Where the Iran War Goes From Here

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0:30Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policy's Editor-in-Chief. This is FP Live.

0:40So, a two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran was supposed to expire on Tuesday. Just hours before it did, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was extending it, unilaterally. He also said the U.S. would continue to block ships from accessing Iranian ports, a move that Tehran says is an act of war. So, are we in a ceasefire? Or are we at war? Karim Sajidpour has been on this show before and is well known for his superb analysis of Iran and the region.

1:16We spoke on Wednesday, the 22nd of April, and I will bring you that interview in just a minute. But first, I thought I'd share my read on an aspect of the war that is not getting enough attention. There's little doubt that Americans are feeling economic pain from the war. The price at the pump is up by a third. But as newspapers and cable news shows dissect polls showing how the war is making Trump less popular, it began to strike me that in relative terms,

1:48Americans actually are not really feeling that much economic pain, at least not like people in the Middle East or Asia are. Why is that? The United States has some key advantages that most other countries don't. It is geographically blessed with no real adversaries nearby. It has become a true energy superpower, the world's biggest producer of oil and natural gas. It enjoys what is known as the exorbitant privilege of dollar supremacy.

2:2090% of all international commodities are traded in dollars. A strong dollar benefits U.S. importers. And of course, the U.S. stock market is doing just fine. And that's partly because of a generational AI boom. All of those strengths translate into weaknesses for much of the rest of the world, but especially Asia. Asian economies account for 40% of the world's energy demand. Almost all of them are net importers.

2:51Pakistan, for example, gets 80% of its crude from the Gulf. Bangladesh imports 95% of its energy. Energy shocks are like a triple whammy for these countries. They are more dependent, so they have very few options. They have to buy energy in dollars that are more expensive. And they're already in economic trouble, so they have less fiscal room to subsidize energy. So while Americans are facing some pain at the pump, and with booking more expensive flights,

3:21and I don't want to diminish any of that pain, we must acknowledge that people from Manila to Dhaka to Islamabad are facing all of that and reduced work weeks and the closure of universities. People in Asia are having to cut back on cooking gas. These are real daily sacrifices among people who already don't make that much in relative terms and spend a much greater proportion of their money on food and energy. And this is not just about energy.

3:53So many other commodities are affected. To take just one other example, petroleum products go into the manufacturing of thread. The price of thread is up by 50% in Bangladesh. So at some point, Uniqlo and Zara, which manufacture there, are going to have to pass that pain on to consumers in the West. And that's the final point I wanted to make here. People in the Gulf, in Asia, and in much of the Global South have suffered disproportionately from the last few weeks of war.

4:26That gets lost in the conversation in the United States about the costs of war. But even so, the longer this goes on, supply chains will come back to hurt Americans more than they currently are, and in the most unexpected ways. From something as simple as the clothes you wear, to the phone you're probably listening to this on, which relies on helium that is currently held up in the Strait of Hormuz, we are looking at a supply shock that could get a lot worse. I wrote about this in FP this week, and there's a gift link in the show notes.

5:01Okay, on to this week's interview, where we can hopefully shed some light on where the war might head. My guest is Kareem Sajidpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Make sure to check out our website, foreignpolicy.com, for a lot of related reading. Let's dive in. Kareem, welcome back to FP Live. Thank you, Ravi. Great to be with you. So, let's just start with the status quo. What's your understanding of where things stand

5:32between the United States and Iran right now? So, Ravi, we're in between a cold war and a hot war. I think neither President Trump nor the Iranians want to go back to a full-blown war. At the same time, the demands of each side are very far away. And historically, Iran has only been able to come to consensus and compromise.

6:03Over the last 47 years, perhaps on three, four occasions, they've agreed to a major compromise. And that's always happened after many months, if not years, very difficult negotiations. And so, I mean, President Trump has somewhat unrealistic expectations that this Iranian regime, whose senior leadership has been decapitated, is going to be able to come to such a quick decision on such a monumental issue. Look, we've all understood that Iran is holding the world hostage by blocking the Strait of Hormuz.

