Who Is Really Running Iran Now? (w/ Karim Sadjadpour)

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Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile.com. If you're Mojtaba Khamenei, not only was your father killed in this war, but your wife was also killed in the war. When I speak to people in Tehran who've known Mojtaba Khamenei a long time, what they say is he doesn't wake up in the morning thinking about governance. You know, how can I improve the quality of life of Iranians? He's thinking about revenge. Before this war began, I used to think of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a zombie regime because I believed it had a dying ideology. Dying legitimacy, and it was ruled by an 86-year-old supreme leader. Today, if I had to use one word to describe the regime, it would be a gangster regime. And that it's a regime which its first instinct is force and threat. Whether it's gangstering its own population, its neighbors, or the global economy. Hello and welcome to One Decision, conversations about intelligence, statecraft, and the forces that drive world politics. With people who've been in the room and on the ground. I'm your co-host, Kate McCann. And I'm Sir Richard Diller, former head of MI6, one of the people who's been in the room. Hi, Kate. Hi, Richard. And on the ground, pretty much everywhere you've been. And on the ground, yeah, pretty much all over the place. Well, it's great to see you. And I know we've got a great conversation coming up today. But first, our show this month is supported by Incogni. Incogni, data brokers and identity thieves can't harm you if they can't. Find you. Get 60% off the annual plan with code OneDecision at incogni.com forward slash OneDecision. That's incogni.com forward slash OneDecision. And to keep up with all of our content, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Like this episode or drop us a comment on YouTube. That will help others find the show. And we really love to read your feedback. We read all of them, so do keep those coming in. This week, we are returning to the Iran conflict. We're now eight months into this war. The U.S.-Iranian negotiations have stalled, energy prices remain high, and there is a new Houthi-Saudi front. What's the Iranian endgame at this stage? And is there further escalation on the horizon? Kareem Sajrapour joins us to grapple with these questions and to help us understand the war from Tehran's perspective. Sajrapour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, an expert on Iranian politics, and a frequent advisor to U.S. policymakers. Kareem, welcome to One Decision. Thank you so much for inviting me. Well, it's the perfect time to talk to you about Iran because it enters so many different conversations at the moment. We should probably start with an update. Where are we now in terms of the conflict and what you think is happening right now? I still think we're in a hot conflict right now, Kate. President Trump has an important decision to make in the coming weeks, which he himself has telegraphed. Is he planning to take more millions? More military action against Iran in the hopes that doing so will force the regime to compromise or capitulate. The Iranian government has a similar decision to make. Do they want to keep resisting against the United States? Or is this economic pressure too difficult to sustain? And should they be thinking about compromise? I think the dates everyone has been focused on the last several months are the midterm elections in the United States. I don't suspect we will see that. I don't suspect we will see any major decisions or resolutions before then, but after the midterm results, I think both sides will have to rethink their strategies. And when we talk about "they," who are we talking about, especially from the Iranian side? So when we start in Washington, your listeners who have read Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's great book, "Regime Change," would know this decision to go to war was not a whole-of-government decision in the United States. It was really President Trump's decision. It was really President Trump's decision to go to war was not a whole-of-government decision in the United States. and the State Department and the CIA thinking about strategy. I really think that this is President Trump and a few key aides, whether that's Secretary Besant right now is perhaps in the lead, the Treasury Secretary, and that the real U.S. strategy right now is to squeeze Iran economically, an economic blockade and pressure in the hopes that it's going to economically coerce the regime into a compromise. Now, on the Iranian side, we really don't have an answer to the most fundamental of questions, and that is, who is the most powerful man today in Iran? For 37 years, the answer to that question was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the former Supreme Leader who was killed in the early days of this conflict. And his son, on paper, succeeded him, Mojtaba Khamenei, a Supreme Leader, but no one has seen or heard from him over the last seven months. I think there's a general consensus that Iran is now no longer a clerical regime ruled by clerics. It's really more of a military government ruled by the Revolutionary Guards. If you look at, let's say, the top 20 men, top 20 most powerful men today in Iran, I would say 90% of them perhaps are not wearing turbans. They're not clerics. They're alumnus of the Revolutionary Guards. But the Revolutionary Guards are not a monolithic institution either. There's real power battles amongst them. And I think the fundamental decision, as I said, that the Iranian regime has to answer is, how long