DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. After a year and a half of dramatic and often heartbreaking news from the Middle East, events of the past four days have been truly head-spinning. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump joined Israel's air campaign against Iran, dropping massive bunker-busting bombs and other heavy munitions on three Iranian nuclear sites. Iran responded with what appeared to be a symbolic military gesture, a missile attack on an American base in Qatar, which it warned was coming and caused no injuries. Trump called it very weak and said he does not intend to retaliate.
As we record today's show Tuesday morning, a ceasefire between Israel and Iran has been marred by alleged violations on both sides, while Trump warns the two adversaries to hold their fire. Our guest today, veteran Iran expert Karim Sadjadpour, has called Trump's bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities a once-in-a-generation event that could transform the Middle East. While the impact of the conflict may not be clear for years, Sadjadpour says, the attacks by the U.S. and Israel do raise a more immediate question - will they strengthen the authoritarian regime in Tehran or hasten its demise?
We've asked Sadjadpour to join us today to help us understand the nature of the Iranian regime and explore some of the many questions raised by recent events. Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He was previously an analyst for the International Crisis Group, based in Tehran and Washington. He grew up in the United States but is the son of Iranian parents. We recorded our interview this morning.
Well, Karim Sadjadpour, welcome back to FRESH AIR. It has been a very busy, dizzying series of events. And I wonder if you might begin by just sharing what you may be hearing from friends and contacts in Iran about how they are, how they're reacting to the U.S. entry into the war.
KARIM SADJADPOUR: Well, thank you, Dave. It's wonderful to be with you. I think that inside Iran, you have a very torn population. On one hand, Iranians are very patriotic, very nationalistic people. At the same time, I would say probably more than 80% of Iranians are deeply discontent living under the Islamic Republic, which is essentially not only a politically authoritarian regime, but it's also socially authoritarian, and it's profoundly mismanaged the country economically.
And so I think that early on in the war, when Israel first invaded last week and they took out some of Iran's senior military commanders, these were individuals that were associated with repression for many Iranians. And those were very precision operations and didn't impact the lives of most Iranians. So early on, I think many members of Iranian society were watching in amazement that, you know, suddenly these individuals who were the faces of repression in Iran could just be disappeared.
But then, as the war went to Tehran and it became an urban war, and President Trump and senior Israeli officials called for residents of Tehran - a city of more than 10 million people - to evacuate, that started to cause enormous disruption in Iranian society, and there's been hundreds of civilian casualties now. And so I think it's a population which is, right now, living in a profound state of anxiety. And then, you know, America dropping several 30,000-pound bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities is unprecedented. I think there's a combination of perhaps deep humiliation, perhaps anger on the part of some. And despite the fact that the official slogan of the Iranian regime for many years has been death to America, it's a population which I would argue has yearned for a rapprochement with America. And so very complex feelings there.
DAVIES: Well, you know, one of the things that's just not clear in the events of recent days is what the impact is on Iran's nuclear program. And, you know, President Trump said that it was - that the facilities were obliterated. American military leaders were more measured in their comments. It's just not clear. And I have to say, you know, when I had pictured bunker-busting bombs hitting this mountain where the Fordo nuclear facility was based, I pictured it, you know, being a kind of relatively contained space that a single bomb might not penetrate immediately, but several in a row might get inside the mountain and just blow it up. When you now look at satellite photos, it is a huge area, and, you know, the holes left by these missiles are relatively small. So it's just not exactly clear - is it? - how much damage they've done. What's your sense?
SADJADPOUR: Well, to the extent that Iran had industrial-sized nuclear program, that industrial-sized nuclear program has been significantly degraded. The question here is, has Iran's ability to build a nuclear weapon been significantly degraded? And the concern that many people have is that the stockpile of highly enriched uranium which Iran had accumulated over the years was removed from those nuclear sites before the bombing happened. This is according to Vice President Vance, who said that we're not sure where that highly enriched uranium is. You know, from talking to my colleagues who are nuclear physicists, they say, you know, these are like scuba tanks, scuba-diving oxygen tanks. It's around 400 kilograms worth, but they can fit in perhaps a dozen trucks.
