Why This War Could Be a “Turning Point” for the Global Order - Vali Nasr | Endgame #261

Iran is determined not to be bullied into surrender. Iran is not interested in a ceasefire that would take it back to the box that it was kept in before the war. Maximum pressure, open to Israel and America attacking it anytime they want, facing an angry population at home. They don't want to go back there. After all the suffering they've gone through, if they were just going to throw in the towel, It doesn't make sense to them.

Hi friends, it's a pleasure to tell you that my book What It Takes: Southeast Asia has been released in English and Bahasa Indonesia. You can buy it through books.endgame.id or at any of these stores. Now back to the show. Hi friends, today we're honored to be graced by Professor Vali Nasr, who is a professor at Johns Hopkins, but he's also a senior advisor at CSIS in Washington, DC. Vali, so good to see you, and thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, it's very good to see you since last time we met in Jakarta, and it's very good to be on your program. Thank you for inviting me.

Thank you. You wrote a fantastic book, Iran's Grand Strategy. You brought up a few points and talk a little bit about the history of Iran and, you know, the Iranian people's ability to endure, you know, the trials and tribulations as early as the Ottoman days, the Soviet Union days, the British days, and as of, you know, recent times, the Americans. And talk about how that has translated into the variability of the Iranian people to basically endure and also undertake some sort of asymmetric mechanisms in dealing with whatever we're witnessing today?

Absolutely. I mean, when I wrote this book, I did not have in mind that we are going to end up where we have. But I think that book is, as you mentioned, is very much a guide into how Iran is thinking about this war and its struggle with America. Why is it in this long struggle with America? And also why, to everybody's surprise, Iran has not surrendered, has not broken down under American and Israeli pressure, and what really sustains them. So I think, you know, in a lot of discussions, particularly in the West, it's very easy to reduce Iran just into a theocracy, particularly in the imagination of the West. Everything is about Islam. Everything is about religion. Iran's leader has a turban on its head, and that's all you need to know. He's some kind of a religious fanatic. And what is missing here is that ultimately Iran is a nation-state, a very old nation-state. And whoever rules Iran, particularly somebody like Khamenei, and the Islamic Republic who have been there for decades, ultimately are embodying a sort of a historical perspective and a national security perspective. Now, that may be not necessarily the best one for Iran or the right one for Iran. It can be debated, but it has to be taken seriously as a national security perspective. The way, let's say, we think about China, it's not helpful to say China's a communist country, like let's say, Secretary Pompeo likes to constantly refer to it, whether it was under Mao or today under Xi Jinping or under Sun Yat-sen, China has a national security perspective. It also has a perspective on its history. And so I think what we are seeing in Iran is, of course, is a particular national security perspective that is born of the Islamic Republic, of the Iranian Revolution, of the Islamic Republic and its experiences, but is a longer history to Iran. And I start with that. I mean, Iran in its current form, by and large, was born during the Safavid period in 1500. If you look at the time period from 1500 to now, there are some particularities about the way Iran took form. It is a country with a historical legacy that goes way before Islam, to millennia before. It is a country that is very proud, has imperial view of itself, much like China does, but it's also a wounded country, much like China is. Iran, even today, when you look at it, it is alone in the Middle East. It is Shia in its Islamic confession, which makes it a minority in the world of Islam, in a Sunni-dominated view of Islam in the Muslim world as well as in the Middle East. It is Persian in its language, in its culture, which means that it's also alone in an Arab-dominated, Turkic-dominated Middle East. And so that loneliness was part of the Pahlavi period's way that Iran thought of itself. It's part of the way that the Islamic Republic thinks of itself. In the wars that it has had with Israel, with America now, in the decades that it's been there, it has viewed itself as being alone in this region, as not having any permanent or natural friends, in a sense that it can, in the sense that the way the Arab countries rely on each other. That they're all members of an Arab family. Iran's historical experience since it was created is a country that has endured. The Safavids created an Iranian state surviving the Ottoman expansionism. In fact, they adopted Shiism strategically as a way of not being dissolved into an expanding Ottoman Empire. Then after the Safavid period, Iran has gone through periods of turmoil. And then during the long 19th century, it was abused by imperialism and it lost territory to Russia, to Britain. It was deeply penetrated and abused by imperialism. Unlike Indonesia or let's say other developing countries, it was not totally colonized, but much like China, it went through a period of humiliation and abuse at the hand of the Europeans. During World War I, at the end of that period, it was almost divided between Russia and Britain. It was occupied. It went through a period of tremendous economic hardship and famine. Then it sort of embraced a period of Kemalism, or let's say like post colonial Indonesia or Southeast Asia, where you had a great state builder in the first Pahlavi monarch who made essentially nation building and development as a strategy of survival, that Iran could only survive if actually it became strong economically. And he followed the model of Turkey in terms of state building. But as soon as Iran basically found blood in its veins and it was getting set up, you had World War II, where the three allied countries, Britain, the Soviet Union, and America occupied Iran, took its food and fed the Soviet army. Iran went through a period of famine during World War II. They changed the ruler of the country. They sent Reza Shah Pahlavi into exile. They put his son on the throne. And when the war ended, the Soviet Union actually refused to leave Iran, wanted to take Iran's northern provinces, and much as it had done in Central Asia, turn them into Soviet republics. And Iran ultimately survived because of the Cold War. And a number of years later, you had also the birth of If you want the first Third World leader in the form of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was a precursor, let's say, to the Bandung phenomenon by 2 years, in fact, 1951 to '53, until he was overthrown. A person who said that, you know, we're not part of the East-West conflict. We have a right to our natural national resources and that the British have to give up Iran's oil or share much greater royalties with it. And he was overthrown in a coup, which obviously had Iranian backing, much like in Indonesia. Ultimately, you know, the military that staged the coup was Indonesian. They didn't come from outside, but they had outside backing when they overthrew Sukarno. Something like that happened in Iran. And then you had a 37-year period, 39-year period under the Shah, the, the, the, the second monarch, during which Iran developed hugely. Did very well, but there was always resentment towards the Shah because he was authoritarian, because he was too pro-American. And much again, like history under Suharto in Indonesia, that there's a lot of development, there's a lot of wealth, but it wasn't quite right. And also Iranians never really accepted him because they thought that the coup that restored his monarchy in '53 was blemished by American-British intervention. And so you have this overhang of Iran's history from 1500, particularly during the imperialist period of 19th century, to the military coup of 1953, that arrives at a juncture of Iranian revolution. And there is enormous amount of historical grievance that is built into the revolutionary thinking. And revolutionaries in '79, Gita, were not all Islamists. There were Marxist-Leninists, there were liberal Democrats in the mix with Khomeini. And all of them had a view of Iran's history that Iran had been abused by foreigners. It had gone through two centuries of humiliation. So in a way, some of the way in which Mao saw himself as restoring China's, not only independence, but actually true honor through the revolution, was also present in Khomeini's revolution. I mean, I cited in my book that when, it's very telling that when the leader of the liberal secular liberal national front goes to Paris to sign a pact with him, he thinks that the best way of signing a pact between a liberal democrat and Khomeini is to say the future government of Iran will have two principles. One is that it will be Islamic, one is that it will be democratic. And Khomeini writes in his own handwriting in the margins that, and it will be independent. And I actually believe that at the core of it, for Khomeini and for Khamenei, the greatest achievement of the Iranian Revolution was to give Iran independence in their own view. I don't believe that Iran, you know, I think it's an exaggerated view, but it's their view that they believe that only Islam and Islamic revolution can give Iran genuine independence. So in a way, Islamic Revolution was a vehicle to Iranian independence. And Ali Khamenei, I mean, in a way, was the last Third World leader ruling a country. I mean, his mindset was not Quran and Sharia. Yes, he believed in that and he was an ayatollah, but his political mindset was Bandung Conference. His political mindset was Che Guevara, was Ho Chi Minh. He was a child of the '60s. He was very well versed in the writings of Frantz Fanon. He knew all about Algeria. That was the way in which he viewed America. So since the revolution happened, first Khomeini and then Khamenei believed that the greatest threat to Iran's independence was the United States, was imperialism. And essentially, they organized the Islamic Republic as a kind of a garrison to protect Iran's independence in a very exaggerated view. And they ended up, if you would, in a prolonged 4-decade conflict with the US to protect Iran's independence. And in trying to do so, they escalated with the United States, created a certain permanent hostility that ultimately has ended up in the situation we're in. Yes, they were Islamic, but increasingly over time, the leadership that you see in Iran is basically a leadership that believes in resistance. It believes in resisting the United States, resisting its footprint in the Middle East, that the greatest mission they have is to exclude the US from Iran. No embassy, no direct talking. Secondly, exclude them from the Middle East. Exclude them from being on Iran's borders. And in a way, it's become a tragic, if you would, way of thinking for Iran, because it has come at a huge cost for a country the size of Iran to maintain this kind of a foreign policy posture. And then unlike China, Iran never had its Deng Xiaoping moment where you would say, okay, enough is enough. We're going to change direction. You haven't had that. And sort of this war now has become the last stance. Now, we can talk about it. There are also episodes that happen in the middle that are quite important. Like Iran goes through an 8-year war with Iraq. And that becomes very important to the psychology of the Revolutionary Guards, of Iran's leadership. But in a way, you cannot understand Why Iran? I mean, by Iran, I mean not just its people, although because I think now a lot of the Iranian people are no longer subscribed to this resistance at all costs. They want integration into the world. They want the Deng Xiaoping moment. They want to change on their— But the leadership of Iran, you cannot understand how they arrived at this point and what accounts for their stance right now without understanding the important overhang of history. And my view is that Islam does not explain this. Islam is their language. It's the language of power, is the language of politics. But the logic behind how Iran has ended up where it is comes from the way in which the Iranian Revolution of 1979 understood Iran's history in an exaggerated way. As a history of struggle against weakness, humiliation, imperialism, and then how it sees itself as having corrected that history. And I'll start with this. Only about a couple of months ago, Iran's former foreign minister, Javad Zarif, had an interview with the American media outlet Foreign Policy, in which he said the Islamic Republic is the first government in 200 years of Iranian history to give Iran genuine sovereignty and independence. I don't believe that's the case, but he's basically telling you the way, what is the mental framework that has dominated in the Islamic Republic. So you have to understand this history, how they read history, how they see themselves as correcting history before you can understand, you know, why, why we are where we are.

