A man, no plan, Iran

0:00It's today explained this week's big news was supposed to be that Sean Rama's firm is back from parental leave But then there is even bigger news So I texted you on the weekend and I was like, yo, do you want me to do the bigger news? And you were like my name's no king step aside Let's go to the president to see why he's doing war with Iran every time you see someone with missing arms and legs Or a face that's been absolutely shattered violently It was almost certainly caused by in Iran And Roadside bomb. He is not trying to beat the forever war allegations somebody said today They said oh, well president wants to do it really quickly after that. He'll get bored. I don't get bored There's nothing boring about this the president says he doesn't have the yips about sending in ground troops He also says we accidentally killed the people who were supposed to take over from the Ayatollah Sean You glad to be back. I don't miss my beautiful little daughter at all Ha ha

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2:03Expect the unexpected at South by Southwest driven by Rivian Unlock at 10% discount on your innovation badge when you use code vox 10 and sxsw.com slash vox Discount on badge price only not combinable terms apply You're listening to today explained We reached Greg Carlstrom longtime Middle East correspondent for the economist in Riyadh today Greg has seen a lot over the years Has he seen this? It is unprecedented I think in the run up to this war I mean everyone expected that there was going to be a conflict between the United States and Iran once Donald Trump started this enormous military buildup and everyone expected that Iran was going to lash out At Arab countries in the region because it had warned that it was going to do that

3:05But the speed with which they have struck the the scale of the targets not just American military bases and Gulf states But all sorts of civilian infrastructure We've never seen anything like that in the Gulf At least in since the the Gulf war back in 1991 and It's taken a lot of people by shock in this region Let's talk about what Iran is doing today So the US is still bombing Iran is retaliating. What is Iran hitting? So it's firing at Israel of course It's been firing Valleys of ballistic missiles there which have notably been smaller than the ones that we saw During the 12-day war between Israel and Iran back in June But the bulk of Iran's retaliation has been aimed across the Persian Gulf at the UAE Qatar Bahrain Kuwait Saudi Arabia Armand all six of those countries have been targeted When the war began on Saturday morning

4:10At least for the first few hours Iran was mostly firing at American military targets in those countries Plumes of smoke seen in an area of Bahrain Near the headquarters of the US Navy's fifth fleet And our base in Doha also hit where there was a significant US military presence Kuwait Saudi Arabia or Oman Where tankers were struck just off its shores in the street of Hormuz A vital global shipping route where one-fifth of the world's oil passes through The regional headquarters of the US Central Command Is in Qatar the headquarters of the Navy's fifth fleet is in Bahrain And those bases were targeted but Iran shifted very quickly To aiming at civilian targets in these countries In fact the airport was hit by a second attack in the early hours Of this morning with black bellowing smoke rising up above the city There was the luxury luxury hotel here Hit the Burj al Arab

5:11You can also see the damage that has been brought To several of these residential homes that were around this small synagogue Here in the city of that Shemesh on the outskirts of Jerusalem All of these things have no conceivable military value as a target These are civilian targets plain and simple But Iran has been focusing its fire on those And then on Monday signs that it's also beginning to aim at energy infrastructure In the region A refinery and oil refinery in Saudi Arabia Was targeted with drone Similarly a natural gas facility in Qatar both of which Have temporarily gone offline in the aftermath of those attempted attacks Big explosion here at the Rastanura That's the Aramco Factory Saudi Arabia's biggest oil company there And of course this is state back And you see look at the splumes of smoke The global ramifications that will be felt by people all over the world

6:13When they're fueling their cars, when they're beginning to pay their bills We can mark this is the moment where that begins So it looks as if they're on now not just stopping at airports and hotels But also beginning to go after the energy infrastructure that is critical for the economies in the Gulf And for the economies of the world Hey why is Iran going after civilian targets Why not just keep hitting the US military The logic of it for the Iranians is that All of these countries in the Gulf they are close American allies They have good relations with the Trump administration And they really do not want to be involved in a war They have thrived for decades on this reputation For being Oasis of stability in a very turbulent region Whatever else is happening in the rest of the Middle East The Gulf has historically been pretty quiet So missiles and drones zooming overhead That's bad for business, that's bad for tourism That's bad for the economic model of these countries

