The Rest Is Politics
513. Inside Iran: The Country Trump Cannot Control? (Question Time)
19 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thanks for listening to The Rest Is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com. Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell.
And today we've done something rather unusual, which actually Alistair deserves credit for, which is that he said, rather than the two of us answering endless questions on Iran, we might actually get a genuinely deep Iran expert. So we've got my friend Karim Sajjadpour, who is himself obviously originally of Iranian descent, but has been the leading analyst at
the International Crisis Group, and then again, more recently, the Carnegie Endowment. He is somebody who understands Iran very well. But actually, perhaps even more, he understands the US debate on Iran very, very, very well. He is going to be with us as we answer your questions. And my goodness, we have had hundreds of your questions. We are absolutely delighted to have you with us, Karim.
Rory and I have quoted your work in Foreign Policy Magazine many, many times in recent days or weeks. Let's just kick off with where we are in terms of the theme of nationalism and Iranian public opinion more generally. Leo, why are the Iranian people so split in their opinion of this war? Mattia, why do we see so little or no sign of uprising?
Is this Iranian regime control of the rally around the flag effect? And Iris Seyram asks a similar question.
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Chapter 2: Why do the US and the West struggle to understand Iranian culture?
So let's start with that. It's great to be with both of you. And those are very important questions, which, to be honest, are not easy to answer because we don't have good polling inside Iran like under any circumstances. authoritarian regime and now an authoritarian regime in a state of war, a lot of what we get is anecdotal.
But what I would share is that, first of all, the questions from your listeners are absolutely right that Iran is one of the most nationalistic populations on earth. It's a population which feels proud of its very ancient history. And that nationalism can take you in multiple different directions, because you could say that Iran should be a great nation. In my view, it should be a G20 nation.
It has the human resources, the natural resources, the history to be one of the world's 20 wealthiest nations. But under the Islamic Republic, it's a pariah. And therefore, for Iran to fulfill its potential, you need to get rid of the Islamic Republic.
the nationalism could take you also in an opposite direction to say, no matter what you think of the regime, we're a sovereign nation and we oppose external intervention. I would argue, Rory, that Iran is a deeply polarized society these days, but in my view, it's not polarized 50-50.
It's polarized probably around 80-20, 85-15, in that I would say around 80-85% of the population is opposed to the regime, The regime has a hard core of 15% to 20% support. And what we know from dictatorships is that what matters most is not the breadth of your support, but the depth of your support, meaning you don't need a majority.
You just need a devoted minority that is armed and organized and willing to kill on your behalf. And so I suspect that that devoted minority has been reawakened in Iran the last few weeks. I am skeptical that those who are opposed to the regime several months ago now are supporting it. But this goes to the second question. Why haven't we seen any popular uprisings?
And the reason why is that people are under bombardment at the moment and they're just thinking about staying safe, and they're not thinking about political mobilization. And the big question is, what happens once the dust settles, whether that's one month from now, several months from now? Are people then going to think about political mobilization? Or are
Is it a situation in which they believe that the regime is just too ruthless to be challenged in the near term, and they may look for opportunities in the future? Julia Kellner asks, what do we need to understand about the new Ayatollah? And Vincenzo Maresca, at what point... Does decapitation of Iran's leaders start causing genuine systemic collapse?
And I think what's interesting there was my sense, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the new Ayatollah, in a sense, is a product of Donald Trump and some of the things that he's been saying about, you know, it's got to be somebody that I approve of and the Israelis saying they'll take out anybody that they don't approve of. So is this a guy that you were surprised became the new Ayatollah?
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Chapter 3: What is the current state of Iranian public opinion regarding the war?
I've heard from people in Iran that The injuries he suffered are not life-threatening, but nonetheless, he's been injured. He's obviously in probably great emotional distress given he's lost much of his family. He's having to live underground in hiding because Israelis are actively trying to assassinate him. And he is someone who he's inexperienced.
