The Bulwark Podcast XX
[0] Welcome to the Bullwark podcast.
[1] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[2] It is Election Day.
[3] So just a quick heads up.
[4] Really, nobody knows what's going to happen.
[5] So most of the punterty today is going to be a little bit like riding a bicycle as slowly as possible without falling off.
[6] So I think of hours and hours and hours of fact -free foe certainty, you know, clashing with some wishcasting.
[7] There'll be lots and lots of speculation, occasional bursts of hysteria, endless repetition.
[8] And then, About late afternoon, sometime we'll get those exit polls, which are certainly going to be BS, but which we are not going to be able to resist commenting on, but you can safely ignore them.
[9] So given the fact that nobody knows anything, and by the time many of you listen to this, you will be much smarter than us.
[10] I thought we'd do a little bit of counter programming.
[11] We talk about something that I've been really embarrassed that I haven't spent more time on, what's going on in Iran, where, you know, we talk here about democracy beyond.
[12] the ballot.
[13] Well, obviously, human rights is at play around the world and perhaps no place more dramatically than the streets of Iran right now.
[14] So we are joined by Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, also a lecturer in international affairs at George Washington University and the author of the book, Bitter Friends, bosom enemies, Iran, the U .S. and the twisted path to confrontation.
[15] So happy election day, Barbara.
[16] Thank you.
[17] Thank you.
[18] And I'm, you know, I'll take any excuse to talk about Iran, including U .S. elections.
[19] So pleasure to be with you.
[20] Well, if you could indulge me for a moment, I don't want to, you know, wallow on the election, but we did have the former president speaking in Ohio last night.
[21] And I know that's kind of same old, same old.
[22] And yet there's still something jarring, I think, listening to the former and perhaps future president of the United States, expressing his open admiration for the Chinese and the regime in Singapore, and his enthusiasm for the execution, the summary execution of drug dealers, he said this before, I have to say there was just, there's something about, it's not just the bloodlust, but also the admiration for authoritarian, totalitarian societies.
[23] And here's a little bit of what Trump said.
[24] And again, not all of this is new.
[25] However, I don't think I'd heard the the dazzling detail about sending the families of the dead drug dealers, the bullet that was used to kill them.
[26] The sending them the bullet thing was kind of a new twist, at least for me. This is the former president last night.
[27] This is a trial that takes approximately two hours, and if they're guilty, they are executed.
[28] And the bullet, and you know, the bullet, I don't know if anybody wants to know this, it gets a little bit too graphic, but the bullet is said to their families, You know that, right?
[29] Do you know that?
[30] It's actually sent to their families.
[31] It's pretty tough stuff.
[32] There's no games.
[33] So they have no drug problem whatsoever.
[34] He actually thought it was a foolish question.
[35] I said, do you have a drug problem?
[36] Absolutely not.
[37] What are you talking about?
[38] Of course we don't.
[39] Because we don't play games.
[40] You look at Singapore, you look at other countries, wherever they have the death penalty, zero drug problems.
[41] Drugs are causing us tremendous problem.
[42] So, Barbara, hi.
[43] I just, you know, and he tells us a story.
[44] over and over again.
[45] He's talking to President Xi, and President Xi is just explaining how the Chinese have this down.
[46] They don't have this rule of law, appeals, messy stuff, which Trump refers to his games.
[47] Yeah.
[48] You know, it's fascinating to me that there are people who are very worried that there are more and more authoritarian regimes in the world, and somehow democratic regimes will fall in competition with these countries.
[49] But I have a new phrase, which I'm calling the axis of losers.
[50] Iran, Russia, and China, I put in this axis of losers.
[51] Normally, I don't like to have these broad brush, you know, epithets about countries.
[52] I'm here for it.
[53] You know, I was very opposed to the axis of evil and we can talk about all the mistakes we've made in U .S. policy toward Iran over the years.
[54] But Iran has doubled down on its relationship with Putin, who is losing the war.
[55] in Ukraine, who has lost perhaps 100 ,000 soldiers, just extraordinary waste of his own country in this ridiculous pursuit of hegemony in Ukraine.
[56] And then she, I just read a piece this morning about how all of these incredibly talented, hardworking Chinese entrepreneurs, particularly tech entrepreneurs, are looking to get the hell out of China.
[57] because she is ruining that country with his COVID lockdowns, with his monopolization of power.
