Arash Azizi

The other vision is fail the state, civil war, ruin the economy.

I mean, these are two extremes, and often it could be something in the middle.

So Iranians really need some bold reasoning, and they shouldn't only think about, oh, well, Trump didn't give us all we want or not.

The stakes are really high.

And if you know something about Iranian history, the stakes have often been high when Iran has been facing the First World War and the Second World War, through which Iran was invaded, and then other sort of grand moment, the Cold War.

And Iranian leaders often have then risen up to the occasion to try to safeguard Iran's sovereignty.

And that's really what we need right now.

And unfortunately, I'm not sure that the level of leadership in Tehran is up to the task.

Why?

I mean, besides the obvious, but expand on that.

There are two answers.

For so long under Ayatollah Khamenei, who was Iran's leader from 1989 until he was killed earlier this year, you know, he read Iran to this ideological Islamist vision.

You know, Khamenei, I always tell my students, the best way to think about him is not like Islamist fundamentalist.

It's like hippies in the 60s.

You know, he was this revolutionary ideologue who...

came out with his very austere vision and he held power and he held on to it.

And he was also, he was a worse mix of things, revolutionary, rigid, but very tactically cautious and almost cowardly.

So he wouldn't make big decisions.

He held on for this grand vision that would never come true.

So he really brought it onto the bad place.