Lawfare Daily: The Latest in Iran, with Richard Nephew

[Intro]

Richard Nephew: Diplomatic deals or military operations may not be as successful in a narrow sense of addressing a nuclear issue. And this takes me back to the question of what should be the objective of the United States? You know, is this a time where you need to contemplate something much more aggressive in terms of limiting this regime's ability to develop those weapons?

Is that the kind of path that you want to pursue? Especially if there are protests ongoing?

Ariane Tabatabai: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Ariane Tabatabai, Public Service Fellow here at Lawfare with Richard Nephew, Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and former Deputy Special Envoy for Iran during the Biden administration.

Richard Nephew: I cannot believe the ongoing protest activity is going to suggest to the Russians, you know, this is a relationship we need to invest in. I think more than anything, if they've were already kind of lukewarm they're gonna remain such until they see what comes out of this, until they see what comes out of potential military strikes coming from the U.S. or Israel with a guided missile program so on and so forth.

Ariane Tabatabai: Today, we're talking about Iran and taking stock of the Trump administration's policy toward the country. We recorded this podcast on Thursday, January the eighth. As we were beginning to record, we learned that the Iranian regime had shut down the internet in response to the protests across the country.

The shutdown has now gone on for days, and the regime has ramped up its crackdown. The number of protestors killed and arrested by regime forces have gone up drastically. The latest reporting puts those numbers at more than 500 killed and 10,700 arrested.

[Main Episode]

These are the numbers as of this morning. This is January 12^th, eastern time, and they will likely continue to go up by the time you listen.

There is now reporting of diplomatic outreach from Iran to the U.S. as the regime's leaders continue to respond to President Trump's signaling that he may intervene in Iran, should Tehran continue to kill protesters.

Let's start with the ongoing protests. You know, this is not the first time we've seen such activity.

These are, though, the largest protests Iran has experienced since 2022. And it seems to be expanding into even regime strongholds, including the bazaar. So that's noteworthy. Meanwhile, President Trump has been floating around the idea of taking action in Iran should the Iranian regime continue to crack down on protesters.

And this is all happening in a very unusual and very complex context for the United States which includes obviously most recently the deposition of Venezuela's dictator Maduro, who was an Iranian partner. We also have an administration that's been more openly talking about military action that has certainly shown over the past year that it is inclined to take action where other administrations in the past would not have done so, or would've been, would've thought twice before undertaking that type of action, including in the context of Iran, and lastly, you know, the strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities over the summer.

So I wanna ask you to unpack two sets of questions here to begin with. And the first is about the protests themselves. You know, it's fairly, it's not that early, but it's fairly early to be able to tell where these are going.

And again, this is a regime that is very well acquainted with protests. It has an advanced machinery that is designed to repress and suppress, and it's never shied away from killing, torturing, or arresting people to secure regime stability. So how do you see these protests and the response so far as different from, or similar to, what we've seen in the past, and can you give us some indicators for what you are watching for as these protests continue?

And then the second set of questions that I wanna address are what do you make of the Trump administration's response to the protest so far? You know, again, the president is using more, sort of stronger language how much stock do you put into that, and what would a U.S. involvement look like if the administration were to actually do what it says it would be doing?

Richard Nephew: You know, the optimist in me wants to say, okay, this is the beginning of the end, right? That, that we are now seeing all the contradictions of the Iranian system laid completely bare. The inability to manage the economy, the corruption, the crime, the human rights violations, the subjugation of a population that is incredibly sophisticated, incredibly worldly, you know, understanding where Iran's government is in the world and not particularly liking their place in it.

That's the population that Iran's leaders are dealing with here. And all that adds up to my mind to be, you know, the case for why this might be different and why, you know, we might actually see the final fracturing of this particular system. And I think, you know, it's worth saying just to be transparent in all respects, that's a good thing, right?

The idea that the current government of Iran could collapse and that the result could be an improved situation for the Iranian population, I think we should accept as an un unambiguous good.

The realist in me though, has got some concerns and it's got some concerns on two levels. You know, concern number one is, you know, as you were describing Ari, that we have seen this before and so has the Iranian government. And you know, while it is absolutely true that the pressure that is building on the Iranian government appears to be as significant as any that the Iranian government has experienced in the last, you know, four decades of existence.

The reality is that they also know how to handle it, and we have not yet seen the full Iranian playbook come out. We might be seeing that today. Just before we started recording, there were reports on Twitter that the internet is now out in Iran. That's the kind of thing you would expect to see as a first step towards a broader crackdown.

We have indications that there has been violence used to repress people, but not the full apparatus, the state repression that you and I would both expect. And so, realist point to me, number one is, boy, we do know that the Iranian system knows how to sustain itself and is prepared to take action to sustain itself.

And because we haven't seen it yet, that doesn't mean that it's not coming. And that, if and when the Iranian state chooses to repress people as forcefully as they can, past history would suggest that they have the ability to persevere and that they have still both a monopoly of violence and a willingness to use it in excess of what people are prepared to tolerate.

So that's concern number one. Concern number two is, you know, even if there were to be a crack in the regime, it's not entirely apparent to me that results in a better outcome for the Iranian population. I know that's a, that's a dangerous thing to say but hear me out. You know, the reality is that the current system is terrible, but the pessimist that I have to be, says it can always get worse.

