Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Karim Sadjadpour:

I think that people inside Iran, as I’ve said to you before, Preet, they’re hungry to be South Korea, not North Korea. They want to live up to the enormous potential Iranians have as a nation.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Karim Sadjadpour. He’s a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on Iran and U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East. Two weeks ago, Israel assassinated a senior Hamas leader in Tehran, and a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut. Iran has vowed to retaliate while world leaders have urged restraint. Sadjadpour joins me to discuss Iran, Israel and the state and fate of the Middle East. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

Q&A

Now let’s get to your questions. This question comes in a tweet from Jamie who asks, “Is the DOJ actively investigating the $20 million from Egypt?” Thanks, Jamie, for that very important and relevant question. For those of you who may not be familiar, Jamie is referring to a blockbuster Washington Post article from last week about a pretty crazy investigation involving Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and former President Donald Trump. So the reporting is that back in 2017, the CIA shared with the DOJ a bit of intelligence they had gathered that suggested that el-Sisi had perhaps tried to illegally send $10 million in cash to Trump in an effort to help get him elected in 2016.

The significance of that particular figure lies in the fact that Donald Trump, contrary to his own usual stinginess, put $10 million of his own money into his campaign in October of 2016. So after DOJ got the tip, Bob Mueller was put in charge of investigating it. Mueller ultimately did find evidence of a $10 million cash withdrawal from a bank in Egypt five days before Trump was elected. But in early 2019, before he was able to tie that withdrawal to Trump as a reimbursement for the money he put into his own campaign, Mueller handed the case over to the sitting U.S. Attorney in DC. That U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu, was later asked to step down by Trump’s then Attorney General Bill Barr, and eventually after all these roadblocks, the case was closed in about 2019 without any conclusive evidence that Trump had actually received the $10 million.

So, as to your question about whether or not it’s being actively investigated at the moment, one important fact is this: the statute of limitations for illegal campaign contributions almost certainly expired back in 2022, meaning that criminal charges can’t really be brought at this point. So, the short answer to your question is no, at this moment we don’t believe DOJ is actively investigating this. Although there were efforts along the way and there are suggestions from the Washington Post article that Bill Barr and others maybe didn’t like the investigation, didn’t like the case. There are a lot of twists and turns in this story that are worth delving into in greater detail, though I don’t have time to here. But if you’re curious to know more about the investigation and how the story was uncovered, my CAFE Insider co-host Joyce Vance and I interviewed Carol Leonnig, one of the Washington Post reporters who broke the story on CAFE Insider last week, so check it out.

This question comes in a tweet from Emily who writes impatiently, “What’s holding up the 11th Circuit appeal of the documents case?” That’s another great question. Of course, Emily is referring to Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida. If you’ll recall, back in July, the judge in that case, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed it in its entirety on the grounds that Jack Smith’s appointment of special counsel was unconstitutional. Then as you might expect, Jack Smith appealed the dismissal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Since then, the 11th Circuit has filed a scheduling order which lays out the deadlines for each side to submit their briefs in support of their positions. Jack Smith and his team have to file their brief by August 27th, then the Trump team will have 30 days to file their brief, and Jack Smith will have three weeks after that to file a reply brief.

It’s not super, super fast, but it’s not out of the ordinary slow either. Anyway, by the end of that briefing schedule, we’ll be in mid-October. If all goes as planned from there, the appeals court would likely hear oral arguments, but as of this moment, we don’t know when those will be held. So, these things take time, briefing takes time, arguments take time, and then the decision ultimately takes time as well. So the bottom line is there’s not any holdup per se. A lot of it is a matter of ordinary scheduling. And unfortunately, litigation doesn’t always progress as quickly as we’d like. I know that from lots of professional and personal experience. Now, some people have noted that Jack Smith could have but didn’t request an expedited schedule in front of the Circuit Court.

But as Joyce Vance and I also discussed a few weeks ago on the CAFE Insider podcast, it’s possible that Jack Smith believes he’ll get a better ruling if the case is decided after the election. The trial, in any event, would not possibly be able to be conducted before the election, whether it was an expedited schedule or not, so probably he decided, “Let’s leave well enough alone.” We’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll be right back with my conversation with Karim Sadjadpour.

