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Episode: Iran’s Next Move - with Raz Zimmt

Author: Ark Media
Duration: 00:41:24

Episode Shownotes

Over the past few months, and especially in recent days, we have seen Iran’s decades-old proxy system and strategy collapsing. What are Iran’s options? To help us understand how Iran is dealing with this crisis, our guest is Raz Zimmt, one of Israel’s top experts on Iran. Raz Zimmt is

a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and a research fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of the book "Iran From Within: State and Society in the Islamic Republic" published (in Hebrew) in 2022. Recent published pieces by Raz Zimmt discussed in this episode: https://www.inss.org.il/publication/syria-rebels/https://www.inss.org.il/publication/iran-changes/

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_01
They certainly underestimated the capabilities of Israel and I think they also overestimated the Axis capabilities and their own.

00:00:08 Speaker_01
I think that what happened in recent years was that due to the development of ballistic missiles and drones and the progress made in Iran's nuclear program,

00:00:20 Speaker_01
They got the sense in Tehran that finally they managed to compensate for their military conventional weakness. There was a sense of we can do whatever we want because we have finally reached a kind of strategic balance with Israel.

00:00:50 Speaker_00
It's 9 a.m. on Wednesday, December 11th here in New York City. It's 4 o'clock p.m. on Wednesday, December 11th in Israel as Israelis are winding down their day. Here are some of the latest updates on the situation in Syria.

00:01:06 Speaker_00
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accused the United States, Israel and likely Turkey of orchestrating the fall of Bashar Assad's regime in Syria. calling it, quote, a joint American and Zionist plan.

00:01:23 Speaker_00
Interestingly, Khamenei criticized Syria for ignoring prior Iranian intelligence warnings. Turkey, a NATO member, has supported the anti-Assad forces and now actually controls some parts of northern Syria.

00:01:38 Speaker_00
After a swift operation in which 320 Israeli fighter jets destroyed Syria's remaining military, the IDF has moved several miles into Syrian territory, which it now controls, at least temporarily.

00:01:53 Speaker_00
Despite Assad's fall, Iran has pledged ongoing support to Syria and emphasized strengthening the resistance movement against Israel. vowing regional expansion.

00:02:04 Speaker_00
Syrian rebels, including led by Mohammed al-Bashir, a senior rebel leader in Idlib, have formed a transitional government and are working with representatives of the ousted regime to manage the transfer of authority.

00:02:21 Speaker_00
It has been reported that already five weeks ago, Ukrainian intelligence sent drones and operators to assist Syrian rebels in weakening Russian influence in the region.

00:02:30 Speaker_00
And following the overthrow of Bashar Assad, Russian naval ships have left their base at Tartus on Syria's coast, and some have dropped anchor offshore.

00:02:41 Speaker_00
As we've been saying in the recent episodes, these past few months have seen Iran's decades-old proxy system and strategy falling apart, especially in recent days.

00:02:53 Speaker_00
Hamas and Hezbollah in Syria seem to be falling like dominoes, leaving Iran exposed and the regime in Iran vulnerable and fragile. So this begs the question, what are Iran's options? because desperation could have dangerous consequences.

00:03:09 Speaker_00
A regime under siege and vulnerable could be a regime that acts out. It could be a regime on the march. So to help us understand how Iran is dealing with this crisis internally, our guest today is Raz Tzimt, one of Israel's top experts on Iran.

00:03:26 Speaker_00
Raz Tzimt on Iran's next move. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome to the podcast for the first time, Raz Tzimt.

00:03:37 Speaker_00
He is a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, INSS, a think tank I turn to quite frequently. Raz is also a research fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University.

00:03:52 Speaker_00
He's the author of the book, Iran From Within, State and Society in the Islamic Republic, published in Hebrew in 2022.

00:04:01 Speaker_00
And he is a real authority figure inside Israel on intra-Iran decision making at the official level and intra-Iran societal dynamics. He joins us today from his home in Netanya. Raz, thanks for being here.

00:04:18 Speaker_01
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

00:04:21 Speaker_00
Roz, over the past 14 months, we have had a lot of conversations about Iran, but admittedly, we've been evaluating Iran from the outside in and trying to understand just how they're thinking about their foreign policy options.

00:04:36 Speaker_00
And you have dedicated your career to understanding Iran from the inside out.

00:04:41 Speaker_00
And I think that one of the most interesting questions on the minds of world leaders, geopolitical experts, the media following events over the last several months is what are Iran's leaders thinking?

