Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and get the fingered at FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America, and by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN, like, say our names, been saying, saying three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing James M. Dorsey.
He's a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and co-director of the University of Wurzburg's Institute for Fan Culture and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast, and he's the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
And that's also a blog of his as well.
Here he is at the Great Jim Loeb's blog, Loeb blog, hosting a guest piece here, The Battle for Iran.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
I mean, not back to the show.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
It's a pleasure to be with you.
I'm doing fine.
Great.
Appreciate it.
Hope you are well.
All right.
Thanks for joining us here.
So there's a battle for Iran policy inside the U.S. government and between the allies.
I don't know how much of a battle it is between the allies.
Saudi, Israel, and the U.S. all have their interests here.
The JCPOA is not all the way dead, but looks like it's headed that way.
America's out, of course.
And then you're reporting here that there have been violent attacks by separatist groups in the east of the country, which reminds me of the George W. Bush years when it turned out it was Mossad posing as CIA backing the group Jandala there, committing attacks against the Iranians.
And, of course, there's been a lot of escalated rhetoric against Iran inside the government and different reports about working groups on coming up with excuses for conflict and protests held by the Pahlavi faction and all kinds of action with the MEK holding their big convention and Rudy Giuliani speaking there, acting as though Myron Rajavi could be the new president of Iran someday, and maybe someday soon.
So it seems crazy, but I don't know.
Where do you think we are exactly on the Trump administration's path to war, actual war with Iran, James?
Well, first of all, what you have is a series of incidents over the last year or two, both on the western side of Iran where the Kurds live, as well as on the border with Pakistan.
Now, to be clear, there are indigenous groups that are genuine, that have gripes with the Iranian regime, and are fighting their own battles.
You have a history, however, on both ends, actually, of foreign powers supporting various of these groups.
In the case of the Jundala, it actually is not clear that it was not the United States.
The key figure in that was a New York police or New York Port Transport Authority detective who was the key intermediary with the group.
What you have going on now is two things.
You have a debate within the Trump administration on whether the goal of a hard line towards Iran is to get a policy, a change in policy, a change in Iranian behavior, or whether this is really about regime change.
And if it is about regime change, then the question is, what's the strategy?
Now, up until now, both sides of the debate within the Trump administration maintain that it's about creating pressure, domestic pressure, particularly through economic and social gripes.
And you've had a lot of protests in Iran recently because of the deteriorating economic situation and the mismanagement of the economy, frankly, rather than trying to stir up trouble by furthering ethnic gripes that there are.
However, within that debate, you have people like John Bolton or Rudolf Giuliani who have clearly sided with an opposition group, the Mujahideen Halk, who have a very checkered past.
They killed Americans in the 70s.
They were declared a terrorist organization by the United States and various other governments and only delisted in 2012.
And they have very little domestic Iranian support, primarily because during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, they had sided with the Iraqis and have had a camp there.
And that's a group that propagates violent overthrow of the regime in Iran.
And Bolton, Giuliani, and many other former American officials have backed that call.
Now, on the other end of all of this, you have the Saudi-Iranian rivalry in the Middle East that has become much more tense with the rise of Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince.
And the Saudis have done two things.
They have drafted plans to support ethnic disturbances, ethnic unrest on the Iranian side of the Pakistani border.
Both sides of the borders are populated by a group, by the Baloch, which is an ethnic group.
And you've had a lot of Saudi money going into virulently anti-Shiite religious seminaries along the border.
Now, having said that, this is all stuff that is creating building blocks.
It's on a drawing board.
It has not been taken off the drawing board, to the best of my knowledge, and turned into policy, at least not as yet.
Well, you know, it never did make sense, and this wouldn't preclude it from being the policy, but it didn't make sense that they were going to get out of the JCPOA, and then they were going to put some really now crippling sanctions on Iran, and increase pressure, and get a better deal.
They already had a pretty damn good deal, and it seems like they must have known that the politics of the situation inside Iran, in reaction to the withdrawal from the JCPOA, etc., would be that we can't deal with these guys, and that it would be virtually impossible for Rouhani to deal.