And Iran, we know, has the technical wherewithal to build a nuclear weapon if they choose to do so. It's long been no longer a technical question in Iran, but a political question of whether they wanted to cross that threshold. So on one hand, we did significantly degrade Iran's industrial-sized nuclear facilities. There is a concern now that if it's a regime which is hell-bent on acquiring a nuclear weapon, they still probably have the scientists, the technical capabilities. They have the stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, and they may be able to set up centrifuge cascades, you know, in a basement somewhere in the country. Iran is an enormous country.
Now, if a Mossad agent were on this interview with us, they would say, listen, we have thoroughly penetrated this Iranian system. As everyone witnessed in the last week, you know, you had senior Iranian military commanders who were assassinated in their bedrooms. So the idea that we don't know where 400 kilograms of uranium is - highly enriched uranium is is incorrect. But again, this is the concern that Vice President Vance raised - that that highly enriched uranium is unaccounted for. So, you know, as I wrote, Dave, in the early hours after this operation, we will only know with the benefit of hindsight, several years from now, whether this military operation prevented Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon or it actually ensured that Iran would acquire a nuclear weapon.
DAVIES: So let's talk about the Iranian regime. This is a country with an elected parliament - 290 members - and an elected president. But someone else with the title of supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is he, in effect, a dictator with the authority of, say, you know, Muammar Gaddafi in his day?
SADJADPOUR: Perhaps not in the same level as Muammar Gaddafi, but, absolutely, Ayatollah Khamenei is a dictator. He's arguably the longest-serving autocrat in the world. He became supreme leader in 1989 after the founder of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, passed away. One thing he's done very cleverly - I wrote a piece many years ago entitled "Ayatollah Machiavelli" because he's a very clever political operator in that, in contrast to a lot of autocrats in the Middle East - whether you mentioned Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein or, you know, modern-day autocrats - the key to Khamenei's longevity is that he has, for many years, wielded power without accountability. And that's because of these institutions in Iran that have accountability without power.
So the way that other autocrats absorb the blame for what's happening in their nations - whether that's, you know, economic malaise or political repression, social repression - for many years, Khamenei has been able to deflect that onto elected institutions like, as I said, the president of Iran or the Parliament, or the Guardian Council or elsewhere. But that is much more difficult for him to do now. He's seen by most Iranians now as an autocrat. For the majority of Iranians now, the only leader they've known is Ayatollah Khamenei because he's been ruling for 36 years, and the median age of Iranians is lower than 36 years.
DAVIES: Right. Do we know the state of his health, his cognitive abilities or even his whereabouts? He's said to be in hiding.
SADJADPOUR: So it's long been thought that he has prostate cancer and he's been managing that prostate cancer for many years. You know, I tend to watch his speeches rather than read them, just so you get a sense of how he appears, the strength of his voice. And he's 86 years old. So, you know, obviously, he doesn't have the physical and the mental bandwidth to be micromanaging the country as he used to. And, you know, I think a lot about his current predicament because, as you said, he's living right now in a bunker. You know, the president of the United States, President Trump, essentially threatened to take him out.
DAVIES: Right.
SADJADPOUR: And so he's been living in fear and hiding. As I said, several of his - at least a dozen of his top military commanders were assassinated in the last week - people whom he has grown to really rely on. So he has to be operating in a state of paranoia about how penetrated his system is. And, you know, he's fighting three wars - three very high-tech wars against the greatest superpower in the world, the United States, the greatest military power in the Middle East, which is the state of Israel, and his own population. And that's daunting for any individual, let alone an 86-year-old man inside a bunker whose only formal education was in the seminaries of Qom six decades ago.
DAVIES: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, formerly an analyst with the International Crisis Group, based in Tehran and Washington. We recorded our interview this morning. We'll hear more after this short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF JULIAN LAGE GROUP'S "IOWA TAKEN")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an analyst with the International Crisis Group, based in Tehran and Washington. We're talking about the events in the Middle East. We recorded our interview this morning.
