Understanding Iran's Grand Strategy: A discussion with Vali Nasr

All right.

Well, hello and welcome to Security in Context. My name is Negar Razavi. I'm a senior researcher here at Security in Context, and it's my great honor to speak to our guest today, Dr. Vali Nasr. Professor Nasr is the Majid Khaduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, where he also served as a Dean. Professor Nasr previously served as the senior advisor to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke when he was the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. More broadly, Professor Nasr has advised senior policymakers in the U.S. and indeed globally, and is regularly featured in places such as The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Wall Street Journal, so on. You can get his full bio online, but I just want to highlight some of the big points here. Professor Nasr is also the co-director, along with Professor Narges Bojogli, of the SAIS Rethinking Iran Initiative, at Johns Hopkins, which I'll add is producing some of the most exciting critical policy-relevant work out on contemporary Iran today. And that's my added note to his bio. And last but not least, Professor Nasr is a New York Times bestselling author and co-author of many books and articles. And we are here today to talk about his latest book, Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History, which just came out this year. I'd also like to connect it to what's happening over the past 3 weeks in terms of an escalation of conflict and the tenuous ceasefire we have between Iran, Israel, and the US. So thank you, Professor Nasr, for being here.

Thank you. Thanks for having me with you. Thank you.

Yeah. So I want to start with a question that is often asked of scholars, which is what motivated you to write this book in the first place? You start with October 7th in the book and you really end with Iran's nuclear gambit. But I imagine that this is a project that's been in the making for a while. So what motivated you to write it? Why now? And who is really your prime audience here?

I mean, it's been a while that we all understand that the most important thing about Iran in US foreign policy, it's Iran's posture towards America, its nuclear program, its role in the region. And Iran has become a very important foreign policy concern for the West, which hasn't been able to to be resolved. In fact, now it's ended up in war. Secondly, it's very clear that if you looked at Iran itself, whatever you say and you think about the government, its behavior, etc., that Iran is very much being shaped by this crisis with the West, largely because of sanctions, because of the war footing the country has been on. So national security issues sit sort of right in the middle of both state-building, I think, and Iran's foreign policy. And I thought that, you know, policymakers and academics, you know, talk about this, but they don't have a real handle on it. As far as academics are concerned, you know, typically academics write about society, domestic politics, maybe some elements of economy and foreign policy, but they don't see national security as a massive element in terms of understanding state-building, state formation in any country, and particularly in the case of Iran. And also there's a gap in a serious study of what is Iran's national security outlook. There's a lot of opinions, but very little firm grasp on it. And policymakers really want to understand what Iran's national security thinking is. What is the sort of, as we call it in academia, strategic culture that dominates the country's thinking? And then in a public arena, if you add that to it, the media, etc., always reduce Iran to just a theocracy. All you need to do is understand that these are Islamists Honest, the most important leader in the country has a turban on its head, and their war with the West is all essentially cultural civilization. So all of these things I thought were lacking. There's a lot of studies on China, on Russia that deal with the country's grand strategy. In other words, they don't get bogged down in Chinese cultural outlooks or, you know, issues like that, but they actually take seriously that the Chinese are looking at a chessboard, this is how they play it. And the Iranians are also playing on a chessboard, except nobody thinks about how do the Iranians play this game. And then add to this that in recent years, particularly since Iran went to support the government in Syria, a lot of material has been published in Iran. I mean, it's a peculiarity about Iran. It's an authoritarian regime, but it's a fairly open, you know, political environment of discussion, dialogue, etc. There's a lot of debate in Iran about why the country is doing what it's doing and whether it should do this, whether it should not do that. And then there is a lot of, I would say, records in the form of memoirs by leading commanders, former commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, foreign ministers, policymakers, et cetera, has been written. For instance, just to give you an example, that the three chief negotiators of the nuclear deal, one of whom is now foreign minister and one is deputy foreign minister, and the former one, very well-known Zarif, along with two other colleagues, wrote a six-volume account of the nuclear negotiation that led to the 2015 deal. And then there are interviews, oral histories. It's actually quite interesting. There's a sort of an archival mindset in Iran. And this is a goldmine of looking at debates. And in the debates, you can understand assumptions with which they come to understand international issues, assumptions and analytical logic that dominates the way they respond to it. So there is a lot to sink your teeth into. And I actually spent better part of almost a decade reading through a lot of this, making sense of it, constructing it. And my aim was basically to demystify Iran's foreign policy thinking, for better or for worse. This is a, I would call it a secular, pragmatic, rational form of discussion, much as China's is or Russia's is. It's not what the West wants to see, and it's not what many Iranians want to see, but it is not some woolly-brained ideological outlook. And in fact, you know, going even to the early times of the revolution is very evident that national security outside of religion was a dominant factor in the thinking of the revolutionary elite very early on.

