Iran, the Day After
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Forty-five years ago this month, followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini seized the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage. Last weekend, regime supporters in Tehran celebrated that blatant violation of the most basic international law by rallying outside what used to be the embassy building. It's now a museum known as the Den of Spies, and it's covered with anti-American murals.

Demonstrators burned American and Israeli flags while chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." Back in 1979, the response of the Carter administration was, to be generous, ineffective. The hostages were released 444 days later on January 20th, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president.

Over the decades since, the threats posed by the regime that came to power, the misleadingly named Islamic Republic of Iran, have not diminished. In a video released last week, Iran's current ruler, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed, "...the enemies, whether Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front."

That last term refers to Tehran's proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Shia militias in Syria and Iraq. What should be America's policy toward Iran? Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, has published a new special report entitled Navigating the Iranian Opposition, a national security briefing for the United States. Here's a copy.

He's here at FDD headquarters to talk about his research and his conclusions. We're pleased you're virtually in the room with us here today on Foreign Policy. Ilan, welcome to FDD's headquarters and our studio here. This is great. Thanks, Cliff. Listen, before we really start on your report and you talk to us about what's in it, you know what, tell us a little bit about yourself, how, why, and when you immigrated to think Tankistan.

That was a long time ago. So I immigrated to think tankestan because I'm a recovering lawyer. It's a lifelong process. We have jackets, you know, but I went to university, went right to law school. And what part of the country did you grow up in? So I grew up all over, but mostly in New England. My parents,

My parents were Soviet refuseniks, so they came out of the Soviet Union. I'm too old to be a Jackson-Vanik baby, but I still self-identify as a Jackson-Vanik baby. So they came out in the early 70s before the Jackson-Vanik Amendment was passed. Ended up in Israel right on the eve of the Yom Kippur War, which their timing was impeccable. But served, met, married. I was born there. Spent

about three, three and a half years there. And then I came, you know, emigrated to the United States and we were all over, but mostly in new England. And we ended up settling in New Haven, Connecticut, which is, which is a great place to go to school. It's a, I would argue less nice place to be a townie. Right. But there you have it. And then, and then I sort of went off to university and, and, and,

I was up at Brandeis studying Near Eastern Judaic Studies. I discovered very quickly that a linguist from MIT may not be the proper guide for me to understand one of the most consequential regions in the world. So I sort of broadened my horizons, came down to do law school here in Washington and never left, migrated to – didn't go to the law firm route, thankfully, but migrated to work in counterterrorism policy and then –

After a short stint doing that prior consulting, I ended up in the think tank world. So very good. All right. And what motivated you to write this new special report navigating the Iranian opposition?

Well, so this was an interesting, a lot of the books that I write and the reports that I do and a lot of the work that we do. And at the American Foreign Policy Council, I have tremendous freedom to sort of to. With Herman Pritchard, I should say Herman is a wonderful, wonderful human being. I just got to praise him. Herman, I love Herman. Our president, Herman Pritchard, is really sort of.

visionary in terms of knowing when to rein people in and when to let them go. So I've been enormously fortunate to be able to sort of run a Middle East practice, run sort of work, research and analytical work on Russia, on terrorism, on Middle East, Africa, with mostly no constraints. And so out of that freedom, a lot of times comes this idea, these sort of these stochastic

stubborn questions that I don't really have answers to. And Cliff, you and I have known each other for a long time, but I'll always remember years and years ago, you told me something that sort of always stuck with me, which was that in order to sell somebody aspirin, you first have to convince them they have a headache, right? And that's a really apt metaphor for thinking about Iran because we understand we have a headache. We understand the regime is problematic. But after all

All this time after, you know, we've been sort of laser focused on the Iranian regime's nuclear program for a quarter century after sort of all this investment. We actually understand very little about the terrain, the complexity of the political actors and the groups that are arrayed against the regime. So when you look at the regime, right, I spent a lot of time looking at Iran, as does your team.

um i see all of the same things that they do which is you know this mass disaffection this uh walking away from the religion uh this economic failure to thrive all of the ingredients right i don't know if we're going to make a stew but all the ingredients are there for this really heady political cocktail that may be fatal for the regime so it raised this question in my mind um

okay, so what comes next? Do we really understand what comes next? The answer is we don't. And part of the problem is, you know, as the old saw in American politics is if you don't stand for something, you fall for everything. So, you know, we had that to our great detriment in the Iraqi context. We had this sort of vision of how Iraq would go. Not, I would argue, not as much understanding of the terrain. And so we were sort of played by some political actors and in the service of doing a little bit better this time around.