6:38And our listeners know this, but a fifth of all crude and all natural gas goes through there, in addition to many other important commodities. But, Kareem, what's interesting over the last week or so is that Trump has now blockaded the blockade. And in other words, he's essentially telling the Iranians, we can take the pain, maybe you can't take the pain. So, who has a higher pain threshold now for economic pain? Well, on one hand, Iran is obviously in a very difficult economic situation.

7:08This was a country which, even before this war, was teetering on insolvency. If you recall, those protests that kicked off last January were about the country's dire financial straits. And this war, the regime has probably incurred tens, if not over $100 billion in damages. So, economically, Iran is in an incredibly difficult position. The United States, on the other hand, the stock market, the economy has been going in some ways better than expected.

7:43What Iran pays very close attention to is President Trump's public approval and the public approval for the war in the United States in the hopes that limited popular support for this war will end up restraining President Trump's ambitions to continue it. I think from our vantage point, there was a perception, I know in the first round of negotiations, having spoken to one of the American negotiators that was in Islamabad,

8:17that this is a regime which, despite its public bluster and confidence, it's in desperate need of cash. It's in desperate need of sanctions relief and of getting its frozen assets unfrozen. And so, the advantage that authoritarian regimes always have when they're fighting democracies is they don't care about their public opinion in the same way. But there's kind of two, what Donald Rumsfeld would say are known unknowns.

8:50One of the things it's difficult for us to grasp from afar is just how desperate is their economic situation. In some ways, it may be that they themselves are not fully cognizant of it because the revolutionary guards who have become now, and were before, but even more so now, the chief power in Iran are not the people who are managing the country's economy. So, they may be a little bit divorced from the country's economic realities. That's one known unknown.

9:21The other is, what is the health of Moshe Tava Khamenei, the new supreme leader? To what extent is he really overseeing these negotiations? To what extent has he given his blessing for a compromise? And, you know, these are two critical questions which are not answerable at the moment. I'm curious how the nuclear issue is playing in negotiations right now and in the coming days and weeks. And I ask this question mostly keeping in mind that the regime now has this other weapon,

9:55the ability to disrupt the global economy. And so, for the Iranian leaders, does that change its need for a nuclear deterrent? How do you expect them to approach the nuclear issue when it becomes a sticking point in talks? Ravi, I don't see Iran altering its nuclear ambitions. And I think you're absolutely right that what they perhaps have discovered over the last five weeks,

10:25that hormos enrichment is a far more potent tool for them than uranium enrichment. Because most citizens around the world are not really impacted by Iran's nuclear program. Obviously, countries like Israel and Iran's neighbors and the United States certainly are deeply concerned about Iran's advancing nuclear weapons capabilities. But most citizens around the world are not impacted. But when the Strait of Hormuz is blocked, and as you said, a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas and fertilizer are locked up,

11:05then citizens all over the world feel that impact. And so, that is what Iran wanted, something which would impact citizens the world over. But given how much they've invested in their nuclear program over the last 25 years, when you consider both the sunk costs of the program and just the opportunity costs and the sanctions, the tally is perhaps north of a trillion dollars. That's not something that they're willing to give up.

11:41They've gone to war now twice, rather than compromise what they see as their right to enrich uranium. And I think on the contrary, Ravi, not only are the nuclear demands going to remain, and their demands will be the right to enrich uranium. And we'll have to see about their stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which they obviously want to keep, and President Trump wants to get out of the country. But I do think that, you know, unfortunately, one of the lessons that it's been plain to all to see

12:16is that countries that have given up their nuclear programs have made themselves vulnerable to external intervention, whereas countries who have nuclear weapons have given themselves perhaps a cloak of immunity. So I'm not confident that even if a nuclear deal is ultimately signed with the Iranians, that that's the end of the story. I think there's perhaps almost a consensus view now in Tehran that the regime needs nuclear weapons, and I won't feel confident that, you know, with one signature, they're going to renounce those ambitions.