can they sustain this level of economic pressure, which is significant? The country suffers from as high as 70% inflation, triple-digit inflation on food. That's not something they can sustain for years to come. Does it matter when it comes to the fact that we're not talking about clerics, anymore? What difference does that make when you're talking about calculations about how the regime may react? So before this war began, I used to think of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a zombie regime, because I believed it had a dying ideology, dying legitimacy, and it was ruled by an 86-year-old supreme leader. Today, if I had to use one word to describe the regime, it would be a gangster regime, and that it's a regime which its first instance, instinct, is force and threat, whether it's gangstering its own population, its neighbors, or the global economy. And so you now have, as I said, this group of military men who learned the wrong lesson from this war, which is that you don't reap concessions by compromise. You reap concessions by fighting back, by punching back hard, again, by attacking your neighbors, closing the Strait of Hormuz. And I think that that is going to be their instinct for the, for the foreseeable future. Karim, it seems to me now that the stakes are really high. If Trump does succeed in getting the Iranian regime to compromise, negotiate, and let's say change their disposition, particularly towards the West generally, I mean, this could be seen for him a big achievement. And let me just follow that thought through a bit more. Let's say he loses the midterms, and then, you know, let's say he loses the midterms, and then, you know, we have a foreign policy outcome, which could be Trump's legacy of having changed the regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran, which is pretty significant if that were to be the outcome. Now, I'm not suggesting it is going to be the outcome, but it seems to me that Iran, given the Besant sanctions, is in really a really tough place. I certainly don't agree with the media analysis that Iran's coming out of this ahead of the game. I mean, I'd be. Keen to know how you see that overall scenario. So it's a great question, Sir Richard, and certainly if we were having this conversation in the very early days of the war or before the war was launched, I think it was an open question. You know, could this conflict actually hasten the demise of the regime or implode the regime? But I think so far, the result has been the opposite. It didn't cause the security elite, of this regime to fracture. It caused them to cohere. And so I think at the moment, there is virtually no chance that the regime decides to change its revolutionary identity. If anything, they've doubled down on revolutionary identity. But I think you're right that there's a difficult decision, which I suspect that they're pondering in real time right now, which is, does it behoove them to make what I would describe as not a strategic compromise to change their revolutionary identity in opposition to America and Israel, but a tactical compromise in order to continue fighting? Ayatollah Khamenei, the late Supreme Leader, in 2015 made that decision with President Obama when he signed the JCPOA. But when he telegraphed he was going to compromise, he used the metaphor of a wrestler. He said, sometimes when you're a wrestler fighting an adversary, you have to take a step back in order to regroup and to rebuild your strength in order to keep fighting. So I think that would be the way in which they would compromise. It would be a temporary tactical compromise, but their revolutionary identity in opposition to America and Israel will continue, in my view. Has it hardened, do you think? Has the revolutionary identity hardened? And against America. Has it now become even more difficult to see a way out of this that's negotiated? Certainly in the near term, 100 percent, that enmity toward the United States has hardened. What has been done over the last seven, eight months has, you know, confirmed all of the suspicions and animosity and mistrust of Iran's revolutionary elite towards the United States. When the president of Iran, Mr. Pazishkian, came to the United Nations last month, he complained. He said, you know, on two occasions we're in the middle of negotiations and the United States attacked us. So how can we possibly trust the United States? If you're Mojtaba Khamenei, you know, not only was your father killed in this war, but your wife was also killed in the war. And so when I speak to people in Tehran who've known Mojtaba Khamenei a long time, what they say is he doesn't wake up in the morning thinking about governance. And so certainly I think their revolutionary animosity toward the United States is hardened. And if I could, Kierkegaard, just. Kind of in parentheses, say something which I think is counterintuitive about revolutionary regimes. There's a terrific book by two political scientists, Lewitsky and Wei, about revolutionary regimes. And what's counterintuitive about them is that they actually tend to last around three times as long as your conventional dictatorships. And that is in part because that external adversary is useful for them for their internal. Legitimacy, in part because it helps to maintain the cohesion of their security forces. It helps prevent against defections and military coups. And that is what we've seen in Iran, surprisingly, over the last seven, eight months, is that I don't think we've seen a single high level defection within the security forces. I believe it's a deeply unpopular regime, perhaps no more than 15, 20 percent popular support. It's largely despised