You touched on what was going to be my second question, and I want to draw out this theme a little bit more because it really struck me as I was reading the book, the extent to which Iran's grand strategy and its foreign policy decisions are dictated by politics at home. And again, for our viewers, maybe they've taken an IR course, that seems obvious when you're talking about the United States or France or wherever. But when it comes to Iran debates, there seems to be this notion that Iran is a monolith, the Iranian government is a monolith, and then whatever the Supreme Leader says and decides when he wakes up in the morning is what the foreign policy will be. And actually what you show very systematically in your analysis is that at very crucial points, Iran had to make these very complex calculations that had to do as much with domestic pressures as they did with perceptions of external threats. So could you tease that theme out a little bit more and why that's so important for your readers to understand.

Very true. I mean, when you look at the long duration of the Islamic Republic, you know, 40, 45 years of its history, you could say that the sort of a vision that Ayatollah Khamenei has had has basically become Iran's grand strategy. You know, Iran has not veered away from this. And actually, I argue in the book that in fact, Iran is less a theocracy and more really a national security state. I mean, this is a country that Khamenei has organized around the theme of resistance. And then, essentially every institution, whether by design or as a consequence of confrontation with the West, has been shaped by this ongoing confrontation. But looking at the fact that, okay, he has been able to put a stamp on this does not mean that this has been easy or straightforward. That there has been a very strong trend in Iran, literally from the time of the end of the Iran-Iraq War, which actually saw Iran's security in economic development, which then means basically normalization with the West. Although they never went as far as to say normalization with the West, but when you look at the period between 1989 and at least 2005, where you had two consecutively, two presidents who, even though they were clerics, they were basically developmentalists. And then again, you had a developmentalist president from 2009 to 2015 under Hassan Rouhani. And the way they framed Iran's national security needs was very similar to that of the Pahlavis. In other words, Iran has a security problem, but Iran can only solve that security problem if it's a strong, if it has a strong economy and it's a developed country. And then you can't develop while you're at war with the West that are under sanctions. And the debates were very, very strong in Iran. They lost those debates for varieties of reasons, one of which is also the reaction of the West to that, that never took them seriously. And actually increase the level of sanctions. And in fact, during the 2015 nuclear deal is the best case in this, where it is these people who believe that Iran needs to repair its relations with the West, even within the language of the Islamic Republic. It needs to sign this deal with the United States. It needs to normalize things. And they force, if you would, the Supreme Leader to accept this. And you can see there's another faction that is undermining them in the parliament, in the media, as well as through acts of like arresting Iranian Americans, trying to sully the relations, etc. And in this particular case, when the United States walks away from the deal, in a way, it is the US that decides who wins that debate. And that also is the case in 2003 and 2019. '95, when Iran wanted to give a major oil concession to Continental Oil Company. Yes, the Supreme Leader won these debates, but it was not without a fight. And it's all reflected, if you would, in debates in Iranian media, in the parliament, in the memoirs people have written that that Iran's system is not as closed as is assumed. But as the tempo of this confrontation with the US has become more, more stronger, it is the space for those who argue that we need to make up with the West, open the economy and develop, and that's where our national security lies. The space for them has been closed. Now, the only space for them becomes outside of the Islamic Republic. And that was reflected in popular protests in Iran or popularity of the Pahlavi period among Iranian public. But within the Islamic Republic, the space for this argument became narrower. Now, the irony is, as you and I are speaking, this idea that Iran should go back to nuclear negotiations, it was very clear in the aim of of President Pesechian when he became president, he said that we cannot grow Iran's economy under sanctions. Well, the implication of that is I want to grow Iran's economy. That's important. It's important to national security. But you can only do that with talking to the US and getting a nuclear deal. But instead, you know, Iran and the US have ended up in exchanging missiles and bombs. And so, we'll see which way Iran goes from this point forward. But this is a, as you mentioned it, this is, it has this confrontation, this debate has shaped Iran's domestic politics. But at the same time, it has also been shaped by Iran's domestic politics. And I would say one last thing, which is, And this is something we worked on in the Rethinking Iran project with my colleagues there, is that, you know, the sanctions has also shaped Iran's economy and politics in ways that it has created vested interest in the existing structure. I mean, Iran's economy and society has become like a tree that, you know, you push it in this particular direction, you tie it down, you push it, you push it. 40 years later, you cannot expect it to just sort of easily snap back where it is. There are billionaires and institutions and ways of doing things that have now been built around the fact that Iran's economy largely has to grow by going around sanctions, surviving sanctions. So, and those are not powerful voices also in Iran's economy. Like, they are the one, the economic interests in sanctions, routinely supports hardline candidates in elections, spends a lot of money in influencing elections in their favor because it wants the debate to veer in a particular direction.