The, the comparison with China is interesting. I mean, one, one would think that China went through that necessary political revolution in 1949, and you, you aptly alluded to the, the Deng Xiaoping moment starting in 1978. Would you argue that there is some degree of Deng Xiaoping moment in Iran on the back of Iran's ability to endure despite the sanctions, despite the opposition from many parts of the Western world ever since 1979. The asymmetry that we're witnessing that Iran is undertaking has sort of helped Iran in surviving, you know, this tumultuous moment or period.

It's very true. I think there could have been a Deng Xiaoping moment, let's say, that you would've had a revolutionary leader in Iran would step forward and say, we need to end the revolution. We need to embrace integration into the world economy. We need to change direction, particularly because this is now very popular with the Iranian public. I think one of the problems Iran of today faces is that its public is no longer committed to the values of the revolution. Or of the first decade of the revolution. But it was never possible, or you didn't have a powerful leader as powerful as Deng Xiaoping. And even in China, it took Deng Xiaoping 7 years to triumph over the Gang of Four and Hua Kefeng and assert his authority. You could say that there was a moment where Iran's first president, Iran's first post-war president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, you know, tried to push Iran in a different direction. And Khamenei won the day as Supreme Leader and kept Iran on track with, with resistance. Or you could say when Mohammad Khatami became president and he wasn't strong enough to change Iran's direction, or when Hassan Rouhani became president. But, but now that Iran has ended up in these wars with America and Israel, I think actually the inclination is to go in the other direction. It is the Gang of Four that is actually coming to the fore in Iran. So one of the issues that we're seeing is that Israel has eliminated, if you would, the Mao, Chuan Lai generation of Iran. And the people who are taking over are not your Deng Xiaopings, it's your Gang of Four. I mean, if you looked at the example of Ali Larijani, Ali Larijani was actually the Chou En Lai of Iran. I mean, I have an episode in my book when I say a senior Iranian statesman met with Kissinger and had a conversation with him. I didn't name him then because he was alive and I didn't want to sort of create ripples inside Iran. But now that he's passed away, he's been killed. He met with Kissinger. And I think that meeting was very much like the first time that Kissinger met with Chou En Lai. And have a strategic conversation. Now, Israel killed Larijani. The replacement to Larijani is probably one of the most hawkish IRGC generals in Iran, former generals in Iran. It's somebody who would be part of the Gang of Four. And so at this moment, because of these wars, Iran is not going in the direction of Deng Xiaoping. So if there is a Deng Xiaoping moment, It will have to come in the future. It would have to be under a different circumstance depending on how this war ends.

I'll come back to that. We'll try to deep dive into Zolga there, the new leader of the National Security Council. But in the book, you talk quite at length about the leap of faith on the back of the JCPOA. Is there any hope for that sort of an engagement?

