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Iran Conflict Brief: Ali Ansari on What's Going on Inside Iran · Columbia Energy Exchange

• 0:55
  Underscoring the credibility of that threat, Israel cut off power supplies to Iran's biggest petrochemical complex on Monday. The Israeli logic is that if IRG hardliners remain in power, then denying them a functioning economy or energy export revenues may create conditions to topple the regime in the months that follow the war. Iran is warned that it will respond to attacks on its national infrastructure by targeting economic assets in the Arab Gulf States. A threat underlined by weakened strikes in Bahrain, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait, including a highly symbolic attack on Kuwait's oil ministry and national oil company, KPC. Reportedly, Iran has threatened Saudi oil and power assets will be next. Dated Brent, the physical benchmark for North Sea Crude is over $140 a barrel, almost $30 higher than Brent futures. That has one way to go -- up -- if key Saudi assets like the East West pipeline bypassing Hormuz or Aramco's Abqaiq oil processing facility is targeted.
• 1:51
  In short, unless regional mediators pushing for a 45-day truce can pull a diplomatic rabbit out of their hats, the region stands on the edge of Ukraine style tit for tat infrastructure strikes that would subject the world energy system to prolonged outages, significantly higher prices, and deeper economic disruption, even if there is eventually a ceasefire that restores transit through the Strait of Hormuz.
• 2:16
  I'm joined today by Ali Ansari, one of the world's leading authorities on Iran. He is a professor of Iranian history and the founding director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews. He's also a senior associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute and is the author of multiple books on the politics of modern Iran. I can think of no one better to help us understand how wartime decisions are being made into Iran and how to assess how fragile or durable the Islamic Republic will be when the most intensive kinetic phase of this conflict winds down. Good afternoon, Ali. Ali Ansari (02:48): Hello. Daniel Sternoff (02:49): Let's get into it. Love to hear your perspective about what is going on right now inside of Iran, as well as to understand what might be as we move through this. And many outside analysts tend to treat Iran as a unitary actor. The Supreme leader sits on top, but decision making authority in the Islamic Republic has always involved bargaining between many key institutions. IRGC, the Supreme Leader's Office, Guardian Council, presidency. That's in quote unquote normal times. Now we're in war and Khamenei is dead. Many senior officials have been decapitated. Israel is hunting those that remain. The supreme leader's son Mojtaba is not seen in public. So under these conditions, where does real operational authority sit? Is the IRGC effectively the state or are there still countervailing centers of power that matter? Ali Ansari (03:49): I mean, it's a good question because at the moment you're seeing a state under a political system under quite intense stress. It's given the impression of functionality. It's always at the best of times have been pretty dysfunctional, to be honest. It operated on the basis basically that the Supreme leader was the final arbiter and could make the final decision depending on competing sort of claims to his attention and ultimately he would make a decision. Now with the supreme leader out of the way and a new Supreme Leader, his son no less, who nobody's seen or heard of really, apart from a few sort of messages that seem to have been written for him, one can assume really that because it's wartime conditions that you're seeing the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps taking the front seat really in the organizing and the sort of administration of the country.
• 4:43
  But it is difficult because we don't really have eyes and ears inside the country. I'm sure the US and the Israelis have pretty good intelligence assets. I mean, one of the striking things was that when Harmane Sr. Was killed, a picture of him as proof of death was basically sent to Israel, I think within minutes. So how that happened, we can only sort of conjecture that they have some fairly high level assets within the country and that this may be continuing, which only can increase the level of paranoia really that goes on. I think at the moment now, it's a much, much more complex affair with many different sort of elements competing in a sense for attention. Although because of the war situation, clearly some elements in the hierarchy of the IRGC are dominant in driving that. And of course key to that in many ways is Ghalibaf , who's the mayor of Tehran, but obviously an ex [unclear] very closely tied to the IRGC and someone who can basically direct attention.