Yeah, I want to pick up on this point and then I want to go back to some of the basics in the book too about what like forward defenses and things like that, like what is Iran's grand strategy. But before I do that, I also want to just point out that, like many countries right now, Iran is doing foreign policy on behalf of national security, but not always selling it to its own people or to coalitions within its own parties in a way that makes sense to the average person. So one of the things that I was hearing repeatedly when Iran was being bombarded by people inside Iran is, why was Iran in Palestine? Why was Iran in Lebanon? Why is Iran supporting Hamas? And this was, you know, you talk about it in the book, how the chant in 2019 and since then, neither Gaza nor Lebanon, you know, Iran, we sacrifice for Iran. This idea that they haven't been able to even explain the logics of forward defense, which I'm going to ask you to explain what that is, to their own people is in some ways undermining their own project. And I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that.

No, no, absolutely. I mean, absolutely. Look, Iran's grand strategy, and I write in the book, has a lot of flaws. I mean, first of all, the country cannot sustain it. It's very clear. It has lost also the support of the population for it. It doesn't make sense to them. It is a policy that, you know, came with the revolution because I think the revolution within its ideology, yes, it was religious, but politically, Ayatollah Khomeini saw the Iranian revolution and the Islamic Republic as the first time that Iran in 200+ years had genuine independence. In fact, he saw the value of the revolution in being able to do what the monarchies before or Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh had not been able to do. And this is born of a particular reading of Iranian history, that Iran essentially has been under the thumb of imperialism since the 19th century, has never freed itself. Even the Pahlavis were, you know, foreign puppets. And here is the Islamic Republic, given Iran independence for the first time. And the value of Islam to Iran is that it's only the Islamic and Islamic state led by the clergy that can give this independence. Now, early on, people probably bought into that, agreed to it. So when they took hostages, closed the American embassy, confronted America, they saw this as defending Iran's independence. And this ideology was also used during Iran-Iraq War, which Iran portrayed as essentially Iraq being a proxy of America, if you would, in order to topple the Islamic Republic. And, but over time, you know, this mantra that we're defending ourselves basically became an ongoing conflict with the US. It was never-ending. And, and in it, gradually, Iran began to think that it needs to defend itself outside of its borders. I mean, the first place was Lebanon. Of course, every time Iran goes outside of its borders is a combination of opportunity and then Iranian decision. In other words, something happens that collapses an Arab state, provides Iran opportunity to go there. In Lebanon was Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It removed the PLO from there. There was a vacuum. And Iran, and then Israel decided to occupy South Lebanon, and that anger of Shias towards Israeli occupation allowed Iran to organize Hezbollah. Now, Hezbollah in Iran's eyes, if you put aside all the ideology, was essentially a deterrent system against Israel. But you're right, the Iranian public didn't understand it this way because the language was language of anti-Israeli, you know, pro-Palestinian. Although, yes, you can ask, had they made peace with Israel, they didn't need to deter Israel. But Iran saw Israel also part of America's project and thought that Israel also would never be reconciled to an Islamic revolution in Iran. But in a way, you would say, well, what prevented Israel to do to Iran what he's doing now 5 years ago or 10 years ago? And the answer that Revolutionary Guard would tell you is that It was because of Hezbollah that at least for a two-decade period, Hezbollah, once you put aside all of the rhetoric, essentially was kind of like a deterrent system against Israel. And then in Iraq, Iran did the same thing. I have anecdotes about, you know, how the Supreme Leader said when the US was going to invade Iraq, Both Syria and Iran were convinced that if the Americans really easily topple Saddam and succeed, then Syria and Iran would be next. And that attitude was very much at display in the US administration, to the point that where the reformist Iranian president offered talks, they just dismissed it. Why should we talk to you? We're going to topple you. All right. And so the opportunity arose because the US made a mess of it very early on. And on the eve of US attack to Iraq, in a meeting between the Supreme Leader and Bashar Assad, Bashar Assad says, we're going to be next. The Supreme Leader says, I agree. He said, the only option is resistance. And we have to make sure that this crocodile doesn't digest its bite easily. Right? So, so basically being in Iraq, supporting the insurgency, the Syrians did it from the north. The Iranians did it from the south. There's no evidence that they actually really collaborated, but this meeting suggests that they both understood what they need to do. The Syrians did support the Sunni insurgency. A lot of the leaders of the Sunni insurgency were holed up in Damascus during the uprisings, and the Iranians organized the Shia militias in the south. And the Americans ended up in a quagmire and forgot about Iran, right? So the Iranians again understood that they defended themselves not from within their territory, but inside the Arab world. There are times that the Iranians understood and supported this. For instance, when there was a rise of ISIS in Syria, there is a moment in which General Qasem Soleimani and his campaign in Syria and in Iraq is understood and then very well supported by at at least a segment of the Iranians. But once ISIS is defeated and Iran stays in Syria and stays in Iraq and its presence in those countries actually leads to more confrontation with US and Israel, and then Iran is put under more sanctions, which means that the domestic situation gets worse, the population really doesn't understand this as defense. The more sophisticated would say, Isn't it cheaper for you to make peace than wage perpetual war? And, but the majority just see this as meddling in Arab affairs and being more Arab than the Arabs on Palestine. And so they don't see the benefit in it. And now they would say that, okay, even if there was a deterrence, it collapsed, it collapsed too easily. And as we see in this war, they are put in a situation of having to defend Iran from inside Iranian territory. But interestingly, there is much more support for doing that than there was support for being outside of Iran and doing it. But you have to— the Arab countries, Israel, the United States, Europeans characterize Iran's presence in the Arab world, in Syria, in Iraq, in Lebanon, essentially as Iranian imperialism and expansionism. Whereas the origins of it was a defense strategy that we need to defend ourselves not from within our borders like we did with Iraq or right now what we're doing.