And that there are people inside of that system who would be 100% prepared to step forward and potentially take ownership and leadership in a way that would involve even more repression, more fundamental changes to the system as well. And so, the reality is we may be at the precipice of something very good, but I think that we've, at least at this moment, still got as much chance of being at the precipice of either a clamp down, that the regime itself is able to bring to bear or something much worse emerging from it.

And that's the nature of these kinds of inflection points. So, you know, all that adds up to me to being, you know, again a willing optimist, you know, wanting to see the possibility curve is being positive here. But being really concerned about what also might be coming as people who have a lot of power, a lot of authority, and a lot of stake in the system, you know, clinging to that and refuse to give it up.

Ariane Tabatabai: Okay, so that's a really good kind of, I think, overview of what we've seen so far, what we're expecting in Iran. Now, to bring us back to the sort of D.C. side of things, right? What do you make of what President Trump has said about how the U.S. might respond to the protests? If he were to take action, what range of options exist to him?

Which ones have we seen used before and which ones seem like unusual and would be a point of departure from previous policy?

Richard Nephew: Yeah. I think it's worth, especially after Venezuela when people are now inclined to think that the U.S. is gonna be prepared to use military force much more aggressively prepared to take significant action describing his regime, change those things, let's take a half step back.

Let's pump the brakes and let's actually, you know, say what we have seen this administration do when it comes to military force. We're still in the area largely of special operations, still in the area, largely of, you know, one and done kinds of operations, you know. We are not seeing a resumption of, you know, 2003 era, you know, massive invasion, occupation force.

And in fact, I mean if you look at the Venezuela case right now, the administration is going to great lengths to say how prepared they are to, you know, put troops on the ground, how prepared they are to escalate but they haven't done it. And instead what they have done is a special forces-based operation that removed one person and his wife.

And now they are seeking to do a deal with the remaining governments not actually executing a regime change, because you can't look at the vice president of President Maduro, you know, now being, you know, put in charge as a regime change. You can look at it as a leadership change, but not a regime change.

And I think if you look at the June operation against Natanz, Fordow, if you look at. You know, some of these other, you know, operations, either Nigeria or you're looking in the Red Sea vis-a-vis the Houthis. You know, all that adds up to, yeah, this administration's prepared to use force, but it still is in a way that minimizes risk still is in a way that minimizes exposure still in a way that doesn't overly commit the United States.

And that is what informs my thought about what they'd be prepared to do in the case of Iran. You know, I think, you know, the Israelis were prepared to do a multi-day and multi-week operation to eviscerate the Iranian nuclear program. The United States was prepared to do one operation and call it quits.

And that's what we did. The president came out basically while the planes were still in the air, flying back to the United States and said, now we should have a ceasefire. My sense is that is the same sort of pattern that we'd see here if the United States were to be willing to use military force to, you know, basically carry out the threat that was presented by the president. Then we're talking about something that is much more in the area of an operation as opposed to a campaign.

You could imagine the U.S., or the U.S. plus Israel, potentially taking action that would target regime officials and those sorts of things to try and enable protestors to rise up. And it would be seen in that light, that we are gonna clear space such that protestors could operate. So could that involve something as daring as a military operation to capture Khamenei?

I guess could it involve military operations to kill Khamenei or, you know, top regime officials, that strikes me as a little bit more likely. Especially because it, unlike in the case of Maduro, it's not at all apparent to me that if you removed Khamenei, you would really fundamentally change what's going on inside of Iran and what the leadership would actually look like, you know, which may have a parallel here with Venezuela.

So I think, you know, there is a possibility of military force. I think that'd be the only way to truly honor the commitment that the president appears to have made about responding forcefully. I think it's much more likely that lower force options are on the table where you'd imagine something potentially targeting IRGC naval forces or, you know, a demonstration strike that potentially involve industrial facilities, or oil and gas facilities or something that would show the Iranian government that they've gone too far and or provide support to protestors.

I think the idea would be to demonstrate willingness to continue, but not necessarily to advance.

And then really it's a question going back to the first topic of what protestors and what regime security officials are prepared to do in response, to answer whether or not that would be something that's meaningful or just something that's more of a test and demonstration activity.

Ariane Tabatabai: So you mentioned the strikes over the summer. I'm gonna turn to that topic and the nuclear program because at the same time as all of this stuff is going on, the president has been making some statements about potentially eliminating Iran's nuclear missile programs, should Iran continue rebuilding its capabilities that were degraded over the summer.

So we're now about six-ish months after the 12-day war. And this was one of the major things that happened in foreign policy land in the first year of Trump's return to office. I know a lot of information isn't available publicly, but I would be very interested in your sort of assessment of where you think the program is today.

I mean, tactically, the operations were very successful, quite impressive, right? But what does it, where does it leave us in terms of whether or not we have actually meaningfully degraded Iran's nuclear capabilities? I know you have a more, you know, you have an interesting view I think of the role of military, the use of military force on Iran's nuclear program that is different from some of our colleagues, one that I happen to share.

So I would like to hear more of your thoughts of whether that has, what you've seen so far has changed any of your assessment, or whether it's actually reinforced what you believed before.