7:13And so for Iran the hope was that They would cave under the pressure of these attacks And then Gulf states would use their relations with Donald Trump To pressure him to try and wrap up the war They would tell him essentially we can't endure this any longer You need to end the war because this is becoming unsustainable for us That is what Iran has been trying to accomplish With these want and attacks on civilian targets Do you think that's going to happen? I mean the US says it's going to continue its campaign Do you think Iran will continue retaliating? I don't think it has many other options It cannot fight the United States directly If there are no American troops on the ground In Iran, Iran cannot shoot down the American jets overhead Or almost certainly cannot do that Because its air defenses are so degraded All it can do is attempt to fire missiles and drones at American ships Or continue attacking the Gulf It's really the only means they have to try and influence

8:14How Donald Trump perceives this war to try and impose costs That might push him to end it sooner You mentioned earlier that the response from Iran Is not as strong as it was during the war last June The very short 12-day war last June What is that telling you? Right, that's the Israeli assessment If you think back to what we saw in June With these attacks on Israel They were enormous barrages of dozens and dozens of ballistic missiles Fired at a time and sometimes there were hundreds of these missiles in a day But the first few days of this war we've seen much smaller valleys Sometimes only two or three missiles at a time And I think what that suggests is that Iran either does not have the capability to fire larger valleys Because so many of their missile launchers have been damaged or destroyed Or that they are trying to ration the missiles that they have

9:14Because they expect that this is going to be a prolonged conflict And they have a finite number of the long-range missiles With the capability to hit Israel So they are rationing what they have there Whereas in the Gulf it's a different calculus They've actually fired more missiles and drones at this point at the Gulf Than they have at Israel significantly more And that's because of geography It's because the Gulf is so much closer They're not reliant on a small number of long-range missiles They can use short-range missiles They can use drones more effectively to target the Gulf And so they have a much larger arsenal That they can use and they are using it I want to ask you about what President Trump says the objective is here And the president has been about as coherent on this as he is ordinarily But he posted this weekend that the bombing is going to continue Until the, quote, objective of peace throughout the Middle East And indeed the world, unquote, is met How do you interpret this statement?

10:16At this point, I'm not sure how to interpret any of his statements No, we don't get bored, I never get bored Because if you look at all of these interviews that he's given I mean it's remarkable, he's in the middle of a war But he has found a lot of time to call seemingly every journalist Whose number is in his phone To chat over the past few days And he tells one outlet This is going to continue until I bring freedom to the people of Iran All I want is freedom for the people He tells another one Maybe this will be over in two or three days and I'll cut a deal I can go long and take over the whole thing Or end it in two or three days And tell the Iranians See you in a few years if you start rebuilding There was this remarkable pair of interviews Where in one of them he said I have three candidates in mind To replace the supreme leader of Iran I won't be revealing them now Let's get the job done first And then a few hours later he told another outlet Actually those three guys were killed in the first round of strikes So it turns out we can't rely on them

11:18I asked him about who is going to take over now That the Ayatollah, the supreme leader is gone And his answer was interesting He said the attack was so successful It knocked out most of the candidates He told me it's not going to be anybody that we were thinking of Because they are all dead I mean What is he driving at here? I don't know, it's not clear that he knows I think really he wants to be able to say Iran has been a problem that bedeviled American President since Jimmy Carter I fixed it But what that looks like, what I fixed it means We really have no idea Is there any suggestion that In order to get what it wants The US will have to put boots on the ground Do you want to go round to Iran? I haven't heard much talk about that But at the same time it is very very difficult to change a regime from the air There are very few examples in history of that working And so if the goal here truly is regime change To rip out the Islamic Republic root and branch

