Kylie Moore-Gilbert on the situation in the Middle East | Insiders On Background

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Well, in the space of a week, we've had some fairly dramatic international developments.

It started with the US joining Israel's war on Iran, launching strikes at nuclear facilities.

We've had a response of missiles from Iran fired at a US airbase in Qatar.

The pronouncement of a ceasefire, pretty shaky start to it, but it seems to be holding for now.

We've heard a lot about what's driving the US and Israel over the last week.

But we haven't heard as much about the internal dynamics inside Iran, what the events of the last few weeks mean for the Aatollah's regime, what it means for the people of Iran and for the other countries in the region.

I'm Melissa Clark, filling in for David Spears on the land of the Ngunnawal people.

This is Insiders on Background.

Kylie Moore Gilbert is a Middle East political scientist at Macquarie University and someone who's been detained in Iran for more than two years, has a knowledge of Iran perhaps unlike anyone else in Australia.

And I'm thrilled that she's joining us for Insiders on Background.

Kylie, thank you for being with us.

Thanks for having me, Mel.

I want to start by just taking you back to when you first learnt that the prison that you had been detained in in Iran had been struck by an Israeli missile.

What were you thinking and feeling when you learnt that that had happened?

I was quite in shock that that had happened.

I saw the footage online of the front gates of Evan Prison basically being destroyed by a missile and it was playing again and again on loop and it was going viral on Iranian social media.

And I think my first thoughts were, oh my gosh, I hope everybody's okay.

I hope they haven't inadvertently bombed any of the prison wards because knowing what it's like inside and trying to imagine.

how terrifying that must have been for the prisoners who, you know, many of which are in very overcrowded spaces and have nowhere to run and nowhere to protect themselves.

My brain instantly went there and not knowing the extent of the bombing, I hoped it was just the gates and not elsewhere.

And it's since emerged that they also bombed some of the administrative buildings and the main judiciary building, which many prisoners are familiar with as well.

And that some innocent people did die, as well as some truly evil people and some nasty characters

heading up the prison too.

So it's definitely mixed feelings.

I think the symbolism of it's really impactful, obviously.

This is the most notorious prison of the Islamic Republic.

It's the place where they house dissidents and opposition figures and people for various other thought crimes.

you know, partially destroying it, or at least the entrance to it, sends a very strong signal

about the regime's weakness to its own people, as well as

that powerful message directed at dissidents.

There's quite a contrast there, isn't it?

Because as you say, it's very strong symbolically, but for the people actually detained inside the prison, it must have been a pretty terrifying moment and doesn't necessarily help them.

No, many of them are far worse off now than they were before that bombing.

I mean, they've been transferring them out to a number of other regional prisons around Tehran, Tehran Abuzurg for the men and Kha Chak for the women.

And the conditions in those prisons are horrific.

They're already overcrowded and there's no space, there's no infrastructure for political prisoners specifically there.

And a number of prisoners have disappeared from Evan.

They haven't escaped.

The authorities have moved them somewhere and the family members don't know where they've gone and can't track them down.

So

it's quite chaotic, actually, the aftermath of this.

And I was also hearing.

of reports of what it was like inside and you know there was a stampede in in one of the wards where a number of people got injured because everybody was trying to flee and run in terror all at the same time as well as you know falling glass and masonry and all kinds of other projectiles that might have landed on prisoners.

So

it seems like it was very terrifying and that ultimately these guys are probably worse off for it having happened.

It's a really interesting microcosm of what just one missile and the impact that has at a really human level.

At the other end of the scale, we've got the impact that has been wrought, I guess, on the Iranian regime itself, on Ayatollah Khamenei.

Can you tell me from your view, do you think that the events of the last week or so have shaken the grip of the regime in any way?

It's certainly weakened the regime.

Obviously, it has externally in terms of its deterrence and its ability to interfere in its neighbours' affairs and project its power geopolitically.

But internally too, I mean, the people have seen all of that.

They've seen these humiliating assassinations of very, very high-level and widely loathed regime figures and military figures.

And that telegraphs weakness internally.

There's been a lot of kind of ill-placed, ill-advised, in my view, talk of regime change by the Israelis and the Americans.