00:04:54 Speaker_00
How are they evaluating this new environment that they have, these new landscape? Now that their security doctrine, their proxy system seems to, for the first time really in a long time,

00:05:06 Speaker_00
I don't want to say it's collapsed, but it is collapsing potentially at a minimum looks fragile and under threat. So I want to get a sense for how you think at least their thinking may be evolving.

00:05:18 Speaker_00
But I want to start with asking you as a researcher and an expert on Iranian society and politics, what is the most important thing that you think we in the West don't get about Iran?

00:05:33 Speaker_00
and that we don't get about how Iranian leaders and the regime perceives itself.

00:05:39 Speaker_01
Well, there are 90 million Iranians in Iran, so they think differently about different things.

00:05:45 Speaker_01
But when it comes to perception, I think that perhaps the most important thing to understand about Iran is that there seems to be a paradox between the way they perceive themselves as a former empire, which deserves the right to be recognized as at least a regional power in the Middle East,

00:06:07 Speaker_01
and the fact that they're surrounded or at least they think they're surrounded by threats and challenges.

00:06:14 Speaker_01
You know I was once told about a western journalist who went to Iran and she got into a taxi and the driver asked her where are you from and she said I'm from Rome. And she said, oh, and he told her, oh, you're from Rome.

00:06:29 Speaker_01
Well, never forget that both Rome and Iran used to be empires. So that's on the one part. On the other hand, I have to tell you that when I was working almost a year ago,

00:06:43 Speaker_01
on my research on Iranian involvement in the Middle East, I read a lot of papers published and articles published by the Imam Hussein University, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards.

00:06:57 Speaker_01
And I read their perception about the region and about the so-called Zionist threats. And it amazed me that they think about Israel more or less the same as Israel thinks about Iran.

00:07:10 Speaker_01
As a country surrounded by enemies, they kept saying that the Zionist regime tries to encircle Iran from northern Iraq, from the Persian Gulf. It goes back to the Iran-Iraq war.

00:07:23 Speaker_01
You know, in Persian, in Farsi, the Iran-Iraq war is called the war which was imposed on Iran. And they still go back to the Iran-Iraq war as the national trauma.

00:07:36 Speaker_01
And I think it's very important on the one hand to understand that they want to be regarded as equals, And on the other hand, we have to understand the disconception of threats.

00:07:47 Speaker_01
They really believe that they have to preserve their national interests because they might face the same reality they faced during the 1980s with Iraq.

00:07:57 Speaker_00
Okay, I want to stay on that for just one moment. So the Iran-Iraq war, can you just give two minutes of background on the Iran-Iraq war? why it started and how it ended. And when I was working in Iraq on behalf of the U.S.

00:08:10 Speaker_00
government, they would often describe the Iran-Iraq war as Iran's Vietnam and the toll it imposed on Iranian society, on the Iranian people and on Iranian government and the regime's decision making going forward.

00:08:22 Speaker_00
So can you just talk a little bit about the impact of that war on Iran?

00:08:27 Speaker_01
Yeah, well, there are a few things one has to remember about the Iran-Iraq war which erupted in September 1980, which means just a year and a half after the revolution in Iran.

00:08:38 Speaker_01
And what was most important in Iran about this war was not just the fact that it lasted for eight years, eight devastating years, but that first it was attacked by Iraq, principally about territorial disputes between the two countries.

00:08:55 Speaker_01
But it was very obvious, at least for the Iranians, that Saddam Hussein, then the leader of Iran, tried to make use of the weakness of Iran following the revolution in order to gain some territories in the southwestern of Iraq.

00:09:08 Speaker_01
And then, of course, at a certain stage, Iraq began to use chemical weapons against Iranians as well. And that created this trauma that we should never be in the same situation where we face existential threat and we can do nothing about that.

00:09:26 Speaker_01
At the end of the day, after eight years, the then leader of Iran, the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, had to admit that it was impossible for Iran to win the war.

00:09:38 Speaker_01
and he went on national TV and he admitted, there is no way we can win that war and therefore I will have to accept a ceasefire.

00:09:48 Speaker_01
Although for many years he said we will never agree for a ceasefire with Saddam Hussein as long as the Baath regime, as long as Saddam Hussein is still in power in Baghdad.

00:09:58 Speaker_01
And one of the lessons or I think the main lesson Iran has learned from the Iranian war is that it has to produce a reliable deterrence to make sure that it will never face the same situation as it has to face during the Iran-Iraq war.