He might not even survive as the president after this debacle, right?
He might be replaced by another Ahmadinejad.
Well, first of all, I think it's questionable whether this is going to really lead to change.
The Iranians have, up until now, proven that they're not only able to cope, but they've been quite successful regionally in recent years, despite the sanctions.
And this goes back to before the lifting of the sanctions in 2015, when the nuclear agreement was signed.
That's one.
Two, what the Trump effect has been, even before the American withdrawal from the JCPOA, from the nuclear agreement, is that up until now, Iranian public sentiment was negative towards the American government, but not negative towards America and Americans as such.
And that has changed.
You look at opinion polls now, the mood has turned much more anti-American, and not only anti-American government.
And that, in some ways, of course, solidifies the government.
Obviously, Rouhani was the proponent of a nuclear deal, and hardliners within Iran were critical about it.
And there's a lot of discussion, or there has been a lot of discussion and speculation, of whether Rouhani would survive this.
And if he didn't survive, not necessarily, well, some Iranians believe that you could see a military takeover.
A military takeover, in this case, meaning the Revolutionary Guards, rather than the traditional military.
One of the interesting things I think we've been seeing in recent days is that there is some debate among the more hardline factions within Iran on whether or not they really want to use this as a pretext for a power grab.
There's some degree of solidifying of Rouhani's position.
The jury is out on this.
It hasn't been decided, and it's not clear one way or the other.
But what is clear is that the sands are shifting.
I guess the Rouhani faction could argue that Trump really is an aberration here, obviously from the typical system, and the next president is likely to be more willing to deal, not go back to the old deal, to do something different than this, if they can survive Trump.
Well, that's one way of looking at it.
The other way of looking at it is that Obama was the aberration.
In other words, Obama was the president who reached out.
Former presidents didn't really reach out or weren't that serious about it.
That's one.
The other thing is, yes, you can say Trump is an aberration, and he will ultimately be replaced.
But that replacement could be two years from now or six years from now.
And that's a very long period in this kind of battle.
Let me ask you this.
You sound like you know so much about what's going on here, and this is kind of a side topic.
You know the principle of so-called tests.
The more you know, the less you know.
Yeah.
Well, this is a detail, so forget the wisdom on it.
But I'm just curious if you know where Prince Bandar is these days, and how much power and influence he continues to have inside Saudi Arabia.
He's ill, to the best of my knowledge.
Has been ill for quite some time, and he's not a player in the current regime.
I see.
I think it was Bandar that said to Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, that we're so sick and tired of the Shia, and it's on now.
We're going to have this war, and nothing can stop it.
You know, and kind of his reaction to the calamity of Iraq War II, and putting Iran's friends in power in Baghdad there.
Does his view there represent the policy of MBS and the rest?
Well, first of all, you're right.
It was Bandar who said that to the former MI6 director, Dearlove.
It does and it doesn't.
I think the way to understand this is, in theological or ideological terms in Saudi Arabia, anti-Shiite sentiment is very strong.
Among the ruling family, those that were more religious may have shared that.
But for the ruling family as the government, or the ruling power, the anti-Shiite element really was one of geopolitics, because Iran is Shiite, rather than an ideological one.
Mohammed bin Salman has made some very stark statements on Shiites, but by and large, he's started to back away from that.
For one, look at Iraq.
Saudi Arabia, for the first 13 years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, did not have diplomatic relations with Iraq.
In the last two years, Saudi Arabia has embarked on a charm and win hearts and minds campaign.
It is investing heavily in Iraq.
Shiite leaders have visited Riyadh.
They played a football match that broke a lot of ice, and they're putting, if I recall, it's $100 million.
But don't hold me on the figure.
But what is supposed to be the world's biggest stadium, they're building that in Baghdad.
So there's been an outreach without question.
Mohammed bin Salman tried to shape things in Lebanon and failed.
And de facto at this moment, has accepted that Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese polity.
So it's really a mixed bag, and it's something that's very fluid.
But I think that some of the stark anti-Shiite rhetoric that we've seen, you know, is starting to change.
And by the same token, they cracked down very brutally on Shiite protests in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia.