[58] He's just come out of a party Congress with a third term, and he has eliminated all dissident voices within the Communist Party Party.
[59] In Iran, we've had this consolidation of power where those who advocated better relations with the West, those who supported the nuclear deal, have been.
[60] largely sideline, purged, and we've seen this hideous crackdown on people who are demanding basic human rights, particularly young women.
[61] And they all think this is going to keep them in power forever, but it's not.
[62] These are the techniques used by people who are narcissistic and who are also at some level, I think, terrified of losing.
[63] And that applies to Donald Trump as well, doesn't it?
[64] So you put on this image of the tough guy, you know, kill all my opponents, right?
[65] Kill the drug dealers.
[66] But it shows your own vulnerability.
[67] It doesn't show that you're strong.
[68] Well, that is one of the subtext here that he seems to think that the arc of history is bending toward authoritarian, that they have it right, that they get it.
[69] And there is a stream, you know, a stream of thought now, you know, that the future belongs to people like Victor Orban or these other countries that impose their will.
[70] So I think you're actually.
[71] of losers is a very interesting take on all of the.
[72] Bolsonaro just lost.
[73] I mean, he didn't lose by much, but he lost.
[74] And went quietly.
[75] Well, let's hope so.
[76] So far?
[77] Yeah, so far.
[78] Yeah.
[79] Again, this is the paradox of somebody like Donald Trump, although that seems like too fancy a word to use to describe his thinking on all of this, that he wants to pose as the tough man against China that, you know, I'm the one who can stand up against China, but he deeply admires China.
[80] he deeply admires Vladimir Putin.
[81] You know, I was thinking about when he was talking about sending the bullet, you know, that's used to kill the drug dealers after their two -hour trial without appeal, apparently, to the families.
[82] You know, he's had a fascination with this kind of thing for a long time.
[83] Back in 2016, I don't know if you remember this.
[84] He used to talk about this fake story from World War I or that era where General Blackjack Pershing was said, it's not true.
[85] but it was said to have murdered Muslim terrorists or criminals, shooting them with bullets dipped in pig's blood.
[86] Yeah, I totally remember that.
[87] And he told that story over and over again with great relish because you not only would kill them, you would defile them.
[88] And this was a form of sort of counterterrorism.
[89] And again, it was, like many of his stories, a fake story.
[90] But it is interesting, the through line, how much he relishes the people.
[91] not just the power of the authoritarian regimes, but the cruelty of the authoritarian regimes.
[92] Yeah, it's not a nice person.
[93] No, and you reminded me before we started this, that last night he also referred to Nancy Pelosi as an animal, which, you know, given his track record, you're almost tempted to kind of just shrug your shoulders and say, same old, same old, but this comes a week and a half after the attack on her husband, and he can't even access whatever, remaining of humanity to say, maybe I shouldn't refer to another human being, a political opponent as an animal.
[94] Yeah.
[95] But no. All right.
[96] So let's talk about Iran, because I think this is really an extraordinary story.
[97] And you've been writing about this for some time.
[98] You first went there as a journalist for USA today back in 1996.
[99] And you were reporting on plight of the women in the Muslim world.
[100] the Iranian regime granted you a visa thinking that it had this great story to tell about the status of women there in contrast to the Taliban who had, you know, just consolidated their power in Afghanistan for the first time and weren't letting women go to work or girls go to school.
[101] So tell me about, we're going to get to what we're at now, but tell me about what the status of women was when you first got there to Iran.
[102] Let's do this timeline.
[103] Yeah, you know, it was a fascinating trip.
[104] And, you know, the stereotypes of Iran are all these women dressed in black and who have no rights and so on.
[105] But, you know, even in 1996, that wasn't true.
[106] And there was a sort of paradox in the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
[107] It took away a lot of the legal rights that women had.
[108] But it actually empowered all of these young women who came from traditional families, women who hadn't gone to university before because their parents didn't want them mixing with men or mixing with young women who were wearing mini skirts, you know, under the Shah.
[109] And so all of these women started flooding the universities and they became incredibly well educated.
[110] I think Iran has one of the highest literacy rates in the Middle East and that includes women.
[111] And so needless to say, they began to chafe at restrictions that had been imposed on them.
[112] And in 1996, I went, I interviewed the editor of a woman's magazine.