12:52Hmm. Look, and the other potential sticking point was ballistic missiles. But Trump has now been saying that ballistic missiles are a regional problem. And so, in other words, it may not be a major issue in any talks in the next few weeks. What is your sense of how that changes the dynamics of negotiations? So what President Trump has done is to significantly reduce his demands of Iran over the last six weeks.

13:24If you go back to the speech that he gave at the outset of the war, he had very grand ambitions to destroy Iran's nuclear program, destroy its missiles and drones, destroy its regional proxies, and potentially even bring down the regime. And now, six weeks later, the missiles and drones, as far as we know, are not even part of the negotiations. The proxies are not part of the negotiations. Regime change is no longer part of the negotiations.

13:56And so the focus of the negotiations has been more narrowly focused on just the nuclear issue. And that is something which is of deep concern, in particular, for our allies in the Persian Gulf. Because what they will tell you is that they don't worry about Iran nuking them, but they worry about Iran's missiles and drones over the last six weeks. United Arab Emirates, I think, upwards of 3,000 attacks they've experienced. And when I speak to the leaders of those countries, they say, listen, three months ago,

14:31we would have been content with only a nuclear deal. But now we need a deal that includes missiles and drones, because those are not defensive weapons for Iran. Those are offensive weapons. And, you know, missiles and drones are something that Iran has learned how to mass produce themselves. And in some cases, they have deep underground cities producing missiles, which are hard and difficult for us to reach. And so even if we are able to get to a nuclear deal with Iran, the threats that it poses, the Islamic Republic poses to its regional neighbors in Israel are going to remain.

15:16Wow. I want to talk a little bit about what we know about Iran's leadership. You mentioned Mojtabak Khamenei earlier. But, you know, a lot of analysts have been talking about how the current crop of leaders are more hardline than the previous ones. And a lot of the moderates have been sidelined. I'm curious, though, about the spectrum of leaders in that, you know, there are reports that Iranian state media has been critical of Speaker Ghalibov for choosing to negotiate with the United States

15:54when he was in Islamabad last week. And that tells me that there's a group within the army that is even more hardline than what we were imagining of the top leadership right now. So, Ravi, Ayatollah Khamenei, the late supreme leader who ruled for 37 years, his political faction in Iran, they refer them to themselves as principalists, which means that they are loyal to the principles of the 1979 revolution, which for me in particular means resistance against America and Israel.

16:31And Khamenei long believed that if you abandon your principles, that's not going to prolong your life as a government. That's actually going to hasten your demise. And the most vivid example for him was when Gorbachev attempted to reform the Soviet Union. And so that line of thinking, the principalist line of thinking, I think, is still a dominant line of thinking in Iran. And then you also have other folks who are equally committed to the revolution and to the Islamic Republic.

17:09But their view is that in order to preserve the system, we can't be in constant war with America and Israel. It's just not a way to run the country to be the most sanctioned country in the world and totally isolated and, you know, at constant conflict with our neighbors. And so the word that we use for these folks are pragmatists. They tend to put economic and national interests before revolutionary ideology.

17:43And Mohammed Bahir Qalibov, the Speaker of Parliament, is perhaps the best example of someone who is thought to be a pragmatist now in Tehran. And so each of these groups are committed to the maintenance of the Islamic Republic. One shorthand way of thinking of them is that the principalists, they fear that if Iran reforms, it could end up like the Soviet Union. The pragmatists, I think the model in their head is China.

18:15When, after Chairman Mao died and Deng Xiaoping came and, as I said, you know, prioritized economic interests before the Cultural Revolution. And at the moment, given the profound mistrust between the United States and Iran, the cynicism of the principalists is difficult for anyone to disregard because they will say, listen, twice while we were negotiating with the United States, they attacked us.