But at the same time, you're seeing a degree of outreach towards the Shiites and investment in Shiite areas of Saudi Arabia on a scale that you haven't seen before.
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Now, I know Saudi has a lot more powerful military than the Iranians do, and they have the Americans to help them if it came down to it, but they have a lot to lose in a war with their very close neighbor, Iran, including future relations after the war and how things are supposed to work out after that.
They backed Saddam in the 80s, but they didn't outright pick a fight with Iran then.
And it seems like there are a lot of disincentives for making things that much worse.
But what do I know about how they look at things?
Well, it's unlikely that they really want a direct confrontation.
Also, keep in mind, on paper, they have a much stronger army.
That doesn't mean that they have a much stronger army when it comes to a real battle.
The Iranian military, whether it's a traditional military or the Revolutionary Guards, is far more battle-hardened than the Saudis are.
Saudi performance in Yemen has been abysmal and really been hardly on the ground, and mostly in the air.
And the number of weddings, funerals, and other things that have been hit is significant, which says something about the accuracy of the Saudi air force.
Over and beyond that, the way you're framing it is that you would have a classic battle.
The Iranians are masters at asymmetric warfare.
If we're talking about Iranian behavior, we're talking about asymmetric warfare.
So with other words, in some ways you could argue that Israeli and Iranian defense strategy is not that dissimilar in the sense that both of them want to fight their battles as far away from their own borders as they can.
It's a very forward defensive strategy.
In the Israeli case, that's preemptive strikes.
In the Iranian case, it's proxies.
Whichever one it is, the Saudis are not prepared for a proxy war.
They're not prepared for an asymmetric war.
So leaving the factor of U.S. aid aside, and if you had a direct war, other parties getting drawn into it, strictly Saudi Arabia-Iran, I think the jury is out on who would win that one.
Yeah.
Well, you know, America has a lot of assets in the region too, right there within missile range.
I mean, in the sense of, I don't know exactly, you know, how the textbook calls this in terms of asymmetric warfare, but basically keeping your infantry home, but shooting a giant barrage of missiles at the Bagram Air Base and at bases in Kuwait and Qatar and Bahrain, and in Iraq where America's embedded with Shiite forces still there.
You know, I guess they'd have to withdraw a little bit.
There are two things to keep in mind.
First of all, if you look at Iranian responses to multiple crises, whether it is the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, whether it is how they respond to domestic protests, or whether it is how they respond to Israeli actions against Iranian targets in Syria, on all three counts, the Iranians have been very restrained, which basically means for the Saudis, or for that matter the Americans, to initiate a war, they're really going to have to find a pretext.
It sounds like maybe they're trying to create one.
I mean, what you talk about in your article here.
I'm sorry, do you name the Kurdish group where there's some attacks going on?
Is that the PJAK there still?
No, I didn't name the Kurdish group.
I mean, there are various groups involved on the Kurdish side.
Back 11 years ago, it was PJAK and Jandala.
That was the redirection.
Jandala was with the Balochs, not the Kurds.
Right, yeah, yeah, over on the other side.
PJAK in the west and the Jandala in the east.
But on the Baloch side, there are various groups involved too.
Not all of them Baloch as such.
You think this is the CIA behind most of this?
Not at this point.
I'm sure the agency is aware of it.
But I don't think that either in the U.S. or Saudi Arabia, there is a decision to take it that way.
What I do think is that there is active thinking about it.
And that certainly in the Saudi case, building blocks have been put in place.
But I don't think that you actually have a decision to turn that into policy.
All right, well, so I can see Rudy Giuliani liking money and that kind of thing.
Pretty obvious, makes sense.
But do you think that there's really a conversation on the National Security Council where these people could possibly, even within the realm of possibility, convince themselves that they could do some kind of coup and put Myron Rajavi and the MEK in power in Tehran?
Your guess is as good as mine.
Trump apparently needed to be convinced that he shouldn't invade Venezuela.
Look, I think that there is a faction in the United States that includes people who are in the administration who have long advocated military intervention in Iran.
I think that would be a disaster beyond the fact that it simply would be a wrong approach.
But I think that there are people that seriously believe that.