[113] They had quite a number of women journalists even then.
[114] I interviewed the daughter of Iran's president at the time, a guy named Raph Sanjani.
[115] She has become a dissident, by the way, and I think she's in prison now, Fiza Hashimi.
[116] And, you know, all of these incredibly vibrant women who were doing just amazing things.
[117] And they, you know, at that time you had to cover yourself quite conservatively.
[118] I had this drab gray raincoat, which I called my Iran raincoat because I only used it when I went there, completely shapeless and drab.
[119] And you'd put a big, dark scarf on over your head.
[120] And the women there said, look, we don't like this dress, this veiling, but, you know, it's the least of our worries.
[121] We're more worried about custody of our children in the event of divorce, being able to get divorced, having equal inheritance rights, increasing the age at which women marry or girls marry from what at the time was nine to, they got it up to 13.
[122] It had been 18 under the Shah.
[123] These were the kinds of issues that women were focused on at the time, getting more women into the Iranian parliament, that sort of thing.
[124] And so now fast forward, and we're in a situation where Gen Z women are, they want it all.
[125] They want all their rights as citizens of Iran.
[126] They want to be able to do any job that they're qualified for.
[127] And by the way, they don't want to have the compulsory veil anymore.
[128] Even though that veil has shrunk to a token little scarf on top of often dyed blonde hair, you know, which is what I saw in my last trip to Iran.
[129] Women in many parts of the capital letting the scarf fall down from their hair onto their shoulders.
[130] I mean, the draconian nature of the required costume had changed a lot, even over 25 years.
[131] Now these young Gen Z women say to hell with that, we're going to act in public the way we act in private.
[132] We're going to walk around wearing the clothes we want to wear because we're on social media and we see what the rest of the world looks like, particularly the young women in the West.
[133] And we identify with them, not with this bunch of old, out of touch, ideologues who've been in charge of our country for the last four years.
[134] So quarter of a century after you first went there and the Iranians were anxious to make the contrast with the Taliban, the irony is that Iran and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world that enforce these headscarf rules.
[135] And they're now literally killing women and girls for having the courage to take off their headscarves.
[136] So I think you've explained the motivation, but I just want to talk about what's happening right now.
[137] So the headscarf is going to sound naive, but I want to draw you out on this.
[138] The headscarf is not about the headscarf, is it?
[139] No, it's about the subjugation of women.
[140] It's about protecting men from their vices by making sure that women do not look provocative, by making sure that women look as unattractive as possible.
[141] This is supposed to somehow keep the man from sinning.
[142] Yeah, because they would not be able to control themselves, right?
[143] I mean, they would not be able to restrain their animal instincts if they could actually see hair.
[144] See a woman normally dressed or her hair showing.
[145] And this, by the way, is not just in fundamentalist Islam.
[146] We see this also in fundamentalist Christianity.
[147] Let's face it, you know, and the comparisons, you know, with the handmaidens tail and all the rest that a lot of people have made, that somehow it is the job of the woman to prevent the man from misbehaving.
[148] Now, you know, a lot of this is cultural in the Middle East.
[149] Women have always worn loose -fitting clothing, that sort of thing.
[150] It's more cultural and tribal, even though.
[151] than Islamic because the Quran does not demand that women veil.
[152] It's simply, it wants women to be modest.
[153] It wants men to be modest.
[154] But over time, this has become, you know, an iron law of certain Islamic fundamentalist societies.
[155] And it is a way of, yes, branding women and keeping them down.
[156] So this had obviously been building for a long time before September when the so -called morality police.
[157] Is there actually a thing called the morality police?
[158] What I mean?
[159] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[160] The morality place.
[161] Yeah.
[162] So the morality police arrested this 22 -year -old young woman and, you know, for violating the headscarf rule.
[163] And our family and eyewitnesses then said that officers beat her to death in a police van and reports had surfaced that she'd experienced multiple blows to the head.
[164] And that's what sparked these protests.
[165] So, I mean, obviously the fire had already been laid, had been, had you had a sense that this was, this was bubbling up, that, that, that, Oh, yeah.
[166] Yeah, and so this was the match.
[167] This set off everything.
[168] Yeah, you know, Iran has had a series of protests since the revolution.
[169] 1999 student protests, 2009, a massive series of demonstrations and protests called the Green Movement after a fraud -tainted election.
