The Four Ways That the Iran War Could End

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simplify work with Ninja 1, learn more at ninja1.com. When it comes to the bombing of Iran, the killing

of Supreme Leader Hamani and Iranian top brass, the unspooling of regional war and the prospect

of a prolonged conflict, it is very easy for me to distinguish between what I hope and what I

fear. What I hope is that the Islamic Republic just rolls over and gives up, that a nation brutalized

by this horrific regime emerges from this episode as a richer and freer society whose stability

extends peace across the Middle East. That is, I hope this moment represents a break from history.

What I fear is that history is repeating itself. Donald Trump has bombed Iran and killed its

leadership without a plan. It sometimes even seems without even the pretence of a plan or a timeline.

And in this sense, this feels to me like a bit of an eerie echo of a very American tendency.

Go back to the 1960s when President Limonby Johnson and his top advisors claimed that,

quote, limited pressure and modest escalation would stabilize Vietnam. Instead, what happened

is we tiptoed into the catastrophe of war, which ended up spilling over into a regional calamity that

killed millions of people. In the Gulf War of 1991, George H. W. Bush bombed Iraq and sent

aircraft to drop leaflets on citizens and troops, telling them to rise up and topple their leader.

Instead, Hussein remained in power and massacred tens of thousands of his own people.

In Somalia, the Bush and Clinton administrations attempted regime change on the cheap again,

only to watch that end with Black Hawk Down in Mogadishu leading to a rapid U.S. pullback.

And then in Afghanistan, George W. Bush tried to break Al-Qaeda and topple the Taliban with

overwhelming military force, only for the U.S. to be drawn into a democracy building and

enterprise that lasted for decades, overseeing that infamous rebuild effort.

Then in Iraq, Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed that the U.S. could topple

Saddam with a lean force, only for that war to require surge after infamous surge.

In Libya, Barack Obama presented a coalition-led intervention as a brief operation,

but after the killing of Qaddafi, that state fell into crisis. Over and over and over again,

it seems history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And in the case of U.S. intervention on

the cheap that rhyme scheme is not particularly subtle. Donald Trump is a unique historical figure.

But this blueprint is not unique. This is what we do. It is no defense of the Islamic Republic

to point out that the U.S. keeps getting seduced by the prospect of cheap intervention,

keeps bargain shopping for the cheapest way to topple our adversaries, only to find quite

frequently that lasting change is hard or bloody, or just not worth the effort.

You know that meme from a rest of the development? Tobias is telling his wife Lindsay,

it never works for people, but they keep diluting themselves to believe it might work for them,

and oh, it also might work for us. That kind of feels like he was talking about America's belief,

the cheap regime change, is a button that we can just press. And then even after all of that,

there's still my hope. I still feel like, you know, this isn't the 1960s. Iran isn't being

backstopped by communist empire. Maybe this will work. This isn't the 1990s. Iran's leader has

actually, in this case, been taken out unlike Saddam Hussein. Maybe this can work. Iran isn't

Somalia. It's a resource blessed country that in another timeline might be one of the richer

countries in the world. Maybe this can work. So that's my big question for today. Which way does

the future go? Today's guest is Kareem Sajad Por, an American policy analyst at the Carnegie

Endowment for International Peace. Kareem provides necessary context to understand why the U.S.

and Israel might have launched this attack. And we propose several ways this war might end,

from complete regime change to moderate regime evolution to a bloody and calamitous regional war.

And then finally, we consider the prospect that so often happens in history, a great amount of

fire and fury fails to change the status quo. And that for all of this moment's chaos and carnage,

the state of affairs at the end of 2026 might look tragically a lot like the state of affairs

at the end of 2025. I'm Derek Thompson. This is Plain English.

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Karim Sudjapur, welcome to the podcast. Thank you Derek. Great to be with you.

You have written that to understand why Trump attacked Iran, we have to understand the miscalculations

of both Trump and Hamini. Why did each man miscalculate?

