بالکل—یہ **YouTube description** English + Hindi + Urdu mix میں، اسی طرح کے geopolitical/history audience کے لیے:
**Why Does Iran Defeat the Empires Trying to Conquer It? | Mehran Kamrava | Deja Vu**
Why has Iran, despite facing some of the most powerful empires in history, managed to preserve its identity, culture and political influence?
From the **Persian Empire** and Alexander the Great to the Arab conquest, Mongol invasions and modern geopolitical conflicts, Iran has repeatedly faced powerful forces seeking to dominate the region. Yet, time and again, Iranian civilization has adapted, survived and re-emerged.
In this fascinating conversation, **Mehran Kamrava** explores Iran’s long and complex history, its unique political culture, geography, nationalism and the factors that have helped Iran resist foreign domination.
اس گفتگو میں ہم یہ سمجھنے کی کوشش کرتے ہیں کہ **ایران نے صدیوں تک بڑی سلطنتوں اور طاقتور حملہ آوروں کا مقابلہ کیسے کیا؟ ایرانی تہذیب اور شناخت کس طرح برقرار رہی؟ اور آج کی geopolitics میں ایران کی تاریخی طاقت کا کیا کردار ہے؟**
इस episode में चर्चा:
🔹 Why is Iran so difficult to conquer and control?
🔹 How did Persian civilization survive successive invasions?
🔹 Alexander the Great, Arab conquest and the Mongols
🔹 Iran’s geography and strategic importance
🔹 Persian identity, nationalism and political culture
🔹 Why Iran repeatedly adapts instead of disappearing
🔹 What Iran’s history tells us about its present-day geopolitical power
**Can history explain Iran’s resilience in today’s Middle East?**
Watch the full conversation and share your thoughts in the comments.
**Disclaimer:** This video is intended for educational, informational and analytical purposes. Views expressed by the guest are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of this channel.
#Iran #MehranKamrava #IranHistory #PersianEmpire #Geopolitics #MiddleEast #IranGeopolitics #Persia #History #DejaVu #PoliticalHistory #MiddleEastPolitics
**Why Does Iran Defeat the Empires Trying to Conquer It? | Mehran Kamrava | Deja Vu**
Why has Iran, despite facing some of the most powerful empires in history, managed to preserve its identity, culture and political influence?
From the **Persian Empire** and Alexander the Great to the Arab conquest, Mongol invasions and modern geopolitical conflicts, Iran has repeatedly faced powerful forces seeking to dominate the region. Yet, time and again, Iranian civilization has adapted, survived and re-emerged.
In this fascinating conversation, **Mehran Kamrava** explores Iran’s long and complex history, its unique political culture, geography, nationalism and the factors that have helped Iran resist foreign domination.
اس گفتگو میں ہم یہ سمجھنے کی کوشش کرتے ہیں کہ **ایران نے صدیوں تک بڑی سلطنتوں اور طاقتور حملہ آوروں کا مقابلہ کیسے کیا؟ ایرانی تہذیب اور شناخت کس طرح برقرار رہی؟ اور آج کی geopolitics میں ایران کی تاریخی طاقت کا کیا کردار ہے؟**
इस episode में चर्चा:
🔹 Why is Iran so difficult to conquer and control?
🔹 How did Persian civilization survive successive invasions?
🔹 Alexander the Great, Arab conquest and the Mongols
🔹 Iran’s geography and strategic importance
🔹 Persian identity, nationalism and political culture
🔹 Why Iran repeatedly adapts instead of disappearing
🔹 What Iran’s history tells us about its present-day geopolitical power
**Can history explain Iran’s resilience in today’s Middle East?**
Watch the full conversation and share your thoughts in the comments.
**Disclaimer:** This video is intended for educational, informational and analytical purposes. Views expressed by the guest are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of this channel.
#Iran #MehranKamrava #IranHistory #PersianEmpire #Geopolitics #MiddleEast #IranGeopolitics #Persia #History #DejaVu #PoliticalHistory #MiddleEastPolitics
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NewsTranscript
00:00:00Have you ever been in a toxic relationship?
00:00:02Stuck in a cycle, reliving the same old arguments?
00:00:05If you said yes, then you might have an idea of how Iran feels.
00:00:09For hundreds of years, it's been trapped in not one, but two of these relationships.
00:00:14One with the West, first Britain, then the United States, and the other with Russia.
00:00:20Think of Sparta, Alexander the Great, and the Russian-Persian wars.
00:00:24Great powers have always tried to dominate, divide, and destabilize Iran.
00:00:29For resources, for land, or just to make sure their rival doesn't get there first.
00:00:34My name is Mohamed Hassan, and this is Deja Vu.
00:00:44My guest today is Dr. Mehran Kamrava, a political historian and author of A Dynastic History of
00:00:51Iran, from the Kachars to the Pahlavis.
00:00:54He's also a professor of government at Georgetown University, Qatar.
00:00:57Our conversation is in two parts.
00:01:01The first, in 2025, after what became known as the 12-day war.
00:01:05The second, in July, 2026, more than 150 days into the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
00:01:13Dr. Mehran Kamrava, welcome to the show.
00:01:15Good to be here.
00:01:16I am in awe of your body of work.
00:01:20You are prolific.
00:01:21And a lot of it is looking very deeply at the history of this region, and also the history
00:01:27of Iran.
00:01:28Throughout history, and we've seen this maybe more starkly over the last 100, 150 years,
00:01:32it has become this place that is fought over by great powers.
00:01:37And that is because of resources, and that's because of its geographic location.
00:01:43When does this part of the world suddenly become of interest to these powers, whether they're
00:01:49in the West or in Russia?
00:01:51Well, this part of the world has always been of interest.
00:01:55But the reasons for that interest have changed.
00:01:59So what we see over the last 100 years or so is the discovery of the black gold oil.
00:02:08And that discovery happened to kind of slightly predate the switchover of the British Navy from
00:02:18burning coal to burning petroleum.
00:02:20And so by the time you come into the early 1900s, and when the British Navy has made that
00:02:28switch, and that's when the British Navy is ruling the seas, and that's when the sun never
00:02:35sets on the British Empire, being so vast and expansive, that the strategic importance of
00:02:43this region assumed new dimensions.
00:02:48In your book, Dynastic History of Iran, you write that Iran is one of the most invaded and
00:02:53revolution-prone countries in the world.
00:02:55Why is that?
00:02:56What is it about Iran that makes it so alive with all of this, sometimes positive, sometimes
00:03:03very negative attention?
00:03:04I think part of the reason is lack of a robust central authority that has historically lent
00:03:12itself to the country being invaded and occupied and raided in one form or another.
00:03:19Now, there's also something interesting, Iranians today, and particularly the political elite,
00:03:27take tremendous pride in the fact that Iran has not invaded a country in years.
00:03:33And you hear that again and again.
00:03:35And oftentimes historians debate whether or not this is a good thing, because okay, Iran has
00:03:41not invaded anyone, but it has repeatedly been subject to invasion and conquest.
00:03:47And so what does that then mean?
00:03:49What does that conversation say that has Iran not been able to protect its borders through
00:03:55offense the way that some other powers?
00:03:58I mean, definitely when it comes to Britain and Russia and then the United States, you have
00:04:02this offensive strategy to build an empire, but also to protect your own borders.