THE INTERVIEW

As the war in Gaza nears the one-year mark, global leaders are now fearing the spread of conflict throughout the Middle East. Karim Sadjadpour is an expert on Iran and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Karim Sadjadpour, welcome back to the show.

Karim Sadjadpour:

Thank you so much, Preet. It’s great to be with you.

Preet Bharara:

So, it’s wonderful to have you. There’s so many things going on with respect to Iran. We are, I should note for the audience, recording this in the 10 AM hour on Wednesday, August 14th, and the whole world has been on alert for a potential attack by Iran on Israel. And I want to talk about all of that. It hasn’t happened yet. It’ll happen potentially after we stop recording. So we should keep in mind that these are fluid events, these are fluid circumstances, and things can change at any moment. But before we get to a potential attack, I want to talk to you about why we’re expecting one. There was recently a targeted assassination of a leader of Hamas by Israel, and that assassination took place on Iranian soil. Can you tell us who that was and why that was important?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Yes, Preet. So, Israel carried out an assassination against Ismail Haniyeh was one of Hamas’s top political leaders, someone who was actively involved in negotiations over a ceasefire. And Haniyeh is based in Doha and Qatar, but traveled frequently to Iran. And he was visiting Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new President, Masoud Pezeshkian. And this assassination was obviously deeply embarrassing for the Iranian regime. And it wasn’t the first of its kind. Israel has taken out senior Iranian nuclear scientists over the last decade, and it’s shown an ability to strike on Iranian soil almost at will.

And so it obviously puts Iran in a very difficult position right now because if they don’t react, if they don’t show any reaction, then there’s really no cost for Israel to continue to carry out these types of operations inside Iran. And it’s also deeply embarrassing for the Iranian regime in the eyes of its regional proxies if they don’t react. And finally, like any authoritarian regime, the Iranian government, the Islamic Republic of Iran wants to be feared by its own people. And the fact, as I said, that Israel can carry out these assassinations almost at will inside Iran is deeply embarrassing for them vis-a-vis their own population.

Preet Bharara:

Can we talk about the method of assassination? And if you’re just paying scant attention to the news, you assume that it was an assassin’s bullet or a grenade or something, at the time. As I understand it, the killing took place by virtue of a bomb that the Israelis placed in a guest house approximately two months before its detonation. I have a number of questions about that. Were the Israelis just being opportunistic in killing Haniyeh, or were they striving to embarrass Iran by doing it in this manner and in that place?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Well, I don’t think it was an either or. Obviously, they were being opportunistic, and they wanted to deeply embarrass the Iranian Government. There’s actually a dispute about how this assassination took place. The leading view is in fact what you recounted, that Mossad operatives likely with the help of Iranian collaborators inside the Iranian Government, inside the Revolutionary Guards were able to place this bomb inside the Revolutionary Guard guesthouse where Ismail Haniyeh was staying. And it was a very targeted operation in that only Haniyeh, and I believe one of his bodyguards was killed. It didn’t destroy the whole building.

Now, the Iranian government has come out and said that that isn’t what happened, that there was an Israeli projectile, which actually hit the guesthouse, but they may be saying that to cover up their embarrassment over the fact that such an operation took place. But again, this not only shows how effective Israel has been in striking inside Iran, but it shows that within the Iranian Government, there’s a lot of people who are now suspects, people who are thought to have collaborated or shared intelligence or even actively collaborated with Israel in this plot. And so that’s deeply worrisome if you’re the Iranian regime.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, how certain are experts that this could only have been pulled off with collaboration from people inside Iran? It seems like it would be almost impossible.

Karim Sadjadpour:

There’s now a history of these types of Israeli operations inside Iran. The most notable one came in late in 2020, the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, a guy called Fakhrizadeh. And that was like something out of a movie. They had placed machine guns in an abandoned pickup truck on the side of a country road. And when this nuclear scientist was driving by, he had a house in the country with his wife, they detonated these machine guns via remote control, and they went off and they just killed Fakhrizadeh, the nuclear scientist, and not his wife. And so it may be weeks or months before the full story comes out, but what we generally have seen from Israel is that they use pretty high tech methods, creative methods to carry out these assassinations. And there’s no way these assassinations could take place without collaboration from Iranians. Whether these are Iranian officials, part of the regime, or they are citizens, dissidents, it’s not totally clear, but again, this is a regime which is deeply unpopular, including within government ranks.