00:10:15 Speaker_01
And how many casualties did Iran suffer during this eight-year war? Hundreds of thousands. Both Iran and Iraq suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. So it's still a major national trauma until today.

00:10:27 Speaker_00
Yeah, I was, again, I was in Iraq 2003-2004 and I have returned to Iraq since then. I remember Iraqi leaders pointing out to me that there was a certain age demographic, basically men who were in their late teens and early twenties during the 1980s.

00:10:45 Speaker_00
You will be struck by how many of them are permanently disabled, have some kind of permanent wound. You can see how pervasive it is at a certain age demographic that this war touched and transformed their lives.

00:10:58 Speaker_00
You know, the same thing obviously was in Iran. So this really was like this, stand out defining trauma for Iran. I know you're a reader of Farsi and you are a consumer of Iranian Persian media. So in terms of how Iranians are seeing this war now,

00:11:18 Speaker_00
Over the past 14 months, a lot has changed going back to October 7th. How would you describe the mood and discourse inside Iran during the first few months after October 7th and then compare them to now?

00:11:30 Speaker_00
And I say now following the fall of Assad, the crippling of Hezbollah, the crippling of, if not complete evisceration of Hamas. Can you describe what was and what is now?

00:11:41 Speaker_01
I think that one of the most interesting thing is to see the very significant change between the mood or the state of mind in Iran in the days or weeks or even months after October the 7th and what's going on in recent weeks and months.

00:11:57 Speaker_01
Because at the beginning of the war, following October the 7th, there was the sense in Iran that this is a historical moment.

00:12:05 Speaker_01
For the first time, and we'll speak later on about the surprise in Iran from October the 7th, but still there was a sense that this was a historical moment in which finally Iran and the pro-Iranian axis in the region, the so-called axis of resistance,

00:12:20 Speaker_01
got a chance to implement the ideological vision of getting rid of Israel and annihilating Israel. There were many positive things back then from the Iranian point of view. Normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia collapsed.

00:12:35 Speaker_01
The Palestinian issue got back to the center of the agenda, both in the region and the international community. For the first time, Iran managed to implement the so-called unification of the fronts against Israel, meaning to take

00:12:50 Speaker_01
its proxies from Gaza, from Lebanon, from Yemen, and used them all against Israel under the umbrella of we are fighting for the sake of the Palestinians. That was back then.

00:13:02 Speaker_01
I think that what happened during the last few weeks and months is a growing sense of, I wouldn't say despair, But there are certainly doubts concerning the so-called axis of resistance or Iran's proxies.

00:13:15 Speaker_01
Iran can no longer enjoy or preserve its deterrence vis-à-vis Israel. Because one, as you said, this axis became weakened.

00:13:27 Speaker_01
Even today, when I heard Supreme Leader Khamenei giving a speech in Tehran, he actually admitted the axis of resistance he said today is weaker than it used to be, following the blows suffered by Hezbollah, following the collapse of the Assad regime, following what's going on in Gaza.

00:13:45 Speaker_01
There are more and more voices in Iran saying, well, perhaps our whole security concept Not just the proxies, but also our ability to preserve our deterrence through missiles and drones no longer works.

00:13:59 Speaker_01
But you know, I think we have to be very cautious because Khamenei looks at things from a historical point of view. we were discussing the Iran-Iraq war.

00:14:11 Speaker_01
Actually, he referred today to the Iran-Iraq war and he said, look, people ask me whether Iran is going to be weakened following the blows suffered by the resistance camp. And I have to say then, Khamenei said, look at the improvement

00:14:25 Speaker_01
or look at the situation today in Iran compared to the situation we were during the Iran-Iraq war. During the Iran-Iraq war, he said, the Iraqi airplanes bombarded Iran and we had nothing to do. We had no aerial defense.

00:14:40 Speaker_01
Today we are much better than before. So I think that despite the fact that there are certainly changes in the sense of self-confidence in Iran,

00:14:49 Speaker_01
they still believe, or at least the leadership in Iran, and particularly Khamenei, still believe that there are ups and downs and they can deal with that. How? I'm not sure.

00:15:01 Speaker_01
But if you would ask me six or seven months ago, what is the assessment in the Iranian leadership concerning the situation? I would say, basically, quite well. Today, I'm not so sure about that.

00:15:12 Speaker_00
Just one question, because I get asked this question a lot. We tend to talk about conflict in the Middle East as along this Sunni-Shiite divide and that the Middle East is divided between Shiites versus Sunnis.