Richard Nephew: Well now hold on. How could the president say that he would take action to stop Iran's nuclear program? Cause it was completely obliterated, right? You know, there isn't a nuclear program anymore. I mean, look I think you know that this is the problem, frankly, with the June operation is that I wouldn't necessarily have undertaken it at the moment in which we did, but once the military operation's undertaken, I think, frankly, you have to ensure that it's actually successful.

And that's the problem that I have with what happened in June, is that there's still a lot of open questions as to what the Iranians possessed and what they're able to do with it, especially when it comes to the highly rich uranium that they still possess and that, you know, any reasonable estimate still has to believe that they could produce, you know, up to upwards of, you know, ten, maybe even a little bit more nuclear weapons out of, if they chose to do so, and to be able to do that pretty quickly.

I mean, you know, I think everyone gets hung up on the fact that Natanz, Fordow, and all these other nuclear facilities were destroyed and that was truly significant in terms of setting back what I call the big nuclear program, right? The ability to take dirt and to make it into nuclear weapons from start to finish.

But what was left in Iran is more than sufficient for the Iranians to move forward with something much more crude and to do something in a much quicker sort of way. You know, people who are much more expert about weapons production than I have said that, you know, essentially could make uranium metal out of a college level laboratory, and the Iranians absolutely have a college level laboratory.

So, you know, in terms of based facts of where I think we are, I think, you know, look, the big program was badly damaged. It's probably a year or two away from being reconstituted, but the ability to produce weapons is probably still in the neighborhood of a couple of months.

And it goes back to the question for the Iranians of, you know, are they willing to take that risk and do they think that there's benefit in doing so? You know, what are we seeing in terms of reconstitution right now? Look, we're seeing them excavate the facilities where that HEU is located at Esfahan and potentially at Natanz as well. We're seeing them continue to do construct facilities that potentially could be used for nuclear activities, including potentially a facility at Parchin, which is the place where they've tested components non-nuclear components for weapons production.

So, all this adds up to me to being a still real clear and present threat that Iran could pursue nuclear weapons. So this goes back to the question of, all right, so what do we do about that, right? You know, as you and I talked about before I was completely on board the idea that we might have to use force to deny Iran the ability to produce nuclear weapons. But when you have a ceasefire end the conflict before a true battle damage assessment is done, what you've actually done is a couple things.

One, you've limited your ability to actually complete that mission, and you've exposed the limits of what your operations potentially could do. And I think the Iranians now have a sense that if they go deeper in Esfahan and other places, they can still produce their weapons components. And that's dangerous.

That's dangerous for all of us. And so then the question is, can we mount another attack? Can we achieve this via diplomatic means? Is there a combination of sanctions levers that convince the Iranians to back away? But all that's a lot harder to do when you've already demonstrated the limits of your military option.

And this is part of the reason why it had to remain in the deck. It had to be something to be prepared to do, but it's not the first card you want to pull, especially when there was still a possibility of a deal.

I think what's interesting, I'd be curious to your thoughts on this too, is from a broad strategic standpoint, what is our priority when we're looking at Iran right now, right? You know, if you would've asked me a few years ago, I would've said we have a still reasonable chance of preventing Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold. I'm not so sure that's true now, and I have a lot of anxiety that it is.

So that suggests to me that, you know diplomatic deals or military operations may not be as successful in a narrow sense of addressing a nuclear issue. And this takes me back to the question of what should be the objective of the United States? You know, is this a time where you need to contemplate something much more aggressive in terms of limiting this regime's ability to develop those weapons?

Is that the kind of path that you wanna pursue? Especially if there are protests ongoing, not withstanding all those risks. So, you know, to me I think that the military action in June, it absolutely addressed some of the problems that we have, but as we're already seeing what the Israelis worried about Iranian missiles, we're already seeing with regard to reconstitution options it didn't address altogether, and now we're kind of in a place where you have to think about what your options are and what your actual goals are in dealing with the Iranians.

Ariane Tabatabai: Yeah, that's right. And what's been striking to me is that you know, Steve Witkoff, who is not only responsible for leading the negotiating team, is kind of stretched all over the map right now, right?

He's responsible for Ukraine settlement and Israel-Gaza, and god knows what else. And we had, we're not really seeing that much, at least that has been reported publicly, in terms of progress in that space. There's been some indications that there were negotiations on deportations, right? So, repatriating, Iranians, several hundred of them who, you know, had illegally entered the country or for other reasons.

But that the nuclear issue doesn't seem to be kind of front and center as it was in Trump one even. And it seems to me that the president himself has kind of resigned himself to this notion that we're just gonna mow the lawn if we need to every now and again. Which I think was something that, you know, previous administrations had tried not to get to that point, right?

Of having to do this every six or 10 or 12 months. And it seems to me that this is kind of where we are now. Where to your point, I don't know that we've answered a bigger strategic question. I don't think we have, and we're just kind of gonna tackle the issue every time it resurfaces and the steady state changes a little bit, but it's unclear whether we're willing to take the next step of kind of figuring out, you know, and then what, right?

Richard Nephew: Yeah. Well, that's the thing too. I mean, I've always hated the mow the lawn analogy from a bunch of different directions, but one of the things I hate most about it is how it actually obscures the challenge that we face rather than illuminates it. You know, my lawn gets mowed regularly. It does not, however, have the ability to covertly plan to grow grass on my driveway you know, and evade the detection of me and my lawnmower.