If we start with President Trump, I think that what he wanted to do in Iran was what he managed to do

in Venezuela, which was he subjected Venezuela to significant economic pressure, significant military

threats, as a prelude to essentially a political decapitation. Maduro was captured from Venezuela,

taken to New York City, and within a very quick period of time, the Trump administration managed

to do a deal with his successor, Delsi Rodriguez. I think that was what he had been hoping for in Iran,

and so we saw over the last six weeks this remarkable military escalation in the region,

and Steve Woodkov, Trump's special envoy even alluded to the fact that they were surprised that

Iran hadn't yet capitulated. And so that essentially, in my view, was kind of the broad sense

Trump's miscalculation. He thought that with enough economic and military pressure, he could have

a Venezuela-style outcome in Iran. And I think he actually, when he listened to his public statements,

he's still somehow hoping for that outcome. In the case of Ayatollah Khamenei,

he's really had one big idea over the last four decades, and that's resistance against the

United States. And he's actually continuously miscalculated vis-a-vis Trump. I think that

they had often not taken Trump seriously, thinking he was merely bluffing. There's a few good

examples of this. The most notable one, perhaps, is in 2020, January of 2020, when Iran did a number

of provocative acts against the United States and U.S. allies in the Middle East, and Khamenei

was publicly taunting Trump, and a few days after that public taunting Trump chose to assassinate

Iran's top military commander, Basem Soleimani. Last summer was Operation Midnight Hammer. Iran

thought it was in the midst of negotiations with the United States, and the United States wasn't

possibly going to attack. They thought Trump wanted to do. He's a deal maker. He wanted to do a deal.

That was another miscalculation. And so this time around Ayatollah Khamenei paid for that

miscalculation with his life. Turning to the strike itself, can you walk us through what the U.S.

actually did here? What was targeted? What was at least the stated military objective? And what

distinguishes this from previous U.S. military actions in the Middle East?

So we're still early days. I don't think it's even been 72 hours. And the administration

hasn't been terribly forthcoming on the specifics of the operation. And I should note

direct that it's not only a U.S. operation. It's a joint U.S. Israeli military option.

It seems that the division of labor is that the United States is focused on military targets

to grading Iran's missile capacities, perhaps some of their nuclear facilities,

perhaps the command and control of their revolutionary guards. It seems that Israelis are the ones

that are more focused on the targeted political assassinations. And so I think it's still unclear to us

whether it was American missiles or Israeli missiles that actually killed Iran's supreme leader.

There's been some reporting that it was U.S. intelligence, which led to his killing.

So when President Trump has been making public statements about his endgame,

he says contradictory things. He said that he's repeated the fact that he aspires

for the Venezuelan model in Iran. He said that he knows who the new leaders of Iran

are and he's prepared to deal with them. He's also said that he's willing to keep

these hostilities for another five weeks. And his goal is to essentially implode the regime.

And so this style in which it's almost like a kind of regime changed by jazz improvisation

is really unsettling if you're Iranian regime. Obviously this is an existential moment for

the remainder of Iran's leadership. A lot of its top leadership has been wiped out.

And in part, it's a period of tremendous is the fog of war. Do they believe that

they can save themselves by escalating or do they believe that they can save themselves by

de-escalating and trying to compromise? And we can talk about the arguments for both.

I love your observation that this is regime change by jazz because it helps me to frame

something that confused me in the last 48 hours. What I'm used to seeing is America engage in war

after the president makes clear to the American people what we're doing and why.

And instead of that, what you have is the president seeming to call various reporters at the

Atlantic, Axios, the New York Times, and giving them entirely different interpretations of why we're

fighting this war and what we should expect. He will, for example, tell the Atlantic that we're

ready to talk. And the Iranians are ready to hop on the phone. And then he'll tell the New York

Times or Axios, no, we're willing to extend this war for days or even weeks, which suggests that

there's no counterparty that's ready to pick up the phone on the other end. This seems to me like a

very strange, unusual way of operating a military engagement with another country. How unique

is this as an American strategy? Well, Derek, I think of Donald Trump as the Jackson

Pollock of Grand Strategy. To his supporters, it's the art of the deal. And there's all a method

to the madness and to many or perhaps most others, it's someone violently throwing paint on canvas

and seeing what happens. I think that the statements on one hand, you could argue that

someone who makes these types of contradictory statements, you keep adversaries on your toes.

