Who Could Rule Iran Next?

Hey, it's Hanna, host of Radio Atlantic, here to tell you about the 17th annual Atlantic Festival happening in New York City this September.

We have an incredible roster of guests, including David Letterman, Scott Galloway, Dr.

Becky Kennedy, H.R.

McMaster, and many more.

I'll be hosting a live recording of Radio Atlantic, and we'll also have book talks and screenings, including a first look at season three of The Diplomat and a conversation with stars Carrie Russell and Allison Janney and creator Deborah Kahn.

Guys, you can ask them about that season two cliffhanger.

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Donald Trump has said two very memorable things about Iran in recent days.

First, this.

We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Do you understand that?

Do you have any fighting Iran?

The second one was more subtle.

We're going to talk to them next week with Iran.

We may sign an agreement.

I don't know.

To me, I don't think it's that necessary.

I mean, they had a war, they fought, now they're going back to their world.

I don't care if I have an agreement or not.

I'm Hannah Rosen.

This is Radio Atlantic.

That was Trump in yesterday's NATO press conference after a reporter asked if he was going to talk to Iran now.

The memorable part of what he said was, they're going back to their world.

As in, we're going back to regularly scheduled programming.

And what about their world?

Today, we talked to an Iranian about how the nine days of war could change everything in that world.

Or nothing at all.

Arash Azizi was born in 1988, a year after the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, came to power.

So I was born the last year of the Iran-Iraq war.

And that's really the last that Iranians had seen war and what it looks like.

They had, I think, forgotten it, perhaps, this

terrible feeling that there are, you know, bombs in the skies that might fall on you.

Azizi is a contributing writer to the Atlantic and the author of What Iranians Want.

In that book, he writes about a future that Iranian activists want to build for themselves, as opposed to the precarious future they're facing right now.

I think a lot of Iranians will feel helpless because it's clear the decisions that are determining their lives, I know, are made in a lot of different places, but not by them.

When Israel bombed Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said something which really stuck with me.

He said, the people of Iran must understand this is their moment.

A light has been lit.

Carry it to freedom.

Did it feel that way to you, like this sudden opportunity?

Or was your first thought, this is going to make things worse, just initially?

Definitely, it was that it's going to make things worse.

And it's because something that is not hypothetical, we've thought about it for a very long time.

You know, there were elements in the Iranian opposition who openly or semi-openly had been hoping for that to happen.

And not just in the Iranian opposition.

If I'm honest, there were people in Iran, people that I, you know, have known sometimes, who were thinking, well, wouldn't it be great if Israel or United States came out and took care of this regime and we could move on to a better life?

I was always, I had not only just a skeptical, I basically thought that frankly a little foolish because I just

it was clear to me that this is not going to happen.

What this is not going to happen, that it's not going to topple the regime necessarily.

That it's not going to topple the regime.

Certainly not going to topple the regime in a good way, right?

As in leading to a democracy.

It's very fascinating when we talk about these issues and people have debates i always like to ask people you know walk me through it like what what do you think is going to happen so israel starts hitting this heads of the regime he kills these military commanders which it did what's the next thing that will happen now if we did have hypothetically right if we had a large organized opposition that was really ready to take power you could imagine okay they could use this opportunity to take power And even then, you know, they would have been, they could have still been against the war and everything.

But you say, okay, realistically, this is an evil way of getting to something good, but

you can.

But this was not the case in Iran.

In fact, it was always clear to me, and I think it's clearer now, that it is the opposite.

Actually,

the attacks help sort of militarize the situation.

They help sort of threaten the security bodies.

And while me and other democracy activists, we are always looking for a way out, the best way out of the bad conditions.

Today conditions are in many ways worse because of the attack.

I'm trying not to be hopeless about it.

And I still think, you know, I think there is a moment of change in Iran that is still going on and there are positive ways about it.

But yes, Netanyahu's claim that this would lead to some sort of a social uprising,

or that this would give an opportunity for people to topple the regime, were always baseless.

And if he really believed them, it would show that

if Israel has great intelligence penetration of Iranian society, obviously sort of Iranian security services and all that shows that it lacks understanding of Iranian society and politics.