And that's the problem. But this is the problem that we come to with this entire theory, is it presupposes the ability of intelligence to accurately identify well the places where Iran might have nuclear material and the ability to produce nuclear weapons components and to address them.

Well, if that's not true, if that fails to be true, then you know we're in a world of hurt and it's just worth noting. Again, I agree with you, the tactical sophistication of the operations that took place in June, it was something to behold. On the other hand, I absolutely expected it, you know, and I'm sure you did too.

I mean, again, as people who have been, you know, involved in these activities and these plans before, I would've been stunned of it hadn't been successful, you know, with the target set that was identified. These were well-profiled targets. We knew where they were, we knew how to hit them, we understood what our operational plans were.

All those things are pretty straightforward. It's scenarios two, three, four, and five, where I think we've got tremendous uncertainties. And again, it doesn't help if you have already demonstrated what you're actually capable of doing. So I really do think that, you know, while what was done had an impact, like you said, the big strategic question of what the nuclear program is and what it's going to do and where that needs to rank in terms of prioritization? That to me is open.

You know, we might find ourselves in a world where the Iranians have tested it at some point, and we're having to struggle with what is our new policy with respect to Iran.

Now, I still think we're gonna be concerned with what the Iranian government's up to. We're still gonna be worried about their missile program. We're obviously gonna be worried about their nuclear program. We're obviously gonna be worried about their regional activities, but you know, the solution set that we'll have to deal with the Iranian nuclear program will be fundamentally different after that day.

And I put it to all of us: Is it not fundamentally different now? And does that not require us to have a real think? What's our ranking and prioritization? The Obama administration, we prioritized the nuclear issue both 'cause we thought it was achievable.

It was the nearest term strategic risk of the United States. And it was something that we thought we could actually, you know, push back in a meaningful sort of way. If that's not true, but you still have all the same worries and concerns that you've got with respect to the current government of Iran, well then that means you have to think about your option set and think about what your choices are, and then decide are you willing to make the commitments necessary to address that as a problem?

And that's where, again I remain really fuzzy, especially after Venezuela, as to whether or not this administration means it, when it says it about, you know, being concerned about regimes like the Islamic Republic. And I also remain very concerned about the alliance structure given everything else that's going on.

So I do think that we still got some big problems here, but we don't necessarily have all the tools that we had you know, a year or two ago to address them.

Ariane Tabatabai: It's been one of the interesting things between Trump one and Trump two, where in Trump one, we at least have had a very clear framework for what the administration thought the major issues were and how it prioritized them.

And we could argue, and we did at the time, that it was a bit too broad and there, you know, it was everything and nothing in a way, but at least it was clear and coherent. I think today it's not really clear to me what our Iran policy is beyond, again, kind of these one-off statements here and there, but, okay.

Speaking of regional activities, let's turn to that. So, and I wanna separate here, Israel's Iran campaign from the Gaza stuff. Obviously there are linkages, but we could just spend hours on each of them. So let's just stick to the Iran side of things to the extent possible.

So, you know, Israel over the past, well, since October seventh has really degraded what we used to call the Iran Threat Network. So the network of proxies and terrorist groups that Iran works with and the IRGC itself, its capabilities, its leadership. Again, tactically, right, really impressive stuff. Fairly successful logistically as well.

I'm interested here again in your thoughts on the kind of strategic success of the campaign. How do you assess Iran's ability to project power in the region today? And then I think this is especially interesting in light of Maduro being ousted, to your point, you know, the regime is still there and that’s very important.

It's the individual that is gone, but does that, you know, Iran and Venezuela and Iran, Hezbollah and Venezuela, have had a very close partnership. What does that look like? What are things that you're watching for in light of the news here, and what can the U.S. do and what should it do to continue to degrade these capabilities and to prevent their reconstitution down the line?

Richard Nephew: Yeah it's funny, I've been musing about this a lot, especially after the apparent failure of the Venezuelan military to prevent their president from being taken outta the country. Yeah. That's a big deal. You know, if that kind of thing happened in any other country, you know, you would imagine there would be a lot of questions that would be being asked about exactly how that were, was to take place.

And I think part of the answers come back to the sophistication of U.S. operations and the ability of the U.S. to both plan and execute a sophisticated military operation. But you know, again, as the press report indicates, you know, there were some potential glitches there too. So, you know, even we of course, are always subject to risk, which is something that we have to bear in mind as people talk rather cavalierly about U.S. military options, you know, they can miss in their actions there too.

But the reason why I think about that as a point of departure is, you know, just like with the June actions against Iran from Israel and the United States. You know, there was kind of an expectation that Russia and China were gonna somehow step in and help the Iranians. Frankly, I never thought they were and that's because my actual estimation of the nature of that alliance is much more transactional, much more limited. I mean, you've written about this, you know, even years ago about, you know, there is a relationship there and it potentially could have gotten much stronger, but we're kind of seeing that it's fairly limited.