I'm always hopeful that there's a possibility. And I think particularly if war does not yield results either for America or for Iran, ultimately they would have to find their way to the fore. If there is any silver lining in this war, is that maybe both sides realize that they would have to seriously negotiate. I think what happened to JCPOA was a tragedy in a way. Because it was a moment in which Iran's ruler, Khamenei, agreed or yielded to Iran's president to try, to try their hand at negotiations. They were facing serious sanctions. They thought that they have a president in the United States, in Barack Obama, that is probably more trustworthy than previous presidents. That he had approached Iran in the right way, writing a letter to the Supreme Leader, a number of secret letters. For the first time in his public messages, he used the name of the country as opposed to the regime. And he made it clear to Iran that he was not after regime change. In fact, he got a lot of criticism for not interfering in the Green Movement uprising in Iran. But the reason was— but the silver lining to that for the United States was that Khamenei became convinced that Okay, this is not a, this is not a trick that the US is trying to play on us. And the Iranians came to the table, whether good deal, bad deal, it wasn't a good deal in Iran's view either. But they signed the deal and then Iran very quickly implemented its part of the deal. In fact, the United Nations Atomic Energy Agency gave 11 consecutive reports saying Iran was in Iran had implemented and was in compliance with JCPOA. The US never really implemented much of what it promised. The sanctions were difficult to lift. They never got lifted. But then the United States basically pocketed everything that Iran had given up and then came out of the deal and then imposed even more severe sanctions on Iran than was the case before. So this left a very bitter taste in Iran's mouth that, you know, you really, you trusted the diplomatic process for the first time you engaged. And that could have been a beginning of a gradual normalization, let's say, over a number of years if the deal had survived and then other deals had been built on top of it and Iran might have gradually opened up. But in fact, the reverse happened. Iran went into its cocoon. And then maximum pressure economic sanctions also changed Iran in its own ways. It impoverished the society, broke down the private sector, empowered the Revolutionary Guards, created a whole new oligarch class in Iran that was connected to the sanctions, was in the dark business area. And then, again, Iran came to the table under Trump twice. And every time in the middle of the negotiations, they were attacked militarily. So, but I think the JCPOA was an opportunity for the two sides to actually build on it, on a first-time deal after decades to go forward. And I think it is this war that is happening now, is really happening in the shadow of the collapse of JCPOA. It's really a consequence of that. Lessons Trump took from it and lessons that Iran took from it has brought them to this juncture.

Talk about the young Reza Pahlavi. In the eyes of the Iranian public, you've alluded to the fact repeatedly that he's not as grounded as many would've thought. Talk about that.

One of the issues that the opposition in Iran has, I think the Islamic Republic has a great deal of problem with its people. Some Iranians have now been born after the revolution. They no longer subscribe to being isolated. They no longer think that, you know, the absolute view of independence that Khamenei promoted was one that is necessary. They say, well, why can't we be like China? Or like Russia or like Turkey. They're not servants of America. They also want to be separate, but they're not as isolated as us. And so that generation now wants a different future. And even those who are much closer to the Islamic Republic, their back is breaking under economic pressure. So they want some kind of a way in which you would compromise with with the West and lift these sanctions. So the Islamic Republic has become much more narrowly based than it was earlier on. Its population has become more upset. But this being upset has not produced a political movement inside the country. Right? In other words, there is a lot of civil society leaders, political activists, most of them are in prison. There is no actual liberation movement or political movement in the country that you could say can organize unhappiness and dissent into a serious opposition. In this sense, Iran is like China today. There could be a lot of opposition to China. You could have, you know, artists, you know, writers, etc. But there's no political party that can actually really organize against CCP. So, you have disparate opinions. Reza Pahlavi has captured the imagination of Iranians, first of all, because over time, the Pahlavi period has become very popular in Iran. Again, I don't think it's alien to Indonesia. I mean, you have today a president who is a legacy of the Suharto period. So with time, views of people change. They may even develop nostalgia about the authoritarian period. And the Shah's period now looks to them as having been a golden era. I mean, yes, there was dictatorship. Yes, there was secret police, but it's not like they're having a full democracy now. But then, rial was much higher, much closer to the dollar. They could travel. The country was wealthy. There was a lot more cultural freedoms. The kinds of things young Iranians aspire to were there. And then there's also been a lot of social media and exile television programs, often backed by Israel, Saudi Arabia, United States, that have been pumping that sort of nostalgia into Iran. I would say that Reza Shah the first is very popular in Iran because he was a state builder. I mean, ironically, the current speaker of Iran's parliament, you know, a decade ago referred to himself as a Hezbollahi Reza Khan. You know, even he understood that, you know, what Reza Shah did in Iran was incredible to bring a country out of, you know, complete ruin and build a state. And even the Shah's period now looks to Iranians as much more rehabilitated than it was in 1979. So the Shah's son is a beneficiary of this nostalgia. And also his image, what he says, symbolizes the future that a lot of Iranians want to imagine, that he would— a future in which Iran would be like other Middle Eastern countries, open to the world, integrated into the world. The problem he has at one level is that popularity has to be matched with political organization before it's meaningful. So yes, it might be popular, but he's not, he doesn't actually have an operation on the ground in Iran that would actually translate that into a political movement. And secondly, he has taken very odd choices, particularly in the last two wars. He has sided with countries that have attacked Iran, particularly Israel. And yes, although there is a segment of Iranians that cheer him and are so angry at the Islamic Republic that they would even side with the enemy, but ultimately this is a position that goes against the grain of Iranian nationalism. And so I think my view is that his moment has really passed. The height of his moment was before this war. But after this war and after the devastation that Iran is going through, I don't think he would be a viable leader in the future unless there are American tanks in Tehran like they were in Baghdad or Kabul. I think whoever, even if the Islamic Republic were to collapse, the leadership that would take over Iran will come from within the country, from somebody who can put the remnants of the state back together again. And basically make a claim for it. Somebody, let's say like Ahmad al-Sharaa that we have in Syria. It is not going to be some exile leader that will be parachuted in by Israel or the United States, unless those countries are sitting in Tehran and can dictate who would be ruling the country.

The last part about the book, it relates to what you talked about in the context of the fractures amongst the Iranian diasporas, those in the US and other parts of the world, how they view, you know, what's happening in Iran and the difference between one camp and the other. Talk about that.

I think generally Iranian society inside and outside is highly fractured, is highly divided. And I don't think this has ever been the case in history of this country. I mean, partly this is because of the policies that the Islamic Republic has carried out, the alienation inside, the degree of, I would say, despondency. And I think when there were massive protests in Iran in January of 2026, before the war, and the Islamic Republic suppressed it in a very bloody fashion, And ultimately the population came to believe that very large number of Iranians, tens of thousands in their view, were killed in a very short period of time by the regime. You had a sort of unanimity of view that the Islamic Republic had lost its legitimacy, that maybe there's a 10, 15% of the population that's very attached to it, but outside and inside the view was that it's done. It needs to go whole scale. Something else has to come. And before this would translate into a real political movement, the war happened. And the war, I think, has divided Iranians further. First of all, between those particularly outside who are followers of the monarchy of Reza Pahlavi, but also others who cheered for the war, saying that the war will liberate Iran. That America and Israel would remove the regime. And what is the cost you have to pay for this liberation? And they had their parallel inside Iran, you know, people in Iran who said, okay, you know, once and for all, let the bombs, we will absorb it and let the regime be gone. But the longer the war has gone, the more there is a sense inside Iran that the war is not liberating Iran. The war is actually destroying the country, destroying its infrastructure. People are actually dying. People in Iran are actually facing bombs, hearing bombs, are being shaken by the bombs. And yes, still there might be a minority in there who says, you know, we still think the war would be decisive. But I think that unanimity that may have existed is broken down. And perhaps there's now a bigger divide between those outside who cheer for the war and those inside who actually have to live with the war. And so I think the Iranian public right now, particularly inside Iran, is highly traumatized public. I mean, this is a country that already was under maximum pressure sanctions, was at odds with the Islamic Republic, felt it was abused by power, then went through a war in June, 2025. Then it went through the whole episode of uprising and massacre in January of 2026. And then it's going through a war that is, in their view, it is quite dangerous for the future of the country because the United States is talking about invading Iran, about destroying its infrastructure, about setting— if you listen to the language of President Trump, I'm going to set them back for decades. I'm going to devastate them. I'm going to destroy them. And at the same time, they're also watching that the Islamic Republic that has taken over from Khamenei, Larijani, all of that is a much harsher, hawkish Islamic Republic. So this is a population that has been badly traumatized by everything that is happening.