00:15:24 Speaker_00
The only real exception to this rule is Iranian support for the Palestinians and specifically Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. So is the Iranian support for Sunni extremists, is there anything ideological about it?

00:15:41 Speaker_00
Is there anything beyond just that the Palestinians serve a tactical purpose for Iran and that they are just like another proxy that Iran can use to pressure Israel and pressuring and threatening Israel subordinates everything else.

00:15:57 Speaker_00
And so if we have to work with Sunnis, we'll work with Sunnis.

00:16:00 Speaker_00
The fact that we're working with a part of the Islamic population that we otherwise would be up against doesn't matter because we need them to create this ring of fire around Israel, which is the priority.

00:16:12 Speaker_01
So first, I don't underestimate the importance of the Shia-Sunni rift. Basically, Iran prefers to work with the Shiites. Now, Hamas has never been a real partner within this so-called Axis of Resistance.

00:16:27 Speaker_01
You know, after the civil war in Syria erupted, everyone remembers that Hamas made a decision. They faced the dilemma whether to support Assad and his Axis, the Iranians and Hezbollah,

00:16:41 Speaker_01
or whether to join most of the Arab states, most of the Arab-Sydney states, including Saudi Arabia, who supported the rebels. And Hamas made a strategic decision, which of course the Iranians didn't like, to support the Sydney Arab states.

00:16:55 Speaker_01
And then after Saudi Arabia began to attack in Yemen, again the same dilemma, whether to support Saudi Arabia, whether to support the Houthis in Iran. And again, Hamas made the decision to support Saudi Arabia.

00:17:07 Speaker_01
Now, this is a kind of, on the one hand, you can say, yes, there are certain ideological issues which are being shared by all members of the so-called pro-Iranian axis.

00:17:19 Speaker_01
They all share the idea that they should have a new Middle East, which has two major characteristics. One is the need to replace Israel with Palestine. And the second issue is to get the Americans out of this region.

00:17:36 Speaker_01
So there is kind of ideological vision shared by both Hamas and Iran. But it's also about interest. Hamas certainly at a certain point required and needed Iranian support.

00:17:50 Speaker_01
So if Iran wants to increase its influence around Israel with this ring of fire, it has to work with Sunnis as well. By the way, over the last few days, there are more and more reports, for example,

00:18:01 Speaker_01
that Iran is trying to establish channels of communication with the new government in Syria, with the rebels. So it's not that they don't share a common friendship with their Shia allies, but they certainly know how to work with Sunnis as well.

00:18:17 Speaker_00
So now let's go to October 7th. In light of everything you're saying, there's lots of ongoing debate about how much Iran's leadership knew about October 7th.

00:18:27 Speaker_00
Some have said that they were aware something was in the works about the October 7th massacre. They just didn't know exactly when it would happen and the exact details, but they certainly were aware and were briefed on.

00:18:39 Speaker_00
But can you describe again, just based on how you read the Iranian dialogue, both among policymakers, decision makers inside Iran and then Iranian society writ large, I know that's a very broad category, as you said earlier, given the size and diversity of the population,

00:18:55 Speaker_00
But how did Iran react to October 7th?

00:18:58 Speaker_01
So, I share the assessment that they were aware of those plans.

00:19:02 Speaker_01
Everyone who followed the meetings taking place either in Damascus or Beirut for at least one or two years before October 7th, between elements in Hamas and the Palestinian-Islamic Jihad, with senior officials of their revolutionary guards in the Quds Force and Hezbollah, they were not talking about the weather.

00:19:21 Speaker_01
They were certainly talking about operational plans. The question was whether Iran was aware of the timing of the event, and here I have to say my sense is that they were surprised.

00:19:31 Speaker_01
I do believe this report, I think it was published by Reuters in late 2023, saying that in the first meeting between Khamenei and Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Khamenei actually told him, look, you should not have surprised us.

00:19:46 Speaker_01
You should have waited, because if you would wait for another year or two, we would have prepared ourselves better. Hezbollah was much, much better prepared to launch its own attack against Israel.

00:19:59 Speaker_01
But even if it was surprised with the timing, the Iranian leadership, as I said before, considered that as an historical moment in which Iran cannot remain indifferent.

00:20:10 Speaker_01
So it didn't want to engage itself directly into a full-scale confrontation with Israel.