• 5:36
  What's interesting is the president probably doesn't have a huge amount of say in what's going on. I mean, Pazeshkian doesn't ... I mean, he had a fairly backseat role, I think even when he was actively president in a sense. I think now his chief function is to really warn the IRGC from what we can gather about what happens after the war's over. And I mean, I think that's a very important question that few people are really addressing. They're not really seeing what the underlying problems Iran will have going forward. Daniel Sternoff (06:05): Ali, you mentioned Ghalibaf, who has also been mentioned possibly as an interlocutor for the Trump administration. I don't know whether anyone is in indirect contact, but how critical is he? I mean, obviously he has impeccable revolutionary credentials, but he also is kind of seen as a manager or someone who has been more statistic. I mean, is he someone who could emerge in a constructive way? Ali Ansari (06:34): I mean, Ghalibaf is a very vain man. I'll put it that way. I mean, when he was running for president, he had this sort of idea that he was the sort of Tom Cruise of Iran and he was a fighter pilot and he sort of the top gun. And he tried to run for president, didn't really do very well. And then eventually he got the booby prize, if you will, and became speaker of parliament. But he's influential, he's corrupt, he's part of the system. I think the real issue we have in Iran today is that it's always had problems making decisions. I mean, we think of it as quite an efficient system in some ways. It's not. It never has been. And it always operated on this basis that there were vastly different opinions, competing opinions, but of course this assisted in the way in which Khamenei would then make decisions.
• 7:13
  I mean, his divide and rule was absolutely vital to his way of governing. So he got people to compete for his attention and then he would dither and procrastinate and think about it. And people would, if they didn't want to make a decision, they would just wait. And this was always the question with Iran that they tended to miss opportunities. They either overplayed their hand, they never liked to sort of compromise. And this, again, we'll see this again now, unfortunately, unfortunately. I think the additional problem we have now is we don't have someone of the gravitas in a sense of Khamenei or the authority that Khamenei had built up over many, many years to actually break the deadlock. Not that Khamenei himself broke the deadlock as well as he could have, but at least there was someone there. And when he made his comments, basically other people felt bound to follow.
• 7:56
  Now we have a problem that say for the sake of argument that Ghalibaf goes and makes an agreement and makes an arrangement. He then has a pretty hard sell around the hardliners and the regime that are left. I mean, this is the issue. And it's also not clear at all whether he'll be able to get coordination. If you remember back in the 12-day war, even after the ceasefire was announced then, there were some missiles that were fired after the event, and it was partly because that sort of command and control setup had become frayed at the edges. I think it's even worse now because of this mosaic defense that they set up, which has the positive aspect of basically devolving, in a sense, command to various regions and people can act on their own authority. It has the negative effect that they can't really coordinate attacks anymore.
• 8:41
  I mean, they're not really coordinating attacks. They sort of lob a missile and they're everywhere. I know journalists like to talk about waves of Iranian attacks, but we're never actually told how many are in these waves. It's fairly limited strikes at some stage. Some get through, some don't, but that's the point. But the other thing is that because it's a mosaic defense, it's quite difficult for them to communicate internally as to what's being done and whether for the sake of argument there's a ceasefire later on today or tomorrow, whenever it is, how would that be communicated across all the different commanders around the region? It's not entirely clear how that works, but of course, the Iranians have given the impression that it's very coherent. I just don't see it that way at all. Daniel Sternoff (09:25): Yeah, that's a huge challenge. Maybe even before getting to how would a decision on a ceasefire be communicated and implemented at the field level, maybe digging a little deeper into your point about how such a decision could be taken. I mean, obviously right now the positions between the US and Iran are a million miles apart, Hormuz is shut, Iran still is in possession of 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. From your reading of the current Iranian political map, what would a deal have to look like in terms of how it's framed or face saving or sequenced if Ghalibaf threw what was doing that deal, what would he need in order to actually sell that? Ali Ansari (10:11): The real problem Iran has is actually, if you look at it, it's played it a weekhand rather well. Okay, let's put it that way. Okay. It's played a weak and well and it's thrown things. It sort of escalated much quicker than most people had assumed, particularly with the Straits of Hormuz, and also by lobbing, I mean, the most extraordinary attacks on the UAE and stuff that most people hadn't really anticipated. And we sort of expected that they would do something. We didn't quite expect them to throw everything in the kitchen sink at Gulf, people in the Gulf who had actually originally thought that they'd sort of covered themselves a little bit with the Iranians. But the problem they have is they've escalated in such a way that in order for them to come away from this with any sense of sort of satisfaction, let's say both sides walk away with a sort of sense that they've achieved some of the aims they want for Iran to be able to walk away with any sense that it's gained somehow.