But there are people who are as critical of the Iranians.
And, you know, you take someone like Mattis, the defense secretary.
He has a personal gripe.
It was his men, or he believes that some of his troops who were killed in Afghanistan were killed with the support of the Iranians.
Whether that's true or not is besides the fact.
He certainly believes that.
And he, you know, he has said to people, I'll take you to Arlington and show you their graves.
Now, so he's someone who has an equally, you know, in many ways, a more personal gripe than a John Bolton does, for whom it is political and ideological.
Yet Mattis is someone who does not want a military intervention.
Right.
Well, see, you correctly assume that any real attempted coup would lead to a war.
But that's skipping a step, right?
Like, I think the question is whether they think they could do in 1953, which is what it seems like they're trying to do with support for groups or, you know, possible support for groups and all these sanctions.
They're trying to destabilize.
And they tell each other, just like they do with North Korea, Oh, the regime's going to fall anytime now kind of thing.
Right.
Well, I think you're right that there is this notion that the regime is teetering and it's about to fall, which I think is wrong.
I don't think that we're looking at a simple copycat of 1953.
What I think that we're looking at is increased economic pressure in a situation that they view as already very tentative because of the protests that have gone on.
You know, whether it was the protests in December, January that you had, or whether it was the more recent protests.
And those protests are very different, by the way, but nonetheless, as well as protests that are regional because of water shortages, for example, that they think that that, with the correct, the right amount of increased economic pressure on the country, will gel into an overthrow of the regime.
You know, maybe not 1953, maybe 1979.
Fact of the matter is that if they think that the, that I don't see an immediate leader for that.
In 1979, you had Khomeini, and Khomeini was popular.
In 1953, you had a coup scenario, so it wasn't about popularity, but you had the Shah.
If they think today that either Reza sitting in Virginia or the Mujahideen al-Khalq are people or groups that have any significant following in the country, I think they're wrong.
I mean, there is without question a quest for change within Iran.
You know, they've had 40 years of this regime, and they want, you know, they're not getting results in social and economic terms.
But that does not necessarily mean that they really want a radical regime change.
A lot really want policy change.
And it doesn't mean, you know, they, the Iranians look at the rest of the Middle East, they look at Syria, they look at the fallout of the 2011 popular Arab revolts that you had that initially toppled four leaders, and they look at the mess that you have in Egypt, in Yemen, in Libya, and they don't want a repetition of that in Iran.
Well, but so if, I mean, the Americans, this pressure, if they can't, well, let's assume for the sake of argument, they don't really believe that they could put Rajavi on the throne there or anything like that.
They know they don't want a war.
It doesn't make sense.
It's hard to believe that they believe that increased pressure is going to lead to a better JCPOA.
So is there really an end other than just keeping John Bolton quiet and appeased for a while?
Or what do you think is even the point of this?
I mean, the Americans seem in general to believe in the magic of sanctions.
And sure, you can point to South Africa, but there aren't that many examples where you can point to sanctions really having worked.
They didn't work in Iraq, and the sanctions devastated that country.
So I think it's, you know, it's much, you know, the belief is much broader than just Iran.
It's a belief that you can coerce.
And Trump, you know, if the Venezuela story is correct, improves anything, he seems to have an even more naive view of the ability to coerce and use force to coerce.
The record shows that, you know, most military interventions have backfired.
I mean, it took Iraq a decade to get back on its feet, if you believe that it's back on its feet now.
You know, think back of all the sectarian violence that you had and so on.
So I think that that, you know, it's a much more fundamental issue in the United States and the way they view their policy tools that goes far beyond Iran.
All right, well, listen, thank you very much for your time on the show today, James.
I really appreciate it.
Okay, good luck with it.
All right, thanks very much.
All right, you guys, that is James M. Dorsey, senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Wurzburg's Institute for Fan Culture and co-host of the New Books in Middle East Studies podcast.
He's the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
That's a blog and a book and more.
Find this very important article at Loeblog, the great Jim Loeb's blog, loeblog.com, The Battle for Iran, Policy or Regime Change.
All right, you guys, and that's the show.
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