I thought what would be really interesting as a thought exercise would be not to just do an examination of the Iranian opposition. And I've done that. I published a book on it a couple of years ago, but to actually do the reverse, which is to say, OK, we know what the Iranian opposition is saying. We know what they're articulating and the vision that they're articulating. Let me go ask national security practitioners. Let me go ask Americans.

You, as someone who works on the nuclear file, you, as someone who works on regional security in the Middle East, you, who works on Homeland Defense, right? It's sort of, you know, this cross-section, really good cross-section of folks from different administrations, subject matter experts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What are the prerequisites for you, right? For a future Iran to align it with American interests, to make it a security producer rather than a security consumer, to really get back to,

this idea that Iran is a constructive force, you know, what needs to happen in, uh, you know, and what we're talking about is everything from what type of political composition Iran should look like to what kind of custodianship you get over strategic programs to, you know, uh, whether religion should be baked into the constitution, right. So all these different things, but there's actually a lot to dig into once you get into it. Um, and there were some pretty surprising conclusions. All right. Are you in a sense, uh,

jumping ahead to the day after the regime falls, but not thinking about or prescribing how the regime falls. And I say that also because there's sort of been two views and still are in a way within the sort of foreign policy community. One is that, you know, the the the.

The search for the elusive Iranian moderates in the regime, because then we can, you know, address their... I'm thinking of the Obama policy. I'm going to reach out my hand. Won't you unclench your fist? I'm going to address your grievances. You know, Mossadegh and the revolution in 52, that's a whole other... We've talked about this with the Ray Takai...

It's false that the CIA created that, brought down Mossadegh back in the 1950s, Kermit Roosevelt notwithstanding. Anyhow, we'll also respect your equities. We want what I call the Mr. Rogers doctrine. That is Obama saying you should share the neighborhood. Saudis, Iranians, Israel, can't we all get along, right? Why not? I would say people at the FDD think all of that is

It's a pipe dream. There was just no way that was going to happen. This regime has to fall for anything good to happen. As long as this regime is in power, the Iranian people will be severely repressed as they are. And the neighbors of the Iranian regime will all be threatened, if not under attack, if not at war, as Israel is now from the ring of fire around Iran. So just to be clear on this.

You're saying, let's not talk about how the regime falls. They probably have opinions on it. Let's think about, OK, if we got there, would we have to say, oh, what do we do now? We should have a plan. Well, right. It's a little bit of both. It's a little bit the day before and it's a little bit of the day after. And what I mean by this is, you know, as you said, right, the.

consensus view uh among national security practitioners um uh certainly within our circle is that the regime is a malign entity the regime is a cohesive ideological hole you can't really bargain with these guys you can't peel off the moderates and you know uh empower them versus the conservatives um this is a bankrupt ideological construct that has to go

What's really striking to me is the degree to which Iranians happen to agree. Right. And so what you've seen over the last two years, and I say two years because we're looking at, you know, the protests have been happening for years and years. Right. Certainly going back to 2009. No, even before. But the latest round, right, the Women's Life Freedom Movement in September of 2022. And it caught fire the way.

Others did not. And frankly, it caught fire the way others did not for a very simple reason, because everyone has a mom. And so, you know, the fact that this was a Kurdish Iranian woman who was brutalized by the regime security forces really resonated on a very visceral level. Yeah. And it cut across socioeconomic strata. And so what you saw, you know, they, they, uh, Iranians came out in the street in droves, at least in the early going. But over time, you've seen this fundamental thing happen. Um, you went from, uh,

over the regime's heavy-handed religious edicts to a fundamental rejection of the Islamic Republic as a whole. Right. And that's

And that's why, you know, I said at the outset, I think, you know, we're heading in the direction of some sort of political transformation, because there is a sense when I talk to Iranians, when I talk to Iranian opposition figures, there is a consensus. They disagree on everything, but there is a consensus that the regime has crossed a Rubicon of some sort. It's not very clear exactly what that entails, exactly when it will fall. But now it's not a question of if it's a question of when, at least in their minds.