[170] And I remember when the Green Movement subsided after, it took really about a year so, before it finally subsided, and the regime was able to crack down, people kept talking about this Persian expression, fire under the ashes, fire under the ashes.
[171] And so the fire has been under the ashes smoldering for, I would argue, decades.
[172] You know, look at what this government has given Iran, or rather not given Iran.
[173] There's been a consolidation of power since presidential elections in 2021, and so -called hardline factions are now in control of every branch, every nook and cranny of the Iranian government.
[174] Parliament, presidency, judiciary, obviously the office of the Supreme Leader, who we can talk about him.
[175] And so any legitimate legal outlet for protest has basically been shut off.
[176] But meanwhile, you have record inflation.
[177] You know, we complain about 8 percent.
[178] In Iran, it's 60 percent or higher.
[179] Their currency is collapsing.
[180] They're under U .S. economic sanctions.
[181] They had an opportunity to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which would have given them sanctions relief, and they hesitated.
[182] And now it's not clear whether this deal can be still revived, given everything that's happened.
[183] They have gotten themselves embroiled.
[184] in an alliance with Russia against Ukraine, providing drones to kill Ukrainian civilians and destroy Ukrainian infrastructure.
[185] They have made every wrong step possible.
[186] And then in September, this poor young woman, Masa Amini, comes to town to Tehran from Kurdistan, comes out of the metro in Tehran, and maybe there's a little too much hair showing under her scarf.
[187] She was wearing a scarf.
[188] Maybe her pants that were hanging out from her cloak were too tight.
[189] Who knows?
[190] Somebody had to fulfill their quota in the Morality Police and grab yet another woman.
[191] So they snatch her up.
[192] They hit her in the head.
[193] They bang her head against the walls of the van.
[194] She goes into a coma.
[195] She dies two days later.
[196] And bingo, that's the fire under the ashes and the match.
[197] So people are, yes, they're demanding an end to enforce.
[198] forced veiling an end to the morality police who even needs such a thing.
[199] But they're also calling for the downfall of the entire regime.
[200] Death to the dictator, they keep chanting.
[201] Margbar dictator, Margbar dictator.
[202] You know, they're made to chant death to America at official demonstrations, but they're chanting death to their dictator, who is the Supreme Leader of the country, Ayatollah Khomeini.
[203] So these first protests broke out after the funeral, when women ripped off their headscarves in solidarity, and as you described, it has become much, much, much bigger.
[204] What has been the level of violence by the regime in response to all of this?
[205] How did this escalate to the point where the regime is literally killing young women, which seems to obviously be counterproductive from their point of view?
[206] Yes, very much so, because in Shia Islam, 40, days after someone dies, you have a commemorative occasion.
[207] So what's happening is that every time they kill someone, 40 days later, there's another demonstration.
[208] And if they kill someone then, 40 days later, another big demonstration.
[209] This is how the original 1978, 79 revolution against the Shah succeeded through these 40 -day rituals that kept the momentum going and going and going.
[210] So they have killed now, estimates are about 300 people, which, believe it or not, is relatively restrained.
[211] In 2019, there were protests over poor economic conditions, and there are different estimates, but some people think at least 1 ,000 or more people were killed during those demonstrations, which just went on a couple of weeks.
[212] So, you know, but there have been deaths, yes.
[213] You have used bullets.
[214] They have beat others to death, but there have also been deaths among the security services, something like 30 or 40 police have been killed by the demonstrators.
[215] Sometimes with rocks, there's been a lot of violence in particular in the ethnic minority peripheral areas of Iran.
[216] Because remember Iran is, you know, the old Persia, which was a great empire.
[217] So they're Kurdish areas.
[218] The young woman who was killed Masamini was Kurdish.
[219] There are areas near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
[220] This is a province called Sistan -Baluchistan.
[221] These people are generally Sunni Muslims, not Shia Muslims.
[222] So you have the sectarian element as well.
[223] And there's been a lot of violence in those areas directed against the government and directed against police.
[224] So it's been quite volatile.
[225] In the midst of all of this, there was also an ISIS attack in the Iranian city of Shiraz on a mosque that killed a number of people.
[226] Iran is not a very stable place right now.
[227] It is very much a country on edge.
[228] Now, you said on a recent podcast that the compulsory rule is now effectively dead and Iran women are just ignoring it.