You know, I've heard you make the point that when you look at countries that have long-running hostilities, like, you know, China and Taiwan, India and Pakistan, they're often countries that share borders or at least, you know, compete for a defined sphere of influence. And when you look at Israel and Iran, that really is not true, is it?
SADJADPOUR: It's not. And this is, you know, one of the great tragedies of this modern conflict - that, in my view, these two countries, Israel and Iran, are more natural partners or allies than they are adversaries. You know, first of all, there's a great historic affinity between the two peoples - Persians and Jews. You know, the ancient Persian King Cyrus the Great was revered in the Old Testament. You know, Iran has one of the oldest continuously inhabited Jewish communities in the world. Now, that community has significantly dwindled since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. And, you know, what essentially happened in 1979 was, virtually overnight, Iran went from being a U.S.-allied monarchy led by the shah of Iran to...
DAVIES: And an ally of Israel, right?
SADJADPOUR: And an ally - a close partner of Israel. And virtually overnight, it went to being an Islamist theocracy led by the Ayatollah Khamenei. And I would say that there was kind of three pillars of the Islamic Revolution that we continue to see to this day. And they are death to America, death to Israel and the mandatory hijab - the mandatory veiling of women, which Ayatollah Khomeini called the flag of the Islamic Revolution.
But, you know, even now, when you look at modern times, Iran and Israel, this is not a geopolitical war as much as it is an ideological war, right? Iran is an energy superpower. Israel is a technology superpower. There's compatible interests there. But for decades now, being hostile to Israel has really been part of the identity of the Iranian system.
And there is a strategic element to it as well, in that if you're a country like Iran, which is predominantly Persian, predominantly Shiite Muslim, in a Middle East which is predominantly Sunni Arab, and you want to be a regional hegemon, you're not going to win a lot of supporters by waving the Persian flag or the Shiite flag. But if you wave the Palestine flag and the anti-Israel flag, that helps to transcend the Persian-Arab divide and the Sunni-Shia divide. So there is a strategic element to it as well. But in my view, it is an unnatural hostility. And the day in which Iran has a government that prioritizes the national interests before revolutionary ideology, I think the Iran-Israel hostility - the Islamic Republic's hostility toward Israel will cease.
DAVIES: Yeah, it is interesting because, you know, historically, I mean, there are, you know, Muslim communities and rulers that had good relations with Jewish populations. I mean, it wasn't necessarily inevitable that Iran would see Israel as a bitter enemy. But this was essentially a matter of revolutionary dogma?
SADJADPOUR: Yeah, when you look back at the writings of Ayatollah Khomeini, it was clear antisemitism. It wasn't -- you know, he wasn't just attacking Zionism or Israel. He would mention the word Jews and talk about Jewish betrayals of the prophet Muhammad. You know, now, the Islamic Republic has -- has kind of learned to sugarcoat their language somewhat. They don't say Jews. They say Zionists. They try to focus on the state of Israel.
But Iranians are still kind of living in the ideological experiment of Ayatollah Khomeini - a treatise he wrote in 1970 called "Islamic Government." And you go back and read those writings - he was far more obsessed with destroying Israel than he has been building Iran. And, you know, that's also what I say about the Islamic Republic. You can very frequently hear official slogans of death to America, death to Israel. I don't recall ever the supreme leader saying, long live Iran or that being, you know, a public slogan in their official gatherings.
DAVIES: You know, you've written that Iran has a relatively well-educated and certainly globally connected population. A lot of people have traveled. If we polled ordinary Iranian citizens, how - to what extent would they share the supreme leader's hatred of Israel and the United States?
SADJADPOUR: You know, nowadays, especially young populations are all consuming the same culture, right? - online, on social media, on Instagram. And that's not to say that Iranians are not very proud of their identity. It's a very proud, nationalistic population. But I think people have figured out that the country will never fulfill its enormous potential.