Preet Bharara:

So, simultaneously with the assassination of Haniyeh, Israel also assassinated a top commander for Hezbollah. Again, to the extent you can speculate or conclude something, was that coincidence or were the Israelis trying to emulate the final scene of The Godfather?

Karim Sadjadpour:

When you read about these operations afterwards, you realize that they take a lot of advanced planning, sometimes many months. And oftentimes you plan for months and you only have a three, four-minute window, if that, to carry out an operation, so I’m skeptical that they choreographed these operations to happen so closely with one another. I suspect it was more the opportunities just coincidentally arose at a similar time.

Preet Bharara:

I’m trying to understand the timing here. So the Hamas leader was killed two weeks ago, more than two weeks ago or around two weeks ago?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Iran, I guess, would never have had the element of surprise here because of the expectation of retaliation. What would be the reason why you would wait this long? Is it because it’s just difficult to put an operation together, and they’re vacillating over whether or not to engage in retaliation at all? Is it because they’re generally incompetent or all of those things?

Karim Sadjadpour:

I think it is a combination of all of those things. If you put yourself in the shoes of the Iranian Supreme Leader, 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he’s one of the longest serving dictators in the world. He’s been Supreme Leader since 1989, and you don’t rule for four decades if a reckless gambler. And so I think for him, the parameters of an Iranian retaliation need to be face-saving, but not life-threatening for the regime. What that means is that, as I said, you can’t do nothing because that makes you look weak in the eyes of your own population, it makes you look weak in the eyes of your regional proxies, and you don’t inflict any costs on Israel, and so they will continue to carry out such operations.

So, doing nothing is not really an option, but nor is massive retaliation an option if you’re Iran because if you launch a massive attack on Israel, Israel is much more powerful than Iran in terms of its conventional military. And obviously Israel has the backing of the United States. And so if Iran launches a mass of attack against Israel, that could trigger a retaliation, which could threaten the life of the regime. So they need to do something in between. And they tried that last April when-

Preet Bharara:

Right, that wasn’t very successful.

Karim Sadjadpour:

It wasn’t successful. They launched these almost 300 missiles on Israel. None of them really hit their mark. And they don’t want to repeat that same kind of operation. And so historically, what Iran tends to do is first they… As the old mafia saying goes, revenge is a dish best served cold. They tend to like to act when the world has moved on, and people are not on high alert as they are right now. And then second, they like to try to also carry out targeted assassinations, targeted killings, but they’ve tried that enough that Israeli diplomats all over the world right now. Whether you’re an Israeli diplomat or Israeli official living in Brazil or Thailand or wherever, I’m sure all of them are on very high alert right now. And so I think Iran is in a bind because it can’t do nothing, it can’t do too much, and it’s up against a much more sophisticated adversary in Israel.

Preet Bharara:

Is one option a cyber attack or do they not have the capability for that? Because they’ve tried that sort of thing with the United States before as well.

Karim Sadjadpour:

Definitely. We’ve read that one option that they are contemplating is a cyber attack, and I suspect that it wouldn’t only be limited to a cyber attack. That’s in addition to the kinetic operations they’d like to carry out. But again, Israel is a first tier cyber power, Israel Russia, China, the United States. Iran is I would say a second or third tier cyber power, so even then Israel is on quite high alert at the moment.

Preet Bharara:

What was the U.S. reaction to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh?

Karim Sadjadpour:

The United States quickly made it clear to Iran that they didn’t have a role in this assassination, and Israel carried it out without U.S. knowledge. I think the goal of the Biden administration, certainly between now and November, is to avoid conflict with Iran and avoid a major war in the Middle East. And since the assassination, they’ve continued to try to de-escalate and de-conflict with Iran. But one of the things they’ve also done in conjunction with that is send several U.S. aircraft carriers to the Eastern Mediterranean, to the Middle East, to send fighter planes to make it clear to Iran that if they choose to retaliate either against Israel or against U.S. forces in the Middle East, the cost to Iran could be extremely high.