[229] They're showing their hair.
[230] They're walking down the street or cutting their hair and burning their scars.
[231] And I thought it was interesting.
[232] You said you can't arrest them all.
[233] You can't beat them all to death.
[234] So the regime isn't going to announce that it's caving in.
[235] It's just capitulating because they can't stop it.
[236] Is that where we're at here, basically?
[237] that's sort of just a soft overthrow of the rule?
[238] I think so.
[239] I think that they understand now how out of touch.
[240] You know, it's fascinating because I mentioned, you know, over the last 25 years, there's been a gradual relaxation of the rules.
[241] I mean, I remember one year I went to Iran in 2005 and all the women were wearing pink for some reason.
[242] I think because it was the antithesis of black, which is, of course, the preferred color.
[243] And, you know, so this has been happening.
[244] happening and happening.
[245] And by and large, you know, there'd be sporadic arbitrary crackdowns, but by and large, the regime allowed it to happen.
[246] And then this idiot, Ibrahim Reisi, the president, who was elected in 2021, decides that he is going to prove his Islamic bona fides by reactivating and re -energizing the so -called morality police and sending them out on the streets to to arbitrarily go after young women and young men too because, you know, young men who gel their hair or have too many tattoos or whatever dress into Western a fashion, they could be harassed too.
[247] But it was primarily women.
[248] So at the exact moment when this guy who's incredibly unpopular, by the way, he was elected with the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic, barely a third of the electorate voted for him.
[249] And the turnout was under well under 40%.
[250] In fact, spoiled ballots came in second to him in this election.
[251] He, this unpopular man who's presiding over an economy that is continuing to deteriorate under sanctions, that is someone who's really not welcome in the West because he has blood on his hands.
[252] He was a prosecutor in 1988 when Iran summarily executed 5 ,000 political prisoners.
[253] There are people who want to haul him before some sort of court for human rights violations, even predating all of this.
[254] This is the guy who decides, let's crack down on women now.
[255] You know, I mean, you can't imagine a dumber moves.
[256] So it's just, and then, of course, we have the drones to Russia, you know, and the galloping nuclear program, which we haven't talked about.
[257] So it's a triple running.
[258] But where does this go?
[259] I saw an interview you gave to the Minneapolis.
[260] Star Tribune where you did not think that this would lead to the end of the religious regime that took over in the Islamic Revolution.
[261] So where does this end?
[262] If it's not counter -revolution or revolution, where are we going here?
[263] Well, look, let's be humble here.
[264] We can't say for sure.
[265] I think that if this regime wants to survive, it has to bend and it has to give its young people, in particular, a little bit more room to breathe.
[266] Otherwise, these comforts.
[267] are going to continue.
[268] They're going to accelerate.
[269] The other thing is I think they have to start rethinking their foreign policy, national security strategy.
[270] Because this alliance with Russia and China, you know, it may allow them to survive, but they're not going to be able to provide any additional economic benefits to their people.
[271] It is interesting, yeah, that they've chosen this moment to go all in with their aid to Russia.
[272] I mean, you thought that after Trump left office, we'd seem the worst that we would see in Iran, but actually they've ratcheted it up.
[273] Well, you know, we do have to put blame at Trump's door for quitting the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 when Iran was still in full compliance with it.
[274] This undercut all of those who had supported the deal in the Iranian government.
[275] And it paved the way for Ibrahim Reisi to become president of Iran because the so -called pragmatists were discredited by Trump's action.
[276] And, you know, so it's difficult for them to trust American promises.
[277] I understand that.
[278] And there's a tremendous fear of coming back into this nuclear deal and then having the next president of the United States, God forbid if it's Trump again, withdraw again from the agreement and make them look like fools.
[279] But, you know, in compensation, they have doubled down on this policy of, you know, the axis of losers, the axis of authoritarian, whatever you want to call it.
[280] And I don't think this is a winning strategy.
[281] It's not popular in Iran.
[282] Iranians don't trust Russians.
[283] You know, these are two old empires that historically did not get along very well.
[284] And Russia, in fact, peeled off big hunks of what used to be the Persian Empire.
[285] Georgia, Armenia, those were parts of the Persian Empire that that czarist Russia took over.
[286] And of course, they continued on into the Soviet Union.
[287] So this is not an alliance that makes sense in many ways for Iranian public opinion.