Interesting. Let's, tell us about the new leader, Supreme Leader, Mohammad Khamenei, how— you've talked about how he spent more than 20 years learning the ropes from the father. And how do you think this will affect the continuation of the style of decision-making and the reshaping of Iran going forward? Not to mention having witnessed most members of his family being murdered, you know, recently.

So, you know, there is very little that is known publicly about him. I mean, in Iran, they used to say that he's the most powerful man in Iran that nobody has seen and talked to or has heard from. But we know about his biography that, you know, before he became a cleric, before he went to seminary, he was a Revolutionary Guard soldier. He volunteered. He went to Iran-Iraq War. He fought in a particularly celebrated battalion. He was in the war during its middle years. In other words, not the time that Iran liberated its territory from Iraq, but the latter part. Then when the war ended, and here his career is very different from his father. His father never served in the war. He spent a lot of time in jail under the Shah, which is a very different experience. But the younger Khamenei, Mojtaba, was a war veteran and he was a member of IRGC before he went to the seminary and studied to become a cleric. And some clerics believe that his credentials as a cleric actually exceed that of his father when he was president. So he's not, he's not an eminent cleric in a religious sense, but He did become a cleric, and he actually taught for a period in Qom as well and in Tehran to seminarians. But then after he became a cleric, he essentially became part of his father's administration. He was part of the secretariat of the Supreme Leader. And if you would, as one of the 2, 3 key people that advised them and were kind of like his chief of staff. And that put him in a position of enormous power because he would see basically every file in Iran, judicial, political, business, and military. And in particular, in that role, we know that he became very, because of his own background, became very deeply immersed in the affairs of the IRGC. So in the promotion of commanders, in who would get what, And the person that actually ran IRGC's intelligence for close to 2 decades was actually his comrade from the war days, a very influential henchman, a very dreaded man in Iran by the name of Hossein Taeb, who was very close to Mojtaba. Now, so we know that essentially he comes from the security military side of the of the Iranian state, but he is well-versed in the affairs of the state, and he has religious credentials. But we also know that probably based on who his closest people are, that he is much more hardline than his father. That the father was actually now in hindsight, we know that the older Khamenei was, yes, he was a revolutionary at heart. He was a third-worldist. He was a radical, but he was also prudent. Because in a sense, like, for instance, he signed a fatwa that Iran should not have nuclear weapons. Now, that fatwa was very important, not for the Americans, but it's very important for the religious constituency in Iran to say, I have spoken and we will not have a bomb. He wouldn't allow IRGC to build extra long-range missiles. He remained content with symbolic responses to when the United States killed General Soleimani, when it bombed Iran's nuclear program. He didn't go that far. Mujtaba belongs to a generation and a point of view that believes that restraint has invited aggression against Iran, that if Iran had been more aggressive, it would not be in the situation it is today. And so I think— and then, you know, there's the question of how did he become Supreme Leader? There were, for a very long time, people expected that Khamenei was grooming him. I mean, I say in my book that Khamenei was of the view that the perfect Supreme Leader is not the supreme cleric. It is somebody who understands religion, understands statecraft, but also understands military matters, which is sort of a very different combination. And Mojtaba was exactly that. But I think towards the end, Khamenei did not— maybe he thought Mushabba is too extreme, but also maybe he thought that it is not a very good look for the Islamic Republic, which actually fought against monarchy, to be having a son succeed the father. And so it is reputed. I don't know if it's the case, but it's said in very high circles that he wrote a letter to the Council of Experts advising against nominating Mojtaba. And I think if the war had not happened and Khamenei had died in his bed, that the Council of Experts would have chosen a Supreme Leader who could address the consequences of the uprising and the suppression of January. But as it happens, the decision to replace— the succession decision came at wartime. It came when Iran was attacked in war. And there are certain things that actually became very important. One is that the voice of IRGC became much more prominent in the choice. And this was not the IRGC that Khamenei the elder had chosen, because those people were killed by Israel. So the new generation that came up were not the ones that Khamenei had put in command. And these people basically demanded mujtaba. They wanted their own Supreme Leader. They wanted a Supreme Leader who basically understood the affairs of the state and was ready to do the job right away. And they thought that national security mattered most. And actually, most of the Council of Experts, later on some of them said, that during war, national security was a higher criteria than theology in choosing the Supreme Leader. And then I think the lesson that what you said is also quite important. You see, there's something peculiar or something very interesting. Peculiar is not the right word in the way in which Khamenei died. So, you know, during the first war in June of 2025, Israel tried to kill him, couldn't find him. He went to ground. Then after the war, he also was not accessible. It was not really known where he was, but he began to come to the surface as war became more imminent after January, around February. During the weekend where everybody thought that war was most imminent, he actually scheduled the meeting in his office above the ground. It's almost like he was welcoming it. Now, to Iranian Shias, the way he died looked like Karbala moment. Yeah, that Karbala moment. And then Mujtaba's story is also Karbala because, you know, his father died, his mother died. I guess his mother has died, his wife, one son, his sister, his nieces and nephews. It literally looks like the Karbala moment. And I think that also played in his favor. It's almost like his greatest credential is not Shia theology, is Shia mythology. In other words, because it evokes what the war needs. War doesn't need theology. War needs Imam Hussein's moment, right? That this is the Battle of Karbala. And that I think also played into into the fact that his charisma at that moment of selection came from, not from his political, military, and religious experience, but from his personal experience. And I think at the moment of war, I think for the Revolutionary Guards and for the regime, what is most important is not to galvanize the entire Iranian state, but to galvanize that core of the regime, that is absolutely essential to survival, that 10, 15% of the population. And that 10, 15% of the population is emotionally responding to the way Khamenei died and to the suffering that Mojtaba went through. So the rest of the population may be very scared of Mojtaba for the reasons we mentioned earlier, But that 10 to 15%, I immediately identified with him and consolidated around him. Now, what do we expect from him? We really don't know. But if we're going to go by his experience, this was already a hawk, let's say, a hardliner. The people that he's putting on top, are not moderates. When Larijani died, the successor to Larijani, which I mentioned, is a very close associate of Mojtaba and is a very hawkish general. So the people he's putting in place are the hawks, not the doves. And then we don't know what kind of psychological baggage he carries from the personal wounds that he suffered during this war, from his father's death, from his wife's death, from his child's death, from his mother's death. And so, so I think Iranians are bracing themselves for what would happen after the war. But what has happened, and we see in Mojtaba already, Geeta, is that Iran now is an IRGC state. Yeah, it's not, it's not that IRGC has influence. IRGC is now the state. Its control of Iran is fully confirmed. And the Supreme Leader that is ruling Iran is IRGC.

