Transcript: Webinar – Is the Iranian Regime Fracturing?

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PANELISTS

Mehdi Parpanchi

Executive Director, Iran International; Former Lead Correspondent, BBC Persian

Dr. Ray Takeyh

Iran Policy Project Advisor, JINSA; Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations

The discussion was moderated by JINSA Vice President for Policy Blaise Misztal.

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Blaise Misztal:
To discuss the state of the Iranian regime, whether it is fractured or cohesive, what its decision-making looks like, and what that means for negotiations with the U.S. and the continuation of the war, I’m delighted to be joined by two panelists who know Iran better than anyone else: Mehdi Parpanchi, Executive Director of Iran International, one of the best sources for understanding what is happening in Iran today, and Dr. Ray Takeyh, JINSA Iran Policy Project Member and Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Thank you for joining today.

We’ve been hearing a lot from President Trump in recent days that the regime is fractured, with questions about who is actually running the country. The New York Times had a big article saying that the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, is alive and ruling through a cabinet or a committee and multiple decision-makers who give people a stake. We heard that the speaker of parliament, who is also supposed to be the negotiator, has been taken aside. What does that mean for the U.S. ability to negotiate with Iran? Trump is saying that the regime might be too fractured to decide. So it is very interesting to hear from you what is happening in Iran and what that means.

Mehdi, I’d like to start with you. Can you tell us the news on the Supreme Leader and how he rules Iran?

Mehdi Parpanchi:
Khamenei, when he became the leader, didn’t have proper religious credentials. It took him about four or five years before he established his authority inside the Islamic Republic. The threshold for his son is even worse. We don’t know if he is injured; we have no answers. But let’s say that Mojtaba is alive. The fact that he is hidden because they are concerned he might be a target means that a leader who is not in touch with the command does not have the opportunity to establish his authority. Even if the succession happens, it would have taken Mojtaba time until he could establish his authority. But he is hidden; no one has heard from him publicly. We can assume that the command level does not have meetings with him to avoid revealing his hiding place. So in this situation, he does not have much authority.

Khamenei was a person who managed all the conflicts and differences between parliament, the government, the president, etc. There are differences in the group. They are all fighting for the same goal, but there are differences in the tactics to get there. Without having someone to resolve them — the final say that Khamenei had — they do not have this figure anymore. Mojtaba has no authority, and these differences and conflicts remain. Imagine a company in which many people have shares, but the majority shareholder does not exist. They do not have somebody who really rules.

Blaise Misztal:
Certainly, we can describe the communication with Mojtaba as being similar to how Osama bin Laden received information at the end of his life: many people transferring handwritten notes back and forth, passing them without being detected.

Ray, do you have more insights on Mojtaba? Is he alive? How in control is he? Or who is running the country?

Dr. Ray Takeyh:
Not more than Mehdi’s reasonable assessment. We are in a situation that is quite extraordinary. There are so many layers of dysfunctionality. We have many people in new roles, which has created difficulties in the system. We do not have the Supreme Leader to impose his decisions on the system. Even if he is physically intact, he does not have the political authority to essentially marshal these coalitions in the right direction. Now they have to make decisions that are very difficult to make under the best of circumstances, but they are doing so at a time when there is a war that continues in some respect in the Gulf. You also have older domestic problems that not only remain unresolved but have been exacerbated by this conflict.

So the management of this country at this time is rather challenging — probably the most challenging management system since the 1980s. The difference is that, in the 1980s, the revolution still had legitimacy, and the Supreme Leader was someone with charismatic authority that was largely uncontested and had some degree of popular approbation. None of those factors are present today.

They seem to be making decisions somehow, but how exactly that is happening, I am not entirely sure I can add any more detail to what has already been suggested.

Blaise Misztal:
Mehdi, you talked about different factions within the regime, and you said it is not moderates versus hardliners. Are these institutional factions? Is it the IRGC versus the clerical establishment? Or is it something else? Are there factions within the security establishment, for example? Do you have a sense?

Mehdi Parpanchi:
I do not think we have any significant clerics around right now, unlike what we had in the early days of the Islamic Republic, when there were many clerics who really had control. Nowadays, who is Iran? Let’s talk about, for instance, Ahmad Alamolhoda, who has control of Mashhad in a way, and also Astan Quds. He used to have power, but not nowadays.