[288] I think that the regime is going to have to adjust somehow.
[289] The other thing that we didn't talk about is that the Supreme leader, this clerical ruler, is 83.
[290] He has cancer.
[291] There were rumors that he died not long ago.
[292] But he's not in great health.
[293] So when he dies, I think that is going to create a crisis, a succession crisis for the regime, and it may open the way for some change.
[294] There's some people who think there might be a military coup.
[295] Who knows?
[296] But this is a country that is ripe for change.
[297] So, you know, will it be a popular revolution?
[298] The guns are still in the hands of the regime.
[299] We have not seen a significant crack in the security.
[300] establishment yet.
[301] But there is a lot of ferment, and the ferment is going to continue.
[302] So what should American foreign policy be toward Iran?
[303] At this point, it seems, especially with these protests and with the drones being sent to Russia, it seems highly unlikely that we're ever going to revive that nuclear deal.
[304] So what should America be doing right now?
[305] What should the Biden administration be doing, especially given the fact that they may only have two years in order to change direction.
[306] Yeah, I think they're doing a pretty good job, actually.
[307] I mean, they came out very quickly in support of the protesters, which is something Obama didn't do in 2009 and was criticized over.
[308] They're trying to help provide high -tech equipment to Iranians so they can continue to communicate with each other and the outside world.
[309] They've eased sanctions on all sorts of high -tech gear, access to the cloud, access to virtual, private.
[310] at networks.
[311] They're trying to convince Elon Musk to provide Starlink to Iran.
[312] Of course, Elon Musk is busy destroying Twitter.
[313] So I'm not sure if he's going to have the time.
[314] Yeah, good luck with that.
[315] Yeah, good luck with that.
[316] They are sanctioning individuals who are identified with acts of repression and institutions like the so -called morality police.
[317] But they are also keeping the door open to diplomacy, which I think is a good idea, because right now it's Iran that has been hesitating about reviving this nuclear deal.
[318] The U .S. was ready, and Iran hesitated, and maybe we've lost this opportunity, it's entirely possible, but Iran now has tens of thousands of tons of enriched uranium, highly enriched uranium, which it could turn into a nuclear weapon.
[319] And of course, the last thing we want is for a country with a regime like that to have nuclear weapons, which really would make it perhaps bulletproof, certainly from outside intervention.
[320] I don't know that it would save the regime, but we do have the example of North Korea, which left a nuclear agreement with the United States after the George W. Bush administration pulled out, we should say, and developed a nuclear arsenal.
[321] And, of course, Kim Jong -un, one of Donald Trump's most favorite dictators in the world, is still very much in power in North Korea.
[322] So I think, you know, you don't shut the door to diplomacy because we have to engage with all kinds of regimes.
[323] If we can talk to Vladimir Putin, you know, we can talk even to Ibrahim Reisi or the Supreme Leader, of course, doesn't want to talk to Americans.
[324] But we can continue to say, look, you want to deal, this is what you have to do, and you know that.
[325] Was that the trade -off that the Obama administration made, though, that they were going to stand down on the Green Revolution, not support it, not talk about it because they were so anxious to get the nuclear deal?
[326] And was that a legitimate trade -off to basically surrender support for human rights in Iran in order to get this deal?
[327] I don't think they surrendered support for human rights.
[328] I mean, they did take steps to try to help, particularly on the Internet and social media side.
[329] they just didn't, you know, they just didn't tout it, and they didn't call for the downfall of the regime in explicit terms.
[330] It's a fine line.
[331] This has to be a movement by Iranians for Iran.
[332] It's not something that the U .S. can do for them.
[333] So we can amplify, we can express solidarity, we can call out the regime for its grotesque human rights abuses, but we're not going to, you know, parachute in and overthrow the regime.
[334] We learned our lesson in Afghanistan and Iraq, hopefully, about that kind of behavior.
[335] And the American people wouldn't support that either.
[336] The question is, you know, is there more that we can do to support these people in their very legitimate at aspirations, while at the same time preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and prevent Iran from increasing its footprint in the Middle East, because this is a country that interferes in Iraq, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Yemen, that tries to project influence throughout the region.
[337] So, you know, it takes intelligence.
[338] I mean, Joe Biden misspoke the other night when he said we were going to liberate Iran.
[339] He quickly corrected himself and said, the Iranian people will liberate Iran.