• 11:07
  It needs to have some form of financial pipeline. I mean, in a sense, it needs to have access to money and it needs to have access to substantial money, by the way. This is not a question of unblocking $6 billion in the Qatar or whatever. I mean, this is nothing. It needs to be substantial. And I just don't see how that works in the current circumstance because what the Iranians are demanding, and I think you quite rightly pointed out earlier, the Americans and the Iranians are quite far apart in their demands. And it's clear that what the Iranians are saying is that Straits of Hormuz need to be sorted out, but in order do this, you need to lift all sanctions. I think the problem with lifting all sanctions as people I think will tell you is that that's a great idea, but how does it work in practice?
• 11:50
  And there's never really been a proper study of how you're going to unwind this complex layer of very Byzantine sort of level sanctions on Iran. I mean, it's not as easy as that. And even if people dedicate a lot of time to it, it's going to take some time to do. And of course, by the time that's all done, it may be quite late for the regime in Iran because it desperately needs ... What it really needs is a win and a cash injection that will help it. Basically, pay salaries, do the basics of government administration and the aftermath of a pretty devastating assault. I mean, this is one of the things that I don't understand with those people that say Iran is doing well. I always say that the Islamic Republic may survive, but the Islamic Republic will survive at the cost of Iran.
• 12:34
  I mean, this is the thing. It doesn't seem to really care too much if Iran sort of goes down the tubes as long as they can pretend that they've survived. I don't know how that works in the long term without there being some substantive sort of cash injection. And again, it's very difficult for me to see how that works without, for instance, for the sake of argument, a comprehensive peace, but a comprehensive peace requires all sorts of things to fall into place. Recognitions, I would say, not only of peace with the United States, which would be a big ask and for them, for ideological reasons, not necessarily for recent events, for ideological reasons, but also with Israel. I mean, this is the other thing. Some sort of settlement with the state of Israel is going to have to be achieved. They're going to have to recognize it in one way or form.
• 13:22
  And I can't see how those people in power at the moment are going to be able to do that. Other people within the system may do that, by the way. There will come a time when people will say, "Enough is enough. We need to have a radical rethink." The problem is we're not there yet, and we're not there yet in part because the hardliners and the regime think they have the whit hand and they think they have the wit hand and they have bigger part and Trump on the ropes and it's not helped, I have to say, by the president's lack of message discipline, if I can use a little bit of British understatement there. It makes people feel that he's lost control and as a consequence of that, they will think they can push even further. And for all the people who study Iran and have looked to Iran, we know the one thing the Iranians are absolutely capable of is basically overplaying their hand that they will not understand.
• 14:20
  And people said to me last week, actually, when the Straits of Hormuz became an absolute pivotal issue, there was the time for them to take the opportunity and use that leverage to get what they needed done. But of course, the problem is they will try and drag this out for the maximum benefit. It will be a sort of a, if I may put it, the perfect and the good, they will go for the perfect, at the expense of the good, and as a consequence, they'll get nothing. I mean, that is the fundamental problem. That is the fundamental problem with their negotiating position. Right. Daniel Sternoff (14:52): What are the impacts? Speak a little bit both about the regime and then separately about what's going on with the Iranian public. What are the impacts of the infrastructure attacks that we have seen mostly by the Israelis? So they have hit significant gas production facilities in South Pars. Today they hit a petrochemical complex that is a big piece of revenues. And if this ultimatum expires and we are hitting a lot of infrastructure, we know Iran's response and the risk that poses to the Gulf States, but inside of Iran itself, I mean, the IRGC is not just a revolutionary resistance ideological body. It's also IRGC Inc that controls somewhere between a third and two thirds of the Iranian economy. So is there a point at which just having an economy in freefall is an equal to greater threat of its survival than staying ideological? Ali Ansari (15:48): Right. Yeah. And I think this is the problem. The problem they have is at the moment they're riding on the crest of a wave with all the adrenaline rush that a war gives, particularly a military. So they get there and they think they're in charge and they're doing quite well. And the way they read the media or the social media and others gives them a sort of a buzz. They've managed to sort of suppress any domestic descent really at the moment because people within the system, I'm talking about not wider dissidents. But if we are to believe Pezeshkian had said to them, "What do we do in the day after?" And basically Pezeshkian said, "The economy is on the verge of collapse. If we continue like this for another two, three weeks, it will not survive." Now, the Iranian economy is a very fragile animal anyway.