We're seeing, it's fairly limited between Russia, China, and Venezuela. And I think you can make that similar argument about this axis that, you know, axis implies based on historical comparison, you know, some sort of, you know, significant coordination and cooperation. Everyone is—when you use the word “axis” you're thinking the Axis Powers during the Second World War, those sorts of things.

But it's kind of interesting, you know, that analogy may be correct. It's just not correct in the way people think about it because the Axis Powers in the Second World War actually didn't get along all that well. They were terribly fractured. They didn't coordinate things all that well. I think that the Germans probably had a pretty negative opinion of Mussolini and the Italians, especially given the nature of the operations that took place in the Balkans and other places.

So all this adds up to, you know, maybe all of us were overestimating the nature of these alliance structures, the nature of these relationships. And certainly I think that's the case in the common parlance. And when people think about, you know, Iran and its proxy networks, they think of this closely interrelated operational network in which the IRGC tells them “go” and they all go, and then they report back and it's, you know, very closely knit. You know, at times there may be more elements of that. Soleimani probably had a stronger ability to do that previous, or than after his death, you know, the IRGC commanders that are, have been in charge.

But, you know, all of this though, it to me is indicative of, really the problem for Iran, which is it was always a more loose knit organization of coed parties that were prepared to take Iranian support but not necessarily take Iranian orders. And we saw this with Hamas well before, you know, October of 23. So I think what that adds up to is the Iranians probably have been overestimated in their ability to truly utilize their proxy network.

That doesn't mean it wasn't dangerous, that doesn't mean it wasn't violent. That doesn't mean it didn't pose a threat to the United States in our interests and those of our partners and allies. But I do wonder whether or not we have both oversubscribed how much control these people are under from Tehran, and the degree to which their operational removal affects Iranian thinking.

I, my own sense is the Iranians at this point see a lost investment. They see a lost opportunity. They wish they hadn't lost it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they say, well, now we've given up on our dreams of what we're gonna be able to do in the region.

I think more than likely than anything else, they are reevaluating whether or not their overall strategy of defense and depth made sense, forward defense made sense, using proxy networks the way they did made sense, and then going to try and decide what is a more effective strategy. We may be seeing that answer because part of what they've been doing is concentrating on the reconstruction, the missile program, as a way of trying to be able to overwhelm regional missile defenses and to threaten Israel in particular, but also the United States.

So all the way coming back to, I do wonder, and I think we should maintain a healthy amount of skepticism, about the actual durability of these alliance structures and whether or not alliance is even the appropriate word, rather than partnership you know, co-interested parties or something similar. To kind of imply there is a thing there, there's a relationship, but it's not nearly as, as rich as other alliance structures like for instance, the United States with NATO, at least until previously. And you know, other alliance structures that might exist.

Ariane Tabatabai: I wanna come back to Russia and China in a second because there's a little bit to unpack there too. But before we do that, you know, during the first Trump administration, we got the Abraham Accords, and then in the Biden administration, which you and I served until at least October seventh. But even after that, we really tried to kind of continue that integration between Israel and the Gulf, but also Israel and the region more broadly.

And I'm curious what—how you assess that sort of effort today. You know, two things have changed, right, since then, at least two things have changed. One is that Israel, following its intervention in Gaza, has become a bit more isolated than it was three years ago. Second, again, the degradation of Iranian capabilities and Iran's proxy network, frankly, means that the Gulf doesn't necessarily have as many, you know, there was one common adversary at the time that we could focus everybody and rally everybody around, even if they didn't necessarily see eye to eye on everything.

With those, the two things—with those two developments, do you think that kind of integration is still something that can be done? I, the Trump administration is trying to kind of refocus everybody on Iran and to get everybody to row in that direction again, but how successful do you think that's going to be?

Richard Nephew: No, it's a great, it's a great question. I mean, look I think if I go back and think about the beginning of the accords. It was always that the Israelis, and to some extent the United States, spoke of them as, you know, creating a regional partnership to confront Iran. I think that was something that, you know, Mike Pompeo and Brian Hook and some of those guys in the first Trump administration thought was, you know, part of that arsenal and something that they could, you know, pull together early, Abrams, other people who were in, in that first Trump administration.

But you know, the Emiratis, in particular, they never talked about the Abraham Accords as being, you know, an Iran focused effort. And when they, when the topic came up, they basically would say, wow this is about our relationship with Israel, not about, you know, any other party. And at the time I think people said, wow, they have to say that.

I think it's probably true, right? That, you know, there was a counter-Iran function to it, to be sure, but I'm not actually as convinced that they didn't also just wanna reconcile what otherwise seemed like a historical aberration that at this point needed to be addressed. And that's not necessarily the case with everybody in the region.

But I, I do think, that actually suggests that there was more durability behind the Abraham Accords than just a “countering Iran alliance.” And that's actually a good thing. I don't think people should look at that and say, oh, that means the partnership went down. No, actually that suggests that the—what we actually wanted to see what U.S. policy's been for a long time is to try and see a reconciliation in the region to allow for countries in the region, our partners in the region, to be able to work together and to have Israel's place in the region accepted and agreed and understood and all those other things.

I think what has been made manifest, over the course of the last few years is two facts. One, that there are still reasons why countries in the region are concerned about that partnership and that normalization process with Israel.