And obviously, you also keep allies on your toes with this kind of conduct. And I'm always

reminded of something that one of Trump's first term senior cabinet officials said, he said,

when Richard Nixon was president, Henry Kissinger, who was then Secretary of State,

went around the world and tried to convince foreign adversaries that Nixon was a madman. And he said

when he was in Trump's first term, he didn't need to convince anyone. All they needed to do was

watch CNN and they could kind of figure out that this president is very erratic. And so I don't

think that there is, I mean, I'm hard pressed to understand what is the point of offering so many

contradictory statements to so many journalists because in this current context,

if you've chosen to take this path of war, you want to signal a resolve to the adversary that,

you know, we're prepared to fulfill our objectives and see this through. The challenge also here,

Derek, is that it's not totally clear what those objectives are. He's moved the goalposts on

several different occasions. And so in some context, you could argue this is useful to keep an

adversary on their toes. But in this situation where we're literally talking about war and peace,

the other side is not quite clear for them as I was alluding to earlier.

Are they better off compromising, believing that if they deescalate, there is a way out in which

they can save themselves, because ultimately the paramount goal of the Iranian regime is to

stay in power or, you know, if they feel that any type of compromise will project weakness and

further emboldened their adversary, then they will continue to escalate. And so, you know, I think

this is a risky strategy. And I almost, I think the worst strategy conveys a little too much.

No, hold on that. That's exactly where I want to go next. So I do think it's important to say that

there's two layers of uncertainty here. One layer of uncertainty is what exactly is the game plan?

The other layer of uncertainty is who exactly are we negotiating with? I mean, the U.S. government

didn't just assassinate Khomeini. It assassinated many of the top leaders of Iran. And so,

who's even at the top of that pes dispenser seems to me to be a big open question. But going to

strategy specifically, Trump and Vance ran explicitly on a no wars, no regime ticket of peace

message. They called themselves the peace ticket. They said Iraq and Afghanistan discredited

American interventionism. This is a point that has been made a hundred million times on the internet

in order to accuse the administration of hypocrisy. I want to ask you whether following the

decapitation of the Venezuelan government, following that kidnapping, following now the decapitation

of the Iranian government, now there are some people talking about this strategy being employed

in Cuba. Should we see this as a new doctrine? Or do you see it more as something that's being

improvised and shapeshifted as we go along? I do think it's improvised, Derek, but

what ends up happening, and I credit General Petraeus for first pointing this out, that the

success and the seemingly swift success in Venezuela emboldened the president to try to transfer

that strategy elsewhere. Now, historically, that can be very dangerous. And the point that General

Petraeus made is that America seemingly swift victory over the Taliban in 2001 gave us unrealistic

expectations about what it would take for success in Iraq. And as a result of that seemingly swift

victory in Afghanistan deposing the Taliban, I think we downsize the number of troops that we ended

going to Iraq within. Also, we went to Iraq with a great deal of confidence. And so

it's too soon to say we're 72 hours into this war, but I've also read the reports that

the president is keen on potentially applying this formula to Cuba.

Frankly, Cuba would have little more parallels with Venezuela than Iran. Iran is a totally

different beast. It's 6,000 miles away. We have very limited. We haven't had an embassy in

Tehran since 1979. I once remember a statistic that there are more Albanian speakers in the

State Department than Persian language speakers from talking to people in government. It was clear

on one hand that we have very talented and professional military planners who've been planning

out versions of this operation for perhaps two decades now. But there was very little

thinking about the day after this. And as Ann Applebaum has very eloquently written about

the institutions that we use to help when the Cold War against Soviet Union,

the soft power institutions like Radio Free Europe, National Endowment for Democracy,

and just institutions within the State Department that had really been thinking about

democracy development and day after scenarios. Those institutions have either atrophied or

as Ann has written about, we've unilaterally disarmed them. I think that there's two parts of

this operation. Obviously, no government in the world can militarily bring down governments

like adversarial governments like the United States. But as we've seen over the last quarter

a century in the Middle East, we can't push a button and dictate our preferred political outcomes

in those countries. It seems to me like you're pointing to specific reasons why we should be skeptical

that regime change is imminent or likely or even peaceful in the next few weeks. We don't have

Iranian speakers, but most Persian speakers in the US government. We have gutted the State

Department's capacity to plan for democratic transitions. It also seems like there's a general

principle here. There's a famous book, Robert Papes, bombing to win, that argues that aerial campaigns

very rarely produce regime change. You're not on the ground forcing a switch from one group

in power to another. You don't have the ability to control political developments on the ground.

