Can Iran's Regime Survive the War?

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From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Six days in, how is the war going in Iran?

And how is the war changing alliances among the nations of the Middle East?

Welcome.

I'm Paul Gigo here on Potomac Watch.

The Daily Podcast of Wall Street Journal opinion.

Those are the subjects.

Among others, we want to talk about today on Potomac Watch.

And we have the perfect guest to talk about that.

Michael Doran.

He's the senior fellow and director at the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute.

He's been toiling in these waters for years and knows where of he speaks.

Having worked at the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration on Middle East issues.

Including Arab Israeli relations, Iran, Syria.

He's also worked as an advisor to the State Department and as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Michael, welcome. Good to have you here. Thanks for coming in.

Great to be here. Thank you.

So let's start by getting your assessment of where you think we are six days into the war.

How is the campaign, the military side of it going?

Militarily, it's going brilliantly.

I think all of the statements from the American and Israeli officials saying it's ahead of schedule better than they expected.

I have no reason to doubt them.

I think it's been an exemplary campaign.

Of course, there's still a lot of work to do.

And there's the big question in my mind, which is how do we translate the military achievement into lasting political goals?

We don't know how that's going to happen yet.

I do want to talk about that, but just keeping to the military side.

We've heard from the Israelis that they thought that the Iranians had about 400 missile launchers, ballistic missile launchers before the war started this time.

And that about 300 of those have been taken out so far.

Is that comport with what you've heard?

Well, it certainly looks like the percentage of launches in the last day has gone down dramatically.

They're launching now, I think, to 25% of what they started with.

That's a rough estimate.

Right.

And that's extremely good news.

The Iranian strategy is based on military strategy, is based on forcing the Americans and the Israelis to use up too many interceptors.

There's a limited supply globally of interceptors.

It takes multiple interceptors to take down one missile.

The defense economics are skewed.

Last June, the United States blew through 25% of its sad missiles.

If we just look at that one indicator, 25% of its global stockpile, it went through in 12 days.

And it would take five years to replenish that 25%.

So China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, they're aware of this vulnerability.

And the whole goal is to force us to blow through those interceptors.

The Iranians have more missiles than we have interceptors.

And they're storing those missiles underground where they're hard to get at.

So the key task militarily is to take out the launchers, which are easier to get at.

They're hard to find because they're good at shoot and scoot.

Right.

And you take out the launchers and you take out the teams.

And that will bring the war to an end on our terms.

Of course, just the numbers that you described and the many fewer interceptors

does really buttress the case in my view for acting now as US and Israel didn't.

And I'll wait until Iran could get 1,000 missiles, 5,000 missiles, 10,000 missiles, and 1,000 launchers.

That's exactly the calculation.

I think that's the key calculation.

Certainly of the Israelis, I assume also of the Americans.

You know, back in October of 2024, the Israelis took out the production capacity of the Iranians

to produce medium range, solid fuel propellant ballistic missiles.

Those are the ones that are the greatest danger to Israel.

They took out these mixers that are crucial to building the missiles.

And they told me at the time that they believed that they had taken production offline for at least a year.

But that wasn't what happened.

What happened is the Chinese stepped in and gave the Iranians the equipment that they needed to reconstitute their program very quickly.

And then the Iranians determined not only were they going to go back to producing missiles,

but they were going to produce many more and they were going to double or triple the size of their arsenal

so that for the Israelis, at that point, the ballistic missile program also became an existential threat

in addition to the nuclear program.

And I think the Americans looking at that too, they see this is a threat to all of our bases around the region.

And so it has to be neutralized.

Sure, and they can hold hostage the Saudi oil fields, for example, and shipping in the region too, if they had that kind of missile capacity.

The American Thads that you talked about, those interceptors.

We really have an almost embarrassingly low stockpile of those.

They're stepping up production in the production lines, stepping up, but still it's very, very low.

Of course, we also have the patriots as part of a layered defense.

The Thad is for higher altitude interception.

The patriots is closer to target.

And the Israelis, I'm told, they worry about their arrow interceptors as well in the stockpile of those.

Nobody knows, I mean, the biggest secret of the coalition is how many interceptors they have and how fast they can produce them.