00:04:08Is the argument saying that Iran should have done the same thing?
00:04:12Well, let's remember that no country in Iran's position was able to fend off British encroachment
00:04:22and then later, of course, American, or for that matter, Soviet.
00:04:27And one of the interesting things we see is that unlike many parts of the developing world,
00:04:34Iran was not a formal colony.
00:04:36It was not like many parts of Southeast Asia, South Asia, or Africa, in which Britain was
00:04:47dominant, or many parts of Eastern Europe where the Soviets invaded.
00:04:53And so that's one of the things that Iranians have always prided themselves in the fact that
00:04:58they've been able to maneuver diplomatically in ways that have protected them against militarily much more powerful adversaries.
00:05:10There is this idea that you talk about when you're writing to, of Iran being caught between
00:05:17being a strong society and a weak state or a strong state and a weak society.
00:05:22Yeah.
00:05:25History of modern Iran, like the history of many other countries, is made up of this almost
00:05:33constant struggle between state and society, between people in position of institutions and
00:05:41instruments of power trying to force their ideology, their agenda, their policies on a society
00:05:50that beats to its own rhythm.
00:05:52Beginning of the 20th century becomes a very exciting period of intense change.
00:06:02And then what we see is that Iran from 1906, 1907 to about 1920, politically becomes dysfunctional.
00:06:15So what we have is kind of a dysfunctional political system that emerges out of the constitutional
00:06:23revolution.
00:06:24The constitutional revolution never really is able to consolidate itself past maybe five
00:06:31years at most, because it's one thing to capture power.
00:06:35It's another to hold on to it and to be able to implement your ideas and to administer a country
00:06:43as vast and in a historically critical juncture when colonial powers have designs on it as Iran.
00:06:52And so that vacuum and political paralysis provides and facilitates an opportunity for a military
00:07:01strongman to step in.
00:07:03By 1925, we have a quote-unquote modernizing monarch that is able to tap into this intellectual
00:07:14energy, harness it, and foster social change.
00:07:19Reza Khan Pahlavi, who was a military commander.
00:07:24I didn't even know that Pahlavi wasn't his real name.
00:07:29Right, exactly.
00:07:30It wasn't.
00:07:30So where does that name come from?
00:07:34Well, subsequently, we are told that he adopted the name of an ancient Iranian language, Persian
00:07:44language, Iranian language.
00:07:46Then later on, his son, Muhammad Reza Shah, would then take on this idea of the dynasty
00:07:54dynasty, and then take it much further and talk about how he is celebrating 2,500 years
00:08:00of monarchy in Iran.
00:08:02So this is kind of where this myth begins, right?
00:08:07You use the perfect word, myth.
00:08:09So what we have in Iran is a civic myth monarchy.
00:08:13It's a monarchy that relies on a historical myth of continuity of 2,500 years.
00:08:22And of course, much of this is incorrect because there are big periods in Iranian history going
00:08:28back to the Mongols' invasion, and then, of course, the Arab conquest of Iran, and then kind of a period
00:08:38of internal civil strife inside the country where there's no central authority in Iran.
00:08:45And the central authority that does exist is imposed from the outside.
00:08:49And so, of course, Muhammad Reza Shah was kind of trying to promote a sense of historical continuity
00:08:59in order to give his own rather recent dynasty historical legitimacy.
00:09:07And, of course, we see that that didn't quite work.
00:09:10Now, you spoke about the outside forces kind of coming in and stepping into the vacuum.
00:09:15And the way you describe in your book the difference between Britain and Russia and what each of
00:09:22these forces wanted out of Iran is really interesting.
00:09:26So you have Britain on one side, Russia on the other.
00:09:29They're both expansionist powers, and Iran is in the middle.
00:09:33What do they both want from Iran?
00:09:34Well, Britain initially wants investments.
00:09:40And for whatever reason, whether it is in Iran or throughout the Arabian Peninsula, Britain
00:09:48decided on indirect influence and indirect rule, unlike what it decided in South Asia and in Africa.
00:09:58And in Iran, monarchy already was in existence.
00:10:02And so what Britain did was it made sure that the monarchy is financially indebted.
00:10:08So many Iranian monarchs before the Pahlavis would borrow money from British banks so that
00:10:16they could go on tours of London for months on end.
00:10:22So they're buying them return flights, basically.
00:10:25Basically, yes.
00:10:27And so these, as you can imagine, you know, we're looking at an entourage of hundreds, and
00:10:33we're not looking at a two-week trip.
00:10:36We're looking at two months, kind of a European tour.
00:10:38So these summer European tours became extremely costly in terms of making the country more
00:10:47and more in debt to the British.
00:10:49And then, of course, we have these long-term agreements called concessions.
00:10:55First for tobacco, Britain controls Iranian tobacco.
00:10:59And then, of course, for oil.
00:11:03And so these long-term oil agreements or oil concessions really tie the country's hands
00:11:13financially to Britain.
00:11:15And, of course, just as a footnote, we have one of the first oil companies in the world
00:11:22is the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
00:11:24And then in 1951, when Anglo-Iranian Oil Company is nationalized, then it becomes British Petroleum.
00:11:36That's where BP comes from.
00:11:38And so that is Britain.
00:11:40That is the Western capitalist incentive and what it wants to do.
00:11:44What is Russia?
00:11:45What is first the Soviet Union and then Russia?
00:11:47What does it want from this relationship with Iran?
00:11:49Well, it wants to make sure that Britain does not become the paramount power in Iran
00:11:55because at that time, Iran borders Russia, the Russian Empire, and then the Soviet Union
00:12:03before it broke up.
00:12:05And it also wants to ensure that the central power in Tehran tows Russia's or Soviet line.
00:12:16And there's this beautiful episode in one of the Shah's books, Muhammad Reza Shah's books.
00:12:24And he says he and his empress went to Moscow.
00:12:31And at night, they knew their room was bugged when they were staying at the guest house in Moscow.
00:12:37And so he tells his wife, you know what?
00:12:40The Soviets are not interested in selling to us anything.
00:12:43We'll just buy stuff from the Americans.
00:12:46And then the next day, he says, the Soviet approach to them was quite different.
00:12:52They were very friendly.
00:12:53They wanted to make a deal.
00:12:55And so, you know, we have the Soviet Union and before that Russia competing for spheres of influence.
00:13:03And so the assumption is to have allies and friends.
00:13:10What I find interesting, too, is that these two powers would often at times put their rivalries aside
00:13:17to make sure that nobody else gets their hand in Iran.
00:13:21And this happened in World War I and this happened in World War II.
00:13:24And Iran chose not to take part in both of those wars.
00:13:27And what happened as a result?
00:13:30Well, this is one of those things Iran, where Iranian policymakers point to and say,
00:13:36we have never invaded anyone.
00:13:38We haven't been part of a war.
00:13:40But they've always been on the receiving end.
00:13:42And so Iran just at that time realized it simply didn't have the power
00:13:48to either become part of the Axis or the Allied group.
00:13:53And so it kind of declared its neutrality.
00:13:57And that neutrality, of course, might have meant something for Iranians.
00:14:03It meant nothing for the Soviets.
00:14:05And it meant nothing for the British.