What we are talking about is really IRGC commanders holding all these important posts. And let’s remember that Ali Larijani, who was killed as the head of the Supreme National Security Council, was himself an IRGC commander. So when we say IRGC, it is not a new thing. The Islamic Republic has always really been run by the IRGC. Among those who are now at the top, I guess, except Pezeshkian, who, as far as I remember, has never been a member of the IRGC — although he had affiliations with them — the rest are pretty much all from the IRGC.

But like I said, with any group of people, you name it — five or six people: when you talk to them, they may all be going to the same place, but they will have different ideas in terms of the best way to get there. So yes, the differences are real.

For instance, when you compare Ghalibaf with Jalili, there are real differences between them. There was an episode that happened only two or three years ago, during the most recent presidential election. There were real feuds between Ghalibaf and Jalili. I do not want to go into the details, but even Hassan Nasrallah tried to convince one of them to pull out of the competition. They did not accept it. Ali Khamenei himself sent a message to convince one of them to withdraw from the contest, and neither accepted.

It was not only about themselves; their base also mattered. At the street level, there were real fights between the two camps. So these differences are real, but as I said, it is not about hardliners against moderates. So yes, it is really the IRGC. No one else.

Blaise Misztal:
Are these just personal competitions for power, stature, and influence, with different individuals trying to come out on top? Or are there actual policy, political, or ideological differences among them?

Mehdi Parpanchi:
The first one maybe explains it better. Ray mentioned this earlier: in the early years of the Islamic Revolution, if you go back 30 or 40 years, the Islamic Republic was a mass movement. Right now, it is not a mass movement. What we are talking about is, at most, maybe 10 or 15 percent of the population supporting it. And even out of that 15 percent, not everybody is ideological. Most people support it because of their own interests, basically.

So that can easily shift. If the center of power moves somewhere else, those interests will also shift, and those people will no longer be supporters of the Islamic Republic. So really, you are looking at some 50 or 60 people who have been running the country for the past 47 years, from the early days of the revolution until now.

When you look at the number of people who got killed in this war, and also in the 12-day war, you get to about 55 or 60 people. All of them are IRGC commanders. They are all military, basically top-echelon commanders. From the political side, only Ali Khamenei and Ali Larijani were killed. The rest of the political structure still remains.

So the Islamic Republic that you are facing today is exactly the same as it was five months ago, with Ali Khamenei and Ali Larijani gone. Nothing has changed.

Blaise Misztal:
Dr. Takeyh, would you agree with that — that nothing has changed? The narrative, at least in Washington, seems to be that the U.S. killed Khamenei, which allowed the IRGC to take over, and now we have a more hardline regime than we had before February 28. Is that the right way to understand it?

Dr. Ray Takeyh:
Well, I think some of what is said about who is in charge in Iran in America has to do with our own political polarization. For Democrats, who are uniformly opposed to this war, they brandish the idea that the hardliners have taken over and the regime is more dogmatic. For the Republicans who would like to support the president, they insist, in some cases, that there is potentially more pragmatic leadership. And the president himself has suggested that a regime change has already taken place.

Those are American debates. They are about Americans justifying their respective positions.

Blaise Misztal:
But now reveal the truth to us, Ray.

Dr. Ray Takeyh:
Basically, we do not know what the truth is. There is much about this country that we do not know at this point, and we do not even have the limited access that we had before, with the internet outages and so on. Now, Iran International and news agencies such as that have correspondents on the ground, and they have different ways of getting news stories. But it is very difficult for an analyst to have a precise — or even imprecise — understanding.

I will say a couple of things. It is not unusual in time of war for military leadership to assume a larger stake in national debates. So the idea that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is more central today is not unusual.

I do think that the Islamic Republic, which I tend to view as an ideological organism, will always have the indispensable marriage between muscle and memory. The muscle is provided by the Revolutionary Guards, and the sanction they require is provided by some aspect of the clerical community. That is a symbiotic relationship that is necessary for the longevity of both, and the balance of power between them may shift. What we would call, in America, civil-military relations may actually shift back and forth.

But this conglomeration of actors will remain wedded together because they understand that one cannot function without the other. Right now, obviously, the Revolutionary Guard Corps is the last line of defense. It is the last line of defense against external enemies and the last line of defense against internal dissent. So that essentially makes it a much more powerful actor as Iran tries to sort itself out.