Preet Bharara:

It seems that what the U.S. wants and a lot of countries want and much of the world wants is a ceasefire. When Biden was asked a couple of weeks ago about how the assassination might’ve affected the ceasefire talks, Biden said it had not helped. What’s your projection about the effect on the ceasefire talks in the last couple of weeks and going forward?

Karim Sadjadpour:

I am not sure if the assassination of Haniyeh is ultimately that impactful on the ceasefire talks. And the reason why I say that is that Ismail Haniyeh was really more of a message carrier for Hamas than a decision maker. The real decision maker and the center of gravity in Hamas is not in Doha where Haniyeh was living. It’s in Gaza, in the tunnels of Gaza, where Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of October 7th, is currently living. And up until now, Sinwar has really rejected ceasefire attempts, even though tens of thousands of his own people have been killed. I think he has seen the last eight months as a positive thing, and that the world’s attention has shifted towards the Palestinian cause and the Israeli killing of Palestinian civilians. And I don’t think he right now is interested in a ceasefire. By all accounts, it appears that he’s prepared to be killed for this cause. And so ultimately, President Biden’s words, I think, as you said, it didn’t help the killing of Haniyeh, but I’m also skeptical that we were on the of peace and ceasefire and suddenly Haniyeh’s killing sabotaged that.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think the fact of nearing American elections has any effect on the Israelis or on Hamas or on Iran, or is it sort of not relevant?

Karim Sadjadpour:

It’s clear that the Iranian Government does not want Donald Trump to come back to power. And so the extent to which more conflict in the region and the spiking of oil prices would hurt the chances of the Democrats and Vice President Harris from being elected, that’s not an Iranian interest. I think for the Netanyahu government for Prime Minister Netanyahu, he probably also sees a Republican return to power, Trump return to power as more in his interests. But I think that there certainly is a sense, both in Tehran and in Israel, that this is not a U.S. administration which wants conflict, which is interested in sending troops to fight in the Middle East. And so when there is that sense from local actors and countries in the Middle East that there’s the somewhat of a power vacuum, oftentimes they can afford to be a little more assertive.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Karim Sadjadpour after this. I want to go back to Hezbollah for a moment. What do you think that means for the current situation with respect to Israel’s border with Lebanon? Is there a greater threat of wider violent conflict breaking out there or not?

Karim Sadjadpour:

I think the greatest risk of full-blown conflict in the Middle East is indeed in the event that there’s a conflict between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah. The challenge we have at the moment is that there are tens of thousands of Israeli citizens, I’ve read as much as 100,000 Israeli citizens, who are currently displaced from their homes in Northern Israel because of Hezbollah rocket and missile attacks. And this has been the case since October, that these Israelis have not been able to go back to their homes. And school is soon approaching, and for a long time, the Israeli Government has been saying that, “We need these people back to their homes. The children need to get back to school.”

And so they’ve sought to push back Hezbollah and to deter Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel, but those attacks have continued. And so the concern is that Iran’s retaliation against Israel will involve Lebanese Hezbollah launching some of its as many as 200,000… They have a stockpile of an estimated 200,000 rockets just tens of miles away from Israel. Obviously, they’re not going to unleash all of that, but that they will launch this retaliatory attack against Israel in conjunction with Hezbollah. Then Israel retaliates in Lebanon, and seeks to push back Hezbollah. And then Iran enters the conflict rather than simply letting their most important proxy get pummeled by Israel. So that is, at the moment, the greatest fear people have about full-blown conflict breaking out in the Middle East. It would be on the Israel-Lebanon border.

Preet Bharara:

Well, you just painted a very terrible picture. What’s your sense of how careful Israel and Netanyahu are being about not getting into a triggering situation like you just described?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Well, one of the challenges that Netanyahu has are internal divisions within Israel. His own defense minister has been at odds with his strategy in Gaza. Obviously, it’s a country, Israel, which has been deeply traumatized since October 7th, but they’re also nearing one year of conflict. And as much as there was support for taking out Hamas, I suspect there’s less popular support in Israel for opening up another war front, so that’s one limitation. And then obviously, going back to Iran, as I said, I’m always reminded of the quote from Hannah Arendt that, “Every revolutionary becomes a conservative the day after the revolution, when suddenly they have something to lose.” And likewise, Hezbollah is not ISIS, it’s not Al-Qaeda. It has a lot to lose. If it unleashed all of its rockets at Israel, they know that Israel has the power to destroy all of Lebanon. It won’t be pretty. It’ll be Gaza on a larger scale.