00:14:07And ultimately, in World War II, it resulted in Britain removing Reza Pahlavi
00:14:15on suspicion of his pro-German sympathies.
00:14:19And, of course, his son succeeded him, Mohamed Reza.
00:14:26At that time, I believe he was only 18.
00:14:28So this neutrality was a result of the weakness of the central government,
00:14:34particularly in relation to the prevailing forces,
00:14:39Britain, Soviet Union, before that Russia.
00:14:42And so there are these successive invasions by Russia and then Britain.
00:14:50It happens just after the Constitutional Revolution.
00:14:53It happens again during World War I.
00:14:56It leads to a famine.
00:14:57It kills 2 million Iranians.
00:14:59It happens again in World War II.
00:15:02How is this influencing the way that Iranians internally
00:15:06are feeling about their country's relationship with these powers?
00:15:11There's tremendous resentment.
00:15:13And ironically, whenever you have a power dominant in Iran,
00:15:22there's this sense, there's this desire for the other third power,
00:15:28whatever that other third power might be.
00:15:31And so when Britain and the Soviet Union were dominant in Iran,
00:15:35the assumption was that the Americans will come to our rescue.
00:15:39Wow, really?
00:15:40Absolutely.
00:15:41And is that because the U.S. wasn't interested in the region at the time?
00:15:45Or did they have any...
00:15:47Well, you know, America was in its kind of up until World War II,
00:15:51it was caught in an isolationist mood.
00:15:54And it was only in 1953 that it launched a coup in Iran or sponsored a coup and a return
00:16:06of the Shah.
00:16:07So it was only really in the latter half of the 1950s and 1960s
00:16:14when Iranians realized America wasn't the benign power that they thought it was.
00:16:20It wasn't kind of this counterweight to the British and the Russians that they thought it would be.
00:16:30And so by the time we come into the late 50s and 60s,
00:16:36this is also kind of globally time of third worldism and the beginning of the non-aligned movement.
00:16:44And by the time you come into the late 1960s and 1970s,
00:16:50again, globally, there's this assumption of return to the self.
00:16:56Egypt, Iran, India.
00:16:58Egypt, Iran, Algeria, and India, of course, Indonesia.
00:17:04And so it's part of that kind of third worldism.
00:17:07And that sense of discovery of the self facilitates an Iranian intellectual discovery of religion.
00:17:16And so this, in many ways, intellectually paves the way for the 1978-79 revolution that assumes an Islamic flavor,
00:17:29whereby in the early 1970s, we have this global trend of discovery of the self, return to the self.
00:17:38And in an Iranian context, return to the self means return to religious identity.
00:17:44That's really interesting.
00:17:46And before we get to the revolution, because I want to talk about this, let's talk briefly about what happened
00:17:51in 1953.
00:17:52Because you have this Prime Minister, Mohammed Musaddiq, who was one of the intellectuals of the constitutional revolution.
00:17:58And he starts assuming a lot more power at the time.
00:18:02The Shah is very young.
00:18:04He doesn't have that much control.
00:18:06And so Musaddiq seems to really shape the direction of the country.
00:18:09And there then becomes this idea about nationalizing oil, nationalizing the resources,
00:18:16and I assume cutting the parasitic relationship that Iran has with Britain at the time.
00:18:22What happens that leads to the U.S., which hadn't really had that much of an interest in Iran, getting
00:18:28involved?
00:18:29This is a time of tremendous polarity between the East and the West.
00:18:34And so the West is particularly allergic to this wave of nationalization.
00:18:42And the assumption is, if the Iranians nationalize oil and get away with it,
00:18:47then the Saudis will do it, then everybody else, the Iraqis will do it.
00:18:52And Gagabel Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal around the same time.
00:18:56Exactly.
00:18:57A couple of years later.
00:18:59But interesting, you should mention that.
00:19:01Because there's tremendous synergy between what Musaddiq is doing in Iran and what Nasser is doing in Egypt at right
00:19:09around the same time.
00:19:10And so there's this kind of electricity in the air, on the one hand, of indigenous empowerment.
00:19:18And at the same time, there's this almost irrational fear in Western capitals of the menace of communism now going
00:19:28out of Soviet borders and penetrating places that are rich in natural resources or are of strategic value.
00:19:39Right. Because from there, from Iranians' perspective, we are nationalizing, we're taking control of our own resources.
00:19:46From the West's perspective, oh, this is communism.
00:19:49This is textual communism.
00:19:51Exactly.
00:19:51And so there's a coup.
00:19:55It's supported and backed by the British and the Americans.
00:20:00Musaddiq is removed from power.
00:20:03And then the Shah, who is kind of still in power, but is really installed in a different way.
00:20:09What is his rule from that moment over the next couple of decades look like?
00:20:15Does he start looking a lot more closely to the United States as a partner?
00:20:20We have an interesting evolution in the rule of Muhammad Azar Shah after 1953, because initially he's kind of like
00:20:34deer in headlights.
00:20:36He is uncertain, and then during Kennedy administration, Kennedy doesn't want to happen in Iran, what happened in Cuba, and
00:20:49kind of encourages the state to take a more proactive role in social welfare and in land distributions or land
00:20:58redistributions.
00:20:59And so soon after coming back to power or kind of coming back to Iran in 1953, we have the
00:21:10Shah, after a few years, becoming increasingly more certain in his hold on power and far more repressive.
00:21:19And so on the one hand, he's implementing social reforms that are being encouraged by the United States, while on
00:21:28the other hand, we have the establishment of the Secret Service Agency under the auspices of what later becomes the
00:21:37Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.
00:21:39And Iran becomes, by the time you come into the 60s, it's a police state.
00:21:47And of course, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
00:21:52And the Shah would kind of treat himself with this regal opulence that surrounded him and treated himself like one
00:22:02of the all-powerful monarchs of ancient Persia.
00:22:08And so he begins to lose at the same time, he begins to lose touch increasingly with what is happening.
00:22:16And so during this time, what is Iran's relationship with the Soviet Union?
00:22:20You know, and obviously the CIA is very involved and they are deeply entrenched in trying to kind of advise
00:22:27the Shah on how to steer his own government.
00:22:30What is happening? Is the Soviet Union shut out completely at that time?
00:22:33It's not because Iran cannot afford to completely shut out the Soviet Union.
00:22:39And so the Shah pursued a very careful and some might say even clever foreign policy where although he was
00:22:49firmly pro-American and purchased massive amounts of armaments from the United States,
00:22:56he also made sure not to completely alienate the Soviet Union.
00:23:01So there was trade, there was diplomacy, there were diplomatic relations.
00:23:07But of course, the Soviets were aware that Iran was firmly pro-American.
00:23:14I mean, if during even during the Nixon era, the kind of the Nixon doctrine when it came to the
00:23:25Middle East was premised on the so-called twin pillars policy,
00:23:30that it had two pillars, one big pillar, one smaller pillar, and the big pillar of American foreign policy was
00:23:37Iran.
00:23:37And that relationship was going to change very dramatically, very quickly when the revolution happens.
00:23:43There then becomes this revolutionary fervor that starts to build.
00:23:46And you again have this, the clergy and the intellectuals and the leftists coming together to try and bring about
00:23:54change.
00:23:54But it goes very differently than it does in the first time.
00:23:59Why does it go in the direction that it does?