And I really believe Iran has the human capital and the natural resources to be a G20 nation. It should be one of - easily one of the top 20 economies in the world. But that can only happen, as I said, if the organizing principle of Iran's leadership is nationalism and long live Iran - not death to America and death to Israel. The country will never fulfill its enormous potential as long as it's focused more on destroying others than uplifting itself. And I think most Iranians get that.
You know, many of these days, they've seen the example - the remarkable example of Dubai, which, four decades ago, was a backwater. And essentially, you know, what one Iranian friend once told me was, you know, 46 years ago, Dubai and Iran went to the same elevator - or I should say the United Arab Emirates - went to the same elevator. And the UAE pushed up, and Iran pushed down. And, you know, the gap between them has been enormous. So, you know, I think that, you know, it's a population which - as I say, it's a regime which aspires to be like North Korea, a society which aspires to be more like South Korea.
DAVIES: You know, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 86. Do we know if he has planned succession?
SADJADPOUR: So some reporting has come out recently about his plans for succession, although we don't know how accurate it is. There's only been one succession event in the history - the 46-year history of the Islamic Republic, when Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989 and Khamenei replaced him. There's a body called the Assembly of Experts, and it's around 86 clerics. I joke that their average age is deceased.
DAVIES: (Laughter).
SADJADPOUR: You know, these are clerics that are - you know, make Khamenei look young in comparison. The head of it is a 98-year-old guy, Ayatollah Jannati. So in theory, that body, the Assembly of Experts, will decide who is Khamenei's successor. I think, in practice, it is unlikely that the Revolutionary Guards, who have become Iran's most powerful political and economic institution - we're talking about 190,000 men - that they're going to defer to this group of geriatric clerics to know who is going to be their next commander-in-chief. In fact, I would go a step further to say that, in my view, it is more likely that, you know, after Khamenei dies, it could be that there is a transitional figure who is a cleric, much like there was the transitional figure of Boris Yeltsin post Soviet Union. But I think the next powerful leader of Iran is unlikely to be wearing a turban.
DAVIES: We need to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Karim Sadjadpour. He is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an analyst with the International Crisis Group based in Tehran and Washington. We recorded our interview this morning. We'll hear more after a short break.
I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF PATRICK ZIMMERLI, BRAD MEHLDAU AND KEVIN HAYS' "GENERATRIX")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. We are listening to the interview I recorded this morning with Karim Sadjadpour about the events in the Middle East between Israel and Iran, the potential fallout from American airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend and how they may affect the authoritarian regime in Tehran. Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an analyst with the International Crisis Group based in Tehran and Washington.
Let's talk just a bit about the history of the nuclear program of Iran. You know, it dates back to the '50s - right? - and actually began with help from the United States.
SADJADPOUR: That's right. It began during the time of the Shah decades ago, and the Shah actually had a very close relationship with the United States and had sent many Iranian students to study at MIT - study nuclear engineering - and they came back, and they played a pivotal role in building this nuclear program. And in some ways, similar to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Shah was a little coy about his goals. On one hand, it was set up as a nuclear energy program. But I think, you know, the Shah certainly was thinking about the possibility that this could also serve down the road as a weapons program.
After the revolution happened, the revolutionary government essentially shut down this nuclear program. They actually used some of these nuclear facilities as silos to store wheat. And Ayatollah Khomeini said that nuclear weapons are un-Islamic. And, you know, remember, we're talking about the aftermath of catastrophic events like Chernobyl, so nuclear power was...
DAVIES: And this was 1979 when the revolution occurred, right?
SADJADPOUR: Yeah.
DAVIES: Yeah.
SADJADPOUR: So for many years, nuclear power was out of vogue. They began to restart the program, you know, in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War when they saw how isolated they were. And, you know, it began slowly, and they built this program in a way in which they could say, this is for nuclear energy, right? Our goal is nuclear energy. It was different than the North Korean program, which was kind of a rapid dash for weapons. This was built under the guise of a nuclear energy program. And a lot of their clandestine nuclear facilities were made public shortly before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
And that's really when this became kind of an international geopolitical drama and an issue of obviously great concern for Israel and the United States. And when we look back now, it is remarkable the amount of resources that Iran has spent on this nuclear program. You know, when you consider both sunk costs and penalties for this program in terms of, you know, economic sanctions and lost oil revenue, it's easily over $500 billion - the cost of this program. And for a program which barely provided about 1% of Iran's energy needs and didn't actually serve as a deterrent - you know, Israel and the United States dropped massive bombs on Iran - so, you know, as of right now, the program has been a colossal failure for the Iranian regime.