• 16:31
  I mean, it's not been working well. I mean, even before going into this war, it was having problems supplying gas, electricity, and water to its major cities. I mean, this was a serious problem. And if you go back to the protests in December, January, the catalyst for that, of course, was the collapse of the currency. And the collapse of the currency was predicated on the collapse of the banks. And I mean, you can go on and on and on and on. I mean, it basically, as a political economy, it's been failing for some time, and it was really a matter of time, I think, before they reached the sort of crisis point. In some ways, this war has given the IRGC a little bit of a fill-up and they sort of think they can defer it, but of course it's only deferred it. It hasn't really healed.
• 17:08
  It hasn't solved it. And I think you're absolutely right. When you look at the IRGC as a sort of a conglomerate, they also want to make money and have business, but they also run this, they run basically a petrol state, they make money from selling oil, they distribute patronage, it's obviously highly corrupt, but the fact is if a lot of this sort of oil infrastructure is being damaged in this way, it means that ultimately their revenues are going to go down. And as I say to people, people say, "Oh, it's institutionally very strong or it's got control." I always ask them, "How? What is it? Don't say these lovely catchphrases. The state is going to get stronger or the institute." I say, "How's it going to think about it? You've got a country the size of Western Europe." We all know it's big because we talk about it being large and whatever in terms of military intervention.
• 18:02
  We know it's mountainous, we know it's varied, we know it's diverse. It's not based on a couple of rivers. It's not Egypt, it's not Iraq, it's not easy to control in that sense. It's a much, much more diverse setup. And you've got a coercive operators of maybe half a million, 600,000 people at most who are armed and dedicated to the regime. How do you maintain control of that without that sort of ability to pay everyone, to administer the economy? And I think this is something that people have not really nailed on their head. They look at it in very broad primary colors standing back and thinking they'll just do it. But I often say, I think we need to think more carefully about what that means. How are they going to do it? How is it going to operate? And one of the things, by the way, I've noticed recently is the shipping in of all these sheer militias from Iraq and the Afghan Shia militia.
• 18:54
  I said to someone, so why are they shipping them in? I mean, what's going on? Do they feel they don't have the sort of control nationwide that they may have? Are they looking for repression? I mean, again, it's probably a realization that the economic situation is not good and their traditional means of leverage and their traditional means of control are going to be very, very weak, if not non-existent. Daniel Sternoff (19:13): Yes. And of course, all those problems of blackouts and fuel shortages and collapsing purchasing power will be worse when the fighting stops not better. Ali Ansari (19:23): As I said, after the 12-day war, I mean, people said, "Oh, this has been a great filip and national solidarity and so on and so forth." And I said at the time, I said, "Look, I'm a student of Iranian nationalism. I've looked at it. I've studied it. " I'm quite cynical about it, to be honest, because I sort of look at it and I said, "This national solidarity stuff I think is pretty shallow." And within four or five months, you had the most extraordinary uprising that you saw and people were very much against it. But fundamentally, what was the cause of that? The cause of that was economic. And it was because they failed fundamentally. I mean, I remember we were talking to colleagues and they said, "What is the Iranian reaction to the 12-day war?" And there was a wonderful phrase that someone used, and I think he was absolutely right.