12:21And replace it with something else It's very difficult to see how that happens without ground troops I think the preference for Trump and for the administration Is probably something closer to a Venezuela scenario Where you find a Client regime insider who can take power now And who is willing to Deal with America be more amenable to American interests It's not quite regime change It's it's changing the figure at the top But it's leaving the foundations of the regime intact I think that's the preference And if that's what they want to do If they can find that person It doesn't require troops on the ground But we don't know I mean the other question I think at this point is Is how bad do things get in the Gulf? How bad do things get with attacks on energy infrastructure here You know there's going to be a point at which some of America's allies start to say Either you need to end this Or you need to do whatever it takes to protect us

13:21And to make sure that Iran can no longer fire missiles and drones at us And again that's something that's Perhaps tricky to do just from the air Greg Carlström is the Middle East correspondent for Leading magazine The Economist Coming up next What is the plan here Support for today explained comes from found Found says managing your finances can be difficult no matter who you are Perhaps much more so if you're running a business that makes things all the more complicated They say especially when it comes to figuring out things like taxes and expenses Found says they bring everything into one place They help you cut through the clutter Banking bookkeeping invoicing taxes all in one

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18:33This is today explained And the hall to see senior foreign affairs correspondent and columnist for politico who is in charge in Iran right now It's a very good question Technically, they've said that they've appointed an interim council to lead the country for now It consists of the president a suede pizestrian He's something of a moderate in the iranian system Um, and then there's a member of the guardian council and the chief justice of the supreme court They're considered hardliners of sorts for the most part But to be honest, it's a little bit unclear in the sense that Who is really running the military who's making the military decisions There's a very senior guy named Ali lar jani who has a lot of power as well Um, it's a little vague especially when the bombs keep raining down How did this regime which right now seems as you say to be incomplete disarray how did it survive so many years Well, everything through repression

19:35diplomatic negotiation Balancing its anti-americanism by appealing to other world powers such as china and russia It has used any number of uh, of tricks. I mean, you know, it has had international relations with plenty of countries If not america over the years, but increasingly it has become isolated as well It was getting weaker and weaker and my sense is that the trump administration saw A moment of an usual vulnerability and just went for it It went for it with the idea presumably that if you sort of take out the leaders of the regime then you get regime change is that Is that what is likely to happen here? You know, it's interesting. I've been thinking a lot about this The thing about a regime is it's not just about the people, right? It's not just who's there It's also about the process of everything from elections to making decisions It's also about power and how power is allocated within a system

20:39The Iranian system was never built around a single cult figure that type of thing To where you could just take one person out and everything else would change and you know, there'd be rainbows and unicorns or whatever This is a systematic place and and it was designed it has been designed to regenerate itself People step in when other people leave or die What's different now is that the us in israel israel in particular because they're really the ones carrying out the Assassinations they have just been going after as many figures as they can get Even ones who aren't really in power apparently like people who might be related to someone in power And there it seems like it just depends on how deep they can go to where the whole thing could fall apart But then you still have the armed forces you still have the paramilitaries There's there's a certain limit and there's certain limit to munitions for that matter

21:42Yet you wonder if President Trump has thought through process as you put it He said this weekend he hopes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the police Will work together with Iranian patriots so the protesters who've been protesting in the streets He's essentially saying that the military and the police who massacred these protesters earlier this year should now work alongside them It it it doesn't sound likely does it sound likely to you does is Trump hitting on something here look Strange times make for strange but fellows yeah, right uh there You know there's been reports over the years that there are people in the military and armed forces police forces who don't like the regime Who would prefer to defect a lot of these guys are there collecting a paycheck at the same time a lot of these guys Killed thousands of Iranian protesters just weeks ago, right? I'm not saying it can't happen someone might emerge But I I would have a lot of questions What does the organized opposition in Iran look like is there someone inside of Iran who has the