And that would have rattled the regime as well.

It's made them even more paranoid than they ever were before.

And,

you know, the real fear is that they're unleashing this process of score settling, revenge taking,

rounding up hundreds upon hundreds of people and accusing them of espionage or collaborating with hostile foreign powers and the like and

expediting executions and rushing through various sham trials of dissidents.

It's only the very beginning.

This has been happening for a few days now, but what we've been seeing has been really concerning.

So I think the regime is reacting to its weakness by trying to project strength in targeting its own people.

It's really interesting because I want to hear your assessment of what you think of Donald Trump Trump in particular making reference to regime change.

Do you think that was a strategic ploy to try to rattle the leadership?

Do you think it was something said offhand with not a great sense of it?

Was it done to try and, you know,

try and encourage internal dissent to rise up by pointing to the potential for the U.S.

to get involved?

What do you think the strategy was behind that?

It's hard to know how much strategy there is behind anything that Donald Trump puts on Truth Social.

In many ways, he was echoing what Netanyahu and some of the other Israeli ministers had already been saying for days prior.

I think from the Israeli perspective, it was much more calculated and strategic.

From Donald Trump's perspective, it was perhaps just bandwagoning on that narrative and maybe also trying to rattle the regime a bit.

I mean, we know that a number of his social media posts were kind of red herrings or ruses to kind of lure the regime into a sense of security when he was actually preparing to strike.

So this could have been another kind of psychological tactic as a sort of this new form of warfare, which is warfare by social media.

But at the same time, we just don't know with Donald Trump, do we?

I mean, I don't know how strategic he is.

Some of the stuff that comes out of his mouth, he could have just thought on in the spur of the moment.

Yeah, it certainly adds to the confusion and the volatility.

You mentioned that some of the response has really been taken out on the Iranian population

in the confusion and the wanting to assert authority from the leadership.

What is the view of the Iranian population to what is happening?

And I'm sure there's a variety of views, particularly if we look at the difference between young and old,

urban and rural.

But can you give us a sense of what the population feels towards the leadership in Iran at this point?

Well, we know from surveys that have been conducted from outside the country into Iran, because obviously you can't conduct popular opinion surveys inside Iran.

And with very large sample sizes, though, which are very reputable and

accurate, I would say, that around 80% of the population now, as of around 2022 onwards, says that they want the regime to go.

And that might be for a variety of reasons.

It's not just because of the political repression and the human rights abuses or the women's rights abuses that we hear so much about.

Corruption and financial mismanagement is actually the number one grievance cited by Iranians in some of these surveys as why they don't trust the regime and don't want the regime any longer to remain in power.

You know, this is a regime that's basically stripped what was a middle power, middle tier country of most of its resources and pushed more than 50% of the population under the poverty line.

So that's a huge grievance within Iran.

And I think we don't yet know it's too early to know popular opinion following this 12-day war, but I think it's pretty logical to assume that impressions of the regime have fallen even further particularly given the weakness and the humiliation that it's been dealt within its own base of support which is estimated to be about 10 to 20 percent of the population there will be a lot of discontent as well people will say why did you spend some estimates are up to 500 billion dollars over two decades on this nuclear program um you know we need this money for our own people and and that's something that the regime support base might express as well but also there's a lot of paranoia and suspicion within you know those who are in the upper echelons of the regime and their supporters clearly some of these assassinations were conducted by people on the inside who had access to very high level knowledge about the whereabouts of some of these extremely senior regime and military officials so the level of paranoia about the base too and people who profess support for the regime is going to be there as well.

So

I think that the regime will probably fall even lower in people's estimations and expectations.

And this is a real dangerous moment of weakness for them as a result of that.

It sounds like it.

If we're talking a combination of very low levels of public support, internally within, as you say, the upper echelons, a great deal of suspicion and lack of trust within each other,

militarily degraded from where it has been in the past, concern and wanting to show force,

perhaps in some ways to save face or at least to try and cement what authority remains, that really sets up for a pretty volatile period ahead.

Is that a fair assessment?

Absolutely.