Although my suspicion is that I don't think he actually believed that.

So let's give people a better understanding of Iran and what's actually happening.

Ayatollah Khomeini has been in power for 36 years.

Is that right?

He's been in power since 1989.

Yeah.

I was born in 1988, so that's like my entire life.

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you.

Is he the only leader you have ever known?

You know, I was one year old when Khomeini passed away.

There are stories that I was one year old and everyone was sort of, a lot of people around us were celebrating and all that.

But I don't remember it.

And so, what was your impression of him growing up, or how did it evolve over time, those 36 years, your whole life?

I mean, I think Atul Khameni has been a total failure.

And Iranians really think about their history in terms of hundreds of years and thousands of years, right?

So, when I say he's been a failure, I don't mean he's been a worst leader of like since the 20th century.

I think he's been one of the worst, like trying to find someone worst.

We need to go back to the last king of the Safavid Empire in the 18th century, you know, perhaps.

And the reason for that is his track record.

It's quite clear to me what happens.

He was a young revolutionary in the 60s and 70s.

And like a lot of people in that era, they wanted to change the world and they were happy to sort of destroy human societies on their path, sometimes with good intentions, you know, sometimes otherwise.

He happened to be part of one of the few experiments in the

60s and 70s that actually won, i.e.

the Iranian revolution.

And he comes to power as part of 1979 revolution and later on as leader in 1989.

And he borrowed our country for his Islamist cause.

Did you say he borrowed our country?

Yeah, that's sort of the expression I use because, you know, the revolution had genuine popular support in 1979.

But throughout the year, certainly I would say since the 90s, since mid-90s, the population are not revolutionary.

They're not supporting these goals of Ayatollah Khamenei, which is what?

Which is two things, really.

To turn Iran, first of all, to a model Islamist society.

A society, this model society of Ali Khamenei is one in which women happily wear the veil,

men and women don't look each other

in a way that they would be attracted to each other, is one in which

everyone is working toward good Islamic values as he understands them.

And it's been utter failure on that count, right?

How do you know?

I mean, how do you know that it's an utter failure, that the population is not in support of him?

Well, I think number one, the thinkers of the regime themselves say that.

And Iran, not only Iran is not a model Islamic society, it's one of the most anti-religious societies in the world.

I think people will be shocked, and they are shocked when they go to Iran and see it.

Now, of course, there are devout Muslims, my grandmother included, right?

But the kids like born after us.

I mean,

they don't care about religion at all.

Sometimes, frankly, they're even a little nihilistic, I would say.

They could not be further.

from the image that Ayatollah Khamenei wanted of this Islamic sort of model.

And look, I don't want to, Iran is a country of of 90 million.

There are differences, there are, you know, there are obviously devout people, there are people with different texts, but by and large, this is a society that really couldn't be further from what Ali Khamenei wants.

I mean, you know, according to his ideas, they wanted to ban most forms of music in some way.

You know, like the Korean pop bands are super popular in Iran, like everywhere else.

There is just like a total cultural defeat.

And they've recognized that.

I mean, if you read regime bodies, they basically, what they're saying is we need to give up on this.

We know we've lost because they see they know what their own sons and daughters are doing.

It's funny because from a distance, like if you just take the flattest image of Iran, I'm not saying many Americans know that much.

It's like a country where there are older clerics who rule and death to Israel, death to America.

That's sort of the, you know, the shorthand for what happens in Iran.

Yeah, so that's, and that is the sort of ruling regime, right?

I would say that's not even necessarily a good picture of the ruling regime and we can talk about it a little bit because yes, you know, Khamenei believes in death deaf to america and deaf to israel i have no doubt right but that's not true of the rest of the iranian regime i would actually say that you know figures in the iranian regime that i talk to sometimes right for my reporting they're actually you know they always send their kids to europe and and america and this actually goes back to your earlier question as well right so how do i how do i know this total culture failure where the sons and daughters of of these leading figures of the regime go They come here, they go to Europe.

Let's go look at their Instagram.

You know, what are they doing?

