Tehran Is Setting a Trap for Trump |
One of the most striking elements of the ongoing war in the Middle East is how a severely damaged and depleted Iranian military has still managed to hold the world economy hostage. In doing so, Tehran’s new leadership is exerting pressure on the United States to either escalate or change course. But as the costs keep mounting for Iran, how long can it continue down that path? Who are its current leaders, and how are they thinking about an endgame in the current conflict?
On the latest episode of FP Live, I put those questions to Ali Vaez, the director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group and an analyst with extensive contacts with Iranian lawmakers. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and lightly edited transcript.
One of the most striking elements of the ongoing war in the Middle East is how a severely damaged and depleted Iranian military has still managed to hold the world economy hostage. In doing so, Tehran’s new leadership is exerting pressure on the United States to either escalate or change course. But as the costs keep mounting for Iran, how long can it continue down that path? Who are its current leaders, and how are they thinking about an endgame in the current conflict?
On the latest episode of FP Live, I put those questions to Ali Vaez, the director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group and an analyst with extensive contacts with Iranian lawmakers. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and lightly edited transcript.
Ravi Agrawal: So, who’s really running Iran right now?
Ali Vaez: It’s still the Islamic Republic—with new faces. Instead of an 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, you have a 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei [his son], and other power centers who were in charge. The president is still the same. The speaker of the parliament is still the same. There are, however, new officials replacing those who have been assassinated.
One of the misperceptions about Iran—because it is framed as a terrorist state in places like Washington—is that if you decapitate the top, the rest of the organization will fall apart. But the Islamic Republic, in the true sense of the word, is a system. It’s a network, a political structure with multiple power centers. And therefore, if you remove one individual, the rest of the system can fill the gap.
Currently, the most powerful figure within the system is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliamentary speaker, who was a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ air force. But U.S. President Donald Trump, who’s seeking the Iranian equivalent of Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez, doesn’t fully appreciate that Ghalibaf could never play a Rodríguez role because other power centers would check him. And if he goes too far in compromising with the United States, he would undermine his own position.
Another important figure now is the new national security advisor, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who was formerly number two in the Revolutionary Guard. He replaced Ali Larijani, a relative pragmatist within the Islamic Republic structure. Zolghadr is so radical that when he was appointed as deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards in the late 1990s, the infamous Gen. Qassem Soleimani resigned because he said he couldn’t work with him. And Ayatollah Ali Khamenei brought him back and appointed him as the head of the expeditionary force of the Revolutionary Guards, the Quds Force, so that he would still remain in service. That’s the cast of characters that we have.
RA: So, the system endures, the regime endures. But not only that, we have a more hard-line group of leaders who are more aligned with the military and are likely to be more vengeful.
AV: Not only are they more hard-line and radicalized, they are less risk-averse than the previous leadership. One of the most important criticisms against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was that he was too cautious. He was hedging all the time. He spent........