But I calculate the Israelis can build maybe 30 arrows a month.

And you can imagine that you have to sometimes use three of them against one missile.

So you can blow through those very, very quickly.

And maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm off by a factor of two.

Maybe they can do 60 a month, but you still see there's a finite number.

You got to get to the launchers.

All right, we're going to take a break.

And when we come back, Michael Geron and I will talk about the possibility of political transformation in Iran when we come back.

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Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigo here on Potomac Watch.

And I'm speaking with Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute.

All right, let's turn to the political side of this.

And by that, I mean how Iran is responding to the American bombing campaign by trying, first of all, to regionalize the conflict.

They fired their missiles and drones at as far as I can tell, just about every country nearby except for Turkey.

I guess even the yesterday that they fired one missile head at a U.S. base in Turkey that was intercepted.

And now they've even fired one at Azerbaijan.

If you'd asked me ahead of time what they would do, I would have told you they're going to try to regionalize it, hitting the UAE especially.

But I didn't expect them to hit Qatar.

I would have told you ahead of time.

They won't strike Turkey and they won't strike Azerbaijan because it's definitely not in their interest to anger those powers.

But they're not listening to me.

Well, so what do you think the Iranian thinking is here and is it backfiring?

The Iranian thinking in general on regionalizing it is what we were talking about before.

It's to force the coalition to blow through interceptors.

They've shifted from Israel to the UAE because of geography because it's closer, easier to shoot and scoot and get at the UAE.

But the attacks on Turkey and Azerbaijan are a bit of a puzzle to me.

I would have predicted they wouldn't do it because Iran has a very, very large Azerbaijanian minority.

And the Azerbaijanian language is mutually intelligible with Turkish.

The Azerbaijanis in Iran call themselves Turks.

And this is the minority group making up to one third of all Iranians.

And they're all concentrated right next to the country of Azerbaijan.

So this is the most sensitive issue in Iranian politics.

Then the Iranian government is very worried that the Azerbaijanian minority, which historically is the most integrated into the system, could look for autonomy.

And that's a huge danger to them.

So I thought that they wouldn't provoke the Azerbaijanian government or the Turks for that reason.

And this also because the Turks have been lobbying Washington hard not to go into this war and to bring this war to an end.

The only thing I can make sense of Paul, I'm speculating here because I don't understand the calculation.

The best I can say is that Turkey and Azerbaijan are in UKAM, not in Senkham.

And if the goal is to regionalize the war and to put as much pressure inside the American alliance system on the Americans, on Donald Trump,

then there's a kind of a logic to it because the UKAM is busy with the war in Ukraine.

It's already working at a maximum capacity.

This is the European command.

The European United States European command, which is overwhelmed with the war in Ukraine.

So from an Iranian point of view, again, if their strategy is based on making us deplete interceptors, it's a way of creating friction inside the American system.

That's the best I can make of it.

But I don't see how they benefit from angering the Turks and the Azerbaijanis.

Yeah, I find that calculation hard to credit.

Maybe they just don't, you know, they're just lashing out everywhere.

But I saw that the president of Azerbaijan issued a very tough statement in response saying, we will respond.

And you will not be happy with your firing on our territory.

He said it will respond with an iron fist.

And he pointed out he said those in the past who tested us unwisely, they were destroyed by our iron fist.

He's talking about the recent reclamation of Karabakh from the Armenians who were backed by the Russians.

And so that is not an idle threat he's making at all.

And when you add the fact that there is this Azerbaijan minority in Iran, I would think that that would make the government in Tehran very, very worried.

Alright, we are going to take another break.

And when we come back, we'll talk about the likelihood of an actual regime change in Tehran when we come back.

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Don't forget you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime.

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That is play the opinion Potomac Watch Podcast.

From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigo with the Wall Street Journal.

It's a daily podcast here at Potomac Watch.

And I'm talking to Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute.

This, of course, fits into the billion dollar question, which is what will it take for the regime in Iran to fall?

Nobody knows the answer to that, obviously.

But it does seem to be holding together so far.

Do you detect any signs of cracks forming in the IRGC, in the Basij, in the military?