And so for that reason, I think that no one is really interested in a full-blown conflict. And one of the interesting developments over the last couple weeks has been that Vladimir Putin in Russia, one of Iran’s critical strategic partners, also sent a signal, sent a message to Iran to exercise restraint. And one of the concerns that Putin reportedly has is the well-being of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens of Russian origin, Russian citizens who reside in Israel wanting to avoid a conflict that can endanger them. And Putin is fighting his own full-blown war with Ukraine, and he’s relying on Iranian weaponry to fight that war. So he’s worried about Iran getting involved in a full-blown war, in which case they would have to use their own weapons rather than send them to Russia. And so I think there’s a lot of different reasons why people are trying to put the brakes on a full-blown conflict. And you’re absolutely right, it’s a very scary proposition, but I don’t think it’s a high likelihood that we spiral into full-blown conflict.

Preet Bharara:

Just I’m picking up on something you mentioned a second ago. How bad a hole do you have to be in? How bad a position do you have to be in as a global nuclear power that you’re relying on the weaponry of Iran?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Absolutely. Vladimir Putin is deeply isolated. Yet at the same time, I think there was an expectation that he would be even more isolated than he is now. Preet, I think for the United States, it’s difficult to have a strategy to fully isolate either Russia or Iran without some cooperation from China, because China is importing almost 90% of Iranian oil exports. Obviously oil exports is the top revenue generator for both Russia and Iran. And China is just hoovering up cheap Russian and Iranian energy. And so this raises a broader question, which I think is very important for U.S. foreign policy strategists to think about, in that we are in some ways simultaneously fighting four different Cold Wars with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. If you like acronyms, the acronym for those four countries is CRINK. And the question is: is there a viable strategy in which we could instead of further uniting these countries against us, is there a strategy that could potentially create divisions between them?

Because China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are very different regimes. Iran is a theocracy. Vladimir Putin has probably killed more Muslims than most world leaders. And China’s obviously persecuted their own Muslim minority. And so these are not countries like the United States and Britain that have common values and common interests. I would say they actually have divergent values and oftentimes competitive interests. But right now, they all share this overarching goal of wanting to defeat the US-led world order. And so the question is: is there a viable strategy for the United States? Instead of trying to fight them all simultaneously, and as I said, bringing them more together, can we try to create divisions between them?

Preet Bharara:

Have you come to a view at this point in history, given how the United States and other countries in the West have tried to deal either diplomatically or in some other way short of military action with adversaries, have you come to a view of whether sanctions are generally useless or something better than useless? And I asked it in a leading way on purpose.

Karim Sadjadpour:

Yeah, yeah. So I’ll tell you the challenge. When you look at the case studies of sanctions, the one successful example that people cite is South Africa, the sanctions against Apartheid South Africa, which help to empower Nelson Mandela and bring down the Apartheid regime. There are plenty more examples in which sanctions have essentially isolated bad regimes which thrive in isolation. The best example of that is the Castro government in Cuba. In the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran sanctions in some ways have been helpful to these revolutionary ideologues in Iran who want to be isolated. They don’t want to be integrated with the outside world. But at the same time, Iran is a country which has enormous impact over numerous U.S. national security challenges, whether that’s supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine, cyber security, energy security, all of the challenges we have with Iran and the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen.

And the counter-argument to what I just said is that sanctions against Iran essentially constrain Iran’s financial ability to support these various endeavors. The challenge at the moment is that, given how we’re trying to take Russian oil off the market, we really haven’t been enforcing sanctions against Iran to take Iranian oil off the market because that would spike the price of oil for the American consumer. And so even though Iran is a country which is heavily sanctioned, those sanctions aren’t really being enforced at the moment. And so Iran really doesn’t feel major economic or existential angst to compromise on its external conduct. So that’s a long answer to say that when you’re dealing with adversaries like Iran and Russia, you’re usually dealing with less bad options. If you don’t want to go to war, which obviously the American public doesn’t want to do, sanctions become the fallback strategy if you want to censure a country, but their record has been mixed at best.