by much of the Iranian population. But it remains highly united and armed and organized, and it's willing to inflict mass violence on its population. And the population is unarmed, unorganized, and they've experienced firsthand last January that they're up against a regime which is willing to potentially kill tens of thousands of its own citizens to stay in power. Karim, if the conflict continues, and I agree with you that it's still hot, what would be America's? Next step, is it possible that they would try to take out Karg Island? Because it seems to me that you've got to somehow deliver a fatal blow to the economy if you're going to expect any sort of result. And they're certainly not going to put American boots on the ground. So this is going to continue to be a kinetic war. What strategic move have they got to make other than attacking Karg Island? You know, let me start, Sir Richard, with a basic dilemma, which is that I don't think President. Trump has a clear idea in his head what he's actually trying to achieve. I don't think he has a clear idea about his his own endgame, which is a challenge, because if you don't know where exactly you want to go, then it's difficult to know, difficult to devise a strategy for that. I do think if we look from we now have a 47, almost 48 year case study of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and this is a regime which is really. We've only agreed to meaningful compromise on two, perhaps three occasions since 1979, and the formula under which it compromises is pretty clear. It's when it faces what I would describe as existential pressure, existential economic pressure. But that pressure is in pursuit of what I would call kind of a defined, limited outcome. The 2015 Obama nuclear deal, the JCPOA is an example of that. The Obama administration wasn't calling for. A regime change in Iran. They weren't calling for Iran to give up all of its regional proxies or its missile and drone programs. It was a narrow nuclear deal. I think this time around, that significant pressure needs to be coupled with what I would describe as a somewhat more limited endgame. If your goal, if you're asked of Iran is change who you are, change your revolutionary identity. In my view, that's not likely to work. But I do think there are really four major points of contention with Iran. One is the Strait of Hormuz, the future of the Strait of Hormuz. I believe that Iranian leaders no longer believe the Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway. They believe that it is an Iranian waterway. You know, that's not something you can ignore. Second, obviously, is their nuclear program. A third issue are their missiles and drones. And the fourth issue. Are there regional proxies? You're not going to get 10 out of 10 on all of those things. But in my view, you shouldn't you can't ignore any of those things because they're all very consequential issues. And the final thing I'll say here is that I know in President Trump's head, his number one priority of those four issues is nuclear. I believe I'm not sure that's the right priority right now, because if you talk to regional countries, they will tell you, listen. We're not worried that Iran is going to nuke us. Their nuclear program is under rubble right now. It's going to take them some time to reconstitute their program, but they're attacking us with missiles and drones on an almost daily basis. And that's not something you can ignore. In at least one interview, you have mentioned an unpublished study of yours that profiles the top 20 figures in the Iranian regime. What have you found and what do your findings suggest about the character? And the durability of the regime? And we've talked a little bit about this, about who's running it and the different expectations that people have. But what have you found in your piece of research? If you kind of separate Iran's top officials into two different categories, one category, we call them hardliners, but they call themselves principalists because they say they're loyal to the principles of the 1979 revolution. And then if you create another category, which. We could call pragmatists, those who are committed to the Islamic Republic of Iran, but they believe that in order to sustain the regime, to sustain the revolution, you have to start to put economic interests before revolutionary ideology, much like what Deng Xiaoping did in China. When I look at what I would call my assessment of, let's say, the top 20 most powerful men now in Iran, and unfortunately, they're all men. I would say perhaps 17 to 18 of them are what we would call principalists, hardliners, you know, committed to the status quo, hostility toward America and Israel, and perhaps only two or three men like the current president position are more pragmatic in their outlook. And so I think that based on that, these assessments that Iran is simply going to naturally transform. Like China did, or, you know, the people have written about Iran transforming to a more nationalist system like Kemalist Turkey or Nasserist Egypt. That is not born out of the personalities of these men who are currently running the country. Their takeaway from the year 2026, you know, both the January uprising in Iran and this war has not been that revolutionary ideology has been. And Albatross sinking the regime has actually been the opposite. They view it as something which has been a life preserver that has helped to sustain them despite a massive popular uprising and then a war from America and Israel because that revolutionary ideology has helped to maintain the cohesion of the security forces. Karim, I want to come back to talk about the Strait