If you're simply flying over dropping bombs and then flying back to the Pacific or back home,

does that framework importantly apply here? Is it useful for us in thinking about what comes next

to look at the history of bombing campaigns and see that regime change rarely is achievable

from simply flying over and dropping bombs? Derek, that's a very important study. And I think

there's another companion to that, which is that we know empirically from World War II to the

present. Around three out of four authoritarian transitions lead to another form of authoritarian

government. Iran, 1979 is a good example of that. Collapse of the Soviet Union is another good

example of that. We also know that when that authoritarian transition is triggered by internal

or external violence, the likelihood of a transition to democratic government is even lower.

Because when you introduce a power vacuum into a country, it's not usually the poets and

artists and intellectuals who emerge in those power vacuums. It's men who have arms and can

mobilize violence. Now, what I'd also say is that we start from a low bar in Iran. You know,

this was after North Korea, one of the worst governments in the world, both in its treatment

toward its own population at Massacre, as many as 30,000 people last month, and just its malicious

role in the world. And so the metric shouldn't be said that we have to achieve Denmark in Iran.

That's an unrealistic metric. The question is, can is it even possible to help transition Iran

from a government whose ethos is revolutionary ideology, death to America, death to Israel,

to a government that puts national interests and the economic interests of its people before

revolutionary ideology? Even that would be a victory for the president. If you can kind of get

Iran to behave like a nation rather than a cause, as Kissinger once put it, that would be a big

victory. But against 72 hours into it, it's not clear yet whether that is going to be achievable

here. It remains to be seen. I'm really glad that you answered my skepticism about the clarity

of this mission with a reminder of just how decrypidly awful the Islamic Republic is. And before

we go any further, I'd actually like you to go a bit further there, because I don't want any

critical analysis of this strike to crowd out a clear-eyed description of what the Islamic

Republic has done to Iran, has done to its people, has done to the economy of Iran, 92 million

people. Before we talk a little bit more about the various pathways from here, how this strike

could evolve into a new reality in Iran, what should people who are listening know about

Hamani and what the Islamic Republic has done to this country?

So, in my view, Derek, Iran should be a G20 nation. It has the human resources, the natural

resource, the history to be one of the world's top 20 economies. It should be an energy

superpower, second largest reserves of natural gas, third largest reserves of oil,

and instead of being South Korea, it's behave like North Korea. It's actually, I think, even

according to its own statistics, its top export is brain drain. It loses 150,000 of its top

minds every year, which, you know, that's a lot of cost when it takes a lot of money to educate

someone, a citizen from kindergarten through university, and all of the top minds are just

desperate to leave Iran. And it's also proven itself to be one of the most murderous governments

in the world. It's long had per capita the highest execution rate in the world. And again,

what we saw last month in terms of its its violence set a new low. And one thing I tell people

about the Islamic Republic, Derek, is that I think one of the reasons why it's so

lulled by, I would argue, probably 80 to 85% of its society is that it's this

social, political, economic dictatorship. And it rules from the moral pedestal of a

theocracy, purports to be carrying out God's will, and it's elbow deep in corruption and repression.

And so that is particularly insulting to citizens. When it's one thing, if you're a dictatorship,

and, you know, you don't have any of those moral pretensions, but to do all of that in the name

of God is particularly insulting for people. And so I think, Derek, that this could have been

one of the few instances, certainly in modern history, in which I would argue,

perhaps a greater percentage of the society that was about to be bombed was supportive of the

military action than the society that was going to be doing the bombing. I think probably

had there been scientific polling, we know in the United States, there wasn't a lot of popular

support for this conflict. And perhaps those numbers have even dropped since it began. But inside

Iran, after the massacres that took place in January, most of the people, again, this is unscientific,

it's anecdotal, but most of the people who protested wanted President Trump to make good on his

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with Indeed. I want to spend most of the rest of our time outlining four pathways from here,

four possible outcomes. I am not asking you to predict the future here. I mean, we are what?

