STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
So where is this all going? We've brought in Karim Sadjadpour to our studios. He's here in Studio 31. He's been watching Iran for a very long time. Karim, welcome back.
KARIM SADJADPOUR: Thank you so much, Steve.
INSKEEP: It's really good to see you. He's a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I just have to ask the bottom-line question first. Does this feel like a moment when Iran's longtime government could fall?
SADJADPOUR: It certainly is an existential moment for the Iranian regime, in that the protests are throughout the country. Collectively, there's been millions of people protesting, and the regime is obviously deeply unpopular. In my view, there's probably no country in the world with a greater gap between the aspirations of its people and the conduct of its government than...
INSKEEP: Wow.
SADJADPOUR: ...Iran. It's essentially a society that wants to be like South Korea, a government that behaves like North Korea.
INSKEEP: So an existential moment. Do you want to add a but there? An existential moment, but...
SADJADPOUR: We know from history that revolutions require several factors - obviously, pressure from below, but it also requires divisions at the top. Regimes usually don't fall if they're able to stay united. So far, we haven't seen any defections from the security forces or any splintering. That tends to happen the more protests go on.
INSKEEP: How much weaker are those security forces because of Israeli and U.S. strikes over the past couple of years?
SADJADPOUR: Well, last June in the 12-day war, Israel assassinated Iran's top, perhaps, couple dozen senior Revolutionary Guard commanders. The country was also humiliated by the U.S. war. And regionally, you know, the most important regional proxies like Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas have been destroyed. Their ally in Caracas, Venezuela - Maduro - was just captured. So in the international context, the Iranian regime has also been certainly weakened.
INSKEEP: I can also imagine Iranian officials - the surviving ones - looking around and asking, can I trust this person who betrayed the location of other people to the Israelis? That sort of thing.
SADJADPOUR: Absolutely. It's a regime which has been deeply penetrated by Israeli and U.S. intelligence, and the - Iran's supreme leader is 86 years old. You know, he's someone who probably doesn't have the mental and physical bandwidth to be quelling a national insurrection for many months to come.
INSKEEP: Does it seem to you, though, that the security forces have the firepower - and I want to use another phrase carefully - and the moral authority? And what I mean by that is not that I think that they're right, but that they would feel that they are right to crush protests. Do you think they have the ability still to crush protests in the streets?
SADJADPOUR: You know, they have it for a limited period, in my view. It just depends how long these protests are able to endure. And at some point, the security forces may ask themselves a question which security forces during the Arab Spring asked themselves - you know, do we want to see - keep killing to preserve the authority of our dictator? Maybe we cut loose the dictator in order to preserve our own economic and power interests.
INSKEEP: This is very interesting. Listening to you, Karim, I'm reminded of a saying by Ernest Hemingway about bankruptcy. How do you go bankrupt? His answer was, gradually and then suddenly. Is that the way you think a government fall could happen? It's not imminent until it's imminent.
SADJADPOUR: In a way, this has been - we've seen - we've been watching a gradual collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the last couple decades, very much like the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Very few people still believe in the ideology of the regime. A friend of mine who's a professor in Tehran said at the beginning of the revolution, the regime was composed of 80% ideologues and 20% charlatans, and now it's the reverse. Very few people, even within the regime, still are true believers. For most people, even within the regime, it's economic and political expediency. But if they feel like the ship is sinking, I think many people would be willing to jump off.
INSKEEP: Now we have a United States that is trying to influence this situation. President Trump has talked about military strikes. He has declared tariffs on countries that trade with Iran. What can the United States do that would perhaps influence events inside the country?
SADJADPOUR: I think most importantly, it's thinking of offensive cyber capabilities to try to tear down Iran's digital Iron Curtain because the regime has throttled the internet. It's throttled satellite communications, cellular communications, so the country has 1% connectivity. Very few Iranians can connect with the outside world and vice versa, and Iranians can't connect with one another. If the United States or Israel has the capacity to tear down that Iron Curtain, it's going to be hugely welcomed among Iranians.
INSKEEP: Meaning that information could become a weapon in this.
SADJADPOUR: Exactly. The other thing is that President Trump has put his own credibility on the line. He's threatened Iran if they continue to kill protesters, and they have done so.
INSKEEP: Yeah. What happens now? Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Thanks so much.
SADJADPOUR: Thank you, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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