But actually beyond the borders.

And there were sayings that they would say that we have to keep Israel busy on its own borders, otherwise it will be busy on our borders.

Yeah.

But in the end, They weren't able to do that. And, but again, in order to understand this, both for historical purposes as an academic, as well as understand Iran's attitude towards the Arab, you have to understand what was the security logic. You know, when you look at the meetings, look at the conversations, when the Iranians say that the fall of Assad would be catastrophic for us, why are they saying this about supporting a Ba'athist? This doesn't make sense in terms of Islamic ideology. It's because they thought that fall of Syria would make Iraq indefensible. And if Iraq fell, then they would basically be on their back heel the way they are now. So there was always a national security logic. And then the argument is that in order to be able to fight in Syria, they basically empowered a particular division of the Revolutionary Guards, the Quds Force, which became a big empire in its own. And then they were willing to accept many more sanctions on Iran. They were willing to, I mean, some elements sacrificed even the nuclear deal for presence in Syria. And domestically, you know, the ones that wanted to wage this war became more powerful. So the Iranian state began to organize around this expeditionary exercise. And as in every foreign policy, there is a thin line between defense and offense. Even with Israel, Israel is continuously, even in the imagination of Americans and Europeans, defending itself. Even when it's attacking Iran, the Europeans say Israel has a right to defend itself. So, but in the eyes of Iranians or Arabs, this is not defense. This is offense. And the same is true of Iran as well.

Yeah, and I, I, I think just being able to capture— again, putting aside ideology, I mean, this is the work of, of doing international relations, right, of geopolitical analysis, as you try to understand, um, a state's leaders in their own logics and in their own terms, in terms of what their fears are, what they're anticipating. So now to just slightly flip the frame and to look at the US, one of the— another theme that comes out strongly, and we can then wrap this up in terms of what Trump calls the 12-day war between Iran and Israel and the US, is I was struck by how often the US tried to shape Iran's foreign policy and domestic policies, and it ended up going exactly in the opposite direction of what they wanted. And I, you know, it starts with, um, the first prime minister of the Islamic Republic, Mehdi Bazargan, having these secret negotiations with the U.S., and that ends up discrediting him. Or, you know, you can sort of— and then siding with Saddam, and then, you know, um, we— the list is long, you know. And then invading Iraq, and that ends up empowering Iran. And then same thing in with Syria, as you mentioned before, sort of drawing the US into this quagmire. So what is a lesson that should really be taken for your US policy audience when they're reading this book in terms of how much they can affect Iran's foreign policy from the outside? And then that ties in to what happened most recently.