of Hormuz because I do think it's a really important point in this conflict. And we should talk more. more about it. But I just want to pick up on where we started, really, which was how. America has ended up where it is and specifically President Trump and we hear a lot of the time Israel was very influential you know Benjamin Netanyahu called Trump up said it was an easy win you know give it a go you'll get all the glory what do you make of those reports? I do think Prime Minister Netanyahu played an incredibly consequential role in persuading President Trump to launch this attack on Iran but I think it's useful for your listeners to to to rewind and think about the context of President Trump and Iran over the course of the last decade so if we rewind to 2018 that was Trump's first term and he hated the Obama nuclear deal and so he eventually he pulls out of the Obama nuclear deal he says that was the worst deal in history now many even of his advisors tried to dissuade him from doing that they said this is going to have terrible consequences and Trump made that decision and he felt like you know he was able to get away with it the consequences weren't too drastic so two years later January 2020 President Trump decides to kill Iran's top military commander Qasem Soleimani again many of his aides tried to dissuade him from doing that they said this could trigger a regional war he did it and the consequences weren't too drastic in fact it was something he he was very proud of now fast forward to Trump second term last summer Israel initially launched these attacks on Iran and Iranians woke up and suddenly dozens of their top military leaders had been assassinated overnight either in their bedrooms or in bunkers and initially the United States and the first hours of that war distanced themselves from the war President Trump's instincts were to try to resolve the Iran challenge diplomatically what happened is that when Prime Minister Netanyahu started to get great publicity for the war on on conservative media outlets like Fox News I think President Trump wanted to associate himself with the conflict and that's when he made the decision to drop those bunker buster bombs on Iran which became the 12-day war again people said don't do that the could start World War three he did it there wasn't much of an Iranian interaction so that's three times he's put his hands on a hot stove and got away with it wasn't much reaction now fast forward to January of this year what happens in January of this year the operation against Maduro and Venezuela you know plucking a foreign autocrat out of his capital bringing him to New York City I think it was the combination of those four events which President Trump you know gambled majorly on all four occasions each four occasions he believed it worked out for him which set up the context for this war and yes Prime Minister Netanyahu was egging him on and persuading him all the way but obviously this is a you know a consequence and a decision made by the President of the United States one of the issues connected with the JCPOA which I always felt was it was that I would say there's a direct line from the JCPOA to the as it were strengthening and creation in the longer term of the axis of resistance it almost gave Iran a laissez-passer to misbehave across the Middle East through the axis through arms length proxies we now see that in Hezbollah that was meant to be the jewel in the crown has largely been let's say neutered militarily and and and and the third member of the axis of resistance which is the one that was as it were least controlled but also strategically important because its position of the Houthis so we're now in a strange position where you know Hamas and Hezbollah I wouldn't say taken out of the equation but they're not strategically so consequential suddenly the Houthis are the key element and you've got this confrontation and escalation which for me is the sort of profound conflict in the Middle East between sunny Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran and and it it looks to me as though the conflict has acquired a more sort of profound direction in terms of the future of the Middle East and who is going to emerge from this as the dominant power I mean logically one would expect it to be Saudi Arabia but the Saudis don't even say seem to be able to deal with the Houthis at the moment I mean how do you interpret this as it were miasma of conflict which goes back you know to to to the earlier you know attack on Iran it's a great question so Richard and I think you put your finger on it at the beginning that Iran cannot only be defined as a as a nuclear challenge it's a much broader challenge than that it's there is the regional challenge the missiles and drones and I don't think it's wise for you U.S. policy or Western policy toward Iran to to only attempt to address one of those issues as you said once they got the the the major financial windfall as a result of the nuclear deal they poured that money into their proxies now the battle between Saudi Arabia and Iran is in my view it's actually broader than just a sectarian battle of Sunnis and Shiites it's in my view kind of really an ideological battle between what I call Saudi vision 2030 and Iran vision 1979 you know the major advantage asymmetric advantage which Iran has had over Saudi Arabia is that Iran is able to mobilize militias and radical groups from the Houthis to Hezbollah as you said and and in order to effectively fill power vacuums throughout the Middle East and and virtually all of these Sunni radical groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda want to overthrow the government of