And especially when you factor in the fact that the supreme leader, Khamenahi, is 86 years old, has not groomed or named officially a successor and is thought to not be in great shape.

I mean, he's thought to have suffered from cancer for a number of years.

He seems like a frail old man.

And, you know, Trump's taunting him.

We know where you are.

We know what bunker you've scurried away into.

And we can target that too for assassination if we want.

You know, that would have struck great fear into the Supreme Leader on a personal level.

And from some reports, you know, he has now taken steps to instruct the internal body within the regime that's technically supposed to nominate his successor, but which he stacked with his own friends and bodies and other very elderly clerics like himself.

He's instructed that body to start to consider the issue and apparently has given three suggested names to them.

Because

if and when he goes and he's so elderly that he could just drop dead one day of natural causes,

that is another real moment of weakness for this regime, given its unpopularity and given the lack of any legitimacy around a successor, even within the regime's own base.

You know, what could come after him is anyone's guess.

That's interesting because what are the alternatives here?

If this uncertainty and volatility were to lead to regime change by any means, whether that was through external forces or whether that was internal uprising, but if we were to consider that as an option, what are the alternatives to the current structure?

Who would fill the power vacuum if the Ayatollah were to fall off the perch tomorrow?

Aaron Powell, so you have a number of factions within the regime.

Some are probably going to be on the ascendancy following the conclusion this conflict, probably more of the hardline militaristic types, I would say.

There's a lot of talk around the sidelining of the clerical elite in favor of the military elite, because of course this is a clerical regime.

According to the Iranian constitution, the supreme leader needs to be the religious authority in the land.

He needs to have that religious legitimacy.

both leaders have been clerics and you know you can actually quibble about whether or not Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader, actually was an Ayatollah or had reached that high-level religious status before he was elevated to Supreme Leader position.

But at the end of the day, you know, these clerics are supposed to be running the show.

But we've definitely seen the military and the Revolutionary Guard Corps more hardline elements on the ascendancy vis-a-vis some of the non-militarized elements of the regime that might have also enjoyed a significant base base in the past.

So there's a lot of talk that, you know, if Khamenei was assassinated, for example, you might see some kind of Surah Council of military figures, IRGC figures, take over, at least temporarily.

But you'd imagine there would be some kind of power struggle because this is a regime that's deliberately built up multiple factions.

It's got double of everything.

You know, this is a kind of a divide and conquer strategy of the supreme leader.

There are two militaries, the Revolutionary Guard one and the regular one, the Aratesh.

There are two court systems.

There are two intelligence agencies.

Everything is doubled up.

That creates rivalry between both camps and allows him to kind of preside over everyone,

rising above all of that.

So these different camps, you can imagine, will start squabbling with one another and jostle for power in the event that he disappeared or passed away.

And that chaos could actually lead to fissures erupting within the regime that an opposition movement on the streets could potentially take advantage of.

So you've got the double system division, which I guess when you have a strong leader, it helps to stop the fomenting of a challenge if power isn't vested in one location.

But at a time when the leadership is weak, it does sound like potential for a lot of fracturing.

I want to ask more broadly about the region, because part of the response we saw from Iran after the US became involved in the airstrikes was to return missile fire towards a US air base in Qatar.

And Iran's relations with the Gulf countries have been a bit of a roller coaster ride over many a decade.

Can you give me a sense of where Iran's relations sit with Qatar in particular after what we've seen, but with the Gulf countries more broadly?

And of course, Saudi Arabia as the main regional power in that area.

I was quite surprised that they decided to attack the Aloudaid base in Qatar as their target for retaliation after the US

struck their nuclear program.

Because Qatar is a very close ally of Iran in many ways.

Iran has come to Qatar's rescue during that 2017 crisis when the other Gulf Cooperation Council states tried to isolate Qatar and cut it off

because of various internal grievances that they had with that regime, particularly its more Islamist bent and sponsorship of Islamist groups in the region.

And Iran came to its rescue, and there was this great airlift of food and other aid into Qatar from Iran.

And they share actually the world's largest gas field.

They divide it between the two of them and share the profits.

So they are, you know, quite close, particularly in contrast to Iran's relationship with other Gulf states and other neighbors in the region.