They're like posting about Justin Bieber, right?

I mean,

and there are tons of examples like that.

The anti-Westernism is total culture failure.

And is this just the upper classes you're describing?

Like, are you describing just rich Iranians?

Absolutely not.

I'm describing Iranians across the board.

In fact, it's sometimes the other way around.

Because, you know, if you're college-educated, like I am and stuff, you might be a bit more skeptical of the West, like as a college, actually, as a very Western thing, right?

I think a college-educated Westerner would be

on different levels.

um no i think look so i mean i think there is a base for let's say radical anti-westernism has a base in iranian society i think if it organized itself politically it would be like maybe 10 15 percent of iranian society but there are there's such a small minority you know you look you can look for example in the last couple of years on the anti-Israel issue you know isn't it interesting that genuine, like mass organized,

let's say anti-Israel demonstrations, they happened in dozens of cities in the United States.

They happened in dozens of cities in Europe.

They obviously happened all over the Middle East.

They did not happen in Tehran.

Last, just a few weeks ago, before the current war, a group of students, sort of leftish students and University of Tehran, tried to organize and sort of anti-Israel demonstration.

And with very beautiful good intentions on a large part, right?

I don't want to see this them.

You know, they want it, it's a very global cause.

Like they made sure there would people come without the hijab, right?

They didn't want it to be a pro-regime thing.

And like 20 people showed up.

That is very telling.

That at the exact historical moment when it is perhaps the easiest to organize an anti-Israel demonstration, the country that is the originator of Death to Israel can only get 20 people to an anti-Israel rally.

Yes, because people don't support it, yeah.

And people don't support it, by the way, for very, for very basic reasons.

And they don't support it because, first of all, they don't see Iran as party to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because we're not, regardless of what we think about it.

So Darush Ashuri, this Iranian intellectual,

socialist intellectuals, after the 1967 war, you know, he's in a debate with someone else, and he says, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to us is like, I think he says, Ethiopian-Sudanese conflict, something like that.

Meaning what?

It's like something happening over there far away.

Exactly.

And it's not something that we don't have as taken.

The people.

Well, Iranians.

I mean, he's saying it from a perspective of Iranian, you know.

Iranian people.

Wow, this is like a very different picture than the picture you get just reading headlines.

And you don't need to take my word for it.

Again, all you need to do is talk to an average Iranian.

They talk about it like someone in Europe.

So you have people who become very anti-Israel, perhaps, and criticize and become very pro-Palestine or not, right?

But you also have the opposite, just like somewhere in Europe.

My point is people don't have a direct estate.

And the other thing that is important related to that, they surely don't want the regime to expend their treasures.

on this conflict and to bring them now as it has in the last two weeks to a direct conflict.

It's It's not that because they don't care for people of Gaza, it's that they don't like the way they're being used and they don't see it as in line in Iranian national interest because it isn't.

So, the leader and the people are at odds, and now the country is in a crisis point.

What does that mean for Iran's future?

That's after the break.

Hey, it's Hannah, host of Radio Atlantic, here to tell you about the 17th annual Atlantic Festival happening in New York City this September.

We have an incredible roster of guests, including David Letterman, Scott Galloway, Dr.

Becky Kennedy, H.R.

McMaster, and many more.

I'll be hosting a live recording of Radio Atlantic, and we'll also have book talks and screenings, including a first look at season three of The Diplomat and a conversation with stars Carrie Russell and Allison Janey and creator Deborah Kahn.

Guys, you can ask them about that season two cliffhanger.

Learn more at theatlanticfestival.com.

Okay, so let's understand what this adds up to.

You're saying cultural alienation from what the priorities are of the leadership.

Just visually right now, the leadership, and by which I mean Khamenei himself, seems pretty isolated.

Like literally, he's in a bunker somewhere.

Many of his top generals are dead.

What are you hearing from Iran then about what his state of mind is?

Because on the one hand, you said the activists are not organized, like there isn't some organized internal opposition ready to overthrow him.

On the other hand, he's pretty isolated, both from his own culture, his own generals.

So where is he?