That, in a ballpark sense, is how I would describe it. As I said, too often when Iran is discussed in America, Americans make it about themselves, and I think you see some aspect of that in our current debate, such as it is.

Blaise Misztal:
So I guess the question is: if there are disagreements within the regime, is it just a question of them trying to navigate this complicated policy and decision-making process that has been disrupted by the war? Or is it something that could actually result in infighting, friction, or weakening of the regime because of the competition and jockeying for power between different personalities and different elements?

Where does this go in terms of how the regime is now able to pull itself back together? The president has said that the regime is fracturing. Does that mean it is actually going to fall apart in some way, or does it just have to reconcile these competing interests and personalities?

Dr. Ray Takeyh:
I would just say that factionalism has been endemic to the Islamic Republic since 1979. Too often, from Jimmy Carter all the way seemingly to Donald Trump, American presidents have seen that factionalism as a means of gaining leverage inside Iranian politics. Almost never has that come to bear.

First of all, those factional divisions — every institution has divisions within it — are something American presidents think they can exploit to advance U.S. strategic objectives. The demarcations between hardliners and moderates, pragmatists and recalcitrant actors, have been around for a long time. Actually, the Islamic Republic has usually used that demarcation to its advantage by having credible voices of reason that the Americans can speak to.

One thing we can say is that the position the regime has taken in the negotiations, really since the June war, has been the same. They have reportedly offered some kind of suspension for three to five years. They have maintained that they have a right to enrich and that this right will not be relinquished. That was the position before the June war. It was the position after the June war. It was their position before March, and it is their position today, as far as we know.

So there is constancy in their approach. Of course, the issue of the Gulf has been added as an additional point of contention and leverage that both sides seem to think they have in a time of conflict.

My impression of the Islamic Republic’s political elites is that they come together. Once the conflict is over, fingers will be pointed about who was at fault and how that can be sorted out. But in this time, I suspect they are going to stick together to deal with the situation, which is quite urgent.

Blaise Misztal:
Mehdi, your thoughts?

Mehdi Parpanchi:
I agree with Ray. Going back a little bit to what you said about whether the recent war made the Islamic Republic even more hardline or even more dogmatic — to be honest, I do not understand that notion.

You may remember that movie where somebody was showing off the loudspeaker he had and saying that it goes up to 10, and how loud that is. Then the other guy says, “Can it go up to 11?” Maybe just a little bit more.

A hardliner is a hardliner. How can it be even more hardline? Remember this regime, less than four months ago, killed thousands of people — tens of thousands of people — within 48 hours. So how much more hardline can it get, really? How much more dogmatic can it be?

About the negotiations: they have been going on for more than two decades, and we have seen what happened — negotiation after negotiation. Think about the last year. There were negotiations. It got nowhere. Then the 12-day war. Another round of negotiations. Then the 39- or 40-day war. Now again, they are doing more negotiations.

We had those wars because negotiations failed, and now you are going to have more of the same negotiations to reach where, we do not know.

So the question is really this: yes, the war has weakened the Islamic Republic. There is absolutely no doubt about it. Whoever says otherwise just does not want to see the reality. It has been degraded massively in every single aspect. If we want to evaluate the Islamic Republic, it is weaker — massively weaker. But has it changed? I do not think it has. Is it more hardline? I do not think it is, because you cannot be more hardline than what you already are. When someone is pregnant, that person cannot be more pregnant. Pregnancy is pregnancy.

In terms of the nuclear program, it is damaged massively. We know that. I do not know what is happening in Fordow or in the other mountains. We do not know what is going on there. But parts of the nuclear cycle — let’s say the yellowcake facilities — because you need a cycle to be able to spin those centrifuges, much of that cycle is basically decimated, massively damaged. So that cycle has stopped.

Does it mean Iran will forget about its nuclear ambitions? I do not think so. As long as the Islamic Republic is there, those ambitions will remain. Iran’s nuclear program was pregnant with a nuclear bomb. The war, I do not think, has stopped or ended that pregnancy. The delivery will be longer, of course, but the baby is still there. Whenever the war stops, if things go back to where they were, Iran will continue that. I am sometimes amazed to hear that the administration and the Iranian team are discussing 15 years of suspension, 20 years, 25 years. That does not make sense to me, to be honest with you. It can be 200 years, but the reality will be only two years, only three years. The moment President Trump leaves office, Iran will go back to what it was doing.

