Karim Sadjadpour

It gets a lot of attention on social media, but it doesn't really move the needle one way or the other, in my view, when it comes to the policy choices people are going to make.

So there is an essay I wrote in Foreign Affairs that came out last fall.

It's entitled The Autumn of the Ayatollahs, about scenarios for post-Khamenei Iran.

And it is my view that this is a regime on borrowed time.

Whether or not the United States chooses to take military action, this is a regime which

I think it's like the last years of the Soviet Union.

It'll eventually crumble under the weight of its own economic malaise and unpopularity.

One of the things I tell people, Scott, is that this is a regime which is a theocracy.

It rules from a moral pedestal, and it's elbow-deep in corruption and repression.

And that is especially insulting to people, because, you know, if you find out your rabbi or priest or imam is stealing from you, that's much more offensive than your local grocer stealing from you.

And so this is a population which is really outraged, and that's palpable.

And this status quo is not sustainable in Iran.

The question is—

What happens in the years to come?

And one of the statistics that has jumped out at me in my research is that from World War II to the present, only around one in five authoritarian transitions lead to democracy.

More than 80% of the time, it leads to another form of authoritarian regime.

So as I said, I would love to be able to say I see Iran transitioning to Norway or Denmark.

The statistical odds aren't great for that, but that doesn't mean that change inside Iran won't be an improvement for the Iranian people and for the United States, because ultimately this is a government which has been acting against its own national interests, in my view, the national interests of its people, meaning the economic prosperity and security of its people.

And so even if you see this regime replaced with a government,

whose ethos is not death to America and death to Israel, but long live Iran, that is a geopolitical game changer.