The Iran Expert Trump Fired

**Nate Swanson** (0:00)
Introducing Meta Glasses.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
You have questions, they've got answers. Hey Meta, what's the capital of Peru?

**Ravi Agrawal** (0:08)
Lima.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:09)
How do you say, where's the restroom in Spanish?

**SPEAKER_4** (0:12)
Dónde está el baño?

**Ravi Agrawal** (0:14)
Hey Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:17)
Technically no.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:18)
Spiritually, yes.

**Nate Swanson** (0:20)
Hey Meta, what should I do with my life?

**SPEAKER_4** (0:23)
That's one of life's biggest questions. What do you think?
Ask anything with the new Meta Glasses.

**Ravi Agrawal** (0:31)
Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policy's Editor-in-Chief. This is FP Live.
Iran and the United States are locked in a familiar pattern.
Conflict has resumed, both sides are slowly escalating and widening the scope of their attacks, and energy prices are rising. What would it take to bring Tehran and Washington back to the table? What do they both see as acceptable outcomes to this war? My guest this week is a Middle East and Iran expert who could have been advising the Trump administration if he hadn't been forced out last year. Instead, he speaks out on FP Live. That is coming up. First, I wanted to draw your attention to a Gen Z protest that is gaining momentum in India, the world's most populous country.
Here is my read on things.
On Monday, thousands of demonstrators, mostly young people and students hit the streets of New Delhi. They call themselves the Cockroach Janta Party, a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling BJP or Bharatiya Janta Party. The name stems from a comment made by the country's Chief Justice in May, who compared India's unemployed youth to cockroaches. A young Indian who had just graduated from a university program in the United States turned to social media to jokingly call for all the cockroaches to join hands. And join they did. The cockroach party quickly gained more than 20 million followers on Instagram. The protesters cleverly focused on just one thing. The fact that the test for the country's medical entrance examinations last May was leaked. Two million students take that exam every year for just over 100,000 seats at medical schools across the country. It is a brutal test. And the idea that someone with money or connections could get the questions ahead of time has enraged millions of students and their families. The protesters are now demanding the Education Minister resign, among other things. India's problems with education and unemployment are real. But it's anyone's guess as to whether this protest will turn into something bigger, or indeed a serious challenge to Modi, who is effectively the world's most popular leader, and whose party recently won a spate of state-level elections. It is also premature, I think, to tie these gen Z protests to other such movements around the world recently, from Nepal to Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines. The specific cause of each protest seems to be different. They've also had different outcomes.
Every generation has its protests. I don't think gen Z is new in that sense, nor is gen Z a term that translates across cultures or countries.
But having made all of those caveats, however, let me stretch and draw a line through these movements. Young people all over the world today have gone through challenges that truly are global. The Great Recession at the start of this century, which wrecked jobs for a generation.
The COVID pandemic, which robbed students of key years on campuses. And then there's AI more recently, threatening to perform the tasks that many entry level workers do. All of that amid a global trend of high inflation and inequality.
When it comes to protest, one thing that connects all of this is the smartphone. Young people everywhere now have not only local, but global peers to compare themselves with. This makes perceptions of injustice especially powerful. Meanwhile, governments everywhere used to have much more control over what people could read and see. Even in India, the country's TV channels were slow to cover the protests. So the Cockroach Party was born online and it grew online. And that's why Delhi briefly shut down the Internet. And that's also why more repressive countries like Iran, North Korea or even China have taken more draconian steps to control the web even more. The Internet is the new battleground for people power. But ultimately protests can't survive just online. They have to navigate the physical world and all of its complexities and trade-offs. My guess is that Modi's BJP is betting that the protest will peter out amid the summer heat. That is the battle of wills. India's Gen Z will have to believe that they can win.
Okay, on to this week's featured interview on the Iran conflict. As of this taping on Monday, the 20th of July, the Houthis, an Iran-backed armed group in Yemen, have threatened to block Saudi ships from passing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the southern portal to the Red Sea. If that goes ahead, you can expect the global fuel crisis to get much worse. But we're also hearing reports of diplomatic talks restarting. Either way, my guest has a lot of experience dealing with key players in this conflict. Nate Swanson was a career State Department official focused on the Middle East. Under President Biden, he was Director for Iran at the National Security Council. And in the Trump administration's second term, he was part of the Iran negotiating team. He was forced out of that role last year. Let's dive in.