18:46And this could just be another ruse, these negotiations could just be another ruse for us to let our guard down and have them attack again. And that's why I said that what's not clear really to anyone at the moment is Moshtaba Khamenei and where he falls in this debate between the principalists and pragmatists. Because Mohammed Bahir Qalibov has an old relationship with Moshtaba. They go back a couple decades at least.

19:17They're from the same city of Mashhad.

19:21And, you know, Qalibov has said publicly that, you know, what he's doing is with the blessing of Moshtaba Khamenei. You know, other more hardline figures argue the opposite. But as I said, Ravi, that isn't necessarily a new phenomenon. This is a regime which, if you look at the Obama nuclear deal, the JCPOA, that process took about two years of negotiations. And so that's just the political culture of the Islamic Republic.

19:52Resistance is lionized. And the word for compromise in Persian, so as ishkad, a compromiser, is almost a slur. And so, you know, that has been the political culture of the Islamic Republic since 1979.

20:09I'm curious if there are any scenarios now in which you see the collapse of the regime, or is that just not going to happen? You know, what we know from history, Ravi, is that when early stage revolutionary governments experience an external military attack, that can oftentimes, oftentimes serves to consolidate their power. A good example of that was when Saddam Hussein invaded Khomeini's Iran in 1980,

20:40helped the nascent revolutionary government in Tehran consolidate power. The Bay of Pigs and Fidel Castro was a similar example. But you oftentimes see the opposite example when it comes to late-stage dictatorships. When they suffer an external military humiliation, we often look back in retrospect and say that actually accelerated their demise. The Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan is a good example of that. Milosevic's defeat by NATO is perhaps another example of that.

21:13So we're two months into this war, and at the moment, there are no signs that I've seen, no visible signs of cracks within the system. There haven't been any popular protests since this war began because people have been living under aerial bombardment. But once the conflict concludes, this is a regime which is going to be inheriting a terrible situation, not only a country in enormous economic distress, but it's now profoundly even more disliked and distrusted by its neighbors.

21:52And those political and social grievances haven't really gone away. So it is plausible we will look back six months, a year, two years from now and say the war, it amplified the regime's existing challenges and it forced them to either change or implode. But at the moment, there are no signs of that. So let's flip this. I mean, we've been talking about Iran now for a while, but I want to look at the White House's perspective now.

22:23I mean, is it fair to say that they set out to do a certain set of objectives which have changed over time, but they did once talk about regime change. They did talk about a nuclear deal that would be better, of course. What is your sense now of what the United States wants out of this? And are any of those scenarios plausible? So I used to joke with my students at Georgetown Ravi that to understand the Middle East,

22:53you're better off studying psychology than political science, because really Middle East has been shaped by the manias and ambitions of individual leaders. And I think to understand U.S. foreign policy right now, psychology degree is perhaps more useful than a political science degree, because we're trying to get inside the head of President Trump. And what are his goals and ambitions here? It's my view that his hope was similar to the Venezuela model,

23:26in that I don't think he even wanted to launch this full-blown war against Iran, but he wanted to have kind of a quick decapitation, followed by a new partner in Tehran who can work with the United States and end this 47-year U.S.-Iran Cold War. Obviously, it didn't turn out as he expected, and I think it's outside the realm of possibilities in the near term that there's going to be a new leader in Tehran

24:01who will abandon 47 years of revolutionary ideology. I think, in my view, best-case outcome in the near term as we go from a hot war back to a cold war. But as I said, the ambitions that the president had from the outset of the war have now been significantly reduced. We're just more narrowly focused on the nuclear issue. And I think, as of late, the president has been alluding to the fact

24:33that the deal he's now working on will be better than Obama's JCPOA. And so the bar has been lowered. Instead of, you know, total surrender of Iran, I think his metric for success is perhaps can he get a better deal than President Obama did in 2015. Now, I frankly think even if he's able to do that, and the metric would be whether he can get Iran to freeze the enrichment of uranium for a longer period.