00:24:01Why does it take on a much more religious flavor?
00:24:06And who then becomes this Ayatollah Rahulah Khomeini, who arrives to become the bringer of change in this moment?
00:24:18If we look at the Iranian political scene in, let's say, mid-1970s,
00:24:27what we have is a group of revolutionaries, all seeking to initiate a revolution, but also competing with one another.
00:24:39And so we have secular intellectuals, we have the clergy, and we have these guerrilla organizations and a couple of
00:24:52established political parties.
00:24:56That's the opposition landscape.
00:25:00And what the opposition, what happens is, Carter comes into office and he says famously that our allies need to
00:25:16reform themselves, need to be observant about human rights.
00:25:20And for a country like Iran that was not used to this, this is kind of a jarring statement.
00:25:28And they read, I think in many ways, they read a lot more into this than Carter meant.
00:25:34Because what we have consistently, historically, in American foreign policy is a duality between the ideals of American foreign policy,
00:25:47which is democracy promotion, and the reality of American foreign policy, which is...
00:25:53It's a lot more pragmatic.
00:25:54Very pragmatic, maintaining American interests.
00:25:58And so the Iranian monarchy starts to make some marginal reforms.
00:26:03Now, if you make marginal reforms, but do not address the causes of grievance, what you're doing is you're inadvertently
00:26:13expediting revolution.
00:26:14So what the Iranian monarchy does, for example, is to give press freedom.
00:26:21And it starts to do things that it thinks the people wanted to do.
00:26:28So, for example, one of the things the government does was to go after the merchant classes that it accuses
00:26:38of hoarding and artificially jacking up prices.
00:26:41So it launches this anti-corruption campaign against Iranian merchants, and it recruits university students to go around, and on
00:26:55the spot, it empowers them to close down stores.
00:26:59And then there's this big banner, this store has been closed for artificially high prices, which means that it embarrasses
00:27:08the merchants, and it unintentionally alienates a socially influential group of Iranians.
00:27:20Well, the middle class, really, right?
00:27:22Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:23And so, you know, the merchants become really annoyed with this state.
00:27:27And then they do something quite stupid.
00:27:33The royal court decides to write an article entitled, The Coalition of the Red and Black Reaction, in which they
00:27:44argue that Iranian communists and Iranian clergy are in cahoots.
00:27:50They have a coalition of the red and the black.
00:27:53They are reactionary, and they name a clergy in there.
00:27:58They name somebody named Ruhollah Khomeini.
00:28:00And Ruhollah Khomeini was somebody who had opposed the land reform in the 1960s, and he had opposed the civil
00:28:11code of the 1960s that gave women the right to divorce.
00:28:15And he had been exiled first to Turkey, then to Iraq.
00:28:20And people started to talk about Khomeini at that time.
00:28:24So he didn't have as much of a public popularity that they knew.
00:28:30No, his name wasn't a household name.
00:28:32Right.
00:28:32The government helped make his name a household name by naming him.
00:28:36And if a government that is now becoming increasingly unpopular, a government that has unintentionally provided space for expression,
00:28:46suddenly names somebody as a target, then that person becomes extremely popular.
00:28:54So people started asking themselves, who is Khomeini?
00:28:58Oh, yes, he has had a history of opposition to the very oppressive monarchy, to the dictatorship.
00:29:04He was kicked out of his homeland.
00:29:07He's been in exile in Iraq.
00:29:09And at the same time, Khomeini begins to resort to the latest means of communication, which is quite high tech
00:29:16for its time, which is to tape his sermons in cassette tapes, record his sermons.
00:29:24And those cassette tapes make their way to Iran and are widely distributed.
00:29:29So this is the 1970s versions of Twitter, basically.
00:29:32Absolutely.
00:29:32Exactly.
00:29:34And then the government makes yet another mistake, which is to ask the Iraqi government to get rid of Khomeini,
00:29:42because they figure that his proximity to Iran is one of the reasons that Khomeini is so popular, and that
00:29:50if he is away from Iran, then he's not as popular.
00:29:55And Khomeini ends up in France.
00:29:59And here's a democracy in which the world media has now ready access to what they perceive to be a
00:30:091970s version of Gandhi, someone who's simple, looks sagacious, he sits on the ground, he kind of has a religious
00:30:19background, and they flock around him.
00:30:23And Iranian intellectuals flock around him.
00:30:26Khomeini is now in France.
00:30:28And he's starting to get a lot of attention from the Western media, specifically.
00:30:33What does that do to his image, and especially his image back in Iran?
00:30:39Well, a number of Iranian intellectuals who had been active abroad cluster around Khomeini, because they see in him an
00:30:49opportunity to finally get rid of the Shah.
00:30:54And Khomeini is saying all the right things.
00:30:57And interestingly, many of these intellectuals designed the questions that Western journalists want to ask Khomeini.
00:31:07All these journalists wanted to interview Khomeini.
00:31:11And one of the conditions is that the people around him devised the questions.
00:31:17And when many journalists see the questions, they're actually the questions they wanted to ask themselves.
00:31:24For example, can women become president?
00:31:28What role will minorities have?
00:31:31So Khomeini is saying all the right things.
00:31:34Women can become president.
00:31:36Minorities will have all rights.
00:31:38There will be democracy.
00:31:40Iran will maintain open relations with all the different countries.
00:31:46And so initially, Khomeini emerges as the symbol of revolution quite inadvertently.
00:31:53There's a couple of other things happening in Iran as well.
00:31:56We have a massive recession in the construction industry in Iran.
00:32:02So a lot of the rural migrants who have come into the cities to enter the construction industry are suddenly
00:32:10unemployed.
00:32:11They're not going to go back to the rural communities.
00:32:14They're going to loiter around in the cities in order to kind of eke out a living.
00:32:21And they cannot go to coffee houses, tea houses.
00:32:25They cannot go to movie houses.
00:32:28They end up in mosques.
00:32:30So you have this restless population that is in mosques because it's free to go.
00:32:38There are these religious sermons that are near and dear to one's heart.
00:32:43And on the other hand, at the same time, we have the emergence of a religiously oriented revolutionary leader who's
00:32:54saying all the right things.
00:32:55And as I mentioned earlier, pre-revolutionary government is busy shooting itself in the foot.
00:33:02It's just doing everything wrong.
00:33:05So, for example, a few people demonstrate unintentionally.
00:33:10One or two people die.
00:33:12Then their funeral processions become big marches and more people die.
00:33:19And so you have the emergence of martyrs all of a sudden, revolutionary martyrs.
00:33:26So the government is panicking, doesn't necessarily know what to do, how to contain what is snowballing.
00:33:33It's not just haphazard acts of rebellion, but has now become a nationwide movement of protest.
00:33:41And so slowly, what we have is a spontaneous revolution in Iran, whereby in many ways, these haphazard acts of
00:33:52protest become more and more widespread.
00:33:56They develop organic ties with one another, and we have the emergence of a very articulate, sagacious figure.
00:34:07Most people don't know enough about him, but they know that he is a leader of what is becoming an
00:34:15opposition.
00:34:15He is the imam suddenly.
00:34:17He's not just Ayatollah Khomeini, but he is the commander of the faithful.