22:48Political leverage to take over right now. I think the short answer is no There's no real organized opposition inside Iran and there are opposition figures Many have been thrown in prison many have just had to flee the country There are some who are under house arrest that sort of thing and some kind of came from the system and tried to change it And so they might not have legitimacy in the eyes of many Iranians who really really want Complete regime change. Oh I mean, there's just not not a real organized group. There are different groups outside Iran Who claim to be opposition leaders and Organizations to a degree But many of them have not been inside Iran for a long long time and they don't really have the confidence and they haven't really proven themselves as having a ground game Inside the country. Tell me about Reza Polavi It seems like maybe he the the exiled son of the last shavir on might fall into that category

23:52Yes, you know, he's been outside the country for nearly 50 years and Over the decades he has every now and then emerged and you know tried to kind of make some noise and say The U.S. should do something we should support the people of Iran This intervention is critical in the sense that it could be really a humanitarian intervention To protect more lives in Iran that otherwise might be lost in recent years his profile really has risen I mean you could just chart it But it's partly because he and his aides have pursued kind of a political polarization approach They've really cited with the Republicans. They've really been pro-Trump and they have gone out of their way especially online to Intimidate to degree and push aside other Who are in the opposition who say their opposition leaders that sort of thing It's been a pretty divisive approach at the same time because he has such name recognition inside the country and because

24:56He has managed to raise his profile. It sort of has worked for him so that more and more people even inside Iran Chat his name and they say his name But does that mean that he has Cells or units for groups in on the ground in the country who can take over institutions and Take you know the armed forces over that I have not seen any evidence of that He says he's in touch with many Iranian defectors Including from the armed forces, but we really haven't seen proof of that and the U.S. officials. I speak to Do not seem to think he's a serious player Wow What about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps if they take over some analysts suggest Possibility maybe keep an eye on them. What is that then? Is that like a military dictatorship? So over the years we have heard reports that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

25:59Has grown in power and stature inside the system now the IRGC is not the normal Iranian military It reports directly to the supreme leader. It's very religiously biologically driven But also I'd say there's probably a fair amount of interest in the economic side of things for them because they have they own large parts of the Iranian economy They are probably in the best position To quote unquote take power even if they put a cleric in front and you know that's a symbol The real power could lie with the IRGC and you know this this is a group that Could on the one hand be very pragmatic if you say look, you know, let's make money. Let's have peace on the other hand They could grow even more hard line in anti-American and anti-Israel And push even harder with having a nuclear Iran down the line So yeah, it's definitely probably In many ways the odds on favorite in terms of really having the seizing the mantle of power in the country

27:02You well know that the United States has attempted regime change in the Middle East before and the results were catastrophic How concerned are you that we are looking down the barrel of another catastrophe here Look if you look at the conflagration in the Middle East right now as a result of these actions It is deeply concerning. It's a question of how How many countries will get drawn in at some point the Arab states might feel like they have to attack Iran because it's been attacking them This could get very ugly. It could spill across borders. It could destabilize A number of places Most of all it could all destabilize Iran. I mean if you decimate the leadership But then nothing really rises to take its place. You could have what's called regime collapse, right? That's another term and It just could become a chaotic failed state So there's a lot of concern there. I do think though you kind of have to ask yourself about the really long arc of history Yes, Afghanistan is a different story It's back in the hands of the Taliban

28:04But Iraq for instance continues now to hold elections. It's gone through some very very tough times But it is a somewhat functioning democracy the people there are freer than they were under Saddam Hussein I mean, we're talking you know, it's been more than 20 years now, but Things do over time change and the question is is it worth it? Also, is it worth American lives and American treasure To make this sort of thing happen and I just think keeping that nuance in everyone's mind is really important That was Politico's Nahal to see ariana as budu and avashai artsy produced today show july myers edited and Patrick Boyd and David Tadashore engineered Andre Lopez Crisato checked the facts and I'm noelle king. It's today explained

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