And I think the Gaza, you know, conflict obviously made that much more difficult for some of those countries, you know, Saudi Arabia at the top of the list. And, you know, as I look forward to it, I still am hopeful that the reason why people wanted to reconcile with Israel, which is because it is the right and sensible thing to do, will remain the objective and will eventually allow us to overcome those issues.

Because the second point is I don't think that Gulf Arab states in particular see eye to eye with the United States or Israel when it comes to Iran anymore, and that was made very clear to me in the Biden administration the first couple of months when we took a trip out to the region and met with Saudi Emirati and other officials.

You know, they were while preserving the confidential discussions, I'll just say, you know, they were very skeptical of U.S. policy. And that wasn't a criticism of Biden, it was a criticism of the U.S. You know, I received a litany of why we had been making mistakes in the region that went all the way back to the first bush and continued all the way through, you know, to the then-president Joe Biden.

And I think that is actually where a lot of people in Gulf Arab states are, is they don't wanna link themselves to a policy with regard to Iran that they think is gonna get 'em in trouble, they think is gonna result in regional conflict, and that we are not gonna be there to support them.

And that's where you see some grumpiness still about the attack on op cake and our lack of response, the attack on Emirati oil tankers and lack of response and not to mention all the minor other incursions that have taken place.

So the way I look at it at this point is I think you could still see, you know, future growth of normalization, the Abraham Accords structure and those sorts of things. But I think the broad counter-Iran effort, I think that started going away well before June, well before the response to Hamas and Hezbollah and other sorts of groups. And I think as much as anything, it's because Gulf Arab states had made the decision they need to have their own path in dealing with Iran, because they don't necessarily believe the United States will be there to have their backs, and they don't trust our decision making when it comes to it.

And I think that's still where their heads are. At least at the moment, until we can convince them that we are in a position where we're gonna do the same kinds of policy choices they want to have, which are not seeing a future risk or conflict, not seeing a future risk of attack, but also making sure that we're gonna be as committed to the partnership as we should be.

Ariane Tabatabai: Yeah, that's great. So let's turn back to Russia and China here. We're almost three years after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As we discussed a bit earlier, you know, there's been efforts to kind of bring that war to an end. But the war really flipped the script of the Russian-Iranian relationship for at least a while, and as Russia became more reliant on Iran in a way that it hadn't been previously, right.

Previously, it was kind of the big brother in the relationship on the nuclear front, given its place on the UN Security Council as a permanent five member. And then relying on Iranian UAVs and Iran's UAV infrastructure throughout the war. It seemed like the relationship was growing in depth and possibly in breadth.

You already expressed some skepticism that relationship has really kind of changed fundamentally. But, you know, and to what I guess in the Biden administration we used to call, you know, it's sort of turning into a fulsome military partnership as opposed to a marriage of convenience, which is what it was before.

The thing that I wanna hear from you though, is whether you think that the relationship has changed in the sense of Iran's place and the relationship evolving and growing as a result of the war in a permanent way, or whether you think this was just a blip that, you know, Russia needed UAVs, Iran had UAVs and could give them for cheap and could give the kind of capacity building part of that to Russia.

And now that Russia has those things and it doesn't necessarily need Iran as much anymore, that ‘we're gonna go back to how things were before’ or whether you think this is the new normal for their that, that kind of partnership.

Richard Nephew: Yeah I'll give you my cents, but you know, I, I'm conscious—I'm literally talking to someone who wrote a book on this and like—

Ariane Tabatabai: Many years ago, though.

Richard Nephew: Many years ago. But it's still, I mean, so here's my two cents. You know, I think going back a long time it made absolute sense to see the relationship as the Russians would—they wanted to work with the Iranians, but they were prepared to dime them out if it was of interest in terms of getting something they wanted more. Most of the time that was getting some cooperation from the United States.

And so, you know, again, you—historically they probably delayed significantly the construction of Bushehr. Now the Iranians also delayed the construction of Bushehr, both in terms of their own ability to help support it, as well as their insistence of using the original Bushehr footprint as opposed to just knocking it down to start over or something else.

I mean, so there's a lot of different reasons why you know, Bushehr was slowed down, but it absolutely had to do something with the U.S.-Russian relationship, and you can look at whether or not we're talking about air defense systems and military cooperation, there's a number of different cases which the Russians were prepared to tell the Iranians “no” to something if we said that was important because they wanted something more important out of us.

So the real question was whether or not, like you said, the Ukraine War changed that, and whether or not we saw that the Russians now understood that they had a relationship partner that they should invest in, cooperate with, and so forth. To my mind, the June conflict absolutely proved, nope, we're still in same place we were, that Russia is 100% prepared to utilize the support it gets from Iran, but it's not going to you know, do anything to support the Iranians, at least of any substance.

So yeah, they'll have a meeting at the UN Security Council. Ulyanov will say nasty things about the United States and the IEA Board of Governors, that's all well and good, but in terms of the actual practical effects of this, I think that they still don't care one bit about what happens inside of Iran. And I actually thought for a while that with Assad's departure that the Iranians might become more important to the Russians.

That they may say, okay, well we've lost Assad. We don't think we're gonna get along great with this Sharaa guy, maybe we'll be able to, you know, have a better relationship with the Iranians. But if that's in fact still the case, it's not been manifesting what the Russians have done, which is only the most fleeting amount of support being given.