Preet Bharara:

It sounds like, a phrase that you mentioned earlier in our conversation, that sanctions are arguably a face-saving, but not life-threatening methodology, right?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Yeah. I’ll share with you one of the most memorable foreign policy conversations I had. It was many years ago at the home of the late British writer, Christopher Hitchens. One of the guests at his home, a small dinner that evening, was the actor Sean Penn. And Sean Penn asked me why the United States and Iran just don’t normalize relations. And I said, “Well, that’s not a unilateral decision that the United States can make. You can’t unilaterally decide to make friends with a regime whose entire identity is premised on hostility towards the United States. And the Islamic Republic of Iran needs us as an adversary for their own internal legitimacy.”

And he said something quite interesting. He had just come from Havana. He was close to Fidel Castro, the late Cuban dictator, and he said, “Fidel always jokes that if America removed the embargo against Cuba, he would do something provocative the next day to get it reinstated because he understands that his power is best preserved in a bubble in isolation. And if you crack open Cuba to the forces of international capitalism and civil society, it’s much more difficult for him to retain his hold on power.” And so as I said, the challenge here is that sanctions are a double-edged sword because you financially constrain your adversaries, no doubt about that, but in a way, it can also serve to empower these regimes which actually benefit from isolation.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, it occurs to me that part of the American strategy, the Western strategy has been, I think, to find ways to get populations in other countries to feel the democratic spirit and want to have freedom and autonomy, and get out from under a theocracy or under an autocracy or out from under a monarchy. And that seems all well and good, and we believe in the American way of life, in our constitutional republic, but the imposition of sanctions doesn’t it almost always unify the population of a country, not against their leadership, which provoked the sanctions, but against the country that imposed the sanctions? Is that fair?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Well, I don’t actually think that has been the case in Iran. I think the effect that the economic sanctions have had in Iran is they tend to accentuate people’s existing political disposition. Meaning if you’re a supporter of the government, you say that, “Sanctions are just another example of the evils of American imperialism and arrogance.” And if you’re a critic of the Iranian government, you say, “Sanctions are just another example of how the regime does whatever it wants, and we the people of Iran pay the cost for it. They’re never concerned about our well-being.” So I think it doesn’t get people to really change teams. But we know from political science literature that popular uprisings don’t tend to happen when people feel most destitute. They tend to happen when people feel their lives are improving and then their expectations are rising, but those expectations are then unfulfilled.

It’s what political scientists call the J Curve Theory or Revolution of Rising Expectations. So one of the things I tell my friends on the right side of the spectrum is that even in the event that there is, for example, a nuclear deal with Iran, which reduces the sanctions against the Government of Iran, they fear that that will financially empower the regime, but I actually say that in my view, improved economic circumstances for the people of Iran, I don’t think that empowers the regime. You could argue that also could empower Iranian civil society. And when people are living day-to-day, in some ways history has proven that they’re less likely to rise up against an autocratic regime.

Preet Bharara:

On that note, I want to sound another note of optimism looking at history. You wrote a piece very recently in the New York Times in which you say Iran and Israel are not natural adversaries. Explain what you meant by that.

Karim Sadjadpour:

Well, I really believe that this is sometimes difficult for people to understand, but I think we have an Iran regime that was born out of the 1979 Revolution, which doesn’t really represent the national interests of Iran or the aspirations of the Iranian people. What I mean by national interests is that which advances the wellbeing and security of the Iranian people. And since 1979, the foreign policy pillars of the Islamic Republic have been death to America and death to Israel, but historically, Persians and Jews have been friends. They have not been adversaries. If you read the Old Testament, Cyrus the Great, the ancient Persian king is revered for freeing the Jews from Babylonian captivity and allowing them to rebuild their temple and to worship freely. To this day, Iran has arguably the longest continuously inhabited Jewish community in the world. Now, that community has dwindled significantly as a result of the Islamic Republic, but it’s a community which has been in Iran for 2,500 years.