It was clearly telegraphed to Qatar and to the US in advance, this strike.

And Qatar, it didn't brush it off.

Public statements from the Emir of Qatar and others very much made it clear that this is an attack on our sovereignty.

It's unacceptable.

But you kind of got the feeling they were going through the motions and they weren't particularly bothered by this missile strike, which I found to be quite interesting.

Everybody knew that the Iranians had to do

something.

They had to react in some way.

There was a lot of speculation that they would target a military base in Iraq, which they've done in the past.

Iraq is obviously a very weak state, very significant Iranian influence over its politics, and won't really be able to put up much objection if the Iranians decided to strike its territory as they have done in the past.

So the choice of Qatar was curious.

It's possible that this was a strategy and maybe quite a clever one on the part of the Iranians to weaken that US, the perception of the US military umbrella shielding the Gulf from threats.

Because most of these Gulf states have gone all in on the US in many ways,

including Saudi Arabia, including countries like the UAE and Bahrain.

When it comes to their own security, they've kind of outsourced it to the United States and they viewed having the presence of US troops, military installations and bases on their territory as a kind of a protective mechanism that would deter Iran or other countries from attacking them.

But now it appears that perhaps it made them more of a target.

You know, hosting that US military base in Qatar might have made Qatar more of a target.

And that, I guess, then throws into question the utility of this security umbrella that they've enabled the US to construct in the Gulf.

I don't know whether the Iranians put that much thought into it, but the outcomes here could be

that some of the Gulf states, as they have already been doing in other spheres, particularly economically,

might seek to hedge with other powers like China, for example,

and seek

more security assurance from elsewhere or develop their own, you know, further develop their own security capabilities rather than just rely on the United States.

It does make an interesting choice for Iran, though, that doesn't have a lot of friends internationally and some that it does, like Russia, don't seem to be providing a great deal of support or the extent of support that it might hope for.

Obviously, others like Syria have undergone their own massive changes and those relationships have changed.

So, given there was a reasonable relationship there, is there a risk that Iran is isolating itself from everyone?

Yeah, I mean, I think that Iran doesn't have much friends and the friends that it does have,

they didn't really come to its aid.

It must be feeling very isolated right now.

We saw Arak Chi, the foreign minister, fly to Moscow in the middle of this war.

And the Russians and the Iranians had announced a strategic partnership, as the Chinese and Iranians had also.

And we that that was on the table.

You know, Araki would have said, hey, we've sent you guys so many missiles and drones for use in your war in Ukraine.

We've supported you in your war in Ukraine.

Where's your support for us right now?

We're under attack.

And the Russians came up with nothing.

You know, they've rhetorically supported Iran.

They've released some statements, but there was no weapons forthcoming.

And equally, the Chinese, you know, seemed very keen not to get involved.

So I think that Iran's isolation has definitely increased.

Some of these countries are willing to back Iran, particularly in the United Nations or elsewhere, but they're not willing to actually put skin in the game if Iran comes under attack.

And, you know, I don't think Qatar would have either, but attacking a friendly country, you know, Qatar in its statement referred to Iran as a brotherly nation.

Attacking such a country even symbolically when everybody knew that there would be no casualties and this was a symbolic strike doesn't really send the right message for for Iran when it's so isolated in the region and among its neighbours?

All right, Kylie, we've covered a lot of ground.

Really thank you for taking us through both with your knowledge and experience of the region.

I think that's really helps give a bit more of the depth and complexity of what's happening and a sense of what might be next to come.

So thank you very much.

Thanks for having me on, Mel.

And that's Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who is a Middle Eastern political scientist with Macquarie University and also an author of a book about her experiences being detained in Iran, An Uncaged Sky.

So read that book if you want to hear more about what Kylie Moore Gilbert went through.

So thank you very much for joining us for Insiders on Background.

Please send us through your feedback.

If you'd like to respond to anything from this podcast or suggest topics that you would like us to do future episodes on, you can send that through to insiders at abc.net.au.

And make sure you tune in on Sunday morning on ABC TV for David Spears with Insiders and all the guests on the couch.

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