00:34:22And so by the time we come into the final months of 1978, Khomeini has emerged as an extremely powerful
00:34:32symbol of the movement to oppose the Shah.
00:34:37And his message, the message of religion, his message of Islam has become the primary language through which people are
00:34:48opposing the government.
00:34:49It wasn't that the revolution was an Islamic revolution to begin with, but it was a popular revolution that emerged
00:34:59as Islamic.
00:35:00In fact, in the very first constitution that Khomeini asked one of his affiliates, one of his associates to draft,
00:35:09there is no role given to the clergy in the Iranian political system.
00:35:15It's a Republican political system with absolutely no role for the clergy.
00:35:21It's only later when intellectuals, Iranian liberal intellectuals, say that this revolution was not drafted democratically.
00:35:31It was just drafted by someone.
00:35:33And what we need to do is to put together a revolutionary consultative assembly that is made up of experts
00:35:42that are popularly elected by people, and then they draft the constitution.
00:35:47It's only then, in that second draft or third draft of the constitution, that there is a role, a very
00:35:56deciding and decisive role articulated for the clergy.
00:36:02What happens after the Khomeini assumes power, this revolution happens, there's a new constitution, is a series of very dramatic
00:36:12events that take place very quickly.
00:36:14And there's the hostage crisis, there is the Iran-Iraq war that starts not long after, and there are so
00:36:24many challenges from outside of the country that immediately try to undermine this new government, this new way of doing
00:36:33things.
00:36:34Why is it that the U.S. and Iran have this very dramatic falling out, and how does the new
00:36:41regime in Iran survive that?
00:36:44Well, first of all, revolutions eat their children, like Saturn.
00:36:48And so what we have immediately after the fall of the Shah is a reign of terror designed to kind
00:36:59of cleanse the political system from elements closely affiliated with the Shah.
00:37:08So, on the one hand, we have kind of settling of scores and efforts by everybody, these disparate revolutionary groups
00:37:17to consolidate their own base of power in the post-revolutionary era.
00:37:24The other thing that's going on is tremendous chaos in Iran, lawlessness, absence of central authority.
00:37:34And this provides an opportunity for kind of the emergence of local militias.
00:37:42And at the same time, there's this popular assumption, widespread assumption, that the clergy are innately good.
00:37:52They can do no wrong.
00:37:53They have the best interest of the people and the best interest of the country at heart.
00:38:00And so you have these kinds of developments occurring simultaneously.
00:38:07One of the big arenas of competition is between the clergy and the youth to the left of the political
00:38:15spectrum, the communists and the socialists.
00:38:21And at the same time, the Shah is flying around the world homeless in search of a place to be,
00:38:30to spend his exile.
00:38:32Ultimately, he ends up in the United States.
00:38:34And that's when it's revealed that he's got cancer.
00:38:37Of course, in that context, in Iran, nobody believes any of this.
00:38:43And all people think about and see is 1953 redo, when the Shah, due to popular protests, left the country,
00:38:53went under the pretext of being on vacation, and then came back when the CIA installed him back in power.
00:39:00So they're worried that the same thing is going to happen again?
00:39:04Everybody's worried that the same thing is going to happen again, that his entry into the United States is only
00:39:11a ruse.
00:39:12And so kind of organically, some youths climb over the embassy wall as a matter of protest.
00:39:21They think they're going to be there for a few hours, then a couple of days at most.
00:39:25And the clergy sees this as a golden opportunity to outdo the communists.
00:39:33And so the clergy suddenly align themselves with the students who have attacked the U.S. embassy.
00:39:43The students call themselves followers of the imam's path.
00:39:47And what emerged as the hostage crisis becomes a means for political consolidation by the clerical establishment.
00:39:59And then, of course, you have a whole other series of developments.
00:40:03All of these developments are intertwined and linked and get reinforced by one another.
00:40:09The Shah's search for a permanent exile, kind of this lawlessness in Iran, Iran's blatant violation of international law by
00:40:22taking American diplomats hostage,
00:40:25a reign of terror that's unleashed in Iran, attempts by different groups to consolidate themselves in power,
00:40:33and a palpable political vacuum in the country, and military vacuum at a time when Iranians are busy decapitating their
00:40:41military
00:40:41by a new aspiring leader in the region named Saddam Hussein that sees the Persian enemy in utter chaos and
00:40:53turmoil,
00:40:54sees a historic opportunity to become the new Nasser of the Middle East and attacks Iran.
00:40:59Wow. And so all of that happens very, very quickly.
00:41:03The state is still trying to deal with its own internal conflicts, and it's trying to solidify itself,
00:41:11trying to consolidate power in the middle of a vacuum, and then their neighbor attacks,
00:41:16and Western powers then pick sides and try and figure out what they want the outcome to be.
00:41:25Yeah. Before I talk about Western powers, I think it's also important to mention that as all of this is
00:41:32happening,
00:41:33there is a violent terrorist campaign in Iran aimed at eliminating the new victors of political power.
00:41:43And so the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party are bombed, the president and the prime minister are killed.
00:41:50There is a massive terrorist campaign inside the country.
00:41:56Now, the United States, as I mentioned during the Nixon-Kissinger era,
00:42:02had seen Iran as one of the primary pillars for American influence in the Middle East.
00:42:09And the revolution completely changed that.
00:42:12And so if you think about 1978, 1979, from the Western perspective,
00:42:21here is a new modernizing secular leader that is going against these archaic clerics who are violent,
00:42:33who are anti-Western, anti-American.
00:42:37And the modernizing secular leader in this case is Saddam Hussein.
00:42:40Saddam, exactly. The West casts its lot with Saddam.
00:42:46And the Saudis and the Kuwaitis give Saddam massive amounts of financial assistance
00:42:54in the form of billions of dollars of loans and grants.
00:42:59Because they're also concerned about what this new government in Iran means for the region.
00:43:03Absolutely. They're concerned about the Iranian government's export of the revolution.
00:43:07And the Iranians are exporting their revolution.
00:43:11They openly talk about the export of their revolution.
00:43:15So the Saudis and the Kuwaitis give financial assistance to Saddam.
00:43:21The French give him advanced weaponry.
00:43:23And the Americans give him satellite information.
00:43:26And so what we have is a war of miscalculations whereby Saddam thinks he's going to kind of attack Iran,
00:43:37capture the oil-rich southwestern parts of the country that is populated by Arab-Iranians who happen to be Sunni.
00:43:47He counts on the Sunni-Iranians and the Arab-Iranians to rise up in his support.
00:43:53And he counts on at most one week, two week invasion of Iran, maybe two months at the most.
00:44:02And what we have then is the unfolding of a war that lasted eight years.
00:44:07A war that, in many ways, no one could have predicted would have lasted as long or would have been
00:44:14as bloody.
00:44:16And it is a devastating war.
00:44:18And it ultimately changes an entire generation in both countries.
00:44:22At the end of it, you get to this point where Saddam Hussein and the West that's backing him
00:44:28ultimately fails at what they're trying to do.
00:44:32What does this government in Iran emerge as?
00:44:35Does it emerge with a sense of destiny that it survived this attempt at invasion that maybe their predecessors have
00:44:45fallen ill to?
00:44:46It wasn't so much a sense of destiny.
00:44:48It was a sense that Iran is strategically alone and that it needs to rely on itself.