• 20:04
  He said, the Iranian regime seems to be concussed. I mean, it had no idea what hit it, and it seemed to be incapable of making a decision, and it just hadn't made a decision, and it landed itself in this problem in terms of the economy. And I suspect now going forward will be a similar situation, if not on many different levels worse, because obviously, as you quite rightly point out, this time, a lot of their economic infrastructure is being hit even before, by the way, Trump has unleashed hell, as he calls it, they're already hitting aspects of economic infrastructure. And to be fair to the other side, if I can be, the Iranians have already been hitting economic infrastructure on the other side of the Gulf anyway. So it's not that this hasn't happened, it's just that obviously the magnitude of it is going to get, unfortunately, is possibly going to get much worse. Daniel Sternoff (20:51): In the decision by Israel and possibly the US or Israel with American blessing to go after civilian infrastructure, when we hear the rhetoric like we're going to bomb Iran, not the Islamic Republic, but Iran back to the Stone Age or even that this is, according to Secretary Hegseth in the name of Jesus Christ, does that kind of rhetoric hurt if your position create conditions for eventual popular unrest? Are those hitting bridges and universities creating I mean... Ali Ansari (21:27): Are they counterproductive? Daniel Sternoff (21:28): Yeah. Are they counterproductive? Ali Ansari (21:30): I think they're massively out counterproductive. I mean, one can see a military purpose in some ways if you're going to degrade. I mean, I remember watching a guy giving me a presentation on American contingency planning on this sort of level and economic infrastructure was always there. And I thought it was horrific at the time, and I think it would be horrific now. And I think if you're really looking to basically prepare the ground for a popular sort of uprising of some sort now when or when that would happen, it's a matter of what the Iranians want to do, then you also have to have a regime for them to take ... There has to be a regime to change. I mean, at the moment, if you go down this level, you're not going to have really anything to change. And what I say to my American colleagues and others, I say, look, winning the war is one thing.
• 22:09
  I don't think Americans actually that have been reasonably good at winning wars. I know many people sort of think that's not the case, but actually when you look at it, in Iraq and Afghanistan, at the end of the day, they won the war. What they didn't win was the peace, and that's the key. And the key is you can't just think of the damage you're going to inflict. You have to ... And I think this goes to the heart of the whole strategic thinking going on at the back of ... When people say the politics is not there, this is what we're really thinking about. We're saying, if you are genuinely thinking about a situation in which, as Trump said at the beginning of this, we're going to get rid of this government and the country will be there for you to take it back.
• 22:52
  This will be your once in a general generation chance. Well, at the end of the day, to say to Iranians of all people, by the way, that we're going to bomb you back to the Stone Ages, and by the way, plural, I don't know how ... But anyway, the Stone Ages, it's clearly, to my mind, very counterproductive in terms of populous sentiment in Iran. It doesn't mean, by the way, that Iranians are naturally sort of automatic and to fall in love with the Islamic Republic again. That's a separate thing because I suspect what will happen with most Iranians is they'll blame both sides. They'll just say, "We're caught in the middle of this and you guys are just causing mayhem." And I think that's a mistake, clearly a mistake and clearly a political mistake and a strategic mistake, I think, on behalf of the messaging, certainly.
• 23:36
  If you look at some officials in the White House, and I would cite Rubio on this, Rubio has been much better and much clearer, by and large. I mean, I don't think there always exceptions every all, but by and large than say what Hexeth or even President Trump have been saying, which is essentially to find their inner Curtis Lemay. It's that sort of the sort of maximalist bombing and very bombastic stuff, which of course you see on the Iranian side, by the way. In the 12-day war, the Iranians were talking about new King Tel Aviv, for goodness sake. I mean, they weren't shy about it. So it's just that obviously our expectation of what comes out of the White House, our expectation of the Americans is going to be higher, but also your ambitions are different. Your ambitions are different. And I think you have to keep a very clear eye on that. Daniel Sternoff (24:19): Yes. Ali, thank you for all of this. It's very insightful. I want to ask you one last question, not an easy one, but zooming out the lens a little bit, will the Islamic Republic in its current form celebrate its 50th birthday? Ali Ansari (24:40): I doubt it. I really, really doubt. I mean, I think they're on a hiding to nothing there. And I think we're on 47, aren't you? So you're saying, well, they celebrate their 50th. So three years, I doubt it, not in their current configuration. Now, it may well be that something called the Islamic Republic will survive, but it won't really be the Islamic Republic as we have known to ... It will be Islamic Republican name only. I don't know what will come afterwards, by the way. I mean, that's quite difficult always to tell. We have optimistic scenarios and pessimistic scenarios, but I think the Islamic Republic does not come out of this as anything but really a sort of a crippled state actually. And what happens then will depend very much on several factors. There will be people on what we might call the outer wing of the Islamic Republic, the Rohani [unclear] these sort of people who might be able to do something.