And for many years, the Iranian government said this is - this program is a great source of national pride. It's akin to landing on the moon. You don't hear them say that anymore because, I think, for many Iranians, they don't associate anything positive with this program apart from, you know, sanctions and isolation and war.
DAVIES: Well, you know, you mentioned that it has not been an effective deterrent because, you know, the United States and Israel just recently attacked, successfully, a lot of its nuclear facilities. But I guess the counter-argument to that is, well, it's not a deterrent because it never came to fruition. If it did, it would be a mighty deterrent, right?
SADJADPOUR: Well, in fact, the events of the last two weeks, I'm sure, have opened up real debates inside the Revolutionary Guards - within the Revolutionary Guards, between those who say, listen, look at the examples of Libya - Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Ukraine. These were countries which either gave up their nuclear option or they failed to acquire a nuclear weapon, and all of them made themselves vulnerable to external intervention, whereas North Korea has managed to stay in power because they have this nuclear cloak of immunity.
And so that is going to be, in my view, a real concern that - you know, in fact, I won't believe the supreme leader's end game was not the North Korea model, but what you would call the Japan model - to be a screwdriver-turn away from having a nuclear weapon, but to not turn the screw. And the reason why, in addition to the fact that he understood that Iran's nuclear facilities were totally penetrated by Israeli and U.S. intelligence - but if he actually crossed that threshold and acquired a nuclear weapon, there was a real danger for him - that he would be ceding power to the military - to the Revolutionary Guards - because they would be the ones in control of that nuclear weapon.
And so when we're thinking now about, you know, what happens in a post-Khamenei Iran, it could very much be the case that you have a new group of leaders who have a different outlook, and they believe that Iran's mistake was having pursued a nuclear weapons capability too deliberately when, in fact, they should have pursued a nuclear weapon more rapidly.
DAVIES: You know, one of the other things I've read is that if the Iranians can't develop a nuclear weapons program of their own that creates weapons, could they simply buy a weapon or weapons from a nuclear power - you know, Pakistan or North Korea? Is that a viable option?
SADJADPOUR: I think, given how penetrated this Iranian system is, that is probably unlikely. And it would be profoundly unwise of Pakistan, which is Iran's neighbor, to provide it a nuclear weapon, given Iran's political instability at the moment.
DAVIES: I'd like to talk about Iran's capacity to strike out against the United States or Israel in the future. I mean, it seems that its ability is sharply limited at the moment. It's lost a lot of allies and proxies in the region, right? Hamas and Hezbollah have been militarily defeated. The Syrian regime is gone. Does this mean that it is in a position where it simply will not be able to, you know, have the kind of military impact that it has? Or could it, you know, activate sleeper cells within the United States and conduct assassinations or commit, you know, civilian terrorist activities? What's your sense of that?
SADJADPOUR: You know, I'm skeptical they will go to those measures, Dave, because, at the end of the day, this is a regime which wants to stay in power. They're homicidal, but not suicidal. You know, Hannah Arendt once said that even the most radical revolutionary becomes a conservative the day after the revolution because, suddenly, you have a lot you want to preserve and conserve.
So I think that Ayatollah Khamenei is in an incredibly difficult predicament at the moment. And one of the things that he has to calculate is that, if he responds too weakly, he's at risk of losing face in the eyes of his own people. But if he responds too strongly, he's at risk of losing his head. You know, President Trump has publicly threatened him with retaliation - personal retaliation if he responds.