So we were talking on Wednesday morning, a few days after the United States finally attacked Iran,

and a few days after the ceasefire.

And the commander-in-chief, the head of state, the grand Ayatollah Khamenei, the leader of the revolution, you know, he's hiding like a little mouse somewhere.

We don't know where he is.

He hasn't shown his face.

He's given two speeches since the war began, like the war with Israel began on June 13th.

If you look at the headlines there, it was all about the defiant speech.

But if you actually listen to the speech and you speak Persian, he does not appear anything like Defiant.

He really looks like someone who they forced to, you know, record almost like a forced video and to come out.

He looks tired and defeated.

And

so you just mean his tone?

Like his tone didn't match his words?

His tone didn't match his words.

And he, you know, he just didn't appear, especially if we remember this guy, right?

You asked me sort of why I grew up with him.

Remember a time when he was an impressive figure in some ways, right?

He was a good rhetorician.

And I think he's, I mean, and he's 86.

So,

I mean, he was going to die soon anyways, right?

We are all waiting for that.

Frankly, Iran has been now in a total waiting for years for this guy to drop dead.

There was a term I heard that someone used, which was a zombie regime.

No, certainly.

Yeah.

A zombie regime.

And when I go, like, take a shower.

whenever and I come out in half an hour and I haven't looked my phone I always have this fantasy that I opened and Ahmedi has died right so we're really waiting for this moment to arrive right

so um

but he's now finished in some very real ways.

There is a ferocious conflict in Tehran over the future, some of which we've reported on in the Atlantic, you know, about sort of the plots that are going on,

you know, to replace him.

So, he is finished, but you actually posed that excellently.

So, the opposition is not organized.

Khameni, as a person, is finished.

His policies are total failures, right?

Let me just recapture that very quickly.

His policies have brought Iran economic destruction, international isolation, domestic repression, and now a direct war.

And hundreds of Iranian civilians are dead because of that war, right?

So he's finished.

The opposition is not ready to take over.

So who, you know, so who's going to be?

Yeah, like, does he have a success?

So tell us the options.

Like,

does he have a succession plan?

So according to the letter of the Iranian constitution, the supreme leader, this is a very strange position.

So very briefly, if I explain, like, we actually, the supreme leader is a sort of made-up English term that we use.

The real term there is the guardian jurist.

It's basically the closest example to it is not in Islamic text, but it's from Plato's Republic.

It's the philosopher king.

The reality is, there is nobody with those qualities really who could be the third supreme leader.

So there's a very real possibility that Khamenei will actually end up being the last one, that this position will somehow be abolished and there would be a constitutional transition.

But if it wasn't abolished, some of the main candidates that are being talked about, surprise, surprise, one of them is Moshtaba, his son, Moshtabo Khamenei, Khamenei's son.

But further surprise, supporters of Moshtaba Khamenei are not selling him as a continuity candidate of his father, knowing that that would be a losing bet.

They're actually doing the mere opposite of that.

They're comparing him to MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, as someone who would be a rejunnerating figure, who would take Iran away from the clerics and from the anti-Westernism to a more sort of nationalist path and, you know, would open things up.

They're just selling him as a change candidate.

And you, who call yourself a democracy activist, can you get on board with that?

Do you see him as as a change candidate?

I don't know.

I can't get on board with Moshtaba because we don't know anything about him.

It's an entirely shadowy figure.

You know, like when I say we don't know anything about him, like there's not a single speech of this guy you can find anywhere.

There's a speech of him that he teaches at home.

That's what he is a cleric.

That's what you do, right?

So you teach other religious stuff in seminaries in the holy city of Rhom near Tehran.

And he stopped teaching actually Mysteriously last year.

So it's entirely vibes, right?

And actually, it's funny,

in 2009, when they say moshtaba, it really felt like something that like your weird uncle or like a taxi driver would say.

Right.

But now it's a serious thing.

So they're coming up with a narrative about him.

They're trying to package him or sell him.

Okay, so that's over there.

That's a mystery.

What's another option?

So there's a possibility of an actual hardliner who would actually be Khamenei continuity, as in anti-Westernism, anti-Israelism,

dracunian domestic policy and repression.