Saudi Arabia so in a region in which there's been great instability a lot of power vacuums as a result of both the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and then the Arab uprisings of 2011 you know look at the places that Iran was dominating Syria Lebanon Iraq Yemen Gaza essentially five failing states so that is what the Islamic Republic has done well now in the current context of this war in this battle with the Houthis the metaphor I think about are two kinds of actors and the Persian Gulf you have what I call Falcons that aspire to build soaring cities economies societies like Saudi Arabia Qatar UAE and then you have what I call the vultures who actually are very effective and kind of feeding off the chaos and the misery and that's the Islamic Republic and its proxies it's so much easier to be a vulture than a falcon because you know I did a Fulbright in Beirut many years ago and my one big takeaway from that year is it takes decades to build things it takes weeks to destroy things and this is what we witnessed over the last six seven months that stability you know becoming a hub for international transportation technology finance that takes decades of building and it's very costly instability can come very quickly and with $30,000 drones and so between you know Iran the Houthis the Shia militias and Iraq they're very effective at at destruction but there's also huge asymmetry as you as you both know in terms of the the costs of being a vulture versus a falcon you know our defense system to shoot down these $30,000 drones cost perhaps 10x 20x the cost of those drones so it's it's been a much less costly fight for for Iran and its proxies a question linked to that and you sort of opened up before for us really by saying that you think Iran the regime inside Iran now view the Strait of Hormuz as Iranian and that is a shift a quite significant one and also you know a lot of ground lost quite quickly what does that mean in terms of where we go forward from here I'll tell you I think that really creates a dilemma because you know at the moment the Trump administration would say that traffic going through the Strait of Hormuz you know the energy flows through that Strait are getting back towards status quanti what they were before the war I'm not sure that's quite true but in any case the reason why that's happened is because the US Navy has been escorting those ships through that's not a sustainable strategy for years to come that US Navy escorts traffic through that Strait that's very costly my fear is that it's a reason why in my view there's probably not going to be any quick resolution to this war because even if there is some type of a ceasefire or a tactical compromise I'm not persuaded that six months from now a year from now two years from now Iran won't attempt to to close down the Strait again in reaction to something that they don't like, a provocation from Israel against them, against, you know, on Iranian soil, or it's a provocation against one of their regional proxies. This is something which they've now proven they could do before this war was theoretical. Could they close the strait? They've now proven they can do, and my sense is they will attempt to do it again in the future. As a follow-up to that question, which I think is, you know, specific to Hormuz, what about the state of play between Oman and Iran at the moment? I mean, you know, if you take, you know, the borderline, there is still the Omani passage. How many attacks have the Iranians made on ships going down the Omani side of the channel, or is the Omani side, I mean, I'm not totally familiar with the navigational characteristics, but I know the Iranian side is meant to be better, but would it be possible to develop the Omani side in terms of getting around this problem or not? I've oftentimes thought that two of the most important external actors in this conflict who are not, you know, combatants in this war are Oman and China, because for the Islamic Republic of Iran, it needs, in some ways, Oman's cooperation to come up with a plan in which they can say, okay, there's a new plan, administrative plan for the Strait of Hormuz. And if the government of Oman comes out very definitively and says, we reject a new model for the Strait, our position is that it should go back to status quo ante, it's much more difficult for Iran to legitimize their ambitions to control the Strait. Over the last several months, I think the Omani position has been pushed. Closer to the GCC and U.S. position, but, you know, they also don't want to totally alienate Iran. And the reality is that Iran still, you know, has the ability to launch attacks on ships passing closer to the Omani side. Now, right now, when you have a massive U.S. naval presence in that region, it helps to deter and prevent those kinds of attacks. But as I said, in my view, that's not a sustainable solution for years to come. I also mentioned China, because as many of your listeners already know, the bulk of the energy that goes through that Strait is bound for China. And Iran's case, 90% of its oil exports are bound for China. And even though China and Russia are commonly lumped together when it comes to their interests, I think they actually have very divergent interests here. I think Russia does benefit from regional insecurity. They benefit from risk premium of energy going up and staying up. And I think that's a very, very important point. And I think that's given they're a massive energy producer and exporter themselves. But in my view, China doesn't benefit from that over the long term. You know, their energy security is better ensured when there isn't a constant war and