So what you're suggesting is that it's not an impossibility for Mojtaba Khamenei to think differently as it relates to the preexisting nuclear fatwa, the preexisting short-range missile capability.

No, I think the more odd thing would be if he, when he settled down, he decides to be something else. Like there's a remote, remote chance that he decides to be Deng Xiaoping, that he decides that, okay, I've established power. Now we have to go somewhere else. But the greater likelihood is that particularly if things between the United States and Iran are not resolved in this war, if Iran has to continue to watch over its shoulder, expecting another attack, I think he would, that also will be important in the direction he goes. That no, he's no longer bound by his father's fatwa. He's no longer bound by his limitations of nuclear power. And I think the people that are coming to power under Mujtaba'a, even within the ranks of IRGC, are people who believe that this senior Khamenei's restraint was a mistake.

I want to get into the Supreme National Security Council, but before we get there, last question on the decision-making apparatus. You've talked about how the military and political process is converging, and this, you know, they serve as an inhibitant, you know, to any kind of toppling. And then you also have a properly functioning constitutional mechanism for succession. But we keep hearing from the US and Israel about this continuation of decapitation. How do you reconcile the two?

Well, the decapitations in a very narrow sense have been successful because they've been killing people. Even in June, they killed 30 Revolutionary Guard commanders.

In hopes for regime change, right?

In hopes for for regime change or regime collapse. Let's say that the regime would just collapse. Well, the regime change has happened now, as I said, but it's not the regime change Trump expected, that somehow you're going to end up with somebody who's going to be palatable for the US. It's actually the opposite direction. You have brought the most radical side of IRGC to power. Regime collapse hasn't happened for the reason that the Islamic Republic, from its outset, was designed to survive, not to be popular. And in the early years of the revolution, when they were fighting leftists, leftists, particularly this organization, which is still out there, MEK, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq organization, while it was engaged in a struggle of power against the Islamic Republic in the first years, assassinated a lot of the leaders of the Islamic Republic. But, and so the Islamic Republic survived and increasingly began to distribute power among many different nodes, which is one reason sometimes Iran is dysfunctional, or you hear different things with different places. But authority in Iran, particularly decision-making authority, is distributed among many different people, many different organizations inside and outside the system. Yes, the Supreme Leader is the ultimate arbiter, but in terms of decision-making, it's diffused. Now, that actually helped Iran survive the 12-day war where you kill 30 Revolutionary Guard commanders, but the system continues. Since then, between June 2025 and February 2026, they further diffused the system. I mean, they created what they call a mosaic. Iran is not a top-down pyramid of decision-making. It is a mosaic of decision-making. Everybody knows what they need to do. Everybody has operational authority to make decisions. Periodically, they have to run up the chain and down the chain, but that's not necessary. You could kill the Supreme Leader, the system works. You could kill the head of the missile division and it continues to work. And so you have to decapitate a lot of the state for a much, much longer time before it actually collapses. It's the opposite of the Shah's state. Under the Shah, it was one man ran the country. And when that one man, for whatever reason, became paralyzed during the revolution and could not make decisions, Nobody at the top in the Iranian system could make decisions. Iran's military could not make decisions. There was no operational capability. Everybody was waiting for the Shah to say something. This is exactly the opposite. And it's actually for that reason that Israel and the US are now increasingly targeting infrastructure because they think that the only way the system would now fall is actually by degrading its capabilities to actually govern. Or to wage war. And even there, Iran has created much more resilience, like its electrical grid system is much more, you know, diverse and decentralized than, so let's say, even Israel's is, or that it's, you know, the distribution of varieties of services is across the country. This is all based on the fact that Iran has been, in a way, has been at war for 47 years. It's not a hot war. It's a cold war sometimes, periodically erupting economic war. And increasingly, it's learned that the way to survive is not to allow for a single decapitation. And right now, as we're speaking, I think after Khamenei was killed, and I think this has been part of their planning for what they knew was the war to come, Essentially, IRGC has become a partisan army. This is really a guerrilla state. It's not the state that it was. It's basically waging asymmetric warfare against the United States by essentially a state that is functioning as if it is a guerrilla army. It's a guerrilla state. And that's why it's very difficult for Israel and the United States to finish it off from the air. And trying to finish it off from the ground is going to be even more difficult because of the way in which they've organized themselves.

Go back to the 28th of February, which would have been, you know, in the midst of an ongoing negotiation between two sides. What made it easy to sell the idea for the United States to get involved in this war? Who sold this idea?