You have in your report, you talk about the 2009 Green Movement. And I do remember watching that. And part of the problem was that nobody, not the U.S., I don't think the Israelis, I could be wrong, certainly not the Europeans, did anything to encourage and help that movement to succeed. And so it...

No, in fact, the opposite, the Obama administration said, Oh no, no, no. We're engaging with the government. So therefore we're not going to engage with the people. That's right. The people were saying, Obama, are you with us or against us? And he didn't say, he didn't answer that. He said, this is an internal matter. And again, right. Uh,

sort of full faith and credit, you have to understand it's a little bit awkward to engage with the people and engage with the regime that's trying to kill them at the same time, right? So you sort of have to pick one. I think you made the wrong choice. Right. And then two years ago, as you say, women, life, freedom movement. I think it's a great phrase, women, life, freedom. What was the French phrase? It was liberté, égalité, fraternité. And then there's alcohol, tobacco, firearms. That's another one that I have.

I like that. All right. I'm done. Anyway, but I think what you also say is that the women life freedom movement has sort of dissipated. Again, we haven't given it – they haven't gotten outside support. Right. We haven't given it oxygen. Right. Yeah. And the other thing I would say is that it's hard for these – look –

And you have that, you do have this in your report too. If you look, the Shah was not going to kill 10,000 of his people to stay in power. He just, he wasn't that kind of guy. There's a lot wrong with him, but he wasn't going to do that. This regime, I can see them killing 10,000 people and then going to breakfast. Absolutely. And that's, so that's a really interesting thing because that colors all discussions about what comes next. Right. And to sort of, to contextualize this properly, you,

There is a, and by the way, you and I've had this conversation sort of not on the podcast, not online, but for years about the practice of alternative futures, which was championed, pioneered by the late great Andy Marshall, who was the Yoda of the Pentagon, right? He ran the Pentagon's in-house think tank called the Office of Net Assessment. But he was very big into precisely this, which is let's game out how a scenario may work.

under the assumption that this is not the only thing that may happen. Other things may happen, right? So this is

Part of that attempt. Right. I think in historical terms and political scientists have pointed out inconveniently for a lot of democracy promoters that democracy promotion doesn't usually lead you from directly from authoritarian to democratic regimes. Right. It's like in historical terms, authoritarian to authoritarian transitions are more common. But.

That doesn't mean that it never happens. And so this is my attempt of thinking about, OK, let's assume that that alternative future is possible, that you actually go to a post-theocratic future in Iran. Right. The regime falls, however it may fall. What comes next? And by the way, right, we have to cut through a lot of noise because you have a lot of groups

who are oscillating here in Washington around Capitol Hill and the centers of power. And they're all essentially saying basically the same thing, things that they think Americans want to hear, which is that a future Iran will be democratic. A future Iran will be non-nuclear. A future Iran will be an ally to the United States. And if they're all, the question that I'm always left with is if they're all saying the same things, why can't they get together?

So the answer is because they don't all necessarily believe the same things. And also because, you know, the devil's in the details. They have different agendas. They have different constituencies. So getting out of that sort of that cul-de-sac, I think, is very important. And the way I tried to do that, I tried to thread the needle in the report is rather than looking at what these groups are saying.

Talk to American national security professionals and say, hey, what do we need a future Iran to look like? Right. Along all these different indices in order for us to be comfortable with it in the context of national security. Right. And it leads you to some really interesting conclusions. Right. So the example I always roll out is the question of territorial integrity.

So there is a – has been for years a very healthy debate here in Washington about whether or not we should either encourage or at least tolerate the balkanization of Iran, right? The regime falls. Do we want this thing to come apart at the seams? Do we want it to look like the Czech Republic? Do we want – Because about half of – only about half of Iranians roughly are Persians. Yeah, yeah, 53 percent, something like that. Right. The others –

Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, and others. Anyhow, yes, right. No, no, no, exactly right. And because, and again, right, this is a function of history. Iran, before it was the Islamic Republic, was the last iteration, right? The Pahlavi dynasty, the formal name was the Empire of Iran. And the reason it was the Empire of Iran was because there were many empires before it, right? The, you know, Safavids and, you know, the

All sorts of the Qajaris, you know, so all sorts of imperial constructs and they ebbed and flowed in terms of territorial borders. But what happened over time was that it brought in all these different ethnic groups, all these different languages, all these different confessions. And so you have all these sort of.