00:20:15 Speaker_01
It also didn't want to engage Hezbollah back then in a full-scale confrontation with Israel because it was well aware or was very much concerned with the fact that it might lose not just Hamas, which is less important for Iran, although it is significant for Iran, but it was most concerned with the possibility that it might lose Hezbollah, which has always been the most strategic

00:20:38 Speaker_01
significant element in Iran's deterrence vis-a-vis Israel. Iran certainly didn't want to be engaged in a direct military confrontation either with Israel or the United States, but it couldn't remain indifferent.

00:20:52 Speaker_01
Now, concerning the Iranian population, there were of course different opinions. Those who support the regime were actually supportive of Hamas. Others were against. And you know, I would say that in general,

00:21:05 Speaker_01
following the Iranian society, I can say that basically the Iranian society is much less obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in comparison to the Iranian regime.

00:21:17 Speaker_01
The ordinary Iranian, and I know it's very difficult to speak about the ordinary Iranian, but ordinary Iranian just doesn't understand why Iran has to be so obsessed with Israel and with the Palestinians, which are so distant away from Iran.

00:21:32 Speaker_01
The majority of the Iranians who really believed that it was the most important issue for Iran to concentrate inside Iran and to try and solve the internal and domestic problems of the Iranian people.

00:21:44 Speaker_00
So the Iranians, it sounds like, were the Iranian leadership was right to be worried, it turns out, about the implications for any confrontation with Israel would have for Hezbollah. Turns out they were right to

00:21:56 Speaker_00
worry about that given that Hezbollah has basically wiped out now 14-15 months after Sinwar launched his war against Israel.

00:22:03 Speaker_01
Yeah but I think that the Iranian assessment and I think that was also the assessment of Hezbollah was first that the war will not last so long and the Iranians and Hezbollah thought that it was possible to engage Israel in a kind of attrition war which will not impose ceasefire perhaps on Israel

00:22:22 Speaker_01
that will inflict damage to the Israeli society, to the Israeli economy, which will degrade Israeli status in the international community. And then Israel will be forced to accept ceasefire before Hezbollah will have to pay

00:22:38 Speaker_01
a more significant price for this conflict in Israel. I certainly think that they were surprised with the capabilities of Israel to inflict such a damage on Hezbollah in case of a full-scale confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel.

00:22:53 Speaker_01
But they didn't think it would go to this stage.

00:22:56 Speaker_00
So what did they get wrong? If you extrapolate out what you're saying, this helped shape Iranian security doctrine more broadly. The idea that, like, wait a minute, Israel's 15 months after October 7th, they're still in a war.

00:23:07 Speaker_00
And not only they're in a war, they're not worn down, but actually it's in the later months of this war that Israel is actually on offense and systematically taking out Iranian proxies and even really threatening Iran itself, the regime.

00:23:22 Speaker_00
So what did they get wrong? What was the miscalculation?

00:23:25 Speaker_01
So I think the first day they certainly underestimated Israeli capabilities, certainly after October the 7th. They really believed that Israel is collapsing, that Israel is declining. That was their historical vision.

00:23:38 Speaker_01
You might remember the speech given by Khamenei in 2015, where he said that by the year 2040, in 25 years, Israel is going to be gone. Israel is not going to survive the next 25 years.

00:23:51 Speaker_01
not just due to its confrontation with the so-called Axis of Resistance, but also because of Israeli domestic internal weakness.

00:24:00 Speaker_01
So they certainly underestimated the capabilities of Israel and I think they also overestimated the Axis capabilities and their own.

00:24:08 Speaker_01
I think that what happened in recent years was that due to the development of ballistic missiles and drones and the progress made in Iran's nuclear program,

00:24:20 Speaker_01
they got the sense in Tehran that finally they managed to compensate for their military conventional weakness. There were even assessments, by the way, not just in Iran, even in Israel, saying that there was a sense of self-confidence in Iran.

00:24:38 Speaker_01
There was a sense of we can do whatever we want because we have finally reached a kind of strategic balance with Israel. I think we can't explain, for example,

00:24:48 Speaker_01
The first and then the second, Iranian attack, direct attack against Israel in April, if you don't get this.

00:24:55 Speaker_01
But what happened during the last, I would say one year or even before the war, was that they got the sense of self-confidence, even Hebrews in a way.

00:25:05 Speaker_01
Due to their assessment that Israel is becoming more and more weakened, that Iran and its partners and proxies become more and more stronger, and that enables Iran to make decisions which in the past were unacceptable or considered to be too risky.

00:25:22 Speaker_01
Okay.

00:25:23 Speaker_00
Raz, this now begs the question how vulnerable the Iranian regime is today.