And many of the options that Iran has for retaliation are kind of the tactical equivalent of a suicide bombing, in that they can do enormous damage to others, but Iran may not survive the blowback. So what are those options? They could try to bomb U.S. embassies and military outposts in the Middle East, which is what they did the other day, launching a few missiles at Qatar. But that was, you know, essentially choreographed and more symbolic. They could try to bomb oil installations in places like Saudi Arabia to spike the price of oil.
They could try to block global trade corridors, like the Strait of Hormuz. They could try to rain missiles against Israel. But, again, all of these would likely trigger potentially massive U.S. and Israeli retaliation. So I suspect that, you know, at this point, it's a regime in survival mode. And if it survives, which, you know, is still a big question we can talk about, it will probably bide its time and look for opportunities to retaliate down the road when, you know, the world has moved onto other issues.
DAVIES: Iran has had a relationship with Russia recently around the war in Ukraine. Is it turning to Putin for help? Is he helpful?
SADJADPOUR: Putin hasn't been helpful to Iran during this latest war between Iran and Israel and the United States. And it just shows you that the Islamic Republic is one of the most strategically lonely nations in the world. Its only reliable ally was the Assad regime in Syria, which collapsed last fall. You know, much of their proxy network - like, most importantly, Hezbollah, Lebanese Hezbollah - has been decimated. And so the remaining partners they do have, have been very much transactional.
You know, China is Iran's most important economic partner - 90% of Iran's oil exports go to China. But China really hasn't been anywhere to be seen in this latest crisis, and likewise Russia. You know, Iran has provided Russia drones to fight its war in Ukraine. But, you know, we've seen in the last couple of weeks that Russia has really been on the sidelines, hasn't been able to really protect the Islamic Republic from an Israeli or American military onslaught.
DAVIES: We should take another break here, so let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an analyst at the International Crisis Group, based in Tehran and Washington. We recorded our interview this morning. We'll hear more after this break.
This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARC BROUSSARD'S "INNER CITY BLUES (MAKE ME WANNA HOLLER)")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And our guest is Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an analyst with the International Crisis Group, based in Tehran and Washington. We recorded our interview this morning.
So you've said that the events of the past few days raise a question of whether it will embolden the regime in power in Iran or hasten its demise. So let's talk about the prospects for this. And we should note that, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu kind of encouraged this. I mean, one of - he was quoted as saying, "a light has been lit - carry it to freedom," speaking to the Iranian people. This is your time. Your hour of freedom is near. It's happening now. Trump also kind of welcomed the idea on social media. Well, let's start, I guess, with the popularity or unpopularity of the Iranian regime. You said it's really not at all well-liked by its citizens, right?
SADJADPOUR: That's absolutely right, Dave, because this is a regime which, in my view, has few redeeming qualities in that it's politically repressive, it's socially repressive, and it's profoundly economically mismanaged the country. And it commits this kind of repression and corruption while ruling from a moral pedestal as an Islamist theocracy. And I'll tell you, that is really insulting to people. You know, if you compare it to your run-of-the-mill autocracy, Vladimir Putin's Russia, you know, obviously, he engages in tremendous repression and corruption, but he's not - doesn't have illusions of moral superiority, saying that, you know, I'm carrying out God's will, which is what the Islamic Republic does. So this is a regime which I think many Iranians find deeply offensive.
The challenge that Iranians have had is that, you know, we know from history and the political science literature that authoritarian governments that were born out of a revolution - think, you know, Castro's Cuba, communist China, Soviet Union - they tend to be more durable than just your run-of-the-mill dictatorship, in part because there is this organizing principle, which provides cohesion for security forces. And that's something that the Islamic Republic has had. It's a regime which, in my view, perhaps has at best 20% support. But its security apparatus remains highly armed, organized and willing to kill en masse. And you have a society, for all their discontents, which at the moment is unorganized, unarmed, leaderless and not willing to die en masse.