You said 72 hours, 100 hours into this war. If if if war is even the right noun to use, what's

happening? But I want to start with the most optimistic pathway, which is the pathway of regime change,

the administration's own stated objective. What would that pathway to regime change actually

look like? What would have to happen on the ground in Iran for this strike to end in a total

upheaval in the regime of Iran that even if it doesn't turn Iran into Denmark overnight,

creates an administration that improves the economy, increases civil liberties,

and brings Iran a little bit closer to what you said being a G20 country in the world.

So I think there's at least a couple different models that the president is thinking of in his head,

which is there's the regime implosion, which is the country's security forces, namely the

revolutionary guards and the besiege militia. They essentially unravel and people see these

fissures and then they rise up and they're able to seize the country's institutions and it's like

revolution along the lines of what we saw in 1979 in Iran, a wholesale change in the leadership.

I don't sense that that is the model that the Trump administration thinks is most viable.

And we saw they had that choice in Venezuela as well when they removed, when they physically

captured Maduro and brought him to the United States. They had probably a split second to decide

whether they wanted to try to bring to power the Nobel Peace Prize winner, a very brave woman,

Maria Machado, or do they simply kind of go the path of least resistance and try to do a deal

with Maduro's successor, Darcy Rodriguez, and obviously they chose that option. It's my sense in

Iran that that is the option that they that's the path of least resistance outcome that they would

prefer. The challenge at the moment at least is that because Khamenei's death is so fresh,

it's just been a couple days, at the moment there isn't yet a clear successor or a leadership

council that has the legitimacy, the authority and the will to reverse 47 years of cultural

political resistance. And so perhaps this could be the strategy that they think that with

more military power at some point the regime will cry uncle. But I think I may have alluded to

this earlier at the moment as of today and this could change tomorrow. At the moment this appears

to be a regime more prepared to break than to bend. And we're going to get to the consequences of

its break rather than bend attitude in just a second. But I just want to hold a little bit

longer on this possibility of regime change. In January, you wrote an article for the Atlantic

that listed five conditions that determined whether a revolution could succeed. Those five

conditions were number one, a fiscal crisis, two divided elites, three diverse oppositional

coalition, four convincing narrative of resistance, and five, a favorable international environment,

favorable year meaning and international environment that wants to overthrow the regime.

We have at least a little bit of all five. And so I'm interested. If you still think that the

path forward to regime change is murky or unlikely, what is the most significant obstacle to

regime change at the moment? I think Derek we have 4.5 out of five. And the 0.5 I would say when

and I want to give credit to my co-author Jack Goldstone who wrote, in my view, the definitive book

on revolutions. And so the political fissures that we talk about, we have seen signs of

political divisions in Iran. What we have seen are signs of divisions within the military,

within the revolutionary guards. And that is essentially what is keeping this regime afloat.

And it's for so many of us given Iran's inaccessibility to independent reporters and academics

and journalists. It's somewhat of a black box. What are the internal deliberations within

the revolutionary guards? My view is that at the top levels, these are individuals who have been

hand-picked by Ait Al-Khamani. And so they share his worldview, his commitment to revolutionary

principles. But among the rank and file, it's oftentimes people who are not willing to

kill or die for this cause unless they perhaps now feel like it's killer be killed. And so

I want to emphasize that the revolutionary guards are approximately 150,000 men. It's not

150,000 people who all think the same. And I think that certainly the top leadership are ideological.

But if this regime is to change or to collapse, you will need to see some meaningful fissures

among those rank and file folks. I really want to hold on this point before we zip through the

other three potential outcomes because last year after the 2025 bombings, Reitake came on my

podcast. And in our interview, this is what he said about regime change. And it goes, I think

directly to your point. This is a direct quote from Reitake. Quote, regime change is a casual phrase,

but it tries to capture a psychological phenomenon for a regime to collapse. Critical elements

of these security services have to deflect, which means they have to believe that there is a

future for them in the aftermath. What happened in the Soviet Union is that the KGB decided it could

exist without the Communist Party and they were right. Whether the Islamic Republic's officials

make that calculation is the key question. End quote. I wonder if what Ray said is a decent

recapitulation or pre-capitulation because he said it a year ago of what you just said. And if

indeed, this is the key that members of the Revolutionary Guard have to find a way to see for

themselves a future in the aftermath, what should we be looking at to know if that is imminent?

