Inside Iran's Wartime Regime

**Ryan Evans** (0:10)
This is Ryan Evans, and what I'm about to introduce you to is actually not an episode of the War on the Rocks podcast. It's an episode of one of our members-only shows called The Iran Reckoning, which we're releasing for free. It's a pretty remarkable episode. The Iran Reckoning, if you don't already know, is hosted by Afshon Ostovar, one of the world's leading experts on this regime in Iran.
He has this great conversation with our membership editor, Kerry Anderson, that really helped me understand what's going on in the regime right now in a way that nothing else I've ever read or listened to in the last weeks and months has. I just wanted to share this with all of you. Enjoy the show, and you can become a member and listen to every episode of The Iran Reckoning at warntherocks.com/membership.

**Afshon Ostovar** (0:58)
Welcome to The Iran Reckoning. There's a lot of the news, the Strait of Hormuz remains in flux, diplomacy between Iran and Oman continues toward an uncertain end, and the Supreme Leader has made a rash of new appointments to the security establishment.
Are there tensions behind the scenes in Tehran? Is this a sign of factionalism? And if so, what faction is ascendant? Or is this simply the new Supreme Leader's first attempt to shape the system to his liking? On today's episode, I've invited Kerry Anderson to help me talk through all of this and discuss where we're at in the conflict. There's a lot to cover, so let's get into it.
Great, Kerry, thanks again for being here. I appreciate it. I know our listeners always love to hear from you too. I thought it was a good opportunity to kind of circle back and just sort of give a state of affairs where we at. I mean, it's been a chaotic or confusing few weeks. And so I thought maybe it'd be good to just sort of give a step back for a second, do a state of play, you know, where we are. A lot of things have happened in the news recently, and I thought it'd be just good to have a discussion. And so in that sense, I thought maybe I'd turn over to you to kind of kick us off with questions and we can kind of see where the conversation goes.

**Kerry Anderson** (2:05)
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's been a complicated couple of weeks trying to follow the ins and outs of what's happening here. So maybe we can start with what is the current status of fighting in terms of is the United States hitting a lot in Iran? What are we hitting where and how is Iran responding at this point?

**Afshon Ostovar** (2:27)
Right. So we're recording August 11th. And so this can obviously change. I mean, dates matter, I think, in this conflict more than most. So over the last month, the US, as far as we know, has ceased attacks on Iran. Attacks culminated in this, I don't know, second or third round. I don't know what round we're in, frankly. But in the latest round, peaked on July 29th with a very large amount of strikes across western southern Iran that targeted all sorts of IRGC facilities, bases, headquarters, missile bases, radar, things like that. All the things that have kind of been hit throughout the war, and maybe some things that haven't really been hit throughout the war were struck. So it's difficult to get any accurate BDA from the strikes within Iran. We know what CENTCOM says in terms of the gist of what is hit or the types of targets that are hit. We get some semblance from people who are using open source satellite imagery, but that usually takes a little time to really put together and assess. But the Iranians don't say much about what's been hit, what's been damaged, how many people have been killed, what's been destroyed, that sort of thing. And so we get this sense kind of that this is sort of like a tree falling in the forest in a little, in a way, because we don't know and can't assess the real damage being done to the IRGC or to Iran's military. And yet we still see that Iran has some capacity to fire missiles and fire drones and keep the straight sort of in contest. So in some ways, it looks like nothing's happening, nothing's being achieved, but on the other hand, you suspect that quite a lot is happening and quite a lot is being achieved, but perhaps it's not moving the needle in terms of the political side of the conflict. So where we are in the conflict, the US has stepped back from the latest escalation, it seems to be allowing for some diplomatic process to play out. Iran is in negotiations with Oman and Qatar. Qatar is kind of the middleman in these negotiations, if one was really needed, but it's really between Iran and Oman. They are discussing something about the preferred lane of traffic for the strait. Right now, there's two different lanes that are being used. There's the Iranian route, the northern route, which the Iranians prefer, which goes to their territorial waters and the IRGC is able to maintain it.