No, and I see no signs. And you almost have to give them credit here.

I don't like to because it's a heinous regime.

And I'll be very happy to see it disappear.

But the resilience of it is a striking aspect of this campaign.

We see reports, particularly in the Israeli press, that some of the IRGC units that are tasked with launching the missiles are defecting.

But I haven't seen, you know, other than those reports, which could be psychological warfare, I haven't seen that.

Those units are still operating just as I came to sit down with you.

I saw that they shot ballistic missiles at Bahrain successfully this morning.

So those units are still intact.

And breaking those units has to be the number one goal of the war at this point.

What you do see in the Iranian elite, you saw this before the war began.

There's clearly two differences of opinion about how to handle the current crisis.

The crisis being not just the conflict with the United States and Israel, but also the domestic crisis that they have the protests, the inability to provide water to Tehran and all that.

And there is a current of opinion, which expresses itself openly that says they should reduce the support for the proxies, negotiate with the Americans, try to get sanctions relief because without the sanctions relief, they can't begin to tackle the domestic problems.

President Pzezkian, who by the way is an ethnic Azerbaijani, he has clearly associated himself with that school of thought.

But those people who think that way have been cut out of power.

It's the IRGC hardliners who run the country.

They also fall, they run the economy.

Right.

Perhaps as much as 50% of the GDP is in IRGC owned enterprises.

So it's going to be very, very hard to dislodge them.

The discussion is that the people who will pick the successor to Ali Hamini, they're leaning towards his grandson, which I assume would not represent much of a change in approach.

And the role of Ali Larjani, who is a major deputy to Hamini, is also plays very large here.

At least my sources who understand some things about Iran tell me.

So far, it doesn't look like the president's position is dominant.

No, he's cut out.

He's a little more than a symbolic figure.

But the fact that he is expressing these opinions, I think is meaningful to some level that clearly what Donald Trump has in mind is regime transformations.

I saw some quotes for him just a few minutes ago, where he said much about Hamini, that's how many son.

Great.

There are lots of reports saying that he's been chosen as the successor to Hamini as a supreme leader.

And Trump said he's not acceptable to me.

Clearly he's looking for a Venezuela option here, where he's going to have say in the policies of the major policies and orientation of the government after the war.

He's got to find the relatively client figure who's going to do that.

So the idea is we're going to put the regime under so much pressure.

We're going to take out so many levels of leadership that we're going to get down to a more pragmatic element in the IRGC that is going to be willing to orient toward the United States.

This is out of character of the IRGC.

We've never seen this before.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but that is clearly the strategy that Trump is aiming for.

And we will just have to watch it and see if it works.

He's told this before that they had ideas of the people that they want in power.

So perhaps they've been talking quietly through intermediaries, perhaps, with some of these elements.

I don't know who they are.

Maybe Ali Larajani, it's possible.

You know, Trump in Venezuela is working with the former regime elements, except for the top guy who's now in a jail in Brooklyn.

But everybody else is still there, including the elements of domestic control.

So, you know, we'll see if that can work in Iran, I have my doubts to be honest.

So do I.

But let's talk about another story that's developed in the last 24 or 48 hours.

And that is the role of the Kurds.

There's a significant Kurdish minority ethnic minority in Iran, something like 10% of the Iranian population.

You would know better.

And of course, there are Kurdish populations.

There's an autonomous Kurdish zone in northern Iraq, as well as Kurds in Syria.

And in Turkey.

As you know, the Kurds, long time desires for their own state, if they could get it.

A short of that, they want some autonomy of the kind they have in Iraq.

What do you make of the reports that Donald Trump has talked to the Kurdish faction leaders and said,

look, we might support you with air power, for example.

So your fighters can challenge the Iranian regime.

I think that's the wrong way to go about it, to be honest with you.

I think it's a low percentage of success.

First of all, I don't think it's happening.

Those reports, I think, were false.

It looks like.

But clearly, some people are thinking along those lines.

But what are you hoping to achieve?

The Kurdish regions of Iran are very far from the major cities from Tehran, especially.

The Kurds are unacceptable to the Persian population, which makes up just 150% of the country.

As the major instigators of a revolution.