I 100% agree with that statement from Ray. And again, Jack Goldson's book on revolutions,

perhaps the most critical prerequisite for regime collapse is that the regime insiders need

to start peeling away and believing that they will survive. They can play not the same role in

the country's tomorrow, but they're not going to be hung. That could be killed. And so the

challenge in the Iranian context is this military attack by the United States. Do they feel that

there's no way out for them and they simply have to continue fighting? Or do they feel that if

they actually do put down their arms, there's a better life for them. And this is important,

not only in the context of, you know, US policy, but it's also important in the context of the

Iranian, the opponents of the regime, the Iranian opposition to, you know, the goals should be to

peel those folks away from the regime. This is in some ways what I told a Khomeini did effectively

in 1978 to try to defang co-op the forces, the security forces within the Shah's government. And

that's a challenge, Derek, given the level of hatred that people feel for this regime. And you

know, I'm always amazed that there's some unique people in history like a Nelson Mandela,

who can take that anger and, you know, hatred that many members of his society felt and channel

that towards a constructive end. Those are the kind of rare opposition figures in history.

If scenario one is regime change, let's call scenario two nothing, or no regime change, right?

The regime survives, it reconstitutes itself. And we are simply back and essentially,

you know, the status quo antebellum in six months. What would make this the most likely outcome?

Well, if the Trump administration, and we can just say President Trump, believes that the ratings

for this war, both the TV ratings and popular ratings are badly going down, and he decides he's

going to pull the plug on it, will be in a, you know, arguably you could say worse to both worlds,

and that not only does the regime prevail, but it's likely going to be even more brutal

than it has been, and go on a rampage against its population in order to do everything it can to

to remain in power. That would be a very bad outcome above all for the people of Iran.

Now, the President may say not always lost because we significantly degraded them militarily,

but in my view, one of the important goals, and I've written this for many years,

one of the important goals of U.S. foreign policy to Iran should be to help shepherd this country's

transformation into a nation rather than a revolutionary cause. You know, people like Mike McFall

have written about this in the Soviet context. It wasn't American bombs or American arms control

diplomats who ended the Cold War. It was brave Russian and Soviet dissidents, and in this context,

the Cold War that we've now had, and now it's obviously a hot war that we've had with Iran over

the last five decades, that's not going to end until you have new leadership in Iran. So

simply leaving the same kinds of folks in place and wounding them is going to be a devastating

outcome for the people of Iran, which, you know, this conflict, this decision to invade was

ostensibly, you know, it was an effort to try to improve the lots of people in Iran.

Let me jump in right there. It's not so much that I disagree. I mean, you know infinitely more

about the subject than I do. I don't even have a basis to disagree, but I am surprised

because I thought that, you know, pathway one is the death of the regime. Pathway two is the

survival of the regime, and when I asked you what would make that most likely, a part of me I think

expected you to describe circumstances on the ground in Iran that would make the survival of the

regime most likely. But you went in a different direction. You started by describing the domestic

politics of the United States. You said, you know, if the polling for this aerial assault seems

negative, Trump will pull back. If let's say oil prices skyrocket and, you know, the market

start puking, maybe Trump will pull back. And so I just want to note, just want to reflect back

that I'm surprised that you said maybe the key, despositive piece that will prolong the survival

of the Iran and regime is really about what happens in the US rather than what happens in Iran.

Am I misunderstanding you or putting meaning on your words that you didn't mean or is that, in fact,

what you meant that it's American domestic politics that are the most important ingredient here.