And I say that as actually a sign of the political maturity of the Iranian society because, in contrast to many protest movements in the Middle East which, you know, have a strong kind of Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist component to it, Iran is distinct in that it's not a secular autocracy repressing Islamist dissent. It's an Islamist autocracy which is repressing primarily secular dissent. People in Iran want to separate mosque and state, not join in mosque and state. You have a regime which venerates martyrdom, a society which doesn't believe in that. And so for that reason - you know, people often ask me, well, if so many Iranians are discontent, why don't they just go out and change the government? Well, anyone who's lived under an authoritarian regime knows that, you know, when you go out on the streets and you see 20,000 men with machine guns, it's deeply intimidating.
But like all very powerful dictators, you know, while they rule, their collapse appears inconceivable. After they've fallen, their collapse appeared inevitable. And I think we're at the stage now in the life cycle of Islamic Republic in which I think most people inside the country recognize this is a government on borrowed time. I call it a zombie regime. You know, it's a dead ideology running on repression. And, you know, part of the reason why it hasn't yet transitioned is that it's not clear to people, you know, what the alternative is going to be.
DAVIES: Right, right. You know, and I think we should remember that there were mass demonstrations against the regime not long ago - what? - 2022 and '23, I mean, for women's rights and other issues. What does that experience tell us about the effectiveness of that kind of activity in Iran today?
SADJADPOUR: Well, I'm glad you mentioned that, the 2022, '23 Women, Life, Freedom protests. And it shows you - as I said earlier, this is a regime which, basically, its ideological pillars are now three things - death to America, death to Israel and the mandatory veiling of women, the hijab. And all three of these things are now Achilles' heels because its antipathy toward America and Israel has led to this profound military humiliation which they're experiencing, and their obsession with the veiling of women - which, as I said, Ayatollah Khamenei once referred to it as the flag of the Islamic Revolution - that was what set off the Women, Life, Freedom protests. There was a young woman called Mahsa Amini who was detained and killed in custody for reportedly not having her hijab on properly.
And so, again, you look at a lot of dictatorships out there - Russia, Venezuela, etc. - you know, they're socially repressive, economically repressive, but they allow people a social release. If you want, you know, you can drink alcohol or go out with your boyfriend or girlfriend. In Iran, they police even that aspect of people's lives. And so I think that, you know, it's a population which has really for years been suffocating.
DAVIES: Yeah. Well, you know, and I think we should just note that those hundreds of thousands who took to the streets a few years ago showed incredible courage in doing so because the reaction was really heavy, right?
SADJADPOUR: They absolutely did. There was 20,000 people who were arrested, over 500 that were killed. There's a great sociologist, Charles Kurzman, who wrote a wonderful book about the Iranian Revolution years ago, and I'm going to paraphrase him. He said, you know, the paradox of revolutionary movements is that in order to be viable, they need to attract a critical mass of people. But to attract a critical mass of people, they need to be perceived to be viable - right? - because, you know, as human beings, we don't want to join a losing team. We want to join a winning team. And that's why these tipping points and revolutionary movements happen very quickly. Once you get to 49%, then it's - your days away from 100% - right? - 'cause a critical mass of people figure out, OK, this system is not long for the world. It quickly switches.
In the Women, Life, Freedom protests, I don't think we yet got close to that tipping point. And the thing to look for these days is elite fissures, splinters at the elite level in government, you know, members of the government, senior officials defecting or, you know, questioning the supreme leader. That tends to have this effect in which, you know, the population sees that and they're emboldened by it. But I should also add, Dave, that because this is a regime and a supreme leader who also came to power through revolution, he's very aware of that mentality. And one of the modus operandis of Ayatollah Khamenei is that you never compromise when you're being pressured because if you compromise under pressure, that's not going to alleviate the pressure. It's going to project weakness and invite even more of it.
And so for that reason, he's been a leader who's been totally inflexible, totally hostile to any meaningful political reform because he looked at the example of Gorbachev and even the shah of Iran and said that, you know, if you compromise your principles, that's not going to prolong your shelf life. That's like taking a sledgehammer to the pillars of a building. The whole thing will collapse on top of our head.
DAVIES: We need to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Karim Sadjadpour. He is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an analyst with the International Crisis Group, based in Tehran and Washington. We'll hear more after this break. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an analyst with the International Crisis Group, based in Tehran and Washington. We're talking about the events in the Middle East. We recorded our interview this morning.