And so I think the day when you have a government in Iran, it doesn’t have to be a Democratic government, but a government whose organizing principle is the national interests of Iran rather than the revolutionary ideology of 1979, I think that you will likely see not only the Iranian government normalize relations with the United States, but also end this hostility toward Israel. Because ultimately there are 22 Arab countries, and those Arab countries have citizens that feel much more passionately about the Palestinian cause than Iranians, who are not Arabs, who don’t share direct borders with Israel feel. I think many Iranians feel that they’ve sacrificed their own interests to fight Israel.

And the Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the very few, if only governments in the world whose national slogan is not the advancement of its own people, but the destruction of another people. This is not a regime which has ever said, “Long live Iran.” They say, “Death to Israel.” And I think that people inside Iran, as I’ve said too before, Preet, they’re hungry to be South Korea, not North Korea. They want to live up to the enormous potential Iranians have as a nation. And I think most people recognize that in order to do that, you need to go beyond the death to America, death to Israel ideology of 1979.

Preet Bharara:

Is it possible to know what percentage of the people of Iran as opposed to the regime buy into the death to Israel rallying cry?

Karim Sadjadpour:

Credible opinion polls are always challenging in dictatorships, but the ones that I’ve seen, they’re oftentimes conducted from outfits in Europe, it usually shows that the regime’s base of support is no more than 20%, 15% to 20%. And that’s what Iranian hardliners to the extent you can trust popular votes in Iran when they have presidential parliamentary elections, usually the hardline candidates don’t get more than 20% or so of the electorate. And so that probably sounds right to me that about a fifth of the population, maybe a little less, supports the status quo. But the reality is that they’re the only ones at the moment who have guns. They’re highly armed, they’re organized, and they’re willing to kill and die for their ideals.

And oftentimes, people ask me, “Well, if this government only has 20% support, why don’t people just get rid of them?” And anyone who’s lived under a dictatorship knows that it’s very intimidating when you go out in the streets and you see tens of thousands of men carrying machine guns and you’re unarmed. But I think at the same time, anyone who’s studied history sees that most regimes which once appeared omniscient and all-powerful eventually go the way of the Soviet Union. And I expect that to be the case with the Islamic Republic of Iran as well, but obviously the timing of that is totally unpredictable.

Preet Bharara:

So it sounds like the Iranian people will be better off, the Israeli people will be better off, the U.S. would be better off, the world would be better off with regime change in Iran. When is it appropriate and right for the stated policy of the U.S. to be regime change in another country?

Karim Sadjadpour:

I think the last two decades of the U.S. experience in the Middle East, post 9/11, having spent well over $1 trillion in both Iraq and Afghanistan with very little return on investment, has understandably shaken the confidence of U.S. policymakers that we can shape our preferred outcomes in the Middle East. And so my view is that it doesn’t need to be… My view is that the U.S. needs to have an Iran strategy, which has three pillars to it. One has to counter and contain the nuclear ambitions. The second has to counter and contain the regional ambitions. Iran is now dominating five Arab Lands, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and the Palestinian Territories in Gaza. But the third pillar of that strategy, which is very similar to U.S. strategy toward the Soviet Union, is to advance the cause of political change inside Iran. So, I don’t think that regime change can be the entire strategy, but I do think that championing the cause of political change needs to be one pillar of a broader strategy toward Iran.

Preet Bharara:

By the way, if I had been asked the trivia question, “Which was the second Muslim nation after Turkey to recognize Israel after its founding in 1948?” I would not have guessed Iran. And you point that out in your article, so that’s another example of how things used to be different.

Karim Sadjadpour:

That’s right. What’s interesting is I have a lot of friends who are Iranian Jews, Persian Jews, who have enormous pride in their Persian heritage. When you go to conferences, there’s one conference in particular I’ve been attending over the years, it’s one of the rare conferences in which we have both Israelis and Iranians attending, and you see that there’s no inherent animosity towards Iranians and Israelis, and in fact, there’s a lot of commonality there. So, I do think we will look back many years from now and say, “This was an historic aberration that Iran and Russia, two countries of which have been historic rivals, are currently aligned with one another, and Iran in America are adversaries.” And likewise, I think it’s an historic aberration that you have a government in Iran whose entire identity is premised on death to Israel. That’s not, in my view, consistent with Iran’s history nor its national interests.