I mean, the tragedy of their relations is that You know, they both end up in an attitude and a set of policies vis-à-vis the other one through a series of actions. And each time the reaction of the other side is predictable. But eventually this becomes a straitjacket. So the US very early on takes the attitude of punishing Iran for every transgression. And much of these is very well justified in terms of American foreign policy. And you might even consider it to be restrained, like when Iran killed 500 US Marines in Lebanon, the answer was sanctions on Iran as opposed to any kind of a military action. But in the more recent period, the United States basically has used only economic sanctions and threats against Iran and has not understood that, you know, that only by threatening Iran continuously, you only empower the national security establishment in Iran because Iran's response to threat is not surrender, is to dig in further. And when you dig in, the forces that are going to defend the country, that's Revolutionary Guards and its media and its supporters that get in power, that the more you put sanctions on Iran, the more you disconnect it from the international economy, the more the middle class and the private sector, etc., basically lose their voice. And those who are involved in the economy are no longer dependent on relationship with the West. And so, in a way, you could say if you looked at the 40-year period, or at least even the last 20 years, the US foreign policy with Iran has failed because it avoided— it was not able to avoid war. It has brought us to this point, and it has not worked. In other words, yes, the Islamic Republic has become weaker. Yes, the population is unhappy, but you have not been able to basically create a scenario in which a Deng Xiaoping or a Boris Yeltsin would emerge. And so we have to, in a way, with Iran, We are where we are, but it should be a lesson for the United States that it basically seems like it has only one gear in dealing with countries. And that's not necessarily productive. In other words, there were many exit ramps along the way that required patient diplomacy like Nixon had with China. Like you would have, if the nuclear deal had survived, that gradually, you know, the balance of power in Tehran might have shifted away from the ones that are continuously manning national defense to those who see benefit in this relationship. It might have built trust between the two countries. And then based on that trust, the perception of threat in the two capitals might have shifted. And yes, there are vested interests who don't want this. At that point in time, Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia didn't want that scenario. And now Israel doesn't want that scenario, right? It wants to settle this militarily. But, and maybe if President Bush or President Trump did not see it then, but the value of academic work is to provide a mirror to policymakers, to media, to the intellectual process in the US to look at it and say, let's examine the past 20 years. We know what Iran is, what they did. But let's look at our own policymaking and see whether this was a failure or success.

That's right. And that requires a level of humility to look into, into their own mistakes and be able to have an open debate and conversation. And so that is why this book is so important and it's so valuable because it contributes to that. I'm really— last, last question. Are you hopeful that there is some type of diplomatic solution moving forward or Do you think escalation is on the horizon?

I think there is a sliver of hope. Let's put it that way. And again, it comes down to everything this book says. You have to make the right options. I think the hope is based on the fact that Iran showed enough teeth in this war that even Israel might think that there is not an easy military solution to Iran. Clearly, I think that's what President Trump took away from it. That's why he's trying to claim victory and move on. It's very clear that at least two of the parties in this conflict, which is Iran and the United States, don't want war. And therefore, that's a good beginning, you know, because the problem that created this war is still there. That's the nuclear program. Iran's nuclear program is still there. It hasn't been resolved. And Iran doesn't want to resolve it militarily. US doesn't want to resolve it militarily. And Israel might have seen sufficient pushback in this war to not push aggressively for immediate military action. So that the fact that the problem is there and neither side wants war means that there's only one other option. Either the US lets Iran become nuclear or the US has to really engage diplomatically. And it's going to be tough given that it's coming after the war and the negotiations would be tougher.

But I think in good faith negotiation. Good faith negotiations and also skillful negotiation because that's another part of it.

But, but I think the will is the most important part right now.

Right. Well, thank you so much, Professor Nasr. I recommend everybody take this, take the time to order the book now. It is so important to be having these kinds of nuanced, historically contextualized discussions about Iran's foreign policy at this moment when the stakes are so high. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for inviting me. It was great to have this conversation with you.

Yes, thank you.