00:25:29 Speaker_00
There was lots of speculation and analysis that it was vulnerable due to popular unrest within Iran over the last several years, combined with a very weakened Iranian economy.

00:25:40 Speaker_00
But there wasn't this sense that Iran, the regime, was overstretched in the region. If anything, it had a lot of support and redundancy built into its reach within the region, especially due to these proxies that it had.

00:25:55 Speaker_00
How vulnerable is the regime today?

00:25:57 Speaker_01
The Iranian regime is very vulnerable, but I think one has to explain this vulnerability not just due to the recent developments in the region, not just to the impact of the recent Israeli attack against Iran, which certainly managed to hit Iran's aerial defense and expose Iran's vulnerability to Israeli military force, and not just because of the recent developments in the pro-Iranian axis, but also because of domestic issues.

00:26:24 Speaker_01
On the one hand, I would say the Iranian regime, in my view, suffers from a major crisis of legitimacy.

00:26:31 Speaker_01
Most assessments, including my own, is that the Iranian regime does not enjoy more than 20-25% support from the Iranian population, due to the fact that for many years, the Iranian regime has not delivered solutions to most problems shared by the Iranian population, either the economic crisis, which is

00:26:53 Speaker_01
just terrible.

00:26:54 Speaker_01
Inflation of over 40 percent, a huge budget deficit, a lack of economic growth, in addition to a growing gap between the younger generation in Iran, the second and third generation of Iran, and the Iranian regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

00:27:11 Speaker_01
You can see that during the recent elections in Iran, the presidential elections.

00:27:16 Speaker_01
in which even the concern of many Iranians that someone as radical, as hardliner, as Saeed Jalili will win the elections, even that did not encourage more than 45 or 47 percent of the Iranian population to come and vote.

00:27:32 Speaker_01
So they certainly have to face this crisis of legitimacy,

00:27:36 Speaker_01
But I would say that when you look at the power, I would say, relations between the regime on the one side and the protest movement on the other side, as we also during the 22-23 Maas al-Amini protest, I still believe that the Iranian regime enjoys a significant coherence

00:27:58 Speaker_01
they still are very much determined to fight for their lives in case if they see that necessarily.

00:28:04 Speaker_01
They look at what happened in Syria and I think one of the major differences at least for now between Syria and Iran is that the Syrian regime and the Syrian army seems to have lost its vitality.

00:28:19 Speaker_01
We saw that wherever the rebels arrived, the Syrian army retreated. The revolutionary guards are still very much loyal to the regime. They are still very much dependent on the regime. They know that if the regime is gone, they're going to go as well.

00:28:35 Speaker_01
On the other hand, when you see the protest movement in Iran, or the so-called dissidents against the regime, they still don't have the ability to do two things.

00:28:45 Speaker_01
One is to mobilize millions of Iranians to go to the streets and call for a regime change. And the second thing, which I think is a very big weakness of the Iranian protest movement, is that they have not yet come up with a coalition

00:29:00 Speaker_01
of sectors or forces within the Iranian society working together, teachers and students and middle class and workers and ethnic minorities, they didn't manage to work together in order to bring the regime change in Iran.

00:29:15 Speaker_01
So as long as those problems are not solved, I don't think and I'm not sure there is an immediate threat to the stability of the regime, despite the fact that they certainly suffer from vulnerability, economic crisis and crisis of legitimacy.

00:29:30 Speaker_00
What lessons is the regime take from the speed with which the Assad regime fell to me?

00:29:35 Speaker_00
It's another reminder to how brittle these autocratic Totalitarian regimes however, you want to characterize them the Soviet Union wound up for all the predictions and analysis that it was durable and it could withstand enormous pressure the moment there was a little bit of pressure it all came tumbling down very quickly the Shah and Iran before the

00:29:55 Speaker_00
Islamist revolution was thought to have a stronghold on the country. He fell very quickly. Gaddafi in Libya was viewed as untouchable. Once there was some pressure, he fell very quickly.

00:30:05 Speaker_00
Obviously, we know what happened to Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath leadership in Iraq. I give example after example after example, which

00:30:12 Speaker_00
these leaders seem incredibly durable and their regimes seem incredibly durable and then they're durable until they're not. And when the not comes, it actually comes very quickly and you blink and you're like, how did that just happen?

00:30:24 Speaker_00
And the reason I'm asking you this, Raz, is because I think there are two reactions that many of us are having in terms of what we think the lessons are for Iran from this Syria experience. One is,

00:30:35 Speaker_00
If Syria could go this quickly, if Assad could go this quickly, then what are we waiting for in Iran? The Iranian regime can fall very quickly.