00:44:55And one of the things that we often ignore is the lingering influence of the legacy of the war with
00:45:06Iraq in Iran's policymaking today.
00:45:10When policy is made in Iran today, it is with an eye towards lessons of the Iraq war, that Iran
00:45:20was alone.
00:45:21Nobody would sell weapons to Iran.
00:45:23Everybody was kind of ganging up on Iran.
00:45:26And that Iran needs to rely on its own resources, its own know-how to be able to defend itself.
00:45:38And at what point in time does Israel really come into the picture for Iran as this kind of regional
00:45:45threat that could become at some point what Saddam Hussein was during that period?
00:45:50In some ways, Israel becoming emerging as the enemy is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:45:57Because Iran's foreign policy in the years following the revolution is extremely ideological and full of rhetoric, at least in
00:46:10rhetoric, if not in practice.
00:46:12In practice, it is very pragmatic.
00:46:16It wants to advocate Iranian national interests.
00:46:21But it kind of claims the mantle of Palestinian liberation.
00:46:27And this mantle of Palestinian liberation is part and parcel of Islamic ideology of the revolutionary government.
00:46:37But it is also extremely useful as a tool for consolidating power domestically, eliminating enemies by branding them as supporters
00:46:49of Israel or as not sufficiently committed to the revolutionary cause.
00:46:54And so, on the one hand, we have in Iran this kind of rhetorical enemy of Israel being built up.
00:47:06In Israel, a similar development is happening whereby Israeli body politic is moving increasingly to the right.
00:47:14And messianic assumption begins to take hold that we're surrounded by enemies and this Iranophobia begins to really take hold
00:47:27among Israeli policy makers.
00:47:30We don't have Netanyahu then, but this trend that today, Benjamin Netanyahu represents, which is determined to kind of eradicate
00:47:44the Iranian threat, traces back to the 1990s.
00:47:48And so, what we have is the Lebanese Hezbollah becomes a major source of deterrence.
00:47:55Syria is firmly allied with Iran and that Syria becomes Iran's strategic depth, as Khamenei called it.
00:48:04And Israel, for its part, isn't sitting around silently.
00:48:08It is also undermining Iran, trying to sabotage Iran's nuclear power plants.
00:48:17It is trying to eliminate Iranian nuclear scientists through assassinations throughout the 2000s.
00:48:26And so, we have these kind of two countries that unintentionally suddenly find themselves on a crash course.
00:48:35And it's interesting because there's something that they both share, which is a deep anxiety about their borders, right?
00:48:43Like about how to protect that.
00:48:45And I'm sure for Iran, the lesson of the Iraq war was that we have to protect our borders.
00:48:52And is that where then these proxy relationships with Hezbollah and Syria develop this idea of strategic depth?
00:49:00What is behind that?
00:49:02Yeah, exactly.
00:49:03After the hostage crisis and its own revolutionary excesses finds itself being branded increasingly as a rogue state.
00:49:16And a state which fewer and fewer countries want to have close relations with.
00:49:23And so, any country wants to have allies or looks for allies and friends where it can get them.
00:49:30And so, it finds them in these non-state actors.
00:49:35It establishes and later funds Hezbollah in Lebanon as a non-state actor and then in Afghanistan.
00:49:43And what we have throughout the 1990s and especially 2000s, at the end of the first decade, we have a
00:49:52steady, at first gradual, but then a sudden proliferation of weak states in the Middle East.
00:49:59We have states in which the central authority, for whatever reason, cannot exercise full control over the entire territory.
00:50:09After 2003, after 2003 in Iraq, prior to that in Lebanon, in Afghanistan.
00:50:16And so, what Iranians do is to establish relations with these non-state actors that they use as what they
00:50:26see as a source of deterrence and defense.
00:50:30Others see them not as a source of defense and a source of deterrence, but they see them as a
00:50:37means of offense and as a means of hegemony, Iranian hegemony and expansionism.
00:50:43We have a clash of perspectives.
00:50:46Iranians engage what they see as defensive realism, that kind of, we're very pragmatic, we just want to defend ourselves.
00:50:53And then, the Arab countries, particularly, and Israel, see this as a means of hegemony and as an indication of
00:51:03Iranian expansionism.
00:51:05And then, in the middle of all of this, then becomes this conversation around nuclear power.
00:51:10And, of course, Iran is part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, by all means, has been pursuing peaceful energy means.
00:51:20But there is this ongoing conversation.
00:51:23There are accusations that it's really developing secret nuclear weapons, the way that Pakistan did, the way that Israel, of
00:51:29course, did.
00:51:30And there is, of course, a conversation within Iran about, well, what do we do with this power?
00:51:38Should we develop nuclear weapons or not?
00:51:39What are both arguments saying, basically?
00:51:41First of all, Iran continues to remain as of now.
00:51:45In the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Iranian political leaders have said they will remain in the NPT.
00:51:53What we have is, early on, beginning in the 2000s, this effort at enrichment.
00:52:04First of all, Iran is initially convinced, after 2003, that the United States is going to invade.
00:52:14And there's tremendous insecurity in the halls of power in Tehran about American intention.
00:52:22Because the Americans are now in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
00:52:25So the American military basically surrounds Iran.
00:52:30And there's plenty of people in the administration in the U.S. that are openly advocating for it.
00:52:35Absolutely.
00:52:36Absolutely.
00:52:36And there are, you know, there are American ships in the region.
00:52:41There are American military bases across the region.
00:52:45There is, U.S. military is omnipresent.
00:52:51It's everywhere across Iran.
00:52:53So that's one thing that's going on.
00:52:57And kind of it makes the Iranians all the more determined to build up a robust defensive capability inside the
00:53:06country.
00:53:07At the same time, within the Non-Proliferation Treaty, for whatever reason, they start nuclear enrichment.
00:53:18And they start nuclear enrichment.
00:53:22Now, we know after 2003, they do not have a nuclear weapons program.
00:53:27But 2005, we have a very ideological president being elected, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
00:53:36That comes and his foreign policy is based on social justice, the early ideals of exporting the revolution.
00:53:42And he wants to establish or reestablish Iran's revolutionary credentials.
00:53:50And part of this, he says, it's within our right to engage in enrichment.
00:53:56And he ramps up enrichment.
00:54:00And the West says, this is very suspicious.
00:54:04Why are you enriching?
00:54:05And so, in some ways, we have this kind of Iran and the West talking past each other.
00:54:13And, of course, by this time, Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu, has become a much more vocal force, definitely, in American spheres.
00:54:20And he is constantly advocating this idea that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.
00:54:26We have to stop Iran.
00:54:27This is going to be too late if we don't act now.
00:54:30This goes on for decades.
00:54:32Absolutely.
00:54:33And, in fact, at some point, I went back and when was it that the West thought Iran was going
00:54:41to build a nuclear weapon?
00:54:43And I went back as far back as the 1980s, that Iran was within a year, two years.
00:54:50So, every three or four years, we would hear that Iran is months away or kind of a year away
00:54:57from having a nuclear weapons program.
00:55:01Muhammad al-Beridai, the Egyptian diplomat, when he ran the IAEA, he said, look, Iran doesn't have any nuclear aspirations.
00:55:12And so...
00:55:13Well, same thing.
00:55:13He said that about Iraq as well.