conflict and insecurity in that region and the risk premiums aren't high. So I think that's something which for the Gulf countries who are most threatened by Iran's closure of the strait, I think Oman and China are really key. So what do we do here? Because, you know, as you say, it's not sustainable for the US Navy to be acting as a protector for people trying to travel through the strait, for ships and vessels trying to travel through the strait. It's not just having an impact on China, it's having a huge impact on the whole of the European Union, on America, pretty much the entire globe. And the domestic politics of that is really, really difficult. I mean, here in the UK, it's evident, but it's evident across France and Germany and Italy and everywhere else. What's the solution? What do you see as the end point here? You know, Kate, there's unfortunately, in my view, not a silver bullet solution. Generally, I think the debate in America, given how polarized it is, tends to assume that, you know, if only we're nicer to Iran and offer them, you know, more concessions, we can resolve our conflict with them and, you know, focus on, you know, the right would say, if only we pressure them more or bomb them more, then we can either, you know, implode them or force them to capitulate. And that hasn't been the history of the last 47, 48 years. In my view, this is not, obviously, a global power like the Soviet Union, but it's a deeply ideological revolutionary regime which is prepared to inflict massive suffering on its own population rather than compromise. I think. I think we can increase the cost for its conduct and sharpen the choices it has to make. But, you know, ultimately, my view is that the 47, 48-year Cold War or cold-slash-hot war between America and Iran is not going to be fully resolved until you have a government in Iran whose ethos, whose identity is not revolutionary ideology but national interests. You know, the slogan should be Long Live Iran rather than Death to America and Death to Israel. In my view, that is not. We don't see signs of that transformation happening in the near term. So I think what needs to happen is, as I said earlier, I think President Trump needs to have a clear strategy in his head of what he's hoping to achieve. In my view, a 10 out of 10 ambition would be great if you can get Iran to abandon entirely, its proxies, its missiles, its nuclear program, its control over the strait. But I don't think that's achievable. You have to couple the pressure, the coercion with a clear diplomatic strategy. So far, I think we have one part of that strategy right now, which is that the coercive strategy has been successful in really inflicting enormous economic pain on the Iranian regime, but it's not been coupled, in my view, with a clear diplomatic endgame. Karim, we've got two crucial elections coming up. We've mentioned one, which, of course, is the midterms. You could have an angry and wounded Trump after the midterms, who might just lash out to sort of compensate for political defeat in Congress and in the Senate. And, of course, within a short time, we have this election in Israel. I mean, have you considered what the outcome might be, if Netanyahu can't put a coalition together? Okay, it's going to be a very close-run thing. Israeli politics are pretty opaque because of the number of small parties and the need for coalitions. But it does look possible that Netanyahu won't make 61 votes in the Knesset and that, as it were, a more moderate Israeli government might at least try before him to put together a coalition. So this could be a very. very significant political change which could lead to a strategic change. I mean, I'd love to hear your comments on that. So what's quite remarkable, Sir Richard, is that going back to Netanyahu's first election when he became prime minister in 1996, I would say that the Islamic Republic has long been a political gift to Prime Minister Netanyahu and that he was pulling behind the incumbent in that election, Shimon Peres, and it was a wave of Iranian-backed suicide bombings, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which helped Prime Minister Netanyahu defeat Shimon Peres in 1996. And ever since then, Iran has been the top item on his agenda. So I think Iran's Death to Israel campaign has been far more beneficial to the Israeli right than it has been to Palestinians or certainly to the people of Iran. The impact of the Israeli elections, I do agree, will be significant, because if Prime Minister Netanyahu manages to hold on, I think he will obviously continue to prioritize the war with Iran. I think if Mr. Eisenkot manages to prevail, I don't think that Iran necessarily stays the top priority for Israel. It could be inquiries about what happened with the security failure of October 7th, addressing the Palestinian issue in the hopes that, you know, that can facilitate what would be significant for Israel, which is a normalization with Saudi Arabia. And perhaps above all, repairing of the U.S.