00:00Iran announced that the state funeral for the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been postponed.
00:05It was planned for Wednesday in Tehran. The official reason for the postponement was the anticipation of unprecedented turnout.
00:13State TV saying the farewell ceremony for the martyred imam has been postponed. A new date will be announced later.
00:19Ayatollah Khamenei was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes on Tehran on Saturday.
00:24But the fact that Tehran is constantly being bombarded and, as we were saying, a new wave of attacks from
00:29the Israeli army has just been launched,
00:32clearly must have been in the minds of the people who decided to postpone this event.
00:38The new frontrunner to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran's Supreme Leader is now his son Moktaba,
00:45although Ayatollah al-Arezzi Arafi is emerging as a central figure in Iran's power structure at a moment of unprecedented
00:51turmoil,
00:52propelled into a leadership role from the ranks of top clerics after the killing of Khamenei.
00:57Let's get some analysis on what this all means.
00:59Sahar Razavi joins us, director of the Iranian and Middle East Studies Center at California State University.
01:06Thank you so much for being with us.
01:08I'm wondering how important is it for the current Iranian regime to select for itself a new supreme leader?
01:15Quickly.
01:18I think at this point it's important, but stability is their primary priority.
01:23And for them, stability could mean leaving it in the hands of a temporary council,
01:28which consists of three people, including Ali Raza Arafi, who you just mentioned.
01:33And this is, for them, I think, a move that will, on the one hand, protect the potential successor to
01:41Khamenei from additional strikes and potential assassination.
01:45And at the same time, they are trying to project an image of calm and stability
01:51and reassure the Iranian public that they are at the helm and that everything is in control.
01:56So the Iranian constitution technically provides for a leadership council of this nature to rule in perpetuity.
02:04But I think they will name a successor shortly.
02:07And how will this affect any outreach from Iran towards the U.S. and Israel in order to try to
02:13begin negotiations if such a thing were possible?
02:19I don't think negotiations at this point are going to be likely to happen in good faith or any kind
02:29of faith.
02:30I mean, essentially, the United States has made clear through just the recent statements from an hour ago from Caroline
02:36Levitt,
02:37from the statements of Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump himself, that their goal is a total regime change.
02:43And for them, that means that there would be no Islamic Republic, there would be no supreme leader.
02:48And although compromise is, of course, possible, such that they may allow for a nominal retention of the structure of
02:56the Islamic Republic,
02:57but put in place figures that are willing to make deep concessions so that it would be a hollowed out
03:03Islamic Republic,
03:05that's certainly a possibility.
03:06But with what we are seeing coming out of Washington, D.C., I don't think that negotiations of this nature
03:13are likely to succeed.
03:16Trust has been completely obliterated to the extent that it was even there in the first place, tenuous though it
03:22may have been.
03:23And at this point, I don't even know that I would characterize it as negotiation.
03:27But it's either survival or capitulation as far as the Islamic Republic is concerned.
03:34Sahar, a fresh wave of attacks has been launched by Israel on Tehran as we speak.
03:39The situation for ordinary people in Iran is something that I think preoccupies most people's minds when they look at
03:47this story,
03:47and a story which is obviously affecting more and more people as this goes along.
03:51And I wonder whether at some point or other something has to be done to bring this to a halt
03:56for the good of those people,
03:58regardless of what the supreme leader, whoever that might be, says.
04:05Absolutely. We are seeing a civilian toll that is, in a matter of just a few days, over a thousand
04:11people,
04:11the majority of them civilians, including the girls' school in Minab.
04:17I think the civilian toll is going to be rising sharply.
04:21It's reasonable to expect it to rise sharply in the coming days.
04:24And the more the toll rises, I think the more pressure we're going to see on the Iranian government.
04:30And then, by extension, the Iranian government is going to put more pressure on the Gulf states
04:36to try to negotiate in some way with Donald Trump behind the scenes to bring this to a close.
04:43The strategy of the Iranian government right now to deal with this rising death toll of civilians
04:48is to make this war painful for the Gulf allies of the United States
04:54so that they might be able to put pressure on the United States to bring this to a close.
04:58Some people looking at this from the outside, Sahar, might say that the government or regime,
05:04choose whichever word you like, in Iran doesn't really care about its people,
05:08looking at what has happened in recent years, looking at the way recent protests have been treated.
05:12And basically, they might be willing to pay that sacrifice, someone else's life being lost,
05:17in order to keep their regime going.
05:22I think the clear pattern from the last 47 years of history of the Islamic Republic
05:27is that the government of Iran sees its survival as paramount and civilian casualties.
05:34They have and will continue to blame on external influences.
05:39So it is not surprising, certainly, that that is a popular sentiment among observers both inside and outside Iran.
05:48And I would say that is probably not very unlike many governments in the world and in the region.
05:58Their own survival is going to be of utmost importance to them
06:02because not only for their own self-interest, which is absolutely there,
06:06but also because if Iran is subject to foreign occupation and ground invasion and even balkanization,
06:15many, many more civilians will die.
06:17I think that is also a reasonable outcome, reasonably foreseen outcome of this kind of conflict.
06:26Indeed, that outlook is very bleak, Sahar, but I think it's a very astute observation by yourself.
06:32I'm wondering where we go from here in terms of how that happens,
06:36because clearly there is a regime, as you say, it's been in power since 1979.
06:41There have been protests against it recently.
06:42I'm wondering, can you give us a sense of how many people in Iran would be in favour of keeping
06:49this regime
06:49if they had that choice of electing it or not?
06:53But clearly the regime is looking to sustain itself, to remain in power.
06:58Donald Trump is seeking some kind of change there,
07:00but not quite sure what his plan is in terms of making that happen.
07:03What about the people of Iran? What would they want?
07:09Well, I think it's important to acknowledge that there is a diversity of voices inside Iran,
07:15as well as, I mean, that's before we get to outside Iran,
07:19which diaspora politics have their own sphere of influence.
07:23Inside Iran, the most reliable public opinion data that we have from about two years ago
07:29shows that they largely are in favour of a secular democracy,
07:34a separation of religion and state.
07:37And most people believe that without fundamental changes to the system,
07:42there will not be positive outcomes for people's ordinary lives in relation to what they currently have.
07:49Having said that, nationalist sentiment has tended to spike in times of foreign intervention
07:56or attacks from foreign powers, not only in Iranian history,
08:00but it's a known phenomenon in political science.
08:04It's called rallying around the flag effect.
08:05We've seen it all over the world.
08:07So it is, at this point, of course, we can't get reliable data in the midst of a very serious
08:13bombing campaign.
08:15But I would expect that many people will have more deeply entrenched opinions now than they did before,
08:26and the entrenchment of their existing positions.
08:28So if they were already against the Islamic Republic, they are even more so now for most of them.
08:33And if they were already in support, then they are supporting it even more so now.
08:37Of course, that could shift.
08:39The more the civilian toll rises, depending on what kind of outcomes of these interventions and these attacks we see
08:48in the coming days and weeks.
08:49But it is possible also, besides deeper entrenchment, that some people will be rallying around the flag
08:56and will push back, even though they may not be in favour of an Islamic Republic,
09:02they will push back for the sake of the territorial integrity of the country and their survival against foreign attacks.
09:09Sahar Razavi, thank you for joining us, Director of the Iranian and Middle East Study Centre at the California State
09:14University.
09:15Join us live from Sacramento there.
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