[340] And of course, the White House had to, you know, do clean up on aisle one, you know, as they often do for dear Joe.
[341] There was a lot of cleanup from that speech.
[342] Yeah, they often have to do that for dear Joe.
[343] He got carried away.
[344] And I had to explain that to Iranians.
[345] He got carried away.
[346] Of course, we would all love to see a better government for Iran.
[347] It would be wonderful for the people, it would be wonderful for the region, it would be wonderful for the world.
[348] But we can't do it for them.
[349] I want to double back on something you said about, you know, the precedent created by countries like North Korea becoming nuclear.
[350] There's also the counter example of Ukraine, isn't there?
[351] A country that gave up the nuclear weapons that it had after independence.
[352] In return for what, you know, some sort of guarantees, security guarantees, which turned out to be completely useless.
[353] And I'm guessing that there have been moments where the Ukrainians are going, okay, explain what we were thinking when we decided to give away our nuclear deterrent because the world would be a very different place had they not.
[354] And obviously, countries like Iran are looking at that as well, aren't they?
[355] Yeah.
[356] And of course, Iran is also looking at a country like Libya.
[357] Yeah, I was going to say Libya.
[358] Mawr -Muq Qaddafi had a very small nuclear program, which he basically bought off the shelf from a guy named AQ Khan in Pakistan, who, who's the world's greatest proliferator.
[359] He died about a year ago.
[360] And, I mean, a lot of this stuff was still in boxes, you know, didn't even unpack it.
[361] But Qaddafi got scared after the U .S. invaded Iraq in 2003, and he wanted to get out from under sanctions.
[362] And so he agreed to give this up.
[363] And, of course, fast forward, 2011, 2012, you had the Arab Spring, and Qaddafi met a very ugly fate.
[364] So I think that's another, you know, precedent that folks think about, particularly in Iran.
[365] And there are some within the security establishment who do want to push all the way and develop nuclear weapons because they think if they go all the way, that will protect them against the outside world and against their own people.
[366] I don't think it's going to protect them against their own people, because, you know, you can't use nuclear weapons on your own people.
[367] So the only thing that's going to protect them against their own people as if they change their ways.
[368] And I don't know if they're capable.
[369] There are people now who say that this regime is not capable of reform.
[370] But I think that there are still people within the establishment in Iran.
[371] Maybe they're sidelined.
[372] Maybe they're under house arrest, like the candidates for the presidential election in 2009 who were not allowed to win.
[373] But they're still there and there is still debate.
[374] One thing that distinguishes Iran from a lot of other authoritarian states, is that there is still a debate.
[375] There are still a few newspapers that can print, you know, debates.
[376] I've given interviews to Iranian newspapers where they print everything I say, including where I say, you know, why are you so opposed to Israel?
[377] If you drop that, nobody would care what you do, which is true.
[378] Because look, you know, countries with egregious human rights policies that don't call for the downfall of Israel, get away with it.
[379] They get away with murder, literally, but Iran can't have a nuclear program, call for the destruction of Israel and get away with it.
[380] Well, this is something I try to figure out because they, as you mentioned, in Iran, they have elections, but they are clearly not a democracy.
[381] They are an authoritarian regime, but they do have some free flow of information.
[382] And like just yesterday, you retweeted a guardian story about disagreements breaking out over helping Russia in its aggression against Ukraine.
[383] there's a conservative cleric and a newspaper editors are saying that Russia's the aggressor, and Iran should stop supplying them weapons.
[384] I mean, this is the kind of debate that you wouldn't expect.
[385] You certainly wouldn't see in a country like China.
[386] So there's something different about the political environment in Iran.
[387] I mean, how do you describe that?
[388] I'm trying to get my head around what they are willing to tolerate and what they are not willing to tolerate.
[389] It's a very curious system that they have.
[390] I mean, they have allegedly clerical control.
[391] over everything and vetting of candidates for elected office so that a very narrow spectrum is represented, that sort of thing.
[392] But, you know, there are the bones of what could be a more representative system.
[393] If you get rid of the Supreme Leader and if you simply go with the elected institutions, the president, the parliament, the city councils, you could have a fairly vibrant kind of representative system.
[394] I don't know if I'd call it democratic exactly, but certainly more democratic than other countries in the region.