25:08But was the cost justified? And the costs we're talking about, you know, perhaps between this war and last June's 12-day war, upwards of $50 billion at least. And if the outcome is, you know, just to get a longer freeze on enrichment, when, as I said earlier, I'm not confident that Iran will abide by any agreement,

25:40because their view is going to be that the U.S. didn't abide by its agreements before. So we're willing to sign this piece of paper in order to end hostilities. But I don't think anyone in Israel or the United States or among our Gulf partners will be confident that this regime has really put its nuclear weapons ambitions to bed. Yeah, and it also begs the question, why pull out of the Obama deal in the first place?

26:10But Karim, as we keep looking at how this is affecting other players, I want to get to the Gulf, I want to get to the Global South as well, but Israel. Where does Israel now fit into all of this? Because it seems like the regime will still be intact. It will still have a ballistic missile program. The proxies, Hezbollah is severely weakened, and that arena is still in play. But the Houthi rebels are still at large.

26:43Yeah, if you were Israel, how do you now game out what happens next? And was this worth it? So in my view, if you're looking around the world at which countries are better off now than they were before the war two months ago, the only one I would say with confidence as of now is Russia. And that, you know, Russia is just a lot wealthier than it was a few months ago because of the spike in oil prices and the risk premium to energy.

27:15And, you know, with America bogged down in Iran, it has less time to think about Ukraine. Some have also made the argument that Israel is better off. And I think that remains to be seen. Obviously, Iran militarily is a weaker country than it was two months ago. Its ability to project power is less than before. But by all accounts, these capabilities are things that Iran can rebuild. And we have mixed reporting about the extent to which we have managed to destroy Iran's missile launchers.

27:53Early in the war, there was a view that we were far more successful. Now the reporting that's come out has said that perhaps they have at least 50% still of their missile arsenal. And, you know, we know that they've figured out how to manufacture missiles and drones like they have automobiles. It's something which they can do pretty quickly. So if you're Israel and, you know, you have your mortal enemy, which has just been badly damaged but has survived

28:26and is now going to double down on all of the policies that were threatening to you, that's not an ideal outcome. I think, you know, in my view, when it comes to both Israel and the United States, you're never going to rest well at night until you have a government in Iran whose organizing principle is its own national interest rather than revolutionary ideology. Because in Iran, which is either, you know, representative of its own people or at a minimum representative of its own national interests

29:01will behave very differently toward Israel and towards the United States. It would be more of a complementary relationship than an adversary relationship. And it seems to me the last two months has, you know, made us further away from that goal rather than closer to it.

29:19And we'll be back in a minute with more of Foreign Policy Live. Remember, you can catch these conversations live and on video on foreignpolicy.com. Subscribers get to send us questions in advance in addition to a range of other benefits, including our magazine. Sign up.

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30:11Ah, I told you it was catchy. It's only getting every customer's order right. It's only a point-of-sale system connected by Spectrum fiber-powered business internet, helping you track hundreds of secure transactions. And it's all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based customer support and local technicians. It's only everything. If we broaden this out a little bit, I'm curious how months from now, years from now, how the region will see Iran differently.

30:55I mean, if you are Qatar or Saudi Arabia or the UAE, you're now thinking about your security very, very differently than you did before. You see Iran in a very different perspective than you did before. And if I were to zoom out still further, Kareem, you know, a country like Pakistan, it's been in the news as the mediator between the United States and Iran. But Pakistan is also suffering immensely. I mean, it gets 80% of its crude from the Gulf. It has limited fiscal room to subsidize energy.

31:30You know, it's basically shut down universities. Government officials are on a four-day work week. This is serious pain for a country that maybe could not withstand more pain than it already had. And that's basically mirrored across Asia. A lot of countries that are, you know, essentially passing on severe costs to their people in the form of, you know, cooking gas being rationed, for example. For all of these countries, one has to imagine that their relationship with Iran will change, even though they may have been ideologically friendly.