• 25:32
  There will be people on the dissident wing like Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leader of the green movement who's still there and basically caught ... I mean, he has the solution, by the way. I mean, he said we should have a referendum on the constitution of the Islamic Republic. I'm surprised that more people are not giving more credence to that. I mean, it's a much, much more sensible option. And then outside that, then there's a third tier, which is basically those who are definite definitively outside the sort of Island Republic. And I think, to be honest, the future will ultimately belong to those outside, but the people on the inner tiers, shall we say, are the means by which we transition out more or less peacefully, if I can put it that way. Okay? I mean, that's the way I see it. And that's also a fairly relative term, by the way.
• 26:20
  But I mean, at the end of the day, without the real chaos that may come from a sort of a complete collapse of an authoritarian system. Daniel Sternoff (26:27): Yeah. So let me ask you a last, last question. Okay. If we have some time to see how those politics will unfold, is Iran going to have a stronger position explicitly over the Sbrent(26:40): trait of Hormuz now for the foreseeable period ahead, irrespective of how this kinetic phase ends? Ali Ansari (26:51): Actually, I'm of the view that it won't, and the reason why is I think in the immediate sense it will, but I think the situation is so difficult that the regional partners, as well as the United States and others won't be able to allow Iran to be in that sort of position. So it'll be much, much more difficult for it. And I think this is the interesting thing. When the Shah was being the policeman of the Gulf and he presented himself as the policeman of the Gulf, and when the British withdrew in 1971 and the American ... And the whole premise of that was that the Straits of Hormuz are there as a lifeline for the Iranian economy, and it is in our interest to keep it open. And therefore, they maintain that sort of trust across the Persian Gulf with the control of various islands in the Gulf.
• 27:37
  I think those days are over now. I think people basically are of the view that Iran cannot be trusted Iranic, and that's the catastrophe for them. And that's why I say on the [unclear] and others, I think they've played a weekhand well and they've shot all their sort of, how should we say, arrows or whatever it is, early. It's created a certain amount of shock and awe actually on our side because we suddenly thought, oh my God. But ultimately in the long term, certainly the Arab states and the Persian Gulf will try and find alternative routes. They'll be looking for different ways to get assets out. And the Iranian situation, they'll find, I think, the Iranians that unless they come to some sort of convention on the Straits, they are in the medium, certainly the medium to long term going to be hamstrung by it.
• 28:23
  It won't play well, I think, ultimately for them. Daniel Sternoff (28:26): Wonderful. On that note, Ali, thank you for joining us. Thank you for your time. It's very, very insightful. Appreciate it. Ali Ansari (28:32): Thank you very much. Daniel Sternoff (28:36): That's it for this episode of Iran Conflict Brief, a limited series from the Columbia Energy Exchange Podcast. Thank you again, Ali Ansari, and thank you for listening. The show is brought to you by the Center on Global Energy Policy at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. I'm Daniel Sternoff. This podcast was produced by Mary Catherine O'Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. For more information about the show or the Center on Global Energy Policy, visit us online at energypolicy.columbia.edu, or follow us on social media at ColumbiaUenergy. If you like this episode, leave us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also share it with a friend or colleague to help us reach more listeners. If you have any questions, comments or feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at columbiaenergyexchange@gmail.com. Thanks for listening.