In terms of the proxies, they can agree, “Okay, we will not support them.” But the reality on the ground is that the proxies are embedded in the IRGC. The IRGC is an FTO — a terrorist organization according to the U.S. State Department. What do you want to do with the IRGC? Those proxies are embedded in the IRGC. They are part of the IRGC.

Look at what is going on in Tehran right now. Hashd al-Shaabi is in the streets of Tehran. They have patrol stations with their own flags and their own people. Iranian people see that these are Hashd. Iranian proxies are now controlling Iranian cities, and that tells us a lot about the situation in Iran. If they had enough Iranian security guards, they would not import their proxies from Iraq.

But that is another discussion. What I am trying to say is that I really do not understand what kind of deal the administration wants to get with Iran. Because on proxies, no matter what they say, no matter what you sign on paper, at the end of the day, it is going to last as long as President Trump is in office. The moment he leaves, everything will go back to where it was — or let’s put it this way: Iran will try to rebuild whatever remains.

So what really matters is, when President Trump leaves office, what remains on the ground?

Blaise Misztal:
I want to get to the negotiations in just a second, but let me follow up with you. You said the regime is weaker now. Is there a chance that the different factions you talked about earlier — that their fighting is going to weaken it even more? Or in the end, will they all stick together for the sake of keeping the regime alive to the best of their ability?

Mehdi Parpanchi:
There is a saying in Farsi: they may eat each other’s flesh, but they will not throw away the bones. When you see fighting between, let’s say, two brothers, you should never take it seriously, or you should never think that you can intervene and use it for your own benefit. The moment you do, they are not really going to allow you to benefit from that feud, because that is internal.

So that internal infighting, I believe, will continue. As Ray said, it has been there from day one, and it will continue as long as the Islamic Republic is there.

But from the point of view of the U.S., Israel, or many other countries in the region — all of them are really damaged. All those Gulf countries, most of them were thinking they could live with the Islamic Republic. They could understand the problems, but they also thought they could have a kind of coexistence. I think that delusion is done.

They have seen what the real Islamic Republic is, the real face of the Islamic Republic that Iranian people already knew, but that the outside world perhaps did not know as much. Everybody now is facing this reality.

As I said, as long as the Islamic Republic is there — I know people do not like when you say “essentialism,” because it does not have a positive connotation. People may say you cannot think about political systems as having an essence that will never change. But in the case of the Islamic Republic, the truth of the matter is that yes, it has an essence, and it is not going to change.

Blaise Misztal:
Ray, what are the implications of that for the administration’s attempts to negotiate with the Iranians? You said the regime keeps making the same demands. They have not changed since before or after the war. Is that just a function of the inability to make decisions and decide on new negotiating positions? Or is it this ideological steadfastness, as Mehdi was just saying? Should we not expect them to make concessions now if they were not willing to make them before?

Dr. Ray Takeyh:
I would argue that is the case. The administration needs to figure out what its own requirements are. Reportedly, Vice President Vance offered a 20-year suspension of nuclear enrichment activities. President Trump has rejected that at least twice since then. So what is the administration’s position? Is it suspension of enrichment for a period of time, or is it permanent abandonment of enrichment? We have to sort that out, because at least there are two stated American positions on the table, and they are very different.

If you do not have a permanent ban on enrichment, then Iran is entitled to have some enrichment processing activities and apparatus. Then we get into all that JCPOA stuff. Then you enter the nuclear arms-control bazaar, and the haggling starts about which rotor goes into which centrifuge in which year — that whole JCPOA cycle. Is it prescribing enrichment activities? Then that is a different thing. So the Americans have to sort that out.

But the Iranian nuclear position at this point is, in some ways, secondary to what is taking place in the Gulf. As you can see, their latest position, as far as we know, is that no negotiations can take place unless the blockade is lifted. And there are conditions that they would agree to regarding lifting the blockade. Namely, they want a greater management role in the Persian Gulf waterways. I also think they are quite serious about charging tolls, and those charges would be discriminatory. Russian and Chinese ships probably would not have to pay, and Europeans and others would.