Well, I think largely Israel sold this idea to the US. I mean, you know, there's something that's different about the US today under Trump and decision-making than previous administrations is that usually you first identify a problem. Let's say CIA, State Department, Pentagon identify a problem. Then all of the government tries to figure out how to address the problem, economic, diplomatic, military, and you gradually build up And you make a case then why this particular solution, let's say a military solution, is necessary. You sell it to your allies, you sell it to your media, you sell it to your people. Even under Bush, the excuse that Iraq was building nuclear weapons was bogus, but a problem was identified first, which is Iraq is building nuclear weapons. Then the argument was made that the only way to get rid of it is nuclear, and this is, sorry, is military, and this is the That's the way we got to do it. Trump made a decision to go to war, perhaps because Bibi Netanyahu told him. I mean, the way he makes decisions or what he learns is from high-level people who talk to him, whether it's the three influential Arab leaders, it's Erdogan, it's the billionaires who meet with them, it's Bibi Netanyahu. So they sold him the idea that you need to do this and maybe it's good for you. Maybe you'll come out of this looking like the first American president to solve the Iran issue, to fix the Middle East, to avenge Iranians who wanted to kill you, whatever the argument is, he made a decision that he's going to go to war. And then he basically commanded the military to prepare for it. And then I think he didn't think much of it. He thought that it was going to be very quick. He was sold on the idea that if you take out Khomeini, You're going to end up with a Venezuela scenario of which he's very proud. So there would be a Dulce Rodriguez in Tehran who would step forward and talk to him. And for a while they thought it's going to be Larijani, then they think now it's Qalibaf, none of which is based on fact. And it was very clear because he never talked about it to the American people, even during his State of the Union. He never explained it. And essentially the war with Iran, after it went beyond a week, you began to see many different explanations for why the US went to war. It's as if Trump said this is a solution, but he's never explained what the problem is and why the problem was so urgent that he had to risk oil prices, everything else to do it. And I'm sure Trump did not expect that it would be 28 days that he would still be in the war. And he was shocked by the fact that the Iranian state didn't collapse. He was shocked by the fact that they started firing. And he was completely taken unawares by Iran waging guerrilla warfare on the global economy by going after oil, Strait of Hormuz, and basically creating a battlefield in which Iran is capable to escalate on par with US escalation. So you hit our gas fields, we're going to hit Qatar's gas fields. You can't do anything about it. You hit our infrastructure, we'll hit the Gulf infrastructure. And so he was completely unprepared for all of this. So now that we look back at it, still why it was necessary to go to war was never made. He never made the case. He never presented any evidence of why this war was necessary. And then he clearly either dismissed what he didn't want to hear or that he was not told. But the reality of it is that the assumptions with which he went to war were all proven to be false. Kill Khamenei, Iran doesn't fall. Massive bombing, the regime doesn't fall. No preparation whatsoever for Strait of Hormuz. No preparation whatsoever for if Iran attacked American bases in the Gulf or attacked the Gulf countries or attacked the energy infrastructure or, or attacked the infrastructure for global trade that goes through the Gulf, through the Persian Gulf, none of which he actually had prepared for. So in a way, he's now caught in a dilemma because his original strategy didn't work. He cannot accept defeat. He cannot claim victory because the definition of victory now has become opening the Strait of Hormuz, which actually was open before the war. And he has no way of opening it without cutting a deal with Iran that would be construed as defeat by the United States. And so the only path he sees is to escalate with Iran in the hope that He can do something that would force the Iranians to the table, like capture Karg Island or attack or capture other islands from Iran. But the Iran that you and I have been talking about, the Iran that I describe in the book, is not one that would shy away. I think Iran's instinct now is to escalate for escalate. So you take Karg Island, we're going to do something big as well. And so I think Trump has now created a situation from which he cannot extricate himself. And the longer this goes, I think the more it will have impact on other big things which matters, let's say, to Southeast Asia, not only economic, but actually America's standing vis-à-vis China. I mean, in many ways, China can be the big victor of everything that's happened. It's a gift.

I'll get back to that. But the last bit on this is, how do you see this type of unilateralism continuing? And is there culpability?

Well, there are two kinds of culpability. One is that the international community would hold you responsible. And usually the international community that holds people responsible has always been based in the West. Western media, Western governments, and none of that is happening. We saw that even during the Gaza War, that basically you have a collapse of accountability when it comes to accountability resting on the Western side of the ledger. Accountability is always for China, Iran, Russia, third world countries, but not for Western countries or their allies, let's say. The other kind of culpability would be in the price that the United States will end up paying, economic price, as well as loss of global prestige, loss of its footing in the great power rivalry, particularly with China. And that I think is a price that ultimately would come about. I mean, you know, in reality, Iran has ended up being the country that decided to stand up to the US. That even Colombia or Brazil, etc., who stood up to the US, eventually they went and had a meeting with Trump, after which you could say, we had a great meeting and I'm not going to do what I threatened I would do. But Khamenei refused and Mojtaba is refusing. And that's putting Trump in a position that he's not comfortable, which is having to go to the next level. And I think America is now very close to experiencing an imperial overreach. In other words, it has to resort to things that would hurt it. For instance, Obama was the first president who said, we've spent too much time in the Middle East on unnecessary, expensive wars. We need to stop doing that and focus on Asia. We need to pivot to Asia. Trump came in and didn't use the word pivot to Asia, but it was pretty much the same thing. And then Biden, the same. Now, the second Trump administration is reversing that de facto. He actually has started what could end up being a very costly, long war in the Middle East. And that will change America's global profile. It will create windows of opportunity for China. Vis-à-vis Taiwan, vis-à-vis global trade, vis-à-vis varieties of things. It will impact Ukraine in its war with Russia. It will impact Europe's ability to deal with Russia. It will impact Europe's economy, and it would impact America's own economy. So in a way, Trump came in very giddy about America's unipolar power, that America is the uberpower. It can dictate by threat and by economic action whatever it wants. But now it has bitten into something it can't easily chew. And whatever happens to Iran, if it goes to the next level, forces regime collapse, America is going to own the mess, whether he likes it or not. If he has to come to terms with the regime, that will cost America dearly as well. And so I think in a way, this war, we're still in the fog of it, we're still in the thick of it, but when the dust settles, we're going to see this moment as a turning point, not just for the Middle East, but for American power as well.

Vali Nasr, I want to ask you about the newly elected leadership of the Security Council, Mohammad Bagher Zolgader, who replaced Larijani. What is his likely posturing as it relates to the ongoing war and as it potentially relates to a possible negotiation?

Well, you know, Iran's national security advisers have come in different forms. Some of them have been more powerful and influential than others. But definitely, definitely, this is a powerful position because it really works like America's national security adviser. You know, this is a gateway to the supreme leader. It's the one that organizes between particularly security apparatuses of various areas of the government in order to come up with decision-making. Now, I think the very first impact of Zolghad is that it signals that Iran is not— this is not a This is not a candidate you would've chosen if you really wanted reconciliation or talks with the United States. Zolghad represents a harsh side of IRGC, which means that Iran's inclination is escalate for escalate. And that's what he represents. He's an extreme person. Now, it is possible that after the war, he may no longer be in this position. And Mojtaba may decide that He wants somebody else. If it's a question of negotiations, maybe Zolhajjar won't be there, or if Mojtaba'a really decides about negotiations, that somebody else in the foreign ministry, etc., would govern it. But he is the person who is going to decide, you know, who sits around the table. You know, a lot of what goes up and down to Mojtaba'a will go through him. And he's the face, the interface between Mojtaba and the military commanders and the government officials, right? So right now, there is no two ways that he is essentially a sort of a much more securitized, hawkish face of Iran. Now, whether he can manage properly, how good a manager he would be in his job, all of those remains to be seen. But right now, what we can read is that a person who was much more of a statesman has been replaced by somebody who's much more of a hawkish operator. And so, again, because things in Iran are now very opaque, we don't know exactly what decisions he's making. Or let's say what role he has in new appointments in IRGC. But his own person was a very powerful signal to both the people inside and the outside about where Mojtaba stands, what is his inclination at this point in time.

The idea or aspiration by Washington to get somebody like Ghalibaf involved in a negotiation is far-fetched or even delusional?

Well, it is delusional, first of all, to think that you could just go around the Supreme Leader to pick somebody out of the blue, as if, you know, Larijani or Ghalibaf would be powerful enough to bring the rest of the system with them. And also, you know, yes, somebody like Larijani, you may have had more fruitful conversations with him. And he might have been able to sell the rest of the system, but you also have to have had a realistic deal that they actually would be able to sell the country on. I mean, a yes person like a Dulce Rodriguez, neither of them will play that role. And Iran is not in that kind of a position. But But I would say in the longer term, eliminating these old statesmen in favor of people like Zolghad will actually make ending the war and make diplomatic negotiations more difficult. Because Gita, you know, in government, regardless of what policy is, in the end, when you have a roundtable around the president or a supreme leader or the president of the United States, it really matters who's sitting there. Do you have a— and what kind of advice they're giving, right? And how do they interpret different things? So it makes— so the more radical that table becomes, the less likely it is that talk of compromise negotiations, et cetera, is going to get traction. So the US is actually with Israel. Israel may have a different objective, but the US is actually overseeing the creation of a table in Tehran that is not one that actually Trump wants to see, because it's going to be more and more difficult to talk to these people.