00:55:16That didn't mean anything in the end.
00:55:18Didn't mean much at the end.
00:55:19Exactly.
00:55:20So, the question is, why do the Iranians insist on enrichment?
00:55:27If they don't want a bomb, okay, we know it's within their right to engage in enrichment.
00:55:35But any politician does a cost-benefit analysis and then bases his or her policies accordingly.
00:55:43What are the costs?
00:55:44What are the benefits of pursuing a particular line?
00:55:47And the line you hear consistently from Iran is...
00:55:52Power, energy.
00:55:54Energy.
00:55:55For the same reason that the Americans went to space.
00:55:58Why did the Americans go to space, spend blood and sweat and tears and resources and go to space?
00:56:09Because of national pride.
00:56:12And so, we're going to enrich because of national pride.
00:56:15It is within our right.
00:56:17We don't have any evil intention.
00:56:20That's what we're doing.
00:56:21And this debate has re-emerged in the aftermath of the 12-day war.
00:56:29Does it make sense for Iran to continue enriching?
00:56:33That's a question that has re-emerged now.
00:56:35I wonder, are there voices in Iran that look at what happened and say, well, if we had nuclear weapons,
00:56:45none of this would have happened?
00:56:46They wouldn't have dared actually come after our nuclear program.
00:56:49Absolutely.
00:56:50And those voices have become much more empowered.
00:56:54And they resonate with a far greater number of people.
00:57:00First of all, as you remember, George W. Bush came up with the phrase, axis of evil.
00:57:07And if you think about it, the three members of the axis of evil, two of those members have been
00:57:13attacked that have not had nuclear weapons.
00:57:17Iraq and Iran.
00:57:18North Korea, that keeps saying, look at me, look at me, I have nuclear weapons, nobody has touched.
00:57:24That is conducting tests.
00:57:25That is conducting tests.
00:57:27Yeah.
00:57:28Nobody has touched.
00:57:29So that's something that, that irony isn't lost on Iranians.
00:57:35This is something that is going to shape, this debate is going to shape how Iranian security policy unfolds moving
00:57:43forward.
00:57:45People often talk about, in geopolitics circles, the idea of a grand strategy.
00:57:50That every country has a grand strategy and that decides its domestic policy, but more importantly, it decides its foreign
00:57:56policy.
00:57:57What do you think Iran's grand strategy?
00:58:00I don't know if Iran has a grand strategy, quite frankly, but I think at least for the time being,
00:58:09for the foreseeable future, there is a stark realization that the axis of resistance is no more.
00:58:16So, Iran no longer has Hezbollah and presence, military presence in Syria and kind of even hash the shabby and
00:58:29Iraqi militia are not as potent.
00:58:33Those were deterrence by capability.
00:58:37Now it's deterrence by punishment.
00:58:39If you attack me, I'm going to give you a bloody nose.
00:58:42And the assumption among Iranian policymakers was that they were going to receive a blow, they were going to absorb
00:58:51that blow, and they were going to hit back.
00:58:54And they did.
00:58:55And the assumption is that Israel is not able to engage in a prolonged war of attrition, whereas Iran is.
00:59:06Consistently, we've seen that Iran wants to be taken seriously, and it wants to be taken as heavyweight that it
00:59:15thinks it is.
00:59:17And I think one of the things we see with revolutionary states is that revolutions bestow people a sense of
00:59:27empowerment.
00:59:27A can-do spirit, and when someone like the United States or a series of countries like the European Union
00:59:39consistently ignore what Iran perceives to be its legitimate right, they say, look, we stayed within the nuclear accord.
00:59:49It was the United States that pulled out.
00:59:51It was the European Union that didn't have the backbone to live up to its end of the bargain.
00:59:56You don't take us seriously.
00:59:58That's what they want to see.
01:00:03Over the past 36 hours, the United States and its partners have launched Operation Epic Fury, one of the largest,
01:00:13most complex, most overwhelming military offensives the world has ever seen.
01:00:19Nobody's seen anything like it.
01:00:21We have hit hundreds of targets in Iran, including Revolutionary Guard facilities.
01:00:28Iran's formerly supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is dead.
01:00:36I first spoke with Mehran Kamrava in 2025, but so much has happened since.
01:00:40And to make sense of all that's unfolded in Iran's history, I sat down with him again.
01:01:15Ali Khamenei was killed alongside many members of his family.
01:01:20Iran responds to this war by closing the Strait of Hormuz and targeting many of its Gulf neighbors.
01:01:29The war becomes this central focal point, which freezes global oil and energy traffic.
01:01:38It really alarms much of the world because it feels like it is an escalation that we haven't seen in
01:01:47a very long time.
01:01:47And one that is very hard to contain.
01:01:51And there's been many attempts to contain it.
01:01:53There was an attempt at a ceasefire and a memorandum of understanding.
01:01:56That, as we're speaking now, has fallen through and we're back to, it appears, square one.
01:02:03Were you surprised when this war was first launched?
01:02:07I was quite surprised that Donald Trump allowed himself to be convinced by the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
01:02:18that this war should happen and that it will be a quick war.
01:02:25Because history has shown us that these wars are easy to start, but they're notoriously difficult to end.
01:02:35When a greater power attacks a less powerful adversary, as the Americans attacked Vietnam, for example,
01:02:46or the Soviets in Afghanistan, or the Americans in Iraq, or the Russians in Ukraine,
01:02:53the greater power never wins.
01:02:57They can inflict major damage, but they can never declare victory.
01:03:03And so I was quite surprised.
01:03:05Iran, as you have described, had spent the last couple of years trying to maintain its deterrence.
01:03:14At this point in time, we saw the reaction was to very quickly and very dramatically escalate the scale of
01:03:22the war.
01:03:23What do you make of that response?
01:03:26Do you think something changed in Iran?
01:03:29Definitely.
01:03:31You know, again, history has a lot to show, to teach us.
01:03:36Because to this day, Iranians of all walks of life, not just political elites,
01:03:45but ordinary Iranians, talk about the days of the Iran-Iraq war,
01:03:51the martyrs, the highlights of the war, and of course, the consequences of the war.
01:03:57And this current war that is unfolding as we speak is likely to have consequences for decades to come.
01:04:11And what we've seen is an evolution of the way that Iranian policymakers have approached the war.
01:04:21Of course, in its early days, as we saw the so-called decapitation campaign,
01:04:28the Islamic Republic was fighting for its survival.
01:04:31And it was a question of the very existence of the political system.
01:04:39And in that sense, simple survival was seen as victory.
01:04:45And then as the war dragged on, and as Iran realized, it's not just a question of survival,
01:04:52but in fact, they could inflict serious damage to the United States and American interests.
01:05:00And so, the approach of the war has changed.
01:05:04And however way this war ends, I think will continue to have consequences
01:05:12across multiple dimensions, historically, politically, diplomatically,
01:05:19of course, economically and militarily.
01:05:22When we last spoke, you mentioned the impact of the Iran-Iraq war on the psyche of Iran
01:05:30and the lessons that it learned from that war, specifically in that it was alone in the region
01:05:38and it didn't have allies.
01:05:41Do you think that has changed?
01:05:44It hasn't changed strategically.
01:05:47Iran is still keenly aware that it is strategically alone.