So I think that to get to the nuclear issue, you first have to deal with the Gulf issue — if, in fact, the sequencing the Iranians have presented is their latest position: first the Gulf, then the conversation about the nuclear issue. Thus far, as I understand it, the administration has quite sensibly rejected that.

So the entrance of the Persian Gulf into this discussion has actually made it more complicated, because the Iranian government, as far as I can tell — and to the extent that we have access to its deliberations — believes it has very significant leverage over the international community by obstructing maritime trade. They are not going to relinquish that objective in a permanent way, and they are not going to relinquish it cheaply.

So that is a whole different complication before we even get to the nuclear issue, and it makes an agreement impossible. We are in a kind of stalemated position where both parties, the United States and Iran, believe they can impose economic pain on the other side to the extent that one of them will acquiesce.

There is no question that the United States can impose more economic pressure on Iran, but the Iranian case is that they can endure that pressure more than the Americans can. I do not know if that is true, but that is essentially where we are in this rather unusual, if not peculiar, stalemate.

Blaise Misztal:
Dr. Takeyh, sticking with you: if the reports that Ghalibaf has stepped down or been removed from his position on the negotiating team are true, does that reveal anything to us about either the internal deliberations of the Iranians or whether they are or are not willing to shift or negotiate?

Dr. Ray Takeyh:
What I have seen, given the limited purview we have into the Iranian press, is a lot of discussion of unity and praise for Ghalibaf. I think the parliament passed a resolution — 291 votes or so — expressing confidence in Ghalibaf’s leadership and the Iranian negotiating team. Whenever those sorts of expressions of solidarity are aired, that usually means there is something else going on.

Ghalibaf was never a figure who, in my view, was trusted by Ali Khamenei. He was too slippery, too corrupt, too enamored of Western things. He was never the kind of figure really trusted by him. Saeed Jalili was more trusted, but everybody thought he was too nuts for the job.

So you have this contest between one guy whose corruption and mendacity are notorious, and another guy who has integrity — Saeed Jalili — but is just too bonkers. Who will come out of this? I honestly do not know.

Blaise Misztal:
Does it have implications for the negotiations or the positions Iran might be willing to accept? Or is it just internal political struggle?

Dr. Ray Takeyh:
I am not sure if it changes the Iranian negotiating position, but Ghalibaf is one of those Iranians who has the capacity to tranquilize the Western mind. Not as smooth as Javad Zarif, but he would reach out to the Americans. I imagine there has been some back-channeling between Ghalibaf and the Americans, the J.D. Vance camp. That is kind of what they do. Ali Larijani used to do that. That does not mean their position has changed, but they present those positions with the cloak of pragmatism in order to give Americans, who want a way out of their predicament, a way out of their predicament.

Blaise Misztal:
Mehdi, I want to turn back to you. But first, let me encourage the audience to get involved. If you have questions you want to pose to Ray or Mehdi, please feel free to submit them using the Q&A function in Zoom, and then I will read them out.

Mehdi, I wanted to pick up on something Ray said — that we are sort of in this economic game of chicken, waiting to see which side is suffering more economic harm or is willing to endure the pain longer. Do you have a sense of how much, if at all, the blockade is imposing pain on the regime in Tehran, and how long they might be willing or able to endure that pain?

Mehdi Parpanchi:
It depends on the reserve capacity, if that makes sense. The oil is pumping out, and you have to put it somewhere. You need to sell it. If you cannot, then you need to store it somewhere.

Our very good friend Eiad Malachi had his numbers, and I am increasingly believing that his estimate — or educated guess — is accurate, give or take maybe one week or two. The economic pressure on the Islamic Republic and on the Iranian people is immense.

What we see in terms of prices is that the price hike is 50 or 60 percent in some items, mostly staples. Food is up 230 or 300 percent. It is massive, and it is putting pressure on the people and also on the system itself.

But you need to be aware that when you talk about the economy, the meaning is not the same for, let’s say, an American and an Iranian official. I will give you an example. Ali Khamenei never used the word “development” in a positive way. When you look at his speeches — and there are hundreds and thousands of them — he never uses the word toseeh in Farsi, or “development,” in a positive way. He always talks about it from a negative point of view because he sees it as a Western concept that the Islamic Republic should not adopt and should be against.

Instead, he introduced another concept that he called the Islamic-Iranian model of progress, if you like, and he used it against development. I think it was maybe in 2003 that they made it a policy, a strategic policy document, which was communicated to all branches of government, institutions, and everyone.