Preet Bharara:

Do you see any parallel between that dynamic in the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War? I grew up as an immigrant in New Jersey in the United States in the seventies, and you were kind of trained, in a way, to despise the Soviet Union and worry that the Soviet Union could destroy us, but I don’t remember having any particular bad feelings about the people in Russia. Is there any fair comparison there?

Karim Sadjadpour:

I think that the Soviet Union is probably the best analogy to understand both the Islamic Republic of Iran and kind of a template for U.S. strategy toward Iran. Obviously, the Islamic Republic is not a superpower like the Soviet Union. Soviet Union had hundreds of nuclear weapons, thousands of them. Iran doesn’t even have one. But in terms of the nature of this regime, a regime which is committed to its ideology, but also committed to staying in power, one of the important lessons that Ayatollah Khamenei learned was actually from Mikhail Gorbachev. And like Vladimir Putin, Khamenei believes that Gorbachev’s attempts to reform the Soviet Union actually accelerated its demise, and so for that reason, he keeps doubling down on revolutionary ideology.

But yes, there’s… Let me maybe phrase it more succinctly, that by the last decade or two of the Soviet Union, very few people inside Russia believed in the ideology. In fact, there was probably far more people outside Russia, including on Western college campuses that had an affinity for Soviet Union than those who actually had to live under the Soviet Union. And I think that’s very much true with the Islamic Republic of Iran as well. Very few people inside Iran still believe in the ideology. Even those who are part of the government, I think few believe in the ideology. You have more true believers among Iran’s proxies and the kind of Islamist community at large who romanticize Iran’s anti-imperialism, but that’s much easier to do when you don’t have to live under it.

And I do think ultimately the fate of the Islamic Republic will be similar to that of the Soviet Union in that it’s a system that is built on rotten foundations, and it’s not really capable of transforming itself the way that China did from a communist government into an economic juggernaut. I think the Islamic Republic when and if they try to reform, and that’s certainly not going to happen as long as 85-year-old Ayatollah Khomeini is the Supreme leader, but even if they attempt to try to reform and put the national interest before revolutionary ideology, I think it’s a system built on such rotten foundations that it’s only likely to accelerate its demise rather than prolong its shelf life.

Preet Bharara:

Can I ask you one final question? Which I think is a central question, and that is: what do you think will ultimately be the consequence or consequences of the way in which Netanyahu has prosecuted the war against Hamas?

Karim Sadjadpour:

I was recently at a conference with the current King of Jordan, King Abdullah of Jordan, and one of the concerns he raised, which is a valid one, is that we may look back years from now and say that this war in Gaza proved to be a boon for recruitment for radical actors, whether that’s groups like Al-Qaeda or ISIS, or the groups that become like Al-Qaeda or ISIS five, 10 years from now. We know from history, for example, that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, that proved to be a huge boon for radical groups, and that’s where Al-Qaeda was essentially created and the Taliban was created. And that is something we all have to be concerned about, that on one hand, you can understand the enormous trauma that the Israeli public felt after the horrific attacks of October 7th, and there was probably national unanimity to want to avenge those attacks and defend themselves, but that is a valid concern that we could look back and say that this war in Gaza has spawned the next generation of Islamist radicals.

Preet Bharara:

Karim Sadjadpour, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Karim Sadjadpour:

It’s my great pleasure. Thank you so much, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Karim Sadjadpour continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. In the bonus for insiders, we discuss Iran’s motives for targeting U.S. politics, from hacking campaigns to assassinating Donald Trump.

Karim Sadjadpour:

One of the things that Iran has learned is to partner with criminal gangs to kind of outsource these operations to others, so they can claim plausible deniability.

Preet Bharara:

To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to CAFE.com/insider. Again, that’s CAFE.com/insider. Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Karim Sadjadpour.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Threads, or you can call and leave me a message at 6669-247-7338. That’s 6669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.