01:05:51And that it is fighting a war, not just with the United States and Israel,
01:05:58but also what Tehran considers to be American proxies in the region,
01:06:05Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia.
01:06:11There is that awareness.
01:06:13What is different this time is that the Iranians are aware
01:06:19that with careful public relations and given the fact that the American president's language
01:06:31can at times be quite vulgar and undiplomatic,
01:06:37that they can actually attract global attention to their cause.
01:06:43And what we're seeing also as a result of the war is a shift in Iran
01:06:51in the way that the Iranians present themselves to the world
01:06:55in terms of who they are, what they stand for,
01:07:01how they defend themselves, what their principles are.
01:07:04In fact, historically, the Islamic Republic has been quite weak
01:07:09in not justifying itself, but in explaining itself,
01:07:15in explaining its policies.
01:07:17Its public diplomacy has been quite vacuous.
01:07:22Its PR campaigns have been archaic at best or non-existent at worst.
01:07:30And that is beginning to change with very slick videos,
01:07:36very clever tweets that Iranian embassies around the world are sending out,
01:07:43and kind of a concerted effort to present a different image of Iran.
01:07:50And so they may not necessarily have the support of policymakers
01:07:57in the Gulf Cooperation Council or in Europe or elsewhere,
01:08:01but certainly they're aware that they have greater public sympathy
01:08:06than they ever probably have had in the past.
01:08:10This war began with a very different intention
01:08:15than the one that we saw last year in June,
01:08:18which was aimed at least publicly to take out nuclear sites.
01:08:23This one, from the very beginning, was very clear.
01:08:26It was an attempt to take out the Islamic Republic itself,
01:08:29to dismantle the political regime from the very top.
01:08:33And we saw that with the decapitation campaign.
01:08:37And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
01:08:40was very clear that he wanted Iranian people to rise up
01:08:44and overthrow their rulers, overthrow the IRGC.
01:08:47And that didn't happen.
01:08:50Far from it.
01:08:52And one of the astounding things, as you mentioned,
01:08:55the IRGC itself, which was created in part
01:08:59to prevent the revolution from collapsing
01:09:02or from being overtaken or overthrown,
01:09:06loses all of its senior leadership very, very quickly.
01:09:10And yet it is able to survive and decentralize
01:09:15and operate on a plan that, as you said,
01:09:18seems to have already been in place.
01:09:20What does this do for the revolution?
01:09:24Where is the revolution today?
01:09:26Has it still survived ideologically?
01:09:30Has it survived militarily?
01:09:31Does it survive into the future?
01:09:34That's a really good question.
01:09:36And I have often been of the opinion
01:09:39that the Islamic Republic of Iran
01:09:42is going the way of the People's Republic of China
01:09:46in the sense that within a decade or so,
01:09:52Iran will be as Islamic as China is communist.
01:09:59And now if you apply that to,
01:10:02if you apply the so-called China model to Iran,
01:10:05what we see is a political system
01:10:09that is Islamic in its veneer,
01:10:12it is Islamic in its official sources of legitimacy,
01:10:18it would still have a supreme leader as it does now,
01:10:26but its observance of Islamic principles
01:10:35is as instrumental as China's use of communist ideology is.
01:10:44So Islam is used instrumentally,
01:10:47as an instrument for political ends.
01:10:50And this we saw actually with the older Khamenei
01:10:55prior to Khamenei's departure from the scene.
01:10:58And given the fact that we haven't even seen or heard
01:11:02of the new supreme leader
01:11:04and the fact that in many ways he's the hidden leader,
01:11:08it just further demonstrates the instrumentalized use of Islam
01:11:15as kind of a source of legitimacy,
01:11:18as a political tool.
01:11:20But it's not,
01:11:22the Islamic Republic today is a lot less Islamic
01:11:25than at any time in the past.
01:11:29And so it's Islamic in some very minor
01:11:34or key ways in which that suit the state.
01:11:38But government officials look the other way
01:11:41when it suits their purposes.
01:11:44And so moving forward,
01:11:47I cannot imagine that the Islamic Republic
01:11:51would collapse,
01:11:53but it would certainly go through
01:11:55fundamental internal transformations,
01:11:59the beginnings of which we have already witnessed.
01:12:03Finally, Dr. Kamrava,
01:12:04when we last spoke,
01:12:06I asked you what you thought Iran wanted from the West.
01:12:09And you said that fundamentally,
01:12:12Iran wants to be taken seriously.
01:12:15Do you think it's achieved that?
01:12:18I think it certainly has achieved being taken seriously,
01:12:22if not by the West,
01:12:24certainly by those who look at Iran.
01:12:28I am loathe to use the expression global South.
01:12:32But certainly in the developing world,
01:12:36Iran is perceived very differently
01:12:39with respect and even admiration,
01:12:43given that it has fought
01:12:48and it has survived,
01:12:51not just survived,
01:12:52but it has fought the Americans and Israelis
01:12:57in the way that it has.
01:13:00So I think Iran
01:13:06has a new sense of confidence historically
01:13:10that it has stood by itself
01:13:15and it has stood on its feet.
01:13:18The reason I'm not
01:13:21kind of saying,
01:13:22yes, the West takes Iran seriously
01:13:24is because if we look at the West in general
01:13:29and Europe in particular,
01:13:32there's a wave of Islamophobia
01:13:35across Europe
01:13:37that is reluctant to see
01:13:43positive signals,
01:13:46to read positive signals
01:13:48in coming out of anywhere
01:13:52in the Middle East,
01:13:53much less Tehran.
01:13:55The Europeans
01:13:57and other American allies
01:13:59have been eager
01:14:01to praise Donald Trump
01:14:03in order to remain
01:14:06in his good graces.
01:14:08So,
01:14:10I'm not sure
01:14:11if there's even
01:14:14a begrudging
01:14:16recognition
01:14:17of
01:14:19respect
01:14:20for Iran.
01:14:21But do you think Iran
01:14:23then
01:14:23is at a point where
01:14:24it doesn't need
01:14:26that acknowledgement
01:14:27anymore from the West?
01:14:29I think
01:14:30the Iranian state,
01:14:33certainly the second generation
01:14:35of post-revolutionary leaders,
01:14:37those who are running
01:14:38the show now
01:14:39in Tehran,
01:14:41have a sense
01:14:43of confidence
01:14:44and
01:14:45a recognition
01:14:46that
01:14:48they can stand
01:14:49on their own feet
01:14:50and that
01:14:51they have
01:14:52enough friends
01:14:54globally,
01:14:55if not necessarily
01:14:56in Western capitals,
01:14:57but they do have
01:14:58enough friends
01:14:59and enough
01:15:01international
01:15:01capital
01:15:04to be able
01:15:05to
01:15:06make their presence
01:15:08felt
01:15:08globally.
01:15:09Dr. Mehran Kamarava,
01:15:11it's such a pleasure
01:15:11to talk to you again.
01:15:12Thank you for coming back.
01:15:13And thank you for joining us
01:15:15in this conversation
01:15:16on Deja Vu.
01:15:17Thank you very much.
01:15:18I've thoroughly enjoyed
01:15:19the conversation
01:15:20and it's a pleasure
01:15:21being back.
01:15:22Thank you very much for joining us.
01:15:23Amen.