But I think it's quite likely that they're going to have to move in a pragmatic direction.

And what do I mean by pragmatic?

I think they're going to lessen domestic repression, not politically, but socially, if you mean, if you know what I mean by that.

Which would look like what?

Which would look like most

authoritarian countries in the region that are, you know, politically, you can't organize, but you want to go out and have a drink, that's okay.

You want to not cover your hair, that's okay.

You're the kind of domestic repression that exists in Iran and frankly doesn't really exist elsewhere in the world to the same degree, right?

So there's some release.

This is what people say.

Like Iran is a country where you can't even have a cultural release, a social release, a dance drink, whatever.

So that gets loosened.

And that's the very important part of, you know,

that's a very, it's very important to remember, right?

Iran is a country in which, like, all of us have these memories, right?

You're, you know, you're walking with a woman and you could be arrested, you know, asking what is your relationship.

In fact, I was once stopped walking with my mother and asking, what is your relationship?

My mother was very happy.

Yeah, that was like a compliment to your mother.

Seriously, it was, but it was a sort of a horrifying thought um i also remember my mother and father getting once stopped and then they started fighting and the guy said well only a real married couple could fight like this so it's definitely genuine but so i mean so it's very important so it's like the the daily humiliation and repression in iran is very important and and that will be lifted and i think the foreign policy of Iran, I think ultimately these guys, they don't share the revolutionary aspirations of Khamenei.

They want integration into the Western economy.

That's really what they want.

But I'll tell you

why it is delicate, because they want integration into the Western economy.

However, the part that introduces other element to it is that they've also been restrained effectively by Khamenei, who was the grand ideologue of anti-Westernism, but he was also a very cautious, actually, I would say cowardly man, who said all these things, but never got Iran into a conflict with these countries.

So these guys are less cautious.

sometimes more trigger happy as it often happens with younger generations of military folks.

And they're Iranian nationalists as opposed to Islamists.

But that also means that they would want Iran to play a role in the region and to

sort of stand for something.

Let me just summarize so I understand.

So we have on the one hand the kind of the nepotistic regime.

That's the sun.

On the one hand, we have the hardliners.

That's the least possibility.

This last category you're describing, we're just calling pragmatics of all kinds.

They can be military, they can be businessmen, they're just the sort of people advocating for a pragmatic future, which would mean economic integration, also might mean a little regional arrogance.

Let's call them developmentalists.

I mean, that's, I think, what they really want is Iran to be developed.

They were salivating at the time, like when Trump was in Riyadh, right, and gave his speeches, the entire Iranian political sphere was looking to Riyadh and thinking, this is who we want to be.

Like, we want the American president to come and say, you know, invest in us and we'll invest in you and we'll do AI and we do nanotechnology.

I mean, this is who these people are.

And I want to clarify, in the and the most taboo and epitistic part, you know, that's a bit of a dark scenario, we don't know.

But the people who are supporting him are also some of these developmentalists.

So, some of the developmentists are supporting him, some of them are not.

So, there really is, I would say, majorly, there's two futures, right?

There is the hardliners, which I see as a little possibility, and there is a developmentalist, but developmentalism can go in different directions and can lead to different choices.

And also, the contradictions need to be understood.

So, a lot of these developmentalists, for example, would have traditionally been in favor of nuclear talks and nuclear deal like we had in 2015 like the talks were going on early on this year and hopefully they might go on again but some of them are actually in favor of having a nuclear weapon because you know they say well maybe this is the only way you know iran can be sovereign you know blah blah what i'm hoping is that they'll understand the contradiction in that position that you know as an iranian for me i think pursuit of nuclear weapon is this is going to be disaster for iran so in all the scenarios that you've laid out you haven't really mentioned democracy like you've mentioned the lifting of cultural repression, a better life,

but the thing that you seem to care about is democracy.

So what's the future of that?

That's

an excellent point, an excellent question.

I will always fight.

I have one life.

And to the day I die, I will fight for democracy for Iran.