32:06What is your sense of how Tehran might be thinking about this very changed landscape six months from now, two years from now? You're absolutely right, Ravi. And we may have spoken about this in one of our previous discussions, that the framework I think about looking at the Gulf countries and Iran, you have countries which I call falcons, who, you know, their goal is to build world-class cities and economies and to be hubs of international transportation and finance and technology.

32:48And then you have Iran and its proxies, which I describe as vultures, and that they benefit from instability and chaos. If you look at the countries that Iran was dominating prior to October 7, 2023, it was essentially five failing states, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Gaza. And so their business models are very, very different. The Gulf requires stability. If you want to be a hub for international transportation and finance and technology, it can't be a war zone.

33:21In a place like UAE, perhaps as many as 90% of its residents are non-local. And so if it looks like a war zone, you risk a mass exodus of your residents. And so Iran, in contrast, as we've talked about, that's where it thrives, when there's chaos and stability. It can fill power vacuums with its militias or engage in asymmetric warfare.

33:53And I don't see that basic dynamic changing so long as the Islamic Republic is in power. And the challenge here, Robbie, is, you know, I did a Fulbright many years ago in Beirut. And my big takeaway from that year was that it takes decades to build things. It takes weeks to destroy things. So those who are in the business of destruction have a huge advantage because, you know, that can be quick and cheap. And building things, it takes a lot of capital and many decades.

34:27And so those Gulf countries, I think contrary to some of the reporting, they actually didn't welcome this war. They, I think, tried to dissuade the United States from launching it. But now that we've taken this baseball bat to the hornet's nest, they want the United States to stick around and continue to defend them. And, you know, you will hear them say that the United States needs to finish the job.

34:57I don't think it's clear in their head what exactly that means. But what I think at a minimum it means is that you can't allow Iran to continue to control the Straits of Hormuz. Now, on Pakistan, one of the interesting developments which I think few people paid attention to in the months before the war was this mutual defense treaty that Pakistan signed with Saudi Arabia, which actually has, for the Saudis, if you ask them, proven to be quite consequential.

35:31And so there's many reasons why Pakistan has emerged in this mediation role. You highlighted some very important ones, which is that their economy is deeply impacted by this conflict and they want to see it resolved. They want to see the strait open. But also, if Iran continued to launch strikes on Saudi Arabia, I think there was even a statement that the Pakistani foreign minister, prime minister, made reminding Iran that they have a mutual defense treaty with Saudi Arabia

36:04and they would be forced to enter the conflict if Iran's attacks on Saudi persisted. Yeah, that's a very good point. And, of course, that defense pact included a nuclear umbrella as well. Pakistan, of course, has had nuclear weapons for decades. I just want to linger on the Strait of Hormuz for a bit longer because, you know, I mean, this is a choke point that, as we were discussing it, disproportionately affects the Gulf countries and then Asia.

36:35But it is also broader. And with each passing week, we will have other ripple effects that will affect other parts of the global economy. Europe is beginning to see a greater impact now as well. This week itself, Lufthansa has begun to cancel flights. The price of jet fuel, of course, has doubled. But other ripple effects will soon come into play. And the UK and France are trying to hold a conference in which they would discuss maybe the opening up of the Strait of Hormuz.

37:06How do you think Iran is thinking about this longer term? Because, you know, they always had the ability to disrupt the Strait, but it seems like war has provided them cover to do what we thought was unthinkable. But now that they've done it, now that that genie is out of the bottle, why would you put it back in? Why would they put it back in? And how does the world get together to do that in such a way to build confidence that they don't do it again at some later stage?

37:37It's a critical and important question, Ravi. And just before we started our conversation this morning, I was looking online and I saw that there are now billboards in Tehran, which are essentially normalizing Iran's control over the Strait. And that is indeed what they've been trying to do, to normalize and formalize this new order in which the Strait of Hormuz is their Panama Canal, you know, something that they collect resources and revenue from.

