 missiles at Israel. They need to fire only 10. They don't need to all the time be firing hundreds of drones. They need to be just firing enough to tell the international oil markets that the crisis is not over. Now, so long as they can sustain it, they believe that time is on their side because they built a strategy based on time, whereas the US and Israel did not build a strategy based on time. They built a strategy based on power to knock Iran out. So if Iran is not knocked out, they don't really have a clear plan B, especially the US does not have a clear plan B.

Which is why you see the Israelis really doubling down on the assassinations. I mean, we saw some really big assassinations this week. I mean, I think the biggest one was Ali Larijani. And then today they are saying they assassinated the spokesperson for the IRGC. I mean, what's so wild, it's crazy that we're witnessing this happen because, I mean, we've seen the Israelis assassinate leadership of non-state actors before. That isn't new. But this is an actual country. And it's kind of wild that they're just killing, like, officials of a recognized country. And it's kind of, you know, being— the world is responding with a sort of shoulder shrug. That just seems like it could be a tactic used at some point against a bigger country if it's, you know, goes— if there's just complete impunity over this.

Yeah, I think it's very dangerous. And I think the West is playing with fire. I mean, set aside the United States, even the reaction of Europe. Yes, a country like Spain has come out. But, you know, when the chancellor of Germany says international law does not apply apply to Iran. And this is a country that was always known for upholding international law since World War II. It might be easy in the mind of Europeans, Americans, you know, the pro-Western regimes around the world that, okay, Iran is a special case. It's been a menace. You could apply special measures. But then you're establishing rules that then will become global norm. In other words, you know, why would Russia not do that to the leadership of Moldova? Why would China not do that to the leadership of— even forget about Taiwan— Korea, Japan? I mean, if you don't like a regime, you basically say, I'm just going to remove that regime and I'm going to do it this way. So how the world will react is essentially to try to find ironclad protections, which ultimately means going nuclear. So, you know, countries around the world, I mean, I was reading a conversation between President of Brazil and President of South Africa, both of whom Trump doesn't like, saying that our countries need to join forces because we could be invaded. Now, if you were to say that two fairly neutral countries in the Global South are looking at this picture, and are seeing a direct national security threat, they're looking at this very differently than the Europeans and Americans do, which is Iran or Hezbollah are bad and, you know, you could assassinate your way forward. They're basically saying that what they're seeing is that the old international liberal order is being replaced by a new normative order in which this kind of killing and assassination is accepted. So then the question for them becomes, okay, how do you protect yourself against it? And that's really not the conversation that we want the rest of the world to be having because the conclusions that they're going to come up with is not going to be the ones that the West wants or expected.

Right. I wanted to, you know, there's this video of you that I'm sure you saw. It's gone a bit viral. Talking about the Iranian diaspora. That's, you know, that's the part of the portion of the Iranian diaspora that's been cheering on these horrendous bombings of civilian infrastructure across Iran. And what you were saying reminded me so much of the Lebanese, both the diaspora, but also even people in Lebanon right now who are, you know, cuddling up to the Americans and the Israelis in a really shocking way as the Israelis just bomb everything because they hate Hizballah and Iran more than they do Israel. And in fact, there's even arguments that Israeli bombings are not— Israel is not actually responsible for them. Iran is actually responsible for Israel bombing Lebanon. And it's just kind of mind-blowing. And I guess I just— I'm raising this just as an exchange of grievances with you about this particular segment of people. I know you can speak to the Iranian diaspora, but I see this so much and all these diasporas around the world. And I kind of just wanted to get any updated commentary from you about that particular grotesque response we're seeing from certain quarters of people as they watch their countries get bombed.