all these identities that are subordinated under the, the dominant identity, uh, of Iran itself. And that the Iranian regime is, is trying to sort of to navigate, right. A great example of this is, um, uh,

Masoud Pazeshkin, the new Iranian president who was selected, right? Again, selected, not elected, right? Selected over the summer. He is at least partially an appeal to this, right? Because he's part Azeri, he's part Kurdish. And so there is this sort of this foot stomp. Is he part Persian too or he's just Kurdish? I don't know that, but I do know that he has extraction, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there's this sort of foot stomp of, hey, you know, we we the regime may be repressive, but we sort of we hear you. Right. And I think it's it's a function of the fact that the regime really understands that it's sitting atop of this very variegated. Not it's not a monolith. Right. It's a very variegated ethnic community. So out of that understanding, there have been scholars in the West for a long time.

including here in this town, including in Israel, that have talked about, hey, we should tolerate this thing falling apart. And by the way, maybe we should even encourage it. Maybe we should even- Right, because if you're thinking of how do you spark a revolution or encourage a revolution, there are various, one way to go about it is to say, let's help the Baluchis because they're rebellious and they don't like being part of this Iranian empire. Let's help the Arabs. They don't like, and then plenty of-

Iranian Americans election? No, that's really not a good approach to it. They're Iranian patriots, which means more than being Persian patriots. They're not expansionists like the current government is, that the Iranian empire, which is an Islamic and Islamist and jihadist empire, needs to expand. That's what this Islamic revolution of 79 was all about. That's why they have to wipe Israel off the map. That's why they have to challenge Iran.

American prominence in the world, all those things, but they still want to see Iran as one country, as one

Whatever it is. By the way, it's no coincidence, comrade, that if you look at the axis of aggressors as we talk about here. Is that what we're calling it these days? That's what we're calling here, FTD, most of the time. Russia, China, and Iran for sure. They are all empires, shrunken empires to some extent, who want to be larger empires.

This is very much imperialist. No, absolutely. And all the people on college campuses who think they are studying imperialism, colonialism, don't understand it's happening right now because they're only looking at the 19th century and the 20th century. They don't get what's going on at all. So, right. So our hope, by the way, and I should add this too, here at FDD, Mark Dubowitz in particular, but most members, I would say, of our kind of Iran team,

They want to see the U.S. supporting the opposition to this regime inside Iran in every way possible, overtly, covertly, rhetorically. Show them that we are behind them, that we are with them, not against them. Because we do have the belief here that most Iranians, after 45 years under the Islamist jackboot, really want a very different life. And are different than anybody else probably in the whole Middle East at this point. I don't know, but, you know, I—

It is my feeling, and maybe it's a gut feeling more than it's hard to substantiate, that Iranians would like to be friends with Americans again, would like to be more free than they were under the Shah. But that said, have some of the freedoms that they did have under the Shah. You know, you remember I was in Iran in 79 covering the revolution, and people were disappointed, disappointed.

You could see that to some extent in that it means mostly the women must cover up, cover up. I mean, yes, there were young people excited. They were carrying, carrying guns and they want, and all kinds of things that were going to happen, but the revolution never did succeed the way a lot. Also, a lot of people didn't think certainly young people I talked to over there, that this was going to be a purely Islamist revolution. They thought that there would be,

The Ayatollah Khomeini would be a sort of spiritual guide, but they would have great freedom under this regime. Anyhow, I go I'm going on too long about this. No, no, no. That's right. All right. So let me just sort of finish the territorial integrity example, because I think it's very instructive of sort of what I'm trying to do. So, yes, you're absolutely right. Because of the imperial history, because of nationalist sentiment, Iranians.

from across sort of the political spectrum are really unified in this idea that Iran should stay together, right? As is to be expected. But what I found really striking was when I did these workshops, when I did these long form interviews with former government officials,

All of the ones that worked really seriously on the Iranian nuclear file said exactly the same thing, but for totally different reasons. Right. They said, they said, you know what? That's totally right. Iran should not be what we need. We require central control. But when you press them on it, why? Why is that? I understand why. I understand why Iranians want central control. Why? Why would what do you think is important? The answer is the nuclear program. Right. The historical analogy that was presented to me again and again was Iran.