-Israel relationship. And Israel's global brand, I saw a poll from a few days ago which showed that countries around the world, citizens around the world, were asked to rate their favorability and unfavorability of nations. And I was, you know, quite shocked. Israel was the very bottom of that list, even lower than North Korea. So I think that becomes a priority for an Eisenkot government. And on President Trump, you're right, that I think the Iranians were hoping that if he loses both the House and the Senate, that will be a mass of humiliation, which will restrain him and force him to end the war. But it could actually have the opposite impact. It could be an electoral defeat rather than restraining Trump. It unleashes him to focus more on the United States. and on external matters rather than internal matters and you know continue a kinetic response to iran so so these things could be counterintuitive does that mean then there is also a risk that the types of attacks that we've seen for example raf fairford in in this country and there have been many others that attacks on domestic soil could well continue maybe even increase i believe unfortunately that is going to be our new reality for a while because you have a regime in iran which as i said is is bent on revenge it oftentimes is is probing you know what is the low-hanging fruit what are places that um are are are significant and impactful but perhaps less well defended and what we know about this iranian regime is that it operates through proxies and and cutouts you know it hires uh oftentimes criminal gangs to to to carry out its dirty work and i think that's something we should all expect to continue and what is you know has made them far more lethal now is the is the advent of artificial intelligence which um you know they're going to be uh employing um to carry out these revenge attacks carry what you think the sort of state now is of the gulf nations i mean all of them to a greater or lesser extent have been attacked attacked quite severely by iran all of them had some sort of relationship with the iranian theocracy and we're in some sort of dialogue but this business was spreading the conflict uh the iranian strategy of doing that has caused huge resentment it's sort of upended as you mentioned economic models it's made them look unattractive places for retirement or investment particularly if you take somewhere like dubai you've got lots of sort of expats living in comfortable apartments living a sort of really sort of in what they thought would be a relaxed environment what do you think that the leaderships of the gulf states now i mean what do they want to compromise are they so angry they want the conflict to continue are they prepared let's say to ally themselves very closely and you know their attentions there with saudi arabia if saudi arabia now you know is determined to pursue this conflict with the houthis and by extension directly with iran itself what's their attitude to the next steps it's a great question sir richard and this war has been existential for those gulf countries because you cannot have a forward-looking vision to be hubs for global transportation trade uh finance and technology in the middle of an active war zone and so every um you know all the major plans to bring in the gulf states have been put on hold right now and um counterintuitively many of those countries perhaps almost all of the gulf countries um didn't wish this war it's true that they obviously uh view the iranian regime many of them view the iranian regime as an existential threat but they were worried about what happens if you you kick this hornet's nest and and so there is disappointment in the gulf states and i think it's a very important point and i think it's a very in the united states but the idea that this war is going to facilitate a post-american middle east i think is is wrong because if anything these countries now need to double down on their security relationship with the united states to protect themselves against iran what they've seen is that certainly china and russia cannot fill the role of the united states china has actually been providing not only iran military technology but the houthis military technology which has been used against civilian outposts in saudi arabia and throughout the gulf and so i think that their um defense relationships their security relationships with the united states double down and they've all been um impacted to varying degrees i think perhaps economically the country which has taken the most significant hint is the one which has among the best relationships with iran which is qatar because whereas um you know saudi arabia and the uae you can come up with alternative pipelines to transport your oil but uh in the case of qatar you know the almost the entirety of its economy comes from liquefied natural gas which is that you can't come up quickly with alternative pipelines for that and so qatar has been deeply impacted i think these countries are all looking to de-conflict with iran they're not interested in fighting this war with iran but there's obviously no trust between them and iran and i think that's going to be the state of the the gulf region for for many years to come i want to ask you one last question which is do we really believe that armadino had this relationship with israeli intelligence or do you think this was under iranian control all the time i i mean i i'll tell you immediately my view is it was under control of the iranians and that the iranians were under the control of the iranians and that you know they led the israelis by the nose but i might of course it's only an informed guess i'd like to know what you think i can only speculate as well so richard um one of your successors at mi6 uh i won't say who but i once asked him this question and i'd be curious for your take on it i asked him a question of which kinds of individuals um are you most likely to be able to recruit as defectors you know what are their motivations is it is it ideological is it financial and you know he said something that stayed with me he said oftentimes it's it's people who have grievances uh against their their own government they feel like they've been you know wronged humiliated they have an axe to grind and that is the case of mahmoud ahmed judd he's someone who who had