38:10And it's an enormous source of leverage for them. And that is, you know, something that is going to be difficult to totally reverse because they've seen it's a more powerful tool than anything they've had before. You know, one example we saw last week was the ceasefire in Lebanon. You know, they believe that they got the United States to restrain Israel from its military onslaught in Lebanon because of the Strait.

38:49And so in the future, when they want to exercise leverage over a country, they may choose to do this. And it's a low cost, high impact tool for them because all it takes is a few $20,000 drones, perhaps some mines, harassing these $100 million tankers filled with hundreds of millions of dollars in energy. And, you know, that impact is felt throughout the world.

39:20I think there's two big questions as to whether they're going to be able to normalize some control over. Sure. One of the questions is, where do the Omanis lie here? Because the other side of the Straits of Hormuz is Omani territory. And the Omanis made one public statement that they are not on board with the straits becoming, you know, weapons.

39:53Exactly. They want the straits to remain an international waterway. So that's going to be important. The second is the Chinese role. We know that a bulk of a lot of the oil and natural gas and, you know, other items that are passing through the strait are destined to China. Those countries in the Gulf that are deeply impacted by this, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, have deep and expansive relationships with China, probably more important relationships with China than even Iran has.

40:32And they've been leaning on the Chinese to weigh in here. You know, what I hear from them is that the Chinese also favor a return to status quo ante and the straits once again being a free and open international waterway. But they're not in a hurry to get President Trump out of the spine that he's put himself in. You know, you took us exactly where I wanted to take us to, which is China. I mean, it's very well known that the Chinese have a lot of influence in the Gulf.

41:02Pakistan, of course, even more so, their foreign minister went to Beijing before the Islamabad process began. And then, of course, the rest of Asia, where China is able to offer and has been offering clean sources of energy as an alternative to the fossil fuel energy that everyone has been getting from the Strait of Hormuz. So this is obviously both an opportunity and a pain point in the here and now for China.

41:33But does China have any leverage with Iran? And if so, how do you expect that to play out in the coming weeks? I mean, on paper, they have enormous leverage over Iran and that 90 percent of Iran's oil exports go to China. China is the indispensable partner for Iran, more so than Russia. I think that, you know, I argue that China is far more of a critical partner to the Islamic Republic of Iran than America was to the Shah's Iran.

42:07But, you know, when I talk to, you know, both Chinese officials or to, as I said, those Gulf countries that have very strong partnerships with China, they argue that China really hasn't exercised that prerogative yet. You know, even though they obviously are impacted by the spike in oil prices, they have an enormous reserve of petroleum now. And, you know, again, you know, perhaps they don't want to do President Trump any favors now and getting, you know, alleviating this challenge for him.

42:49But when and if it becomes, I don't want to use the word existential, but when and if it becomes, has a much more profound impact on China's economy, I think they have enormous leverage over Iran and could tell Iran to knock it off. But, you know, so far they haven't done that. You know, and I want to bring in a subscriber question here. This one's from Dr. Robert Friedman. And how long can Iran survive a blockade?

43:22And the reason why this question, I think, plays into the previous one as well is that the blockade right now, as it stands, is the United States and Iran. But this could also include other countries. I mean, China could impose pressure on Iran economically if it wanted to. And there's a scenario where you can treat Iran like North Korea and then force it over time to sort of shape or change its behavior. Absolutely. And here, Ravi, on the question of how long can Iran endure this blockade, I mean, one of the questions which I'm not an energy expert,

44:02but, you know, my friends who do have that energy expertise have been writing about this, is that, you know, at some point it becomes potentially existential for Iran's ability to produce oil. Well, if it has to close off those oil spigots, you know, that can have an enormous impact. And from their estimates, that day is not that far in the future, could be a few weeks before Iran is looking at some, you know, catastrophic economic consequences as a result of this blockade.