00:30:42 Speaker_00
Anyone who tells you that the Iranian regime is so much stronger and has so much of a tighter hold on Iran, that's what we hear every time, including what we've heard in recent weeks about Assad, and then it just comes tumbling down.

00:30:55 Speaker_00
The other reaction is that it is actually different. Assad was much weaker. At the end of the day, Assad was not a standalone strong regime in its own right. It was just a proxy.

00:31:07 Speaker_00
It was just like a satellite office, if you will, of Iran's, and you can't compare the two. Which is it?

00:31:14 Speaker_01
Look, you know, when I was asked, and I've been asked for many years, do I think that there is going to be a regime change or a revolution in Iran, I tend to say, well, right now I don't think that there is an immediate threat to the stability of the regime, but if tomorrow morning I will hear that there was a revolution in Iran, I could give a very good explanation for the revolution, because all the reasons are there.

00:31:37 Speaker_01
We all have to wait for the trigger. I think that the Iranian regime and the Iranian opposition could learn different lessons from what is happening in Syria. They were certainly surprised, as most of us.

00:31:50 Speaker_01
They still try to figure out what are the lessons which have to be learned from the experience of Assad. I think that what I've been seeing in the last two or three days are different lessons learned by different elements inside Iran.

00:32:06 Speaker_01
So, for example, the more pragmatic reformist elements inside Iran are saying, look, the major reason why Assad fell was because of this gap between the regime and the population.

00:32:20 Speaker_01
So if we have to learn one lesson from his experience is that we have to try and close this gap between the Iranian regime and the population.

00:32:30 Speaker_01
There were already some reports in recent days that there are more and more criticism about this recent bill passed by the Iranian parliament to impose more sanctions on women who do not observe the hijab, the Islamic code dress.

00:32:47 Speaker_01
And many in Iran, including President Pazishkian, saying well this is not the right time to go with this bill because it will only jeopardize even further the national unity inside Iran.

00:32:59 Speaker_01
But I have to say that when I heard today Khamenei's speech, he again blamed not himself. He didn't look for any kind of consolidation with the Iranian people.

00:33:11 Speaker_01
He actually said, look, what happened in Syria was the result of the Zionist American conspiracy. And he said, if we want to learn one lesson from his experience was that we have to be very aware of our enemies.

00:33:27 Speaker_01
We should not be surprised by our enemies. And so his lesson might be, we have to be even more regressive. We have to increase the cohesiveness of the Iranian elite.

00:33:39 Speaker_01
We have to strengthen the revolutionary regard in a way which will not permit protests to erupt in Iran. So there are many lessons which could be learned. You know, there is the issue, for example, of the succession of Supreme Leader Khamenei.

00:33:53 Speaker_01
Some in Iran are saying in recent days, look what happened to a regime where Hafez al-Assad decided to nominate his son as successor.

00:34:03 Speaker_01
Now, as you probably know, there are more and more reports about a possibility that Khamenei wants his son Mujtaba to become the next Supreme Leader.

00:34:10 Speaker_01
There are already doubts saying, well, perhaps we should not go there because succession like that doesn't usually work.

00:34:16 Speaker_01
So I think it's too early to say, you know, I remember back in 2018 or 19 during the protests which erupted in Iran following the increase in the gasoline prices in Iran and then one of the faces of those who do not support the Iranian regime were saying

00:34:36 Speaker_01
Iran is not Syria. We should be very careful not to use too much violence against the Iranian state and the Iranian regime because we might find ourselves in the same civil war chaotic situation like Syria.

00:34:50 Speaker_01
This is a big question today, whether the use of weapons, for example, could actually encourage regime change in Iran. Many in Iran still wait to see what kind of a new Syria will erupt, whether it will turn out to be another Libya,

00:35:06 Speaker_01
or Sudan or Somalia or Iraq, which could actually discourage Iranians from going to the streets, or whether we will see some kind of settlements in Syria and stabilization, which could certainly encourage more Iranians to go back to the streets and try to carry out a regime change in Iran.

00:35:23 Speaker_00
This begs the question, does Iran race to a nuclear bomb at this point? Because there are two ways to look at this.

00:35:28 Speaker_00
Either they're incredibly vulnerable and naked, if you will, as one of our previous guests put it, that they're totally exposed as a result of Israel taking out some of Iran's key defense capabilities, the S-300s and others.

00:35:41 Speaker_00
Are they curled up in a fetal position or are they about to actually race to a bomb?