When the Soviet Union broke down, what you saw was for, thankfully, for a very short period of time in relative terms, but you saw a potential nightmare scenario of loose nukes. You saw a loss of control, of central control over fissile material because the Soviet stockpiles were distributed.

And so, you know, we put that genie back in the box, thankfully, but I very clearly remember. So thank you. Now, from the Ukrainian point of view, not so thankfully. No, no. But the Ukrainians gave up their nukes in exchange for a memo that said their territorial integrity would be respected by Russia and guaranteed essentially by the U.S. and Britain and Russia. Neither respected nor guaranteed. Right. So, yeah, yeah. Right. Right.

Right. But in the context of what we saw in the early 1990s, the example is actually very germane because the what we saw was this spread of fissile material throughout the post-Soviet space. Right. So instances in Central Asia. You remember Jose Padilla? You remember the name Jose Padilla? Yeah. Yeah. As late as 2003.

Jose Padilla was the Al Qaeda operative of Hispanic descent that was apprehended in Central Asia by local authorities trying to buy fissile material for an Al Qaeda bomb. Right. So the reason he was there, the reason he was looking was precisely this. Right. So cycle forward. Right. 20 years.

And what all these national security practitioners told me, they're like, look, whatever shape Iran has to take, we need vertical control. We need central control because we need stockpile stewardship because the nuclear program is so mature. It's so distributed and it's so intricate that we actually need somebody to be in charge.

Right. So what that tells you is, right, that's sort of this interesting fork in the road because there's tons of Iranian opposition groups that advocate. Right. Especially the ethnically based opposition groups that advocate on our support us. We believe in in federalization. We believe in separatism and sort of all this stuff. That means given the conversations I've had. Right. I end up sort of in the report. I end up saying, you know what?

It's not consonant with American national security interests, right? So don't think about Iran. Think about stockpile stewardship. Right. What these groups are advocating is actually would be detrimental. Right.

Look, and in a reasonably moderate liberal post Islamic Republic of Iran, you could have considerable autonomy for various groups in terms of the, you know, doing, I mean, they get to speak their language. If you're, if you're, they get to have their culture, they get to have their interpretation of Islam. Most of them are, but there is a Christian minority left. Jewish minority is almost entirely gone at this point. Um,

Isn't there, there's one Jewish member of the Iranian modulus, right? There may be, but there's also a young Jewish Iranian who was just executed. No, no, no, right. What I'm saying is they used the one guy in the modulus as the, oh, look, we have Jews. Yeah, but when I was there in 1979, the Jewish community was 80, 90, 100,000 people. It's down well under 10,000 at this point, a lot of old people who, you know, so that's, but yeah, I can see that. Now, just to be clear, are you,

Are you making the case for nation building, for trying to translate, you know, America helping to make a post Islamic Republic into into a democracy? No, no, no. And in fact, that was sort of another really interesting takeaway, because that's what you hear from all these opposition groups. Right. They all sort of are singing off the same sheet of music when they're like, oh, you know, future Iran, post-theocratic Iran will be democratic. Right.

What you hear both from U.S. national security practitioners and also, frankly, from Israeli national security practitioners, because I spent some time in Israel doing interviews for this as well, is that actually a post-theocratic Iran doesn't have to be democratic. That would actually be an anomaly in the region. Right. I had Israelis tell me, you know what? Actually, we live in the jungle. Right. We've heard this refrain all the time, but we're actually much more comfortable dealing with autocratic regimes than we are dealing with democracies, despite the fact that we're a democracy ourselves. Right.

That tells me something really interesting, which is that

The secret sauce of regime stability for Iran isn't to be a democracy necessarily, but it's pluralism. It's equal representation under the law. It's creating a broad aperture for all these different ethnic groups, all these different religions to coexist on an equal footing. Right. And in places where they do, we've seen great success and in places where they don't in places like Afghanistan.

um you have a real sort of walking away from all the political progress that you've made right so there's there's i i spend probably a little bit too much time looking at history but you know i spent i spent some time looking at afghan history at iraqi history there's lots of cautionary tales there about what to do and what not to do far short of saying hey we're going to build your nation but at the very least you can articulate you know what an iran a future iran that's pluralistic

is better than a future Iran that's not pluralistic. Right. And do you think a monarchy would be useful? Now, that's a division among the, I would say, among the Iranian diaspora, whether there should be a reinstitution of the Shah, the descendant of the Shah, who we know here in Washington, who would go back as a constitutional monarch or something else. I mean, is that probably more stabilizing in your view? So I think the constitutional part matters a lot more than the monarchy part.