You know, the Strait of Hormuz has become a major choke point for many of us in Southeast Asia and the rest of Asia. And a parallel or a mirror of that is the Phillipines Channel south of Singapore, which is witnessing a lot fewer ships now carrying oil and gas products. Talk about this prospect or idea of putting boots on the ground. How is that going to have repercussions on Strait of Hormuz serving as a choke point?

Well, first of all, I think Trump's thinking, okay, if I capture Kharg Island or another piece of territory, the Iranians will fold. Again, if you looked at my book, Iran went in 1980, Iraq attacked Iran, took a major Iranian port, and was sitting on Iranian territory. It took Iran 2 years to organize irregular fighters that would become the Revolutionary Guard to ultimately liberate its territory. And then the war continued for 6 more years. But that first 2 years would tell you that the Iranians will, will basically then continue to attack the United States on Kharg Island. Or wherever it is. And they're patient because that's their historical experience, that it took them 2 years. Nobody helped them. The world was all helping Saddam, the Arab countries, Soviet Union, America, Europe. They were all helping Saddam. Iran was alone. Nobody was helping it. And yet after 2 years, they figured out a way in which to dislodge the Iraqis and push them out. So the same psychology is embedded in the IRGC of today. That's the way they will deal with it. But also, they're going to escalate on their own. How they're going to escalate, we don't know. They may attack in a major way a number of Gulf countries. They may attack shipping. The Houthis may enter in and close the Bab el-Mandeb, which, you know, for Southeast Asia means even trade that goes through Europe through the Indian Ocean would stop. It means that the oil that Saudi Arabia is shipping through Yanbu on the Red Sea will stop. So it would put more crunch on markets. The scope of the war would expand. And ultimately, if Iran decides that it's going to escalate for escalation, then Trump is going to face the dilemma of what do I do now? Do I escalate Yet again, or do I basically try to negotiate an out? But I think Iran is determined not to be bullied into surrender. They actually think that they now are gaining strategic advantage. And Iran is not interested in a ceasefire that would take it back to the box that it was kept in before the war. Maximum pressure, open to Israel and America attacking it anytime they want, facing an angry population at home. They don't want to go back there. They're saying that they don't want ceasefire, they want end to the war. What does end to the war mean? Guarantees of no more war on Iran, economic compensation, control of the Strait of Hormuz as a deterrence against future war, but maybe as a source of revenue, and that the US bases have to go, Israel has to observe ceasefire with Hezbollah. Some of these are very outlandish demands, but what they really are looking for is that the war would give them a completely different situation than they had before the war. And so After all the suffering they've gone through, if they were just going to throw in the towel, it doesn't make sense to them. So they're willing to continue to escalate, believing that the US is the one who's going to get exhausted. That it's not about, in their view, it's not about who has bigger guns. It's about who has a higher threshold of pain.

Right.

Who has more endurance? And they believe they have more endurance. And I was joking, many of your listeners and viewers may remember the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight years ago. Iran's strategy is Muhammad Ali. Let them exhaust themselves. Let them throw the punches. So long as we survive, ultimately they're going to run out of gas. And the longer this bout goes from the first round to the eighth round to the 15th round, it is the US and Israel that are going to lose strategic advantage. And it's Iran that's going to gain strategic advantage. And also, Iran has been preparing itself for this war for some time. So they knew that if they took the Strait of Hormuz, this is what the US might do. So I don't think they are the ones that are being surprised. It's— they have a plan. If they can implement it, it means that this war can become uglier and longer.

The high threshold for pain, as you alluded to, is that likely going to be amplified on the back of reactivation or further activation of those in Iraq, in Yemen, and even in Bahrain, basically the Shia community members in the Middle East. And I guess my question thereafter would be, how is that going to affect the potential unification or combination between Sunni and Shia in the Middle East, or even beyond?

Very good point. So, so, you know, Israel and the United States have only one policy, which is vertical escalation. In other words, if we're dropping 20 bombs, we can drop 40 bombs. If we're killing, you know, 10 leaders, we can go kill 20 leaders. More of what we have been doing. Iran's escalation is horizontal by continuously opening new fronts. So it's the Gulf, then as you said, it could be Bahrain, it could be Iraq, it could be Yemen. It's today's Persian Gulf, then it's going to be the Red Sea and sort of try to spread it out. Now, I think for Iran right now, and also for some of the groups like Hezbollah, like The Houthis, Iraqis, Hashd al-Shaabi, the others, this is a fight for survival. So you have to survive this moment before you think about the future. Now, there are areas where the anti-Shia feeling could get aggravated. Like in Lebanon, there already was hostility to Hezbollah. A lot of the Lebanese don't want to be dragged into this war. They're resentful that Hezbollah as dragging him into the war. You know, there is— you now have a Sunni government in Syria that is very hostile to Hezbollah because of Hezbollah's role in supporting Assad. You have the Sunnis in Iraq who might be resentful of the Shias getting involved and also across the Gulf, but also in a lot of the rest of the Arab world and in South Asia, the mood, I think, among the people is different. Like there are some very serious extremist, I wouldn't call them extremist, but let's say conservative leaders of the Deoband Seminaries, which has been associated with Sunni sectarianism in India and Pakistan, have come out saying that this is not a moment for division. We should stand with Iran, or that Sunni extremists Even some of them showed up in prayers after Khamenei died. Right. So there is also that sentiment that Iran is tapping to, which is which in the Middle East it came was bubbling under the surface or maybe in Indonesia, Malaysia, I don't know, that is there from the Gaza War. This resentment towards America and Israel, you know, bullying what happened in Gaza with the Palestinians. So that is there too. I don't think there's one single strand here between Shias and Sunnis. Even online, you see a lot of Sunnis basically sort of saying, this is not a sectarian moment. This is a sort of a— Iran is basically fighting the fight that they wish their own leaders would fight. I'm not saying that Sunnis in Bahrain would subscribe to that, or Sunnis in Kuwait, or Sunnis in Lebanon, but it is not as a single Sunni versus Shia line as it was the case a number of years ago. The language of Iran is also now much more about resistance to imperialism, to American aggression, that was the case. So I think, and then it also for Iran extends beyond that. It extends also to the non-Muslim sort of populations in Latin America, in Mexico, in Central America, even among progressive circles in the West, that there is, because of the dislike of Donald Trump, because of the bitter taste that the Gaza War has left in many people's mouths, because of the lack of accountability, as you mentioned, that there is begrudging sort of support, let's say, for Iran. And these people don't live in Iran, so they don't have opinion about Islamic Republic and how it's governed and how it might have abused their population. They're basically responding to the image of Iran standing up to the US. And I think, for instance, at this moment, I think there is more sympathy for Iran, let's say, than there is for Gulf countries in most of the Muslim world. You don't see the rest of the Muslim world up in agitation about, you know, criticizing Iran for its attacks. And so it is a This may change, don't get me wrong. I mean, things may change, but at this moment, Iran is not feeling like it's at the people's level that it's isolated. It's isolated at the decision-making level that governments in varieties of countries either are neutral or are supporting the US position in the region.