44:46Now, we know that, you know, obviously Iran is a large country with a lot of land borders. And that's what I said from the outset, Ravi. This is one of these known unknowns. It's difficult for us to ascertain to what extent is Iran smuggling this oil out from, you know, other places, whether that's the Iraqi border, the Turkish border. But, you know, obviously, this is not a way to run a nation, to run an economy.

45:18And it goes back to the point I was making earlier, that there is this disconnect between the men who are running the war, the Revolutionary Guards, and the men who are running the country. And it's not clear to me that the Revolutionary Guards really have a clear understanding of the country's very difficult economic conditions. And certainly, that isn't a big priority for them. Last question. For many months now, you and I have been sort of back-channeling on the question of what does Iran look like in the future?

45:52What is a model for it? And you've written about this as well. It could be North Korea, complete isolation, but with a bomb. It could be Pakistan, where essentially you have military control and the fig leaf of democracy, but you have a bomb. But you could also have a Cuba model, a Turkey model. What is your sense now, given everything that's happened in the last two months? What are the likeliest scenarios for what Iran is going to look like in the coming years and what that means for the world?

46:24So the essay I wrote last fall, Ravi, I laid out five plausible scenarios for a post-Khamini Iran. And I'll just briefly mention them in order of what I thought were the most to least likely. It was Iran as Russia, you know, the system being unable to really reform and eventually implodes like the Soviet Union, but then, you know, looks like post-Soviet Russia. So there was Russia, Iran as Russia, Iran as China, Iran as Pakistan, you know, morphing into a more overt military dictatorship.

47:03Iran as Turkey, somewhat more representative, but a more populist government, perhaps. And then the last model is Iran as North Korea. And I thought Iran as North Korea was the least likely outcome. You know, unfortunately, right now, at least in the immediate term, that may be the most likely outcome of this war that we have.

47:33And again, it depends somewhat on what is the health of Moshe Taba Khamenei, what is his situation going to be. But as of right now, it looks like it's another hereditary ideological dictatorship with nuclear ambitions. And they've proven themselves willing, as they did last January, to kill potentially tens of thousands of people to stay in power. And I think that, you know, they will continue to need to rule with an iron fist, given their lack of legitimacy.

48:08So that, unfortunately, looks like a plausible near-term outcome. But a year from now, two years from now, it's going to be a little bit more difficult to tell. I mean, the big difference between Iran and North Korea is that the Iranian society is very different than North Korean society. As we've talked about before, it's a society that aspires to be like South Korea. And so the one thing maybe I'll conclude on, Ravi, is to say, it's an observation we've talked about also before, the observation that Henry Kissinger made before he entered government service.

48:43When he was a professor at Harvard, he had written that he believed that history is driven by impersonal forces, and regardless of whose power, countries will follow their own natural interests. And he said, after he served in government, he reached the opposite conclusion, that the individual profoundly shapes history. And his last book, Before Dying, was about leadership. And I'm a big believer in that as well, that individuals can come around and totally change the trajectory of a nation. Ayatollah Khomeini did that in 1979.

49:15And so the question is, you know, can there be, who will be the next leader who emerges in Iran? What is their vision going to be? In my view, death to America and death to Israel is not an appealing vision for the vast majority of Iran's population. You know, they're tired of that. But within this revolutionary system, can anyone emerge with a different vision?

49:47I think that's certainly possible. But obviously, we'll be paying close attention in the weeks and months ahead. Fascinating. Kareem, thank you so much. Thank you, Ravi. Great to be with you. And that was Kareem Sajidpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Lots more coming up on FP Live. Next week, could we have a global recession? The economist Gita Gopinath will join me to talk about the economic impacts of war.

50:21Remember, you can watch that live and on video at foreignpolicy.com slash live. FP Live, the podcast, is produced by Rosie Julin. The executive producer of FP Live is Donna Schoen. And I'm Ravi Agrawal. I'll see you next time.

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