How We Arrived at this Iranian Moment and What Happens Next

**Ryan Evans** (0:11)
You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans, I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. And in this episode, I'm joined by my friend and colleague as co-host, Kerry Anderson. We speak to three great experts on what's happening in Iran, how we got here and what comes next, before I let them introduce themselves. Some important information. This episode is brought to you by Victus Technologies. Victus builds resilient navigation and contested environment autonomy for unmanned, manned and robotic systems. MIT born, venture backed and led by former SOCOM aviators and engineers, Victus delivers mission ready autonomy for the world's most challenging environments. In the middle of this episode, I have a very short interview with Jesse Hamill, the Air Force veteran who founded the company. Learn more about Victus at war on the rocks.com/victus.
That's V I C T U S. Please enjoy the show.

**Alex Vatanka** (1:08)
Alex Vatanka, Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.

**Holly Dagres** (1:11)
Holly Dagres, Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute and curator of the Iran is sub-stock.

**Naysan Rafati** (1:16)
Naysan Rafati, Senior Iran Analyst at the International Crisis Group.

**Ryan Evans** (1:20)
Kerry and I very much appreciate you all joining us to talk about these fast moving events in Iran. A lot's changing very quickly.
Just for our listeners, we are recording this on Wednesday. Where things currently stand is we still have a carrier group in the Persian Gulf, and we have supposedly nuclear talks, maybe or maybe not, about to start or starting with the Iranians. We don't really know. All this could change by the time this comes out. Hopefully, we'll get this out tomorrow on Thursday, but it might be Friday. But I would like to start earlier on, and how we should look at what's going on more historically. Holly, maybe you can help us on this. This isn't the first time there's been popular resistance against the regime.

**Holly Dagres** (2:06)
It's been a headline on and off for, I would say, few years now. It started with the December 2017, January 2018 protests that actually ironically started because hardliners in Mashhad at the time had chanted against then president Hassan Rouhani. What they caused was actually unprecedented levels of protest in Iran, the largest in terms of geography since the 1979
At the heart of that, I think you start to realize from one of the protest chants at the time that hardliners, reformists, the game is over. And so there was a real sense of disillusionment with the clerical establishment. And so we've seen that carry on since we had the 2019 November protest known as Bloody November, which Reuters reported at the time that 1,500 protesters were killed under the dark cover of an internet shutdown. And then more famously, it came to head in 2022 with the Women Life Freedom Uprising. And now, yet again, here we are with another uprising with, and all of these, I would say, had explicit calls for the ouster of the Islamic Republic. But the underlining issues at hand were systemic mismanagement, corruption, and repression. So while the triggers in each instance was different, those core issues remain the same.

**Kerry Anderson** (3:27)
Well, and I think one of the big questions, because as Holly noted, there have been multiple cases in the past of large scale protests in Iran. And yet, this one has felt different. And so maybe we can start with Alex on what do you think makes this case different from the past? Or what are maybe some of the similarities?

**Alex Vatanka** (3:48)
I would just point out that, you know, the Islamic Republic has had to deal with protests pretty much from day one. So about half a century of engaging in repression. That's why the regime is in power. It used to be that the people would come out every 10 years. If we just take Ali Khamenei, the current supreme leader, he dealt with the first set of protests, ironically enough, in his hometown of Mashhad in 1991, two years after he became the supreme leader. So he's been doing this for a long time. But we've also seen in terms of trends, they're becoming more widespread. It used to be pockets in Tehran or Esfahan. Now, in this latest round, we've seen small towns in Kermanshah province, down southwest. I mean, places that you wouldn't imagine are associated with sort of political mobilization.
So that, to me, suggested anger is getting deeper. It's genuinely a case of nationwide protest. And the idea that North Tehran is upset and they're in the streets no longer holds. This is not about North Tehran. This isn't about a middle class that wants to live a certain lifestyle. This is about deep-seated anger across society. And it's not, to Holly's point, it's not just about one or two issues. It's a long list of grievances. The other part that stands out is how bloody it's become. I mean, the numbers are staggering. We're still waiting to see what the final count will be. But we're talking thousands and thousands of people here, at the very least, if not tens of thousands of people. In Iranian history, there's no precedent for that. Even in Middle East, you have to kind of look at Assad, what he did in Hamay in 82 in Syria. Really kind of systematic machine gunning your own people down. And the worst thing for me is Ali Khamenei, going back to 91 all the way to today, has always said the same thing. It's a foreign plot, it's a foreign plot. Now, I'm not for a second going to sit here and say US or Israel or somebody else didn't or does not have an interest in what happens in Iran, of course they do. But when I'm looking at the footage of the people mourning the family members being killed, the idea that all these people somehow were recruited by Mossad or some other foreign intelligence service just does not add up to me. And here we are listening to Khamenei's speech just a few days ago. He literally went out of his way to belittle those who were killed. He was making fun of him. He taunted the families. Trump said he would come to your aid. He didn't. And he got a good laughter in that crowd that were there for that speech. It's tragic. Yes, I take away from the recent events that the regime is still ruthless and able to kill. But at the same time, the other trend is that people are coming out in greater and greater numbers and this regime just doesn't have a solution. It's buying time, killing people for the sake of it. It doesn't really know where it's going. And that's again, another tragedy, stock. Maybe the death of Harmony, who was 86, will be the turning point, but that's a maybe. Something could be worse after him.