[395] Iran had its first constitutional revolution in 1906 against the then -Shaw and set up the very first elected parliament in the Middle East.
[396] So this is a country that has a history of repeatedly trying to establish a more representative government, you know, interrupted by long periods of dictatorship.
[397] And, you know, have they reached a point now, especially with such an educated society that is so plugged into what goes on in the rest of the world, where they're really ready for this?
[398] That is a real question that I have.
[399] But I think they have the capability.
[400] I think they have individuals who can lead this movement within Iran, not outside, you know, all these people who are saying, you know, bring back the son of the Shah, who left when he was 17, hasn't been vaccinated.
[401] No, they have people within Iran who are perfectly capable of leading a movement like that, if only the government would open up.
[402] And, you know, they're afraid.
[403] Look, they don't want to lose their hold on power.
[404] They don't want to lose their economic monopolies, their corruption, their smuggling networks.
[405] You know, the revolutionary, we haven't talked about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is this, you know, power behind the throne.
[406] And they don't.
[407] don't want to lose their privileges, certainly not the leadership of that.
[408] But they know that something has to change.
[409] It just cannot continue to go on like this.
[410] So are they an independent power center?
[411] Well, they are defenders of the Islamic Revolution.
[412] They are defenders of the supreme leader and the clerical institutions that nominally control power in Iran.
[413] And there is, you know, there used to be, anyway, a consensus that would be formed among the commanders of the various military branches, the senior clerics, the senior elected officials, over what course Iran should take, whether it was to have a nuclear agreement with the international community or have trade agreements with China or, you know, providing drones to Russia.
[414] A lot of people suggest that because the Supreme Leader is not well, that there's been a kind of paralysis now, in the decision making and that the circle of decision makers has become extremely narrow.
[415] And so they are making the wrong decisions because they are not allowing opposition voices, dissenting voices into the discussion.
[416] And they can open that circle again if they want.
[417] That is up to them.
[418] And it's just a question of whether they think they can survive like this, or whether they think something has to do.
[419] change.
[420] All right.
[421] So you made it clear that you do not think this is going to lead to the downfall of the Islamic Republic or a counter -reolution.
[422] But having said that, that it's not likely or probable, what would be something that you would look for?
[423] What would be a sign that, in fact, the regime is at risk of losing power?
[424] What would have to happen?
[425] Well, to make this a true revolution, you would need massive strikes, particularly in the oil industry, petrochemical industry, the kind of strikes we saw in 1978, 79, before the overthrow of the Shah.
[426] And you would need to see members of the security establishment, the cops on the street, the so -called bus siege, who were the ones who were cracking heads, you would need to see them defect to the opposition, to the protesters.
[427] That happened.
[428] You know, toward the end of 1978, you have to, you a thousand soldiers a day leaving the Iranian military and joining the revolution.
[429] We don't see that yet.
[430] You see that, then yes, this is a revolution.
[431] That would make it a real revolution.
[432] But as I mentioned, there are steps we could see short of that.
[433] We could see the reformists who are under house arrest, including former president Muhammad Hatanee, the leaders of the Green Movement.
[434] We could see them freed from house arrest, allowed openly to speak and contribute.
[435] We could see journalists who were in prison let go.
[436] We could see lawyers who were in prison let go.
[437] We could see the disappearance of the morality police entirely.
[438] We could see a number of steps like that.
[439] Unfortunately, Iran doesn't have presidential elections again until 2025, but let's see.
[440] It has parliamentary elections in 2025.
[441] four we have a ways to wait but you know you could begin to see a little bit more oxygen allowed into the room if if they're interested in in cooling these protests certainly an end to the crackdowns you know no more no more shooting people in their cars no more beating young women to death you know i just don't know if they're capable of stopping that because this may be all that they have now, in which case the protests will go on and on and on.
[442] And, you know, it could turn into a revolution in the end.
[443] Barbara Slavin is director of the future of Iran initiative at the Atlantic Council and a lecturer in international affairs at George Washington University.
[444] She's also the author of Bitter Friends, bosom enemies, Iran, the U .S., and the twisted path to confrontation.
[445] Barbara, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
[446] Thank you.
[447] It's real pleasure to talk to you.
[448] Thank you.
[449] And thank you all for listening to this Election Day podcast.
[450] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[451] We'll be back tomorrow and we'll be so much smarter than we are today, right?