So if I heard you correctly, you gave me a one-year timeline. Was that right? What happens in the

next year? Yeah, let's call it a one-year timeline. Yes, that's exactly right. So in my view,

this is a regime which is on borrowed time. It is eventually going to end up like the Soviet

Union. It's going to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions and malaise, widespread

malaise. But if I'm just looking at this 12 months out, my fear is that they're now at the moment,

they're a wounded animal. And the president even essentially told Iranians that for the first few

days, your spectators don't protest because it's going to be dangerous. But then once we're done,

go seize your institutions. Derek, what I want to emphasize is that probably not a lot of your

listeners have lived under totalitarian dictatorship. And when I lived in Tehran,

it is incredibly frightening. When you go out into the streets and there's, you're not armed,

and you see thousands, potentially tens of thousands of people holding machine guns with a

finger on the trigger. And it's my view, as I said earlier, that this regime has somewhat negligible

popular support at this point. Let's say 15%. But even 15% of an adult population of 60 million

people is millions of people. And if those millions are still ready to go out and kill and die for

you, it's a regime which can last longer than we expected to. And so I think what's happened is that

in the aftermath of these protests, given President Trump's repeated statements that America is

going to help, people were essentially waiting for the United States to intervene. And in the

aftermath of all of this death and destruction, it may be that I'm wrong. And even if the United

States decides to pull the plug early, people will again mobilize. But I see this as more likely

a society which is in profound trauma that was already traumatized by what the regime did to

last month. And now this shock of war, I'm not certain that the natural reaction will be to want

to mobilize politically. Maybe that people just try to hunker down at least for that first year and

rebuild their lives and people are quite shell shocked. Right. Now, I think it's really important

to retrace the fact that regime change via popular uprising would very likely be an event that

ends in the death of thousands, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people. We are

talking about a nation of 92 million that would have to rise up against a heavily armed guard.

So I think it's important to put a very fine point on just how bloody that process would be.

So if we've talked about scenario one, regime change, scenario two, the regime hangs on by this

kind of its teeth, the third pathway that I want to discuss with you is the pathway toward

regional war. I mean, Iran is already been targeting civilian and military infrastructure in Dubai,

Riyadh, Kuwait. What is Iran trying to do here? What are they trying to force the Gulf states to do?

And what are the odds that this spills over into what we would have to describe as regional warfare?

So I think Iran's goal here is fairly clear in that they're not powerful enough to retaliate

in a meaningful way against America and Israel. And so they're retaliating against their more

more vulnerable Gulf neighbors and the hopes that those countries which do have very close

relationships with the United States will weigh in with President Trump and say, please put a stop

to this. And I think that those countries have been incensed at the way that Iran has gone after

civilian outposts and civilian buildings and oil refineries in Saudi Arabia. And

so far, it seems to me it hasn't had Iran's desired impact rather than

compel those countries to tell President Trump to exercise restraint.

Maybe there's been some reporting that those countries are now encouraging President Trump to

actually potentially finish the job or to remain steadfast. And so I think the Iran's strategy

is clear what's not clear is whether it will have the intended result.

So if we have again, one regime change, two, no regime change and essentially we're back to

the status quo in 2025, three, something much messier and regional. What is a fourth likely pathway

here that we haven't had time to describe? I mean, I suppose we didn't outline a possibility like a

like a true civil war in Iran. Maybe there's other outcomes that you consider possible or even likely

that I didn't prompt you to describe. So what is that fourth door here that we haven't opened?

You know, what's somewhat unique about Iran for being a large powerful country is that over

the last century, it's only been really ruled by four men. Reza Shah was the man who built

modern Iran, his son Mohammed Reza Shah ruled for four decades before he was deposed in 1979

and then you had the 1979 revolution led by Ayatoll Khomeini and then the last 37 years Ayatoll Khomeini.

And so this is for whatever reason, kind of a political culture that tends to gravitate towards

large men and cults of personality. And so one of the questions is, you know, who is going to be

an individual who emerges from all of this? Is it going to be someone from within the military

or security establishment like an Iranian Putin? That could take the country in different

directions. It could be someone like a Putin who wants to harness historic grievances and

continue, you know, with anti-Americanism or it could be someone who says, listen, death to America

is a failed organizing principle and we need to say long live Iran and kind of a nationalist

autocratic leader. Could it be that, you know, more of a populist leader emerges? This is a country

which should be a wealthy country and yet because of the profound mismanagement and sanctions, far

more people are living under the poverty line than they should. So I think in Iran's future,

regardless of what happens, economic populism will probably do well. Someone who comes and says,

you know, I'm going to be the person who puts the oil money on your dinner tables.