He's never really given a speech before a large audience. And suddenly not only are 90 million Iranian eyes on him, but the world's eyes are on him. So I think he's inherited a very, very difficult situation. I would not predict that he is going to be like a Mohammed bin Salman figure, someone who is going to be with us for many years to come. I'm a little skeptical that he has that within him.
Now, the other question is, could a political decapitation lead to the regime's implosion? And anything is possible. Certainly, in the first three weeks of this war, it seems much more from the outside that the regime has actually cohered, and they've closed ranks around a common threat. As they say, there's no factions and foxholes.
It's a regime which, despite its internal differences, recognized that its life is on the line, and they need to project a unified front. But once the war concludes, as I said, this will be a regime which inherits economic wreckage. Already before this war, it was virtually economically bankrupt. Its population largely despises it, and it's one of the most sanctioned nations in the world.
And now its neighbors largely despise it because it's been going after its neighbors in the Persian Gulf the last few weeks. So it's not for me a foregone conclusion that six months from now, a year from now, they'll be able to continue onwards with the status quo. But I think basically they have a few options. Number one is retrenchment. We saw that with Saddam Hussein after the 91 Gulf War.
There's a possibility of implosion, as we saw in the case of Milosevic after a military humiliation. And then what we saw in Vietnam was after years of putting dogma before interest, over time the regime adapted. But that was a multiple-year process, and that is also possible in Iran.
Karim, one of the other scenarios you talked about in an article that we shared quite widely was a parallel that you saw possibly with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a period of instability, and then the reemergence, in essence, of Putin, who represented the KGB at the heart of the old Soviet Union, reemerging after a few years as the new structures of a new authoritarian regime.
That's right, Rory. That was an essay I wrote last fall in Foreign Affairs, looking at five plausible scenarios for post-Khamenei Iran. And that was obviously before Khamenei was assassinated. But I've long thought that perhaps the best parallel with the Islamic Republic of Iran is the Soviet Union, and that two deeply dogmatic regimes, but not suicidal regimes.
They want to stay in power, but they've consistently put revolutionary ideology before the national interests of its population. And Russia, similar to Iran, is a resource-rich economy. And so I could easily see a scenario whereby the Islamic Republic simply is incapable of putting interest before ideology.
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Chapter 4: Why haven't we seen significant uprisings in Iran recently?
But thank you very much. I think the first one we'll come back with is some sense of when you think this war might end. But thank you so much for your time. Sure. Now, just a quick pause in the podcast to mention our sponsor, NordVPN. March is the month of forms and figures, tax returns, renewals, end of year accounts, transactions containing more of our money and identity than we realise.
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You can sign up for a free 30-day trial so you can try Whoop risk-free and see what you learn. Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And we are with Karim Sajjadpour, who is an Iranian expert, as you'll have, I hope, experienced so far. So, Rory, where do you want to take us now?
Well, I was going to come to what happens now and how the war will unfold. So, Aras, what's Karim's best estimate of how long this war will last? Ishan Ghayr, analytically speaking, not what he hopes, what do you foresee happening over the next six to 12 months? Lindsay Bennett, how does Karim see this ending?
Can I just, before you come in on that, just sort of, I look at this and I think Israel and the US are now actually in a bad situation. I mean, effectively, the regime has not been toppled, and Iran is demonstrating that it can completely destroy the economies of the Gulf and hold the Straits of Hormuz hostage.
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Chapter 5: What insights can we gain about the new Ayatollah's leadership?
But maybe those things are not achievable. So then I don't see how this thing comes to an end. Over to you. Let me first look six months out and then come back to the immediate term. I don't think, Rory, that unfortunately there's going to be a resolution to this conflict because President Trump's goal was essentially to try to change the character of the Iranian regime.
It wasn't only about degrading them militarily, which obviously the United States and Israel have done, but to kind of end this 47-year menace of the Islamic Republic of Iran chanting death to America and death to Israel. And that doesn't look like it's a near-term possibility.
And so what Iran wants to cease hostilities, among other things, they want reassurances that the United States and Israel are not going to attack again. But those assurances cannot be granted Iran so long as Iran
is, as I said, not so much its hostility toward America, but toward Israel, because Israel is within missile range of Iran, and it feels an existential threat from Iran's nuclear ambitions. And so I think there's going to be no deterring Israel from potentially taking military action in the future, so long as Iran's identity is premised on death to Israel and death to America.