00:35:46 Speaker_00
Because they've lost, they're losing all their insurance policies, at least in the region, that have up until now deterred Israel or anyone else from striking Iran because they're worried about Iran's capacity to light up these, to activate these proxies.

00:36:00 Speaker_00
Now, it doesn't have these proxies, or at least can't depend on them to the same degree.

00:36:03 Speaker_00
So the only ultimate insurance policy it has, the only real proxy, if you will, it has, or the tool that could have the same effect as what they once hoped that proxies would have, is everyone worried that Iran has a nuclear bomb.

00:36:15 Speaker_00
What is your sense in terms of how they play that card now?

00:36:19 Speaker_01
My sense is that the Iranian leadership faces a huge dilemma between two options. One is bad and the other one is very bad. Because there are certainly more and more voices inside Iran saying, look, the last few months showed us that we cannot

00:36:36 Speaker_01
rely, at least in the foreseeable future, on our proxies, because they are much weaker than before. We have lost our ability to impose a new equation on Israel through our missiles and drones.

00:36:51 Speaker_01
The fact that Iran has still not retaliated to the recent Israeli attack by itself shows you that they certainly don't want to carry out an attack against Israel when they're so exposed.

00:37:03 Speaker_01
So there are more and more voices in Iran saying well perhaps our ultimate deterrence would be not through proxies or missiles but through breaking out to nuclear weapons.

00:37:14 Speaker_01
The problem is that if they decide to do that, if there is a decision by the Iranian leadership to break out, They can't reach nuclear weapons in days or weeks.

00:37:28 Speaker_01
They can certainly accumulate enough fissile material to produce weapons in less than two weeks, but it will take them at least a few months, probably more than a year to produce nuclear weapons.

00:37:40 Speaker_01
And this would be a very risky decision, especially due to their vulnerability. The fact that Israel, at least in their eyes, is just looking for any kind of excuse to hit the nuclear facilities in Iran, with now Trump going back to the White House.

00:38:01 Speaker_01
All those developments make it even more difficult, even more risky than before to do that. So, I'm not sure if they're willing to take such a risky decision, unless they have to.

00:38:15 Speaker_00
Okay, so final question, Raz, with all that context, what do you think Iran's next move will be? And I won't hold you to it, so I know this is speculative, but it's informed speculation.

00:38:26 Speaker_01
I think Iran has three main options on the table. One is the option which I refer to in one of my recent articles as Iran first option.

00:38:38 Speaker_01
Meaning Iran should stick to try and focus on dealing with its domestic problems before it goes back to support its proxies and before it goes to improve its regional influence again. So this is one option.

00:38:56 Speaker_01
The second option is the option of doing more or less what they did until now. trying to look for solutions to the problems they are facing.

00:39:05 Speaker_01
So, for example, if they don't have Hamas in Gaza any longer, they might try to increase their involvement and deliveries of weapons to the West Bank in order to compensate for the loss of Hamas.

00:39:18 Speaker_01
If they don't have the ability to rehabilitate Hezbollah, they might say, okay, let's try to strengthen our other allies, the Houthis in Yemen and the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq.

00:39:29 Speaker_01
So doing more or less the same, continue their efforts to improve their nuclear missile and drones capabilities, but without crossing the threshold. So this is the second option.

00:39:42 Speaker_01
The last option is the option we discussed, breaking out to nuclear weapons in order to create the so-called ultimate deterrence. My sense is that due to the fact that Khamenei is still in power, due to the fact that the majority of the

00:39:58 Speaker_01
of the decision-making in Iran is still dominated by conservatives, hardliners. The president's position seems to me quite weak. The revolutionary regards, on the other hand, is much stronger. It plays a significant role in the Iranian decision-making.

00:40:14 Speaker_01
My sense is that at the end of the day, they will have to choose between the second and the third option.

00:40:18 Speaker_01
meaning either to try and survive somehow the next few years until they manage to get out of this predicament or to make a very risky decision to break out confrontation with Israel and the United States in order perhaps to improve in their eyes their deterrence.

00:40:37 Speaker_00
All right, Raz, we will leave it there. Thank you for this. The piece you wrote for INSS, I think you're referring to that you read. We'll post a couple of your recent pieces and direct people to you and to INSS. And thank you for joining us.

00:40:54 Speaker_00
We look forward to having you back.

00:40:55 Speaker_01
It was a pleasure. Thank you very much.

00:41:02 Speaker_00
Call Me Back is produced and edited by Alon Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.