And what I mean by this is, yes, there is you can sort of see it, see the the experiential, you know, the slogans and signs, you know, when you see footage of the Iranian protests, there is some level of support for Reza Pahlavi. What's not clear to me is how deep that runs, you know, what percentage of the Iranian electorate. Right. And by the way, right. Ultimately, this is not for us to decide. It's for Iranians to decide.

But building a framework that's inclusive, that could lead Iranians, if they choose to do so, to be a monarchy again or to be something else entirely, to be a parliamentary democracy, to be, you know, to be sort of, you know, benign, despotism, you know, whatever. Right. As long as the future government of Iran embraces the complexity.

of the society as it currently exists and doesn't repress it, I think that's where the strength lies. And that's where, that's why the constitutional thing becomes so important. What can I, go ahead. That's why I tie up one loose end in terms of the nuclear facilities. I mean, your thought is that there would be nuclear, it could be nuclear power. That's fine. That's the, of course they got plenty of oil, but no nuclear weapons, even in a reform regime. Is that your view?

So I'm sort of, you know, I'm tossing this around in my head. I think I'm a little bit more nuanced than this. And so let me lay out my thinking, right? So one of the consistent refrains you hear from every single Iranian opposition group is, oh, we will eschew nuclear weapons. We will sort of give up nuclear weapons, a future Iran view non-nuclear. So candidly, that's nonsense. And it's nonsense because the nuclear program, maybe not nuclear weapons, but the nuclear program

is actually a very popular venture, right? All, and again, right? All the cabinet- What does a nuclear program mean? Does it imply weapons or does it imply nuclear power? No, no, no, right. So nuclear power- Which I think we should have in the US. No, no, no, right. Exactly. And in Europe, but yeah. No, no, but nuclear power predominantly, but even extending to a nuclear weapons capability. Right, okay. The support tends to drop off pretty precipitously if you start asking pointed questions about nuclear weapons. But it's very clear that there's a consensus at least

for a nuclear program for civilian energy generation. So what that tells you is that all of these opposition groups aren't really like what they're saying is not, not, not totally faithful, right? Because if they want to be in power, if they want to rule, if they want to capture the zeitgeist of the Iranian people, they're going to have to moderate their stance on, uh, on a nuclear program, at least somewhat. Right. And then again, right. Because, uh, you know, uh,

I have to reflect on the history, right? We're the ones that actually started the Iranian nuclear program. Back in the 1950s, under the Atoms for Peace program, the Eisenhower administration gave the Shah the first working civilian nuclear reactor that was, I believe it was housed at Tehran University. And the reason it did that was because it wasn't so much about the technology. It was about the character of the regime, right? Right.

The Shah of Iran was an ally of the United States. He ran a transparent government. You could sort of say what you will about, you know, his his excesses and his repression. But it was a transparent government. We were comfortable with that government. And therefore, we thought that they were going to be a mature nuclear possessor. And by the way, he proved us right. So in intervening years, right, a decade later, he Iran.

The empire of Iran was one of the first signatories of the 1968 non-proliferation treaty. And he allowed international inspectors in for the ensuing decade until he was ousted by Khomeini in 1979. So contrast that to what we have today, where we have a regime that is predatory. It's explicitly revisionist and it is a bad neighbor. Genocidal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is pursuing this capability.

In a way that not just Israel, but every region, every country in the region sees as a potential threat to their own security. Right. And that tells you everything you need to know. Right. Why did people not worry about the nuclear program under the Shah, but they worry about it under the Islamic Republic?

Look, frankly, it's not so much the technology. It's the finger on the trigger. It's the character of the regime that will wield it. So to me, I'm less concerned about Iran being completely free of nuclear weapons or nuclear processes. But what I think has to be a prerequisite is if anything happens along this line, if a future Iranian government comes to us and says, listen, the Iranian people, they want this, right? This is a national project. You know, we'll be really disadvantaged.