You know, this would be like, if a foreign power started streaming Mexicans across our border

and calling on the Mexicans in the United States to rise up

and expecting that all the Anglo-Saxons in America are going to say, hey, fantastic.

Geographically, it's far from the center of power.

Politically, it alienates all Persians for sure.

That's the regime, then, to say to the Persians, which is one of its messages all along.

Hey, if we go down, you go down.

And it also alienates both the Turks and I think also the Azerbaijanis.

The West Azerbaijan province in Iran has got Azerbaijanis and Kurds there.

And historically, the regime has fomented discord between them in order to have an internal divide and rule strategy.

So in terms of keeping the Turks and the Azerbaijanis in a position that will help our strategy,

it's counterproductive, in terms of appealing for any kind of widespread rebellion among the Persians,

it's counterproductive, and geographically, it's far removed from the centers of power.

So I don't think we get whatever people are dreaming of by doing that.

I guess the calculation would be that, well, okay, the Peshmerga, the military,

the fighters of the Kurdish nationalism, they're hardened fighters, they know how to do it.

They could put pressure on the Iranian military somehow to preoccupy them in parts of the country

and therefore help the larger population topple the regime.

What you're saying is that these ethnic complications could actually create a rally around the regime effect

if it looks like the Kurds are trying to run the country themselves or divide the country in half.

And it would anger the Turks.

For sure.

I don't know.

Look at the serious strategies that we had based on the YPG, which is the PKK,

and look what happened.

We provoked the Turks.

They engaged in a series of interventions that were designed to foil all of that,

and it became completely incoherent policy.

So far, the Turks have set this out.

They counseled us against it, but they're not doing anything to prevent it.

They're allowing their facilities to be used in ways that are helpful to us.

I don't think it makes any sense.

And I don't believe I saw the report saying it was Peshmerga, but I don't believe it was Peshmerga.

Because the Peshmerga belong to Barzani, and Barzani is allied with the Turks.

Barzani is one of the leaders in the autonomous zone in northern Iraq.

In northern Iraq.

And those fighters are aligned politically, diplomatically with the Turks,

and with the Israelis, by the way, which is interesting, just like the Azerbaijanis.

So I don't believe that Barzani would want to get involved in this.

The only actors that I can imagine we were able to take and use,

if we're actually doing that, are the YPG that we've been using in Syria,

which is anathema to all of our allies, I mean, to the Turks and the Azerbaijanis.

So it becomes a big mess, in my opinion.

You're right.

I mean, certainly you can tie down some regime forces.

But what they'll do is they'll just cordon off the area,

wait to stabilize the rest of the country, they'll hold on it,

and then go take care of the Kurds.

So in the end, all we'll be doing is if the regime stays in power,

then all we will be doing is ensuring that a lot of Kurds are going to get killed at the end of this.

Well, and that could be another sad story in the betrayal of the Kurds

by America and the West over the years.

And we don't want to do that again.

I do have a soft spot for the Kurds, though myself.

I mean, I think what they've carved out in northern Iraq is, I think, extraordinary,

obviously with American help.

And then also they played a really positive role in fighting back against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Except these are all different groups.

The stability of the KRG and the Barzani operation is built on the support of the Turks

and the cooperation with them.

So we want to create a regional environment where all of our major interests,

if they don't align, they at least aren't really antithetical to the interests of our big allies.

Okay, so let's step back then and take a bigger picture look at the regime.

And what is it going to take for this regime to topple?

I assume you think it's going to take several more weeks, at least,

of bombing IRGC, the siege and the missiles and the regime elements.

I don't see us toppling the regime, actually.

You don't.

I don't.

I mean, we have to think in terms of scenarios and likelihood and clearly toppling them is one of them.

But I think the most likely scenario, when you look at, as Donald Trump is saying,

he's looking for the client, member of the regime, who can prevent a complete breakdown of order

but reorient the country toward US goals.

So that means a negotiation with regime elements about the nuclear program,

the ballistic missile program, and the support for the proxies.

The minute that negotiation begins, then we are locked into, you know,

we have a vested interest in the survival of the Rump regime.

