Chapter 1: What are the implications of Khamenei's death for Iran?
Over the weekend, President Trump announced that U.S. strikes on Iran killed the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This wretched and vile man had the blood of hundreds and even thousands of Americans on his hands and was responsible for the slaughter of... countless thousands of innocent people all across many countries.
There are reasons why previous American presidents haven't gone after Khamenei, even though he was always a brutal dictator and an infamous sponsor of terrorism all over the world. They feared that an attack on Iran would prompt a broader Middle East war. They feared that the theocrats and military hardliners in the country would not give up power so easily. All these fears are still very valid.
And yet, here we are, with Khamenei dead and no real plan for a democratic transition. Combat operations continue at this time in full force, and they will continue until all of our objectives are achieved. We have very strong objectives. I'm Hannah Rosen. This is Radio Atlantic. What President Trump wants out of Iran has always been vague. Maybe regime change, maybe a nuclear deal.
The strikes on Saturday gave him a clear victory in the killing of Khamenei, but the conflict has already escalated outside Iran, and Trump's endgame has remained vague. Since the strikes, he's brought up Venezuela as a model, where the U.S. removed the leader, but the regime itself stayed in place.
That might seem like the simple solution, but the factions inside Iran are already fighting for power. Trump keeps repeating that the people of Iran should rise up and take power. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.
There is, however, no obvious opposition leader. So what are the real possibilities for Iran's future and the U.S. 's role in shaping it? Today, we're talking to Iranian writer and Atlantic contributor Arash Azizi and to staff writer Anne Applebaum, who covers democracy around the world. Arash, welcome to the show. Great to be with you. Anne, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
Arash, we spoke last summer after the U.S. had bombed Iran's nuclear facilities. And one thing you told me was that you knew people were thinking, well, wouldn't it be great if Israel or the U.S. came out and took care of this regime and we could move on to a better life. Do you remember that? I sure do. Yes, indeed. And I'm wondering how they're feeling now that it actually happened.
Well, many people were continuing to have the same hope that something like this could happen. And in the months after, actually, this hope was strengthened, people thought it was even more possible. When the idea of killing Khamenei had already become pretty mainstream, both in the regime's security thinking, but amongst a lot of its opponents.
So there was this exciting idea that this could happen, but now that it has happened, I think people are faced with the fact that, well, even if you kill Khamenei, you won't have the kind of change that you want necessarily overnight. And they're kind of facing, you know, with that reality. Which means what? So what are they thinking? What are the questions in their head?
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Chapter 2: How do Iranians perceive President Trump's actions?
On the other hand, there's what you said, the Democratic opposition, which doesn't really have a leader, isn't organized. So what's in the middle? There must be pragmatic options. There are some names that have come up. Can you just put some concreteness to what are the actual choices here, like names, people? or what they believe. For sure, definitely. I would say this.
First of all, it's interesting that, you know, Anne Broadday compares them to the Soviet Union. The Islamic Republic itself has really looked into the Soviet Union. It makes sure it doesn't want to have a garbage chef because it sort of knows it led to the collapse of that system. So over the years, it has looked at the Soviet Union and China.
And why I would say there is not really a garbage chef figure, there are Deng Xiaoping's, if you will, to use the Chinese example. There are figures, the most important of whom is Hassan Rouhani, the former president of you know, who really have given up on the sort of theocratic vision and who are more technocratic.
You know, they're not Democrats by any means, but they're sort of thinking, you know, Deng Xiaoping's famous saying was, it doesn't matter if a cat is white or black, what matters is if it can catch a mouse. Which he basically meant, you know, what matters is efficacy, if you're able to have economic development.
So if you give long speeches about Islam, but your entire country is crumbling, that's no good. People like Rouhani, who was a president for eight years, really believe in that sort of vision. Now, it just so happens that in the current constellation of power in Iran, as we speak,
Rouhani is totally out of the picture, but his ally, Ali Larijani, his national security advisor, the speaker of the parliament who is part of the National Security Council, Bogor Ghalibov, has somewhat of a similar outlook. So I do believe this sort of cast of current characters, some amongst them are in this way technocratic. As a result, they're also west-facing.
They're very critical of ties with Russia and China. But they're also content with the fact that the Revolutionary Guards, this militia that controls much of the Iranian economy, is now led by a new hardline figure, Ahmad Vahidi. You know, they're also part of this system. So the question of how the relationship between them will work... is what determines the next page, I guess.
So what you're saying is that there's a sort of pragmatic-ish political leadership and then a slightly more hardline military leadership, and that's where the tension is? That's exactly right.
But what also matters is that even for the pragmatic ones, I mean, they're sort of, they inherit these terrible policies of Khamenei after 36 years and the situation the country finds itself in, this war with, you know, U.S. and Israel. The question is, How can they manage this war? You know, what can they do about it? But I would say this.
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Chapter 3: What are the realistic options for Iran's future leadership?
really thought the United States will come, they'll kill Khamenei, and then there can be some sort of a transition. This was also never a feasible plan, but I think they're disappointed. And the war, as it goes on every day, will create more tragedies. There was a school that was hit in the city of Minab, apparently because it was near a military base.
dozens of schoolgirls were killed in this city and they've become sort of a symbol of civilian casualties here in Minab. More civilian casualties will pile up every day. If I was to predict, which is kind of a foolish act perhaps,
I would say that it's still quite likely for Trump to deal with the current leaders of the Islamic Republic at some point in the next few days and try to get some sort of a ceasefire in which he can declare a victory. But then even after that, the question is, then what do we do? And, you know, what would be the path forward? With all my heart, I want a democratic transition.
But unfortunately, I do see it as quite difficult. I am, you know, I'm someone who is active in the Iranian opposition all my life. And I don't see us having really got our act together in the way that is necessary. Still, by the way, it doesn't mean that we won't try, right? This is what we'll push for. This is what we'd like to see. And by we, I mean all Iranians who want democracy.
But can we at this stage muster enough resources? to win against the Revolutionary Guards, against these massive sort of financial and military elites in the regime. I don't see it. For years, I've looked with inspiration to examples like Lech Walesa in Poland, like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, South Korea, the democratic movement there. And unfortunately, in all those cases,
There are important prerequisites, the most important of which is serious organization. And unfortunately, we just lack it at the moment. So I don't see how that could happen. Usually in a successful transition, there is some kind of alternative elite that has already been working together in the underground or in the opposition circles.
who are able to take over and appoint a minister of the economy and a minister of culture and already have roots inside the society. And Iran has some of that. I mean, there have been over the years really important, as I said, figures and people and movements, but they have been so systematically undermined by the nature of the regime that it's been very hard for them to establish themselves.
So this new method and just go in there and extract the leader. Is this a new model of the U.S. exerting global influence? It's unusual, unprecedented. And if it is, what are the implications of that? Like we see a dictator, we extract the dictator. Well, first of all, which dictators do we extract? You know, we aren't extracting Putin. We aren't extracting Xi Jinping.
So it looks like we're looking for weaker dictators. So it's not clear to me that it's part of some overall policy to extract dictators. Secondly, the risk of this kind of policy is that is exactly the one we've been discussing, is that it doesn't seem to be part of a longer term strategy. So what do they want the world to look like in a year or 10 years? Where are the stable U.S.
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