And I think you—by the way, you can make the same argument with regard to China that they're still prepared to engage in transactions with 'em, still prepared to buy their oil, but add a steep discount and, you know, not to the exclusion of working with others too. So I think this remains a one directional relationship still fundamentally, and I cannot believe the ongoing protest activity is going to suggest to the Russians, you know, this is a relationship we need to invest in.

I think more than anything, if they've were already kind of lukewarm they're gonna remain such until they see what comes out of this until they see what it comes out of potential military strikes coming from the U.S. or Israel with regard to missile program so on and so forth.

And, you know, maybe that changes if the Ukraine War ends. But again, to me it's a now a 30-year pattern, so I'd be really surprised if it did change

Ariane Tabatabai: On the piece about China, there was some reporting that you know, I think it was in Reuters, talking about China potentially replacing oil coming from Venezuela with Iranian crude. Can you talk a little bit about what that might look like and how, you know, how much stock again we should put into this?

Richard Nephew: Yeah, and they might. I mean, I think the bigger problem that we've got right now is, you know, the Chinese approach to buying oil has been to buy from lots of different places as part of relationship management. There's been no particular reason why they had to buy Venezuelan or a particular reason why they had to buy Iranian or for that matter, even buy all of the Russian.

Now, I think they do need to buy some amount of Russian just given the volume differences. But they could have done more substitution if they wanted to.

And right now we're in much more of a oil glut. There's a lot more oil in the water that potentially the Chinese could, you know, pick up if they needed it.

But, you know, Chinese demand appears to be slowing, at least according to the smart oil economists that I talked to. And, you know, the Chinese themselves at this point have got their pick of options. And so, my guess at this point is that if the Chinese decide to substitute Venezuelan for Iranian, it won't be because those are the last barrels they can get their hands on.

It'll be more because they see either convenience or some degree of political leverage, maybe vis-a-vis the United States, or probably more likely discounts. Because at the end of the day, where the Chinese prepared to go is who's prepared to sell the oil at the cheapest price. And I think that's still gonna be prevailing notion in China until they have some broader strategic political reason to do differently.

Ariane Tabatabai: Staying on the topic of Venezuela. So, if I if I can ask you to kind of channel everything you know about Iranian perceptions of the world and their place in it. If you're sitting in Iran and you're watching what's going on with Venezuela and adding on all the other things we talked about at the beginning, right, President Trump talking about potentially taking over Greenland, and Canada is the 51st state and all of those things.

How are you seeing the U.S. standing in the international order? How are you seeing your own best ability to protect regime stability and security, which is kind of like the thing that they need to do the most, right—they believe they need to do the most. Because from where I'm sitting, it seems to me that if you're watching everything and you're sitting in Iran and your name is Khamenei or, you know, someone within IRGC leadership, that all of this is just indicating to you that you need to actually acquire a nuclear weapon to protect yourself.

How do you see this?

Richard Nephew: Yeah, it's funny. I think we're giving them two contradictory impulses all at once. I mean, absolutely, the capture of Maduro and the differentials that they have seen between, you know, Kim Jong-Un and Assad and Gaddafi and all the other examples where they look at places where nuclear weapons are and where nuclear weapons aren't, and decide you know, to make that choice.

I mean, they all point in a direction, go get nuclear weapons as fast as you possibly can, and suggest that would be a level of deterrent that would keep the United States potentially away.

You know, I still think that's probably part of their strategic conversation. I think that even less than that, they probably are thinking we'll be able to prevent future Israeli operations if the Israelis have to truly wonder whether an incoming missile is a conventionally armed one or a nuclear armed one.

And I think, even more than the U.S., I think at this point they believe that they are just massively vulnerable to Israel. And they manifestly are, but also believe that as compared to the United States both given distance and size, that we are potentially less deterrable than what Israel is. And I think there's a way interesting conversation about what a Israeli-Iranian deterrence relationship could look like.

And I think part of the reason why Israel is so committed to not having to face that, and why we are also committed to not having to face that is we don't really like what those answers start to look like. And I think that's highly problematic. But if you're an Iranian strategic thinker, you might think that there is some value to doing that.

I think the flip side is if you are the Iranians, you also, though, look around the world and you say, man, if it wasn't for these protests, we'd be sitting okay here. Right, you know, you're probably saying the U.S. at this point has tarnished itself. We couldn't gather a coalition to do anything vis-a-vis Iran.

It's not like we're gonna have some grand blockade that we're gonna get a whole bunch of NATO allies to join and support. That's not gonna happen and probably wouldn't have happened anyway but sure as hell isn't gonna happen now. You know that we're not going to be able to work out something with the Russians and Chinese that's gonna address the Iran problem because the Russians, Chinese won't play ball.

But also it's just not where we're putting our energy either, in terms of China, where we're focused on trade, Russia war focused on Ukraine and the broader relationship. So on a diplomatic, political economic front, I think you're feeling pretty good. And then you look at the military options, again, you go back to the limited nature of what we prepared to do.

It's risky. It's dangerous. You're worried about it. You still might think you could probably survive strikes that come from the United States, but the most important thing, and I really think this needs to be underscored when it comes to Venezuela. The lesson the Iranians may be learning is, you know, he's prepared to do business.