And as we were saying before, you know, the IRGC is in such control of the economy

that you can't actually get rid of the regime without having a revolution.

And Donald Trump doesn't want a revolution.

He wants a reorientation.

So if the regime is aware of its dire situation sufficiently,

and it starts to negotiate with Trump within a framework that he will accept,

then I think we're talking about regime survival.

It'll be a regime with a different orientation, but it will be the same regime.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that that's the outcome that we get to here.

Would you consider that to be a strategic success for the United States and Israel?

Yes, I think there's no way this war ends without it being a strategic success for us.

Iran is not going to play the role of major spoiler that it has played in the past.

I mean, it's been weakened.

But the question is, how big will our strategic success be?

And how long will it last?

For example, if the regime comes forward, let's say Ali Larajani presents himself as the pliable guy.

And he says to Donald Trump, I'll accept zero enrichment.

But I won't negotiate with you on ballistic missiles, and I won't negotiate with you on proxies.

And then he says, and in order for me to sell this at home, I need sanctions relief.

Then we're in a situation that is not dissimilar from Obama's JCPOA.

That's a bad deal, in my view.

That's a bad deal.

Yeah.

Now, it'll be better than the JCPOA, because there'll be so much weaker now.

Right.

And vulnerable to attack and so on.

But it's still a JCPOA style deal.

And the sanctions relief will bring them a lot of money that they can use to build up the proxies again.

If we want to really sever the proxies, and we want to end the ballistic missile program,

then we have to look at all of them as a package.

And we have to say we need you to accept zero enrichment, no ballistic missiles, and no support for the proxies.

This is a fantasy, I think, because I don't think Trump is going to do this.

But my dream would be for Donald Trump, you know, sort of World War II style to say,

I want public acknowledgment that you accept all of this before we stop the war.

Unless you accept that, the war continues.

And then we have a negotiation after they accept that on how this is going to be implemented.

I don't think you'll do that, though.

He is under more pressure than we think.

Of this whole issue we were talking about before about the interceptors, the price of oil, the pressure diplomatically,

the pressure domestically at home, it's not popular.

He wants to bring this to an end sooner rather than later.

He wants to do it on terms that will be publicly recognized as a great advantage to the United States.

But he doesn't want to get, I think, to bog down in all the details.

But for me, the details are actually going to determine whether this is a permanent, very, very significant strategic benefit,

or a significant but temporary one.

Right. And then Israel and the United States, if there's a deal of the kind you described,

which may be where we end up, is going to have to, as they like to say, mold the lawn in Iran on its missile programs

and other and launchers and so on, probably for the next three years, at least, of Trump's presidency.

And because the Chinese and the Russians and others are going to continue to try to supply them with whatever ways they can

to make trouble for the United States.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

So hopefully, Donald Trump sees that clearly and understands that he's got to get everything that he wants in a package.

And the wild card is, of course, the Iranian people.

What will they do?

Do they again try to march in the streets and challenge the regime with 30,000 of them dead just from their protests in January?

That's a lot to expect.

But sometimes it does happen if they think the regime is weak enough.

It could happen in a number of ways.

And I would say, you know, people of Iran, rather than Iranian people, we have to keep that in mind.

Because one scenario here, I don't think it's the most likely scenario, but it's a real one, is that we get a civil war

similar to the Syrian civil war, where you'll have a ramp regime.

It will represent a kind of mix of Shiite radicalism with Persian nationalism.

And then you'll have militias, you know, a Baluchi militia, maybe an Azerbaijanian militia.

I certainly occur to militia with various degrees of outside support.

That's a real possibility here.

And that could lead to refugee outflows, not only in the near region, but in Europe as well.

And Turkey would certainly have to absorb some of them, I would assume, or could.

The Turks are already positioned on the border to create refugee camps to keep that from happening.

Having learned the experience from Syria and before that interact.

All right, so a lot of moving parts here, a lot of imponderables.

But the military side of things going well, and we'll see whether or not that translates into what degree of political success it translates for U.S. interests.

And a more stable Middle East and world.

Michael Brown, thank you so much for being here.

Really helpful for our listeners.

Sure appreciate all you do on this subject.

Thanks for joining us.

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