Vali, I know you've got to go. We only have a few minutes left, but I've got two last questions. The first one is really with respect to the prospect for peace. I mean, we've heard the request from Iran in terms of what it would take, right? That means basically complete withdrawal of the Americans out of the Middle East, amongst other things. How realistic is that? And how realistic is the prospect for peace under any conditions?

Well, I mean, all wars have to end up at a table. Unless the Iranian regime completely collapses and then there's nobody to negotiate with, and something like Syria, let's say something like Libya. But if the Islamic Republic survives, then the United States has to at some point negotiate with it. The US had to negotiate with the Taliban. The US had to negotiate with North Vietnam. Yes, it tried to continuously bomb North Vietnam to get greater leverage, but in the end, he had to negotiate. Iranians are not going to get everything they want, but they also will not accept surrender, which is what Trump is offering them. I mean, this 15-point plan that they've given Iran is essentially a surrender, which they will not accept. So you might say that the two sides have to fight long enough so that the fighting will change their respective positions, that Iranians begin to sort of become more accommodating, and Trump begins to realize that, you know, he has to give them something which is more than what was the case before the war. I mean, it's possible to see that Iran would give up a great deal of its nuclear program, let's say, in exchange for some real gains in terms of its control of the Strait of Hormuz and real economic gains. I think the Iranians want a situation in which they're guaranteed that 6 months from and now they won't be attacked again. How they get that guarantee is very difficult to imagine. But for instance, the Iranians think that the Chinese have to play a big role in providing that guarantee, that the Chinese and the Russians have to come into the Middle East in a big way. The US is not ready for that, but at some point, they might have to accept it if it wants an end to the war. So I think the Iranians think they have to fight longer to get the US to come off of its high horse, that Trump has not quite realized that he needs to compromise. Trump thinks that he needs to beat on Iran more or capture its territory so that the Iranians get off of their high horse. So I think the truth, in the end, it would be somewhere in the middle. I think the best kind of a scenario is that you end up having a kind of a deal where in the end, Iran has a vested interest in in living by it. And the United States also has a vested interest in not undermining it again, even Mr. Trump. Now, we may not be there right now, but ultimately it is difficult and it's just like Vietnam. I mean, if these deals collapse, fighting will continue. And in the end, years ago, I'll stop with this, you know, I used to work for Richard Holbrooke, I was working in Afghanistan. One time we were in Paris and we were walking in the street and he pointed to the hotel where he stayed on Place de la Concorde, where first time he went there with Kissinger to talk to the North Vietnamese as a young diplomat. And he said, I spent 2 weeks in this hotel. And then, you know, years later, I went back to that hotel again to 5 years later for us to resume negotiations. And in the end, it was in this hotel that the war ended, except in this time period between the two negotiations, tens of thousands of Americans died.

Wow.

And he was telling me that as a lesson for the Taliban negotiations, you know, there was the US and the Taliban. He was saying, eventually we'll have to talk. And at that point in time, the US was refusing to talk to the Taliban. And he was saying that many Americans and the Afghans are going to die but in the end, we're going to talk to them. And that's exactly what happened after he died, that eventually the US signed a deal with the Taliban. Good deal, bad deal, but that's how we came out. But in the process, a lot more Americans and a lot more Afghans died before we got there. It may well end up being the same with Iran. In other words, they may meet, it may collapse, they may meet again, it may collapse. And in the meantime, each side tries to bend the will of the other side. But this war, ultimately, unless the Islamic Republic collapses, will have to end around the table. Wow.

I can already tell you that the economic consequences are pretty dire in many parts of the world as we speak. Exactly. And I can't see how they're going to be able to sustain this much longer. The last question is with regards to multipolarity. I used to be in a camp that believed that multipolarity would be one where the revisionism would come from the developing economies that used to be tiny and have become much larger. But we're witnessing how the United States is actually the most revisionist now.

That's right.

You know, with respect to multipolarity and how, I guess the question is, how do you think that would dovetail or impact upon the idea of nuclear nonproliferation?

No, I agree with you. I think President Trump destroyed the international liberal order in the belief that the United States would then be the top dog, would completely dominate the world. But now, if imperial overreach in Iran diminishes US power, then the United States cannot control what comes after the international liberal order. But I also think that the example of Iran. In the West, it's very easy to say, because Iran is a quote-unquote a rogue regime, is a bad regime, that everything that's happening to it, it deserves, and it's only exclusive to Iran. I was shocked when recently the German chancellor said that international law should not apply to Iran, which is an astonishing comment to make. But the reality is that the rest of the world doesn't see it this way. Even countries who would agree that Iran has badly behaved, is supporter of terrorism, etc., believe that the rules that have been written for Iran and in this case have more, more broader applicability. In other words, if it's okay to decapitate a state, I mean, it's different when Israel killed leaders of Hezbollah or Hamas, but if killing state leaders is acceptable, And not a single European country actually condemns it, these upholders of international law condemn it, then it can apply to everybody. And not just by the United States. Why wouldn't Putin do it? Why wouldn't Xi Jinping do it? Why wouldn't a developing country do it to another developing country? And if you can attack a country at will and not be condemned, then basically this can happen to everybody. And the more that countries begin to get worried about decapitation, about this kind of regime change by war, the more they're going to look for alternatives. I was reading in an article in New York Times an account of a recent meeting between the president of Brazil and the president of South Africa. It was maybe a few weeks ago when Ramaphosa was in Brazil. Yeah, I saw that. And Lula said to him, we need to find a pact because otherwise both of us may get invaded. I mean, this is the kind of conversation that is happening among countries that actually are not rogue countries. These are mainstream countries who actually have to worry that Trump may want to remove Lula or might want to remove Ramaphosa or might want to do this or might want to do that. And so ultimately you gravitate towards the fact that the ultimate deterrence is nuclear power. So rather than going to war with Iran and killing Khamenei as a way of preventing non-proliferation, the US may have actually accelerated non-proliferation and it has no way of stopping it. And I think we're entering a much more dangerous world. Because unfortunately, the West and European countries basically have signed up to a kind of behavior that they cannot prevent from it becoming the new normal.

Wow. Vali, you got to go. I've got many more questions. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you very much for inviting me. It was great having this conversation with you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That was Professor Vali Nasr from Johns Hopkins and CSIS. Thank you.