That's true. I mean, and I would parse it further. Yes, there is a segment of Iranian diaspora and also Iranians inside Iran who come to the conclusion that the only way you can get rid of the Islamic Republic is by it being removed forcibly by the outside, and that they're willing to pay the price for it, although they minimize the price in their own minds and in what they say. And the logic is understandable, but also it does carry a certain moral hazard, and it also divides the communities. In other words, it would be very difficult to see how Iranians would reconcile that with a sense of nationalism, a kind of national unity, because there's also a large number of Iranians outside and inside who, as much as they dislike the Islamic Republic, do not support war on their country. And also worry what war means, that wars don't produce beautiful, you know, democratic settings, not since Germany and Japan. We've seen wars in Syria, in Iraq, etc., and it comes at a devastating cost. But what I was talking about was also a different phenomenon, a segment of the Iranian diaspora that even before the war embraced not only Israel, but was extremely hostile to the Palestinians and Gaza and everything Middle Eastern. I mean, religion, even assuming that in a way that they belong to the Middle East, this culture. And I argue that this also has to do with the dynamic of long time living in the West, that there is a segment of the population. Of course, the discourse, much like in Lebanon, has deep roots. A lot of Lebanese imagine themselves decades ago as Phoenicians. There's a lot of Iranians who imagine themselves as Indo-European, as Aryans, as if the Islamic history in the Middle East has never happened and that Iran has not been Islamic for 1,500 years, or its great poets, its great architecture, etc., don't belong to the varieties of eras of the Islamic era, which I say is a convenient tool for integrating in the West. You know, it's sort of an imagination that says we're not really Middle Eastern, we're mainstream Western, we're really white. And we embrace the mainstream politics of the West, which is Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian, and pro-Israel. And so when you see, you know, the tight embrace of Israel, and in fact, Iranian diaspora making a point of going out there and haranguing pro-Palestinian protesters of using extremely lewd and aggressive remarks against them, almost being more Israeli than Israelis themselves in some ways on Palestine and sort of celebrating what's happened in Gaza. And trying to blame on Gaza on, again, Iranians, Iranian regime with which they don't have anything to do, or describe the Islamic Republic as an occupying power, as if it's equivalent of Israel being in West Bank. So that, you know, obviously I think has ramifications. It is dividing the Iranian community in horrendous ways. I could tell you what is most painful for a lot of Iranians Iranians in exile today is not just dealing with the war, dealing even with the massive bloody crackdown that the Islamic Republic carried against its own population in January, but is actually at this moment, at these moments of pain, their most difficult conversations would be with their fellow countrymen, that there are divisions in families, family members not talking to each other, friends friendships broken, having such a jarring different reaction to what is happening. I mean, when there are sometimes people thinking like Israeli bombing of Iran or American bombing is like chemotherapy, it's a necessary pain to deal. I mean, these are statements that are made. It is extremely painful for the community. And I don't know how it will heal itself. Because it's one thing to heal yourself against the war, an outsider. But if you were to imagine if Palestinians had this kind of division among them, it would be much more difficult to deal with the trauma. But it is also a phenomenon of exile. I mean, it is also a desire to be accepted in the West on the terms of the West and to shed any association with the ugly politics of the Middle East that they believe, you know, the West dislikes and shuns.

Yeah, it's, it's really sad. And it also, like, has real material consequences in terms of, like, you know, when it comes to the Israelis, like you were talking about how they like to collapse states and cause civil wars. I mean, in Lebanon, people here killed each other. And right now the Israelis and Americans are demanding that the Lebanese government make everyone kill each other to make the Israeli bombing stop. They want to see civil war. And so it is, it's really, it's also just, there's a scary element to it too, because it can manifest also in like physical communal violence that's, you know, gets even nastier than just the bombs falling. I wanted, as we wrap up here, I did want to ask you, you know, the last time I had you on, you said to me that when we get to a place where we see some daylight, between the Israelis and Americans, it could perhaps be a signal that the end of the war is near. And I'm just curious, you know, have we seen any daylight? I mean, I know there was the obviously the bombing of the gas fields and Donald Trump denied being involved, but it's actually unclear if the Americans were or not. I'm not sure that's daylight, but yeah. Have you seen any daylight yet? Are we there?

We're seeing some cracks. I mean, I think that even the assassination of Larijani perhaps was the beginning of it, because I think when the president kept saying that, "I prefer somebody from within to come forward," I mean, it would have been people like Larijani that ultimately might have been an interlocutor as opposed to hardcore IRGC Quds Force generals that are taking over. But I think the gas field issue is probably the very first sign. In other words, yes, President Trump, I'm sure, knew that it's going to be attacked and perhaps thought that this would be the kind of escalation that may force Iran to change its ways. But I think the Iranian reaction to that is what opened the crack, not the actual Israeli decision to do it. In other words, President Trump, as a consequence, I think is gradually beginning to wobble. Over whether this kind of vision that the Israelis are pursuing, that you just need to pound harder, harder, harder, and either the regime surrenders or it collapses or the state breaks, is not something that he has the stomach for. And the longer it goes on, that the pressure is not building on Bibi Netanyahu, not from Israelis.

Yeah.

Right. That matters. But pressure is building on Trump from allies, from countries around the world, from the MAGA movement, from gas prices. So we'll see. If the Iranians don't fold, if they are able to sustain this into a fifth or a sixth week in the war, I think the chances of a much more significant difference of opinion on the war between Israel and the US will become more probable.

Well, Vali Nasr, I really, really appreciate your time and your analysis. It's, it's the best. And hopefully we can talk to you again soon. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for inviting me. Good talking to you.