If we don't pursue it, for example, like the Emiratis did a few years ago, like the Indians did a few years ago. Right. We empowered them. We gave them a civilian, a one, two, three. Civilian. Yes. Not nuclear weapons. No, not nuclear weapons. But also all the caveats that attach with that. Right. Transparency, international inspectors, accountability, all that stuff. All the things promised by this regime, but they lied. Right. Right.

Yeah, because even if a better regime had nuclear weapons, everybody would know that that regime could change again. So if I'm the Saudis and even if it were pluralistic or even if a democratic Iran, I'd still say I got to have nuclear weapons too. I think the Israelis would be worried about it. Now, of course, I mean, this is not in your report, but right now as we speak,

And I mentioned this in the introduction. You've got the Ayatollah Khomeini threatening Israel with a massive bone shattering or teeth, whatever response the Biden administration saying, we don't know that we can hold the Israelis back. If you do such a thing, if the Israelis were to hit this regime really hard or to end or to destroy its nuclear weapons, which by the way, I think the U S should be doing because the

Presidents, Republican and Democratic for years have said we will not allow this regime to have nuclear weapons. At some point, it's got to be more than something your press secretary repeats. You've got to do something about it. You could do it directly or you could do it with getting the Israelis to help you or even through the Israelis. But you get the – you want to get that job done. I'm not confident it will be done.

If it were to be done, though, I think that would be empowering to the opposition because it would show the weakness of the regime in place right now. If Israel were to hit and destroy the nuclear weapons that they've been building for so long, their facilities, or if America were to do so. In other words, if you wanted to help the Iranian people bring down this regime, you

It would be so useful to get rid of the nuclear weapons this regime is building. 100%. And the way I like to think about it is David Menachery, Professor David Menachery, the dean of Israeli-Iran studies, laid it out this way in the 1990s even, right? Late 1990s. And he talked about two trains leaving a station, right? The first is the regime change train, right? The potential for fundamental transformation of the regime.

And the second is the nuclear program, right? The nuclear possession train.

And his argument, which I think still holds very much today, is that if the second train gets to the end point before the first train does, the first train never gets there. Right. And I happen to think that's a pretty powerful image, but it's also, I believe, the way Israeli policymakers still think about it. Right. So when you listen to Israeli policymakers talk, they never talk about denuclearizing Iran. Right. Full stop. We're going to get rid of everything. Right.

Part of it is this humility where, you know, I've talked to a bunch of Israeli officials dealing with the nuclear file and, you know, they admit they're like, look, we don't necessarily we think we do, but we don't necessarily know where everything is. So we cannot in good faith advocate denuclearization because it may not be possible. But what they do talk about.

is a delay, right? Like fundamental delay for a period of years. And here, the example that they use is Ozark in the early 1980s is the Syrian nuclear program in 2007. The goal, right? They destroyed what was at that time, the centerpiece of the Iraqi nuclear program, the Syrian nuclear program. And the idea was, oh yeah, that they may reconstitute, but we bought ourselves some years. But as Israeli countries,

Former Israeli military officials like to tell me all the time, life has a way of intruding. So Saddam Hussein may have wanted to rebuild Osirak, but he was caught in a year war with Iran and he didn't have time to do it. Bashar al-Assad may have wanted to rebuild al-Kibar, but then the Syrian civil war broke out and he didn't have the time or the energy or the resources to do it. So I think the Israeli hope is,

Yeah. And let, let that second train catch up. Right. And of course you delay, you can delay again. I mean, you can come back and do that again, right? That's, I mean, that's mowing the lawn. That's not the best strategy we can see for certain, but it's not the worst strategy necessarily. All right. So, uh,

I think it's your conclusion or it's one of your last chapters is called America's role. You've talked a little bit about it, but maybe elaborate a little bit on what America because we're way today. Full disclosure is Tuesday. We don't know who who's going to be the next president of the United States. But in a way, this is what you're doing. And this is saying to the next president of the United States, whoever he or she may be.