Marco Rubio is prepared to do business with the rump of the Maduro regime, and if you look at what actually we've said to the Venezuelans, or at least what we've said publicly about our conversations with the Venezuelans, so our number one priority is oil. Our number two priority is oil. Then facilitating some kind of transition with political prisoners being released in similar, but you'll note I said that second after oil again.

And then third, a real transition. So look, if you are, if you're the Iranians, you're probably sitting back and saying, you know, we probably could offer something to this guy. You know, he isn't committed to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, and if we were to do a deal with him, how much could we potentially, you know, stave off that kind of risk?

And do we even necessarily need to offer the same sorts of things that were being demanded of us in previous administrations? Maybe not.

So I think the lesson from all of this is that if you can get Marco Rubio willing to talk to the Vice President for Nicolás Maduro about a kind of long term bilateral relationship in which the Maduro regime, the Chavez regime, is the route to lay, remain in place and to govern Venezuela, you can pretty much get anything.

And that is a thing that is available to us if we’re prepared to do deal. So I'm not surprised at all to see the Iranians say, ‘Hey, maybe we should start negotiating.’ You know, to some extent they're probably wondering what took us so long and whether or not they can convince the president to stop short of the kinds of significant changes that otherwise might be demanded or a minimum steps on the big nuclear program and the missile program.

Ariane Tabatabai: On this note, and this is my sort of last and bonus question, I wanna nerd out on bureaucratic politics a little bit with you because I know we both enjoy that. And you know, the interesting thing to me, again, a difference between Trump one and Trump two is that, while in Trump one you had a very kind of like solid lineup of officials, especially at the senior levels, who had a very long history of having very strong views about Iran, many of whom really wanted to see the regime go. This administration in Trump two has been a bit more divided, right?

Like you have individuals who again, have a very clear track record of they would like to see the regime gone 40 years ago. And then you have individuals who don't really care that much and they're more of a restrainer kind of, you know, like, we'll let people live their lives as long as we can meet our own national security interests and economic interests. How are you seeing that play out in this administration and how is it shaping Iran policy?

Again, to the extent that we can actually tell.

Richard Nephew: That's a great question. And you know, the nice one about this one too, it’s also a little bit gossipy too, you know, which is always fun.

Ariane Tabatabai: Exactly. Yeah.

Richard Nephew: So look, I think if you go back to any U.S. administration, frankly as far as I can remember, you would actually be hard pressed to find any American official that didn't want the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to change.

I think everybody was united behind that. I think that you ask any Secretary of State going back that long, that was absolutely something they wanted to see. The question is whether or not it's something that we were prepared to train action and the reason why we weren't prepared to action is because of all the potential risks and downsides of whether it would work and, you know, other objectives and all those sorts of issues and questions.

I'm not gonna say that this current government doesn't want to see the Islamic Republic go, but I would say that I am more skeptical that it's something that they consider as important and what they would be prepared to trade for it is different. I would say the previous administration, certainly the ones I served in, would've long preferred that, but they didn't think they had the tools and the ability to do so.

I think this group would, if they were offered sufficient oil deals, would be prepared to, even if they knew they could collapse the Islamic Republic government, they wouldn't necessarily do so. And I think that's just a fundamental phase shift in terms of their thinking. And it goes back down to the level of people.

So, you know, I don't think, but I don't know 'em personally, so I might be wrong. I don't think that Steve Witkoff in particular has got a hard and fast desire for the Islamic Republic current government to change. I think Marco Rubio probably does. But the person who's actually in charge of U.S.-Iran policy at this point from every functional perspective is Steve Witkoff.

And, you know, based on what we have seen in terms of, you know, statements that have, you know, come out descriptions, the negotiating approach, you know, there was a very strong inclination to try and have a deal with the Iranians that would involve substantial sanctions relief and money flowing back to Iran that wouldn't necessarily even have the same level of restrictions that we had in the JCPOA and much less any other kind of arrangement that could potentially been reached.

And you know, we saw that up until at least June, it was Witkoff who was calling those shots and Rubio was not. And so from that standpoint, that's where you had all these offers that were going forward. And in my view, it's part of the reason why the Israelis acted when they did, is 'cause they were concerned about those potential of a deal.

But you know, now I'm not so sure that's the case. You know, I think as if we look at what the administration's doing now, Rubio clearly is much more suddenly enabled to exercise as well, but at least only in the Western Hemisphere. And that really is a fundamental question I think we still have to ask, we don't really have an answer to is whether or not we're seeing a real shift that is pronounced and prolonged in U.S. thinking that is potentially gonna empower a much more traditional viewpoint with respect to the government of the Islamic Republic or not, and whether or not the president's along with that too.

Now, he said that he would like to push back on this regime if they hurt protestors. He's also said that he would like to make this government, this current regime, rich, and he has talked about “making Iran great again.” He has not talked about deposing the Islamic Republic in order to do that. He's talked about that even in the context of the current guys in charge and I think, you know, all that is meaningful because, you know, to the broader bureaucratic politics, those are the people who matter at this point.

You know, there, there are lots of folks who are still potentially interested in working on day-to-day Iran policy. But we don't have any sense that there is an Iran policy, you know, process the way that there was