What was the aim? Khamenei was basically thinking that this model of progress, or economic progress, would turn Iran into a model of a new Islamic civilization — tamaddun-e novin-e Islami. What does that tell you? It tells you that this regime — I mean, the Supreme Leader, who was Ayatollah Khamenei, is dead now, but his son is even dumber in terms of subscribing to the same ideology — and everybody else, Ghalibaf, Jalili, yes, there are differences among them, but at the end of the day, they all want to get to that end.

So when you talk about the economy, you are using the same word, but it does not mean the same thing for them. What I am trying to get to is this: the blockade, in terms of the economy, yes, is going to harm the Islamic Republic and damage it. But do they care? Not really.

What they are waiting for is that the midterm election is coming, fuel prices are going up in the U.S., and they are hoping that the share prices will go down. They are hoping that the damage in the U.S. will push the president to change his position. At what price to Iran’s economy? Who cares? It does not matter.

So I do not really think this pressure will make them blink, if you are waiting for the blockade to change their position. I am not sure it will.

Blaise Misztal:
What about the effect on the Iranian people, who, as you mentioned, had already taken to the streets to protest the regime and economic conditions at the beginning of the year? Thus far in the conflict, President Trump has been telling them to stay home. But with the ceasefire, and if prices keep going up, does that create greater pressure — a greater desire by the people to take to the streets again? Or are they just going to have to suffer while the regime continues to oppress them?

Dr. Ray Takeyh:
I would say Mehdi has reporters, correspondents, and sources of information that can answer this question more authoritatively.

What we saw previously after the June war is that there is always an aftershock. I think we will see a similar aftershock because, as I mentioned, all the problems of the Islamic Republic have been aggravated by this war and its conduct.

The economic situation — the depletion of the economy — is not getting better. The oil wells that are not being used may actually be out of commission in a way that they cannot be resurrected. The income disparity, of course, is great. The place is running out of water. The ecological disasters are quite substantial. So all those problems remain, along with the problem of lack of political representation, and so forth.

The key test for the Islamic Republic will be two things. Number one: can it come out of this conflict with a narrative of success? If they can get some kind of agreement on the Gulf where they have greater influence and then go back to protracted negotiations, that constitutes a success.

The second thing is that how it comes out of this war will affect how it deals with internal dissent, and probably the power and strength of that internal dissent. It demonstrated in January that it is capable of killing large numbers of people. Does it still have the capacity to do that? That is going to be the foremost test for the Islamic Republic.

But it will confront the next demonstrations with a very different elite. It may be a different category of people. Now, I think the category of people that have been placed broadly in the Revolutionary Guards are quite capable of dealing with the situation in terms of their intentions. Whether they have the ability to do so remains to be seen. But that is going to be the test.

Blaise Misztal:
Mehdi, I would be curious to hear your thoughts. Let me also ask, based on what Ray just said: we have largely been talking about the elite in the regime, but there is also a question about the cohesiveness of the regime lower down the ranks — particularly the people they rely on to stay in power and to pull the trigger when they are told to do so against their fellow countrymen in the streets.

Are those lower ranks of the IRGC and the Basij still willing to commit to this regime? Is their commitment ideological? Is it more instrumental, because being part of the regime is how you get ahead in life? And is that going to erode if there is economic pain and an inability to provide financial benefits? I do not know if you have any insights, but I would be curious to hear your thoughts.

Mehdi Parpanchi:
About defection, or whether parts of the IRGC or Basij will basically stop defending the system: I do not think they will, as long as the mixed messaging is going on.

The first two weeks of the war, I think, were very successful in terms of really frightening the system. The Islamic Republic itself and its supporters were frightened, because everybody was thinking that this was going to be regime change. Khamenei was gone. That was a massive shock.

But after March 17 — the messaging changed. Before that, what we were hearing from President Trump, Netanyahu, CENTCOM, and everyone else was the sense that they were preparing the ground for people to be safe so that people could come out again.

But from March 17, or maybe March 18, everything changed, because President Trump started talking about how regime change had already happened and a new regime was in place, and we were talking with them.

So from that moment, the psychology of the war changed. One, it empowered the IRGC and the Islamic Republic, because the message they got was that Trump was looking for an exit route. Basically, they did not manage to win the war, so they were looking somewhere for an exit door.