This would be a sound policy vis-a-vis the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is a sworn enemy of the United States as well as Israel. And as I would say, has made an axis, an alliance with Moscow and with Beijing and not least with North Korea, by the way, and working its way well into Caracas and Havana and a lot of other places that we have to – we need to start to understand the threat that's causing this.

coalescing in front of our eyes that we'd rather not see. But talk. So talk about America's role, what the next administration's policy would be if they were to have a coherent and smart policy. Right. Well, it's a big if it's a big if it's a big if. But but I do think no matter who becomes president, at some point we will have a chief executive that grasps what a lot of people are

right now have already begun to grasp what the Iranian people are trying to tell us, which is that the long game for the future of Iran is with the Iranian people. It's not with the regime, right? The regime for all sorts of reasons, right? Because the regime skews older demographically and the people skew younger because the regime, there's this pronounced economic failure to thrive because the regime can't control its borders because the regime can't control its resources, right? I mean, the list goes on.

But the end point where you end is that the future of Iran is going to be shaped by these younger generations within Iran. And those younger generations are fundamentally disaffected and they're disaffected with clerical rule. So where does America fit in? Right. Because we tend to think that we can solve everything. Right. We're a nation of doers. We're a nation of fixers.

I would argue that, first of all, there's a couple of things here. First of all, we have to understand the complexity of the Iranian opposition, right? Because what you're actually talking about is you're talking about two wings. You're talking about a somewhat inchoate mass within Iran, right? Inchoate for all...

All the reasons you would expect, right? There's people who come out in the street, but it's hard for them to organize because the regime is sitting right on top of them. The regime is repressing them. The regime is imprisoning them, killing them. It's hard for them to organize. It's hard for them to come up with manifestos and decorations and meetings.

And then you have a much more well-organized diaspora opposition, right? These groups, including, you know, supporters of the crown prince Reza Pahlavi that, you know, exist here in the West, exist here in the United States, that are agitating for a, you know, for a change of government.

So first of all, there's a complexity there because we have to understand the connectivity between the outside game and the inside game. They're not necessarily all part of one whole. There are elements in the outside that aren't necessarily clued into what's happening on the street. And by the way, the people on the street are the ones that are going to end up determining whether this regime stands or falls. So I think we have to understand.

the limits of what these external diaspora groups can do. The second is we have to understand the fact that historically we're not very good at this, right? In the last hundred years, American...

assisted intervention. American assisted political change has failed more than it succeeded, right? And Iraq is sort of the most- Post-World War II, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Except for World War II, the example. Yeah, right. Germany and Japan, it worked, but yeah. Right, but Iraq is sort of the most recent, the most painful case in point. Although you could make the argument that Afghanistan is maybe- Well, I think in both cases, we gave up before

Fair, fair, but whatever it is, the end product was not salutary. Right. So we have to understand that ultimately this is not our game. This is for the Iranians themselves to decide.

For us is we just have to do better and doing better starts with understanding what we need to see in a future Iran that will make it a dependable partner, a reliable ally and not an existential source of dread. Right. And that those are things like what shape does it take? What government structure does it take?

What does it how does it relate to its religious minorities? How does it relate to its women? Right. The list sort of goes on and there's no one cookie cutter approach. And this doesn't mean that those groups that espouse different things that don't align with this, that they should go out of business. But it does mean that and, you know, one alternative future that we're looking at as we're sitting here on Tuesday and the polls haven't closed anywhere yet is.

is a scenario where we have an administration that is much more cautious about allocating aid to foreign governments and foreign groups than U.S. governments have been in the past.

And if that's the case, it's just good housekeeping to understand who you're potentially giving money to and to understand what they stand for. And so all of this is sort of my somewhat extended attempt to try to get us a little bit smarter at making a difference on the margins in what is the most consequential fight that's going to take place in Iraq.

And people really should read the whole report because you're very nuanced and you go into a lot of different things. Anything else that you think you absolutely need to tell people today before they read the report about the report? I think you've got, you've gone through most of it. No, no. Yeah. Yeah. We sort of very, very extensive, very exhaustive. Um, the one thing I would say is they can download it. Um, uh, they, uh,

The American Foreign Policy Council is online at www.afpc.org. The report is available on the front page. You can download it. It's entirely free. They say there's no such thing as a free lunch in Washington, but I beg to differ. You can get that for free. And there's lots there to chew on.

I would just say how I would love it if 50 years after being there covering the revolution, I were to go back to a pro-American Iran for a visit, walk the streets of Tehran, visit Shiraz. I mean, wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? We'll make a vacation plan. Inshallah. Inshallah. Elon Burman, thanks so much for being with us today. Good to talk to you as always. And thanks to all of you who have been with us for this conversation here today on Foreign Policy.

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