And so I don't see this conflict being resolved in the next year. Now, we could definitely see a cease of hostilities. I think President Trump's challenge is that, in my view, this was not a war of necessity. It was a war of choice for President Trump. There wasn't an imminent nuclear threat. There wasn't an imminent missile threat.
There was an imminent threat to President Trump's credibility because on nine occasions last January, he warned the Iranian government that if they killed their protesters, America was going to intervene and support those protesters. Obviously, we know that Iran shredded President Trump's red line, and they killed up to 30,000 protesters, according to some estimates.
So the reason why Trump intervened was a threat to his credibility, not an imminent threat to U.S. national security. And what began as a war of choice, in my opinion, has essentially evolved into a war of necessity in that I don't think that it's possible for President Trump to simply now end the war and say, okay, We're good.
We won when you have a pariah regime essentially holding the global economy hostage. And so it is a predicament. You're absolutely right. It's a predicament for the United States and Israel. From my vantage point, virtually every country here has been a loser with the exception of Russia, which as its oil coffers have been significantly enriched over the last weeks.
And one could argue that Israel's endgame is perhaps a little different than that of the United States, whereas the United States' goal was not to turn Iran into a failing state. Genuinely, I think the Trump administration's goal was something along the lines of Venezuela, or if not better. But I think Israel wanted to significantly degrade the Iranian threat, which has happened.
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Chapter 6: How has Trump's approach affected the dynamics of the Iran conflict?
The more brutal and repressive an Iranian government is, the more you will see separatist tendencies among Iranian Kurds. As you said, Alistair, there was a moment of only a few days in which this idea was floated of America potentially coming in and arming or financing Kurdish groups. And the challenge there is that, in my view, the most potent opposition to the Iranian regime is nationalism.
The most potent opposition to nationalism. kind of Islamist radicalism is Iranian nationalism and what I call pluralistic Iranian nationalism. So it's not a kind of a chauvinist Persian nationalism, but a pluralistic nationalism which encompasses, you know, Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Baloch, Arab, etc. And the danger is that many Iranians are sensitive about the country's territorial integrity.
They really fear the Yugoslavia outcome of the country fracturing along ethnic lines. And so when an outside power comes in and is, you know, allegedly or in reality arming or financing different ethnic groups, you're going to lose a lot of nationalists who want to see the regime go. And so that is, in my view, you know, a dangerous situation.
strategy of playing with fire, but I do want to emphasize that Iranian Kurds are a wonderful and critical and integral part of the fabric of Iran and deserve a much better role than they have now. Kareem? My last question, I'm going to be wicked and ask my own question. So Karim, you said something that you thought that the war was a war of choice that's now become a war of necessity.
And the story seems to be that there wasn't any pressing reason for the US to intervene two weeks ago, but now they've intervened. It's very, very difficult for them to leave this regime in place given the chaos it can cause for the whole world.
But at the same time, you've also explained many reasons why 20% or 15% of the population, if they have deep enough support and are determined enough, can hang on for a very, very long time. And good reasons to question whether simply striking this regime from the air is actually going to get rid of them.
So you seem to be suggesting it's a war of necessity, but it may be a war that the US and Israel can't win, in which case they need to accept that ought implies can. They don't have an obligation to do what they can't do, and they need to stop trying to do the impossible.
So the nuance I would add there, Rory, is when I say we've gone from a war of choice to a war of necessity, that doesn't mean to imply that I believe that President Trump's metric for ending the war is changing the regime. That would be obviously a wonderful outcome if it leads in a more positive direction, but I didn't believe before the war or even now that
as the last 25 years of experience in the Middle East has shown us, that the United States has the power to dictate political outcomes in the Middle East. And so what I mean as a war of necessity is that I don't think the president can end this war with Iran still essentially holding the global economy hostage by deciding which ships can go in and out of the Strait of Hormuz.
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