There's also, you know, I would argue that if there were to be a free and fair election tomorrow

and Iran, the individual who would get the most votes, I would argue, is probably the former crown

prince, Reza Pahlavi. There's a great deal of what I call forward-looking nostalgia for

how things were before the revolution and he represents that. And so one of the kind of

things for me to watch is that as a country, which as I said over the last century,

has only been ruled by four men, who are going to be the new or potentially renewed personalities

that emerge, that captivate the popular imagination. One thing I would feel confident

predicting Derek is that the next powerful leader of Iran is not going to be wearing a turbine.

Even if they choose another Ayatollah to succeed, Ayatollah Khomini, I don't think this is a

society which is going to want to be led by a religious cleric. That will, in my view, be

more of a transitional figure than a new strongman. Is it fair to say that this fourth door

essentially is somewhere between doors one and two? It is a bit of regime change potentially.

You get a new charismatic leader who might uphold some of the principles of the Islamic Republic.

But it's essentially regime change with a twist and the person who maybe comes to power will

initially seem to be a continuation of some of Khomini's politics in a way that makes it seem

like the regime has survived the attacks from America and Israel. But maybe that to your point

about the turbine, over time, this is a ruler who could slowly modernize the country, maybe the same

way, an MBS-type figure, modernized Saudi Arabia. Am I wrong to see this fourth door sort of,

I know I'm getting into weird door metaphors here, but sort of weirdly fitting in between

doors one and two? So the analogy that's commonly made in the Iranian context is the China model.

And can Iran transition as China did post-Mao with Deng Xiaoping like figure who comes and puts

economic national interests before the cultural revolution. And so I do think there's obviously

great popular demand in that for Iran. The question is whether, number one, they can pull it off.

Iran is a very different type of economy than China. It's actually closer economy to that of

Russia, a resource economy rather than one driven by an incredible labor engine. So can they

pull it off? And number two, will society accept that? Or is the society just kind of so

infuriated with this government that even an easing of social restrictions and potential

economic opening rather than prolong the shelf life of the regime? Could that actually accelerate

its demise? And this was actually always the fear of Ayatoll Khomeini and why he was hostile to

any reform because he believed that when Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet Union, it took a

sledgehammer to the pillars of the building and it collapsed on top of their head. And so for that

reason, these folks inside Iran, we call them hardliners, but they call themselves

principalists because they're loyal to the principles of 1979. Either case, my view is that

you know, if they don't change those principles, eventually they're going to

implode. If they do change those principles or try to dilute them, it could even hasten their

demise. And so in the near term, this regime may manage to stay afloat, but in the medium to long

term, I think that the Islamic Republic as it exists today is on borrowed time.

I have very little confidence in my ability to predict the future of the Middle East. I do,

however, feel like I have a decent line of sight into some norms of American politics.

If there's a near future where military deaths start to creep up on the American side,

a future where oil prices start to rise, a future where people within the Republican Party,

even within the MAGA coalition start to get a little bit jittery about the prospect of the US

embarking and not just a swift decapitation campaign, but a prolonged military involvement with

a country, tens of thousands of miles away that many Americans don't think about on an hourly

basis. Given those as the inputs, what do you consider the most likely output in Iran?

So if this operation, we've started it, we've wounded the regime, and if the plug is pulled

prematurely, I don't see. I think we actually have altered Iranian internal political dynamics

in that the assassination of the Supreme Leader has really energized and further radicalized

and already radical group of true believers. And I think that the impact of that, in my view,

is not a positive outcome for the vast majority of Iranians who would like to see political change.

Well, I hope to guide you wrong. I have many friends from Iran who are families who are from Iran,

and I know that they like you hope that this is a country that achieves its promise as a G20

country, achieves its promise as a modern free country that celebrates civil liberties. But

I also, I think I share your skepticism that this sort of like telescope warfare that Trump seems

comfortable with, where we engage in interventionism, but from such a long arm away where we're not

going to put boots in the ground, it's hard to feel like you control the outcome when you're just

passing by in fighter jets. So who knows how this goes, but Kreme, I really appreciate you

lending your expertise here. Kreme, such at poor. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me, dark.