a had a grievance with his own regime because he'd been very much sidelined over the last decade now does that mean that he actually went so far this is something like you couldn't have written it in a hollywood script because ahmed judd is most people will remember was the most vociferous opponent of israel when he was president of iran denying the holocaust constantly i've spoken to folks in the intelligence community here who who do believe that um you know he was um he did have those types of contacts with with the mossad my own suspicion is that it may have been that he was one of several bets that the israelis uh were putting money on of uh potential officials more friendly to them that could come to power in the aftermath of a military conflict i don't think the entirety of their strategy was resting on him but you're also right to question whether um the iranians were were playing a double game yeah well you're right on the grievances issue karim we we always end every podcast with one question what is the one decision you're watching for from tehran or from washington that will shape the direction of this conflict or maybe it comes from neither of those places so the the obvious answer kate is whether president trump is going to continue military action or pursue a more conciliatory approach and you could say that on the iranian end as well is iran going to continue to be defiant uh and pursue confrontation or compromise but i don't want to say the obvious answer i think the less obvious answer which i'm thinking about and it's really in the context of iran internally is the the the decision that the iranian regime will have to make about the mandatory hijab in iran because from 1979 to the present i think there have been kind of three ideological pillars of this revolutionary regime it's been death to america death to israel and the mandatory veiling of women which ayatollah khomeini once called the flag of the islamic revolution what has happened over the last two three years in iran has really been a social revolution they're no longer able to control the mandatory veiling of women if you see images from tehran and throughout the country now many of them are going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to most women are now defying that and the danger which ayatollah khomeini always feared is that once you you give up something so fundamental to you it's it could unravel the entire ball of yarn as what happened when gorbachev tried to pursue reform in the soviet union it didn't prolong the shelf life of the soviet union it hastened its collapse so i think that is going to be the key iran's leadership will have to make in the coming months and years are they just going to accept the fact that they've lost the mandatory veiling of women which was as i said one of the key pillars of the islamic republic or are they going to try to um reverse what's happened um and it will require enormous brutality uh and repression in order to do that that is such an interesting answer to that question and one i really didn't expect kareem thank you very much for joining us on One Decision. It's been really fascinating to have you with us. us. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Thank you very much, Karim. Great discussion. Thank you both. Well, Sir Richard, I learned so much in that conversation. And I was really surprised, actually, by Karim's answer to our question, what's the one decision you're looking out for? Perhaps I should have expected it, really, because so much of what goes on in a country is dictated by its people. But the idea that so much of this comes down to how the regime sees itself and its citizens and what role women play in that or don't is such an interesting notion, isn't it? Yeah, I think there's a fundamental historical lesson there that when revolutionary regimes reform, they're in deep trouble. And generally speaking, revolutionary regimes, you know, don't reform, they continue to occupy their extreme positions. And of course, if you think about the treatment of the people who are in the government, you know, of women in Iran, they are inevitably hugely influential. And we don't measure that. We don't see that. We've seen evidence of it in some of the recent sort of uprisings. But they clearly are going to play a crucial role in the future of the country. And yeah, if he's right about that, maybe in terms of the durability of the regime, we're sometimes looking in the wrong direction. I thought he just gave a brilliant tour d'horizon of all of the key issues. And I think anybody listening now will have a much better understanding of the variables, the complexities. And there are so many issues which can impact on this relationship, on this conflict, you know, whether it's the midterm elections, the elections in Israel, let's say the lack of strategy that he wants to trump. It's so complex. It's so complex. We covered the ground really thoroughly because of his expertise. And I think asking him many of the key questions to bring out those interpretations. Well, hopefully our listeners feel the same. And you can let us know, share your thoughts, leave us a comment on YouTube. You can email us at hello at one decision.com. We read all of them and we really do enjoy your feedback. That is it for this episode. Thank you for listening. You can subscribe to One Decision on YouTube so you don't miss out on any of them. And you can also check out OneDecision.com for commentaries and explainers that you might have missed. Thanks very much. We'll see you next time. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into. Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer.