US Policy towards Iran:
I think the Trump policy is very coherent to the regime. It may not be coherent to us in academia. It may not be coherent to the American people, but the regime is hearing loud and clear that the policy is one that they are so worried about, that they are actually hoping that Biden wins. And that is a strong message. I would say that in 2012, when we had an international coalition to put sanctions on Iran, to bring them to the table, to talk about the JCPOA, those sanctions were very effective. That was some of the harshest punishment the regime had received. The US alone with its sanctions, and now with snapback, have hurt the Iranian economy and the regime worse than 2012, on its own. So the US going alone with US secondary sanctions, us sanctions, critics said that that wouldn’t work. It has worked. And when I talk to the Iranian diaspora, when I talk to people about sanctions, they want the United States to keep sanctions in place. They want the sanctions to stay in place. They want no negotiations with the regime, because any lifeline to the regime sustains it and kills these protests and kills these protest movements and so on from what I’ve heard. And again, I’m just a gringo in the United States looking at this stuff, but I look at it through the lens of people inside of the country. The sanctions as part of a maximum pressure, and the snapback sanctions, are very effective and they want them kept in place. Otherwise the regime survives this and you know, I understand the argument that this may strengthen the IRGC, but that’s really a call to lift sanctions. That’s really a call to give a break to this regime. And I reject that from a position that I look at that as a nice problem to have. If you have a pragmatic IRGC commander in charge of everything, then he understands hard power, soft power and smart power. And I look at that as a nice problem to have. A definitive target, a target that the people would only follow if it wasn’t an authoritarian type of government. And that means they would rebel against it. One of the biggest problems the United States has is, you know, we don’t put a spotlight on the human atrocities or the human rights atrocities that are taking place in Iran. The international community doesn’t.
If there are protests in Ahvaz, the media would show the government-supported protests in Tehran. One protester is killed for protesting, the other protestor is made to go outside and protest on behalf of the government under threat of punishment. So those are things that we need to look at. So let’s talk about the policy today. The policy today is maximum pressure’s in place. Some of my colleagues that were in the Trump administration wanted Trump to negotiate an Iran deal before the election. Others, those of us in this camp said, this is not the time to negotiate with Iran. We can negotiate with Iran after the elections, whether Trump wins or loses. Trump will still be in power until January 17th or January 20th of 2021. And the sanctions that the US treasury has put in place and the snapback sanctions, aren’t simply something that Joe Biden could just walk back. Remember in 2015, Obama had the pressure on senators to support the JCPOA. The Obama machine was so powerful that it could primary Democrat senators who were opposed to the JCPOA.
In the event of regime collapse:
Well, the IRGC will survive regardless. Even if the regime is replaced, there’ll be a guerrilla force in civilian clothes doing things. You know, if the regime collapses and a democratic regime or a democratic government takes over. “One of the people”, I put that in quotations, will have an insurgent guerilla force that would be former IRGC Quds force operatives. There are also senior leaders that will take their golden parachutes and leave the country. You know, it’s tough to be an underpaid Quds force member. You know, you have divisions within the Quds force. They’ve arrested the 300 IRGC officers for planning some sort of operation against the regime. We saw that in the news last year. There’s a lot of paranoia in the ranks. There are hardliners in the middle ranks. There are hard liners in the junior ranks. There’s competition at the senior ranks. So those are opportunities for the US intelligence community and the international intelligence community, and military, to exploit. There will be no invasion of Iran. There will be no war with Iran. Those days are over. The Americans have no appetite for anything like that. It’ll be the language that is coherent in Tehran, that “we will punish you a thousand times stronger” is the language of the regime. So when, when the president says things, it’s not for journalists, it’s not for Americans, it’s not for academia. It’s for the regime. When the regime hears something, and then because Qassem Soleimani was killed, they take the president seriously. You know, this was Trump’s Operation Praying Mantis moment. Reagan in 1988 decimated half of the IRGC Navy and the regime backed down. After Soleimani, we saw the regime willing to give up Iraqi militia leaders in Iraq, and allow us to target those as compensation, you know, say, “ hey let’s stand down” regardless of what media outlet you follow.
What is the most likely course Iran will take in the future?
I think that the most likely course of action or the most likely outcome in Iran is that the regime will fall. The most dangerous course of action is that the IRGC will do what the other panelists are saying. But we can limit that. We can see the things coming, but I also think that this is an argument against sanctions. It’s the, “if we continue sanctions, we’re going to get something worse than we have”. Now, we cannot let the most dangerous outcomes constrain our foreign policy. The regime needs to be sanctioned. It’s the IRGC, it’s not new. The IRGC has become a criminal organization, penetrating Iran’s economy. It’s the reason Iran’s economy is being sanctioned, because of the IRGC penetration of its economy,