You know, it's interesting, there's - say, since World War II, when, you know, war brought instability to a lot of regimes and a lot of authoritarian regimes were overturned, you know, the fact that a dictator falls doesn't necessarily mean that democratic and liberal values will prevail in replacing the dictator. What does history tell us about, you know, the prospects for a positive outcome when a regime is removed by an invading force or collapses under the pressure of foreign invasion or war?
SADJADPOUR: It's an important question, Dave, because, you know, all of us, especially in the United States, you want to root for freedom and democracy to prevail. But in reality, since World War II, only about a quarter of authoritarian collapses have been followed by democratic government. More often, it's followed by another form of authoritarian regime. Iran, 1979, is an example of that - went from an absolute monarchy to a theocracy. The collapse of the Soviet Union is an example of that. You go from a communist system to dictatorship led by Vladimir Putin. And so it's my view that Iran has a society which is ripe for representative government. It's a wise kind of globalized citizenry, well-educated. They want to be part of the outside world. So I don't doubt the popular capacity for representative government in Iran.
But so often these authoritarian transitions are not popularity contests. They're coercive contests, and the people who, you know, commonly prevail are those not with the best ideas, but the most coercive capacity. And so the task for Iranian advocates of democracy and civil society and human rights will be to coalesce and work together and unite against the common goal because in my view, they do have strength in numbers. But if they remain disunited and you have kind of liberal forces divided amongst themselves, then a small minority can either continue to remain in power, as the Islamic Republic does, or a smaller minority can prevail in an authoritarian transition, as it did in the post Soviet Union.
DAVIES: You know, we should wrap this up, but I have to ask you. As someone who is, you know, a son of Iranian parents, who has lived in the country, has many deep associations and a lot of affection for it - I don't know - when you go to bed at night, how optimistic or pessimistic do you feel about prospects there?
SADJADPOUR: You know, one of the things that I've tried to focus on, Dave, in the couple decades I've been working on Iran is not to conflate my hopes and my analysis or my emotions and analysis, and that I would love to be able to say that I think Iran is going to transition into Norway or Denmark. And as I said, I think that it's a population which, you know, enormously talented. It's a country with all the benchmarks to be a G20 nation, a constructive global power, you know? - great history, civilizational identity, as I said, natural resources, culture. It's blessed in so many ways, Iran.
But I think it's been plagued by terrible political leadership over the last several decades, misplaced priorities, as I said, death to America and death to Israel rather than long live Iran. And, you know, my hope is that some great leaders will emerge from within the population, within civil society, who are able to harness the enormous popular will for change to live in a tolerant, prosperous system. But I know that that's not guaranteed. And, you know, I'm a graduate of the University of Michigan, and every year, during the NCAA brackets, the March Madness, I always fill out two brackets. One is with Michigan winning it all...
DAVIES: (Laughter).
SADJADPOUR: ...And the other with what I think is going to happen. And, you know, I try in this context, not to conflate things. As I said, I would like to be to say, Dave, I'm confident that the Islamic Republic is going to fall and it will be replaced by a secular liberal democracy. I do think there is the popular appetite for that. But, you know, as I said, revolutions are not commonly won or popular uprisings are not commonly won by those who have the best arguments, but it's oftentimes those with the greatest course of capacities.
DAVIES: Well, Karim Sadjadpour, thank you so much for your insights. Thanks for speaking with us.
SADJADPOUR: It was wonderful to be with you. Thank you so much.
DAVIES: Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an analyst with the International Crisis Group, based in Tehran and Washington. We recorded our interview this morning.
On tomorrow's show, we speak with actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach. He's won two Emmys for his portrayal of cousin Richie on the TV series "The Bear." It's new season premieres this week. Bachrach has also appeared in the shows "Girls," "Andor" and "The Punisher." Next month, he co-stars in the new Marvel movie "The Fantastic Four: First Steps." I hope you can join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram @nprfreshair.
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DAVIES: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support today from Charlie Kaier. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Therese Madden directed today's show. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.
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