And two, if you were waiting for defections, defections happen when people believe that the future does not belong to the Islamic Republic — that the current system has absolutely no chance. Then it is time for me to change sides.

But when you start talking to the Islamic Republic, you are not sending the message that the future does not belong to the Islamic Republic. So that mixed messaging from the president, I think, was a mistake. He was doing it for one reason: to control the markets here in the West, or in the U.S. He had his own agenda, and it was working in terms of controlling the oil price and the share market.

But the message it was sending to Iran was: do not defect, because the Islamic Republic will stay in place. I am talking to them. And in terms of the population — going back to your previous question — will there be a massive uprising? I think there was a very good chance for it. But now people are kind of disappointed.

Look at this from the point of view of the Iranian people: the regime killed tens of thousands of people, and now the U.S. government is talking to them. That is the kind of message it sends to the street. We see many people on social media saying, “We do not trust this anymore.” Because if there is a message to come out, what if we go again, we get killed, and then the U.S. government continues talking to them again?

So these are the side effects of the policy that the U.S. government, or President Trump, has been pursuing.

Blaise Misztal:
What would it take, Mehdi, to rebuild that confidence among the Iranian people — that they would have the support and backing of the U.S. to give them the trust they need to go back out into the streets when the time is right? Is it just rhetoric? Is it consistent messaging from the U.S.? Or at this point is something more needed?

Mehdi Parpanchi:
If you have a meeting with me, based on how persuasive you are, you may manage to change my mind. But when you are talking about public opinion, you are talking about millions of people. That sentiment cannot be changed like this.

If there was a moment, it was there, but unfortunately they did not use it. Israel was actually insisting on that. If you go back to Chaharshanbe Suri, people were expecting that there would be a call for protest, but President Trump stopped it. Netanyahu wanted to do it. President Trump explicitly stopped it. It was unused. I guess a week later or so, some reporters also reported that it happened.

So this is fact: that opportunity was missed. I am not saying that it will not come back again, and I am not saying that if they had called for a protest, it would definitely have been successful. Nobody knows. But at the end of the day, that was an opportunity to be taken.

The bigger story is not that particular day. The bigger story is that the narrative of the war until March 17 was: we are preparing the ground for the Iranian people to come out. In other words, there was an air raid, and then the expectation was that the Iranian people on the ground would change it.

After March 17, the narrative changed: this war is only to pressure the current regime to change its behavior. That was a big change, and in my opinion, it was a mistake. Because this regime — go back through the past two decades, and good luck if you manage to change its behavior.

Blaise Misztal:
Dr. Takeyh, any thoughts on the lower ranks of the regime, or the willingness of the Iranian people to turn out?

Dr. Ray Takeyh:
A lot of the success of any internal protest movement, any popular insurrection, lies in the regime faltering. And it has many different ways of faltering, and they tend to be related: losing a war abroad; fractures within the system; beginning to see the whole edifice going wobbly — an edifice that I suspect is already hollowed out — and that essentially produces a convulsive movement.

It is very difficult, as I always say, to predict a revolution. It is very difficult to understand a movement even when you are living through it. But one of the things we have to see is whether the combined pressures of external stress and internal dissent are capable of fracturing at least the lower ranks, or some aspect of them, whereby they no longer feel they can discharge their activities with impunity.

That happened in 1979, when the regime sort of collapsed from the top. We still do not know precisely what percentage of the royalist army was left, but enough was left to discharge its function if it was properly disciplined.

But anyway, the Islamic Republic has one advantage over the monarchy: namely, it understands that people hate its guts. That is actually a good thing. They are self-aware enough to know that everybody hates them, and that causes them to be paranoid, suspicious, and prepared. But that does not mean they cannot be overwhelmed.

I do not believe in the notion that the Islamic Republic is perennially indestructible. I do think we will get to the post-Islamic Republic. Once we do so, much of the analysis and assessment that came before will be reconsidered, reexamined, and hopefully discarded.

Blaise Misztal:
Well, I certainly hope you are right. Ray, Mehdi, thank you very much for your time and your insights this morning. Thank you to our audience, everyone who tuned in. Wishing everyone a good day, and I look forward to seeing you on the next JINSA webinar. Thank you very much.