And figures that I support in the Iranian political scheme, if you will, now, I mean, and that I'm supportive of people like Mustafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interim minister who is now a political political prisoner in Eben prison.

His reaction to the war, he called for ceasefire and a democratic transition.

So there are people who are calling for these things.

I hope those of us in the Iranian opposition can get organized and offer a real alternative and bring this vision to the true.

But you would notice of that, Hope is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

So do I think this is a vision that could happen in the next few years?

I hope...

with all my being that I'm wrong, but I don't.

I think the movers and shakers of Iranian power are now these factions of the regime, and they're not interested in democratization because why would they be interested in giving power away?

And frankly, they also know it's let's be honest with each other, Hannah, right?

This is not exactly a moment of democratic flourishing anywhere in the region, right?

Anywhere in the world, actually, but also anywhere in the region.

The Arab Spring, after all, did not lead to the establishment of democracy anywhere but Tunisia and that got overthrown.

Now, I do think there are more pro-democracy aspirations in Iran, but I think before we can have democracy, we first of all need two things.

We need basic safety and security of our bodies, right?

And secondly, we need prosperity.

Like we need a way to make a living.

You know, it's funny, I used to ask my students always, like, you know, which one would you prefer, prosperity and democracy?

And of course, a lot of them are high-minded, they would say democracy.

Then I say, you know, you know, where would you prefer to live?

Like, you know, Senegal or UAE.

And of course, they all say UAE, right?

And so,

I mean, I think that those are the realities.

So I think that democracy is sometimes

not necessarily a priority.

Last question.

Just as we've been talking, President Trump was speaking at a NATO conference and insisting that the strike completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program, which he's been saying all along, despite some U.S.

assessments that it was only set back a few months.

So, what does it change in terms of Iran and its future if it is only set back a couple of months?

It's not true that the Iranian nuclear program has been destroyed.

I mean, that much is clear.

Iranian-enriched uranium remains

at large, and Iran has different pathways.

And the most dangerous thing is that Iran now has pathways to not collaborate with international atomic energy agencies, so people wouldn't know even what it was doing.

And it gives huge sat-down vibes.

And we know where that ended and where that went.

And I mean, sat down from like the 90s onwards.

I think the proponents of Iranian nuclear weapon do exist in Iran.

They exist, even surprisingly, in sections of the establishment who might not be hardliners, even some on the Iranian street.

But I think this shows the necessity of nuclear talks.

The only durable way to get the nuclear threat of Iran defanged is a nuclear deal, right?

That would commit Iran to not going for a nuclear weapon and that would incentivize Iran not to do that.

Aaron Ross Powell, right.

So the real solution is not a military strategic solution, it's a political solution.

Absolutely, because it's the only way that Iran could commit into not getting nuclear nuclear weapons.

And look, this will also include seriously degrading Iran's nuclear capabilities.

No one is saying, you know, not do that.

Any part of a deal is that, you know, you've got to close off a couple of nuclear plants.

There's no doubt about it.

Most importantly, you've got to increase inspection by the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog.

But it ultimately is to be that whoever is ruling Tehran should not want to have a nuclear weapon.

If they do want to have a nuclear weapon, they'll find pathways to it.

Arash, thank you so much for giving us the view from Inside Iron.

Thank you so much.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Janae West and edited by Claudina Bade.

We had engineering support from Erica Wong.

Claudina Bade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

Listeners, if you like what you hear on Radio Atlantic, remember you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic journalists when you subscribe to the Atlantic at theatlantic.com slash listener.

I'm Hannah Rosen.

Thank you for listening.

Hey, it's Hannah, host of Radio Atlantic, here to tell you about the 17th annual Atlantic Festival happening in New York City this September.

We have an incredible roster of guests, including David Letterman, Scott Galloway, Dr.

Becky Kennedy, H.R.

McMaster, and many more.

I'll be hosting a live recording of Radio Atlantic, and we'll also have book talks and screenings, including a first look at season three of The Diplomat and a conversation with stars Carrie Russell and Allison Janey and creator Deborah Kahn.

Guys, you can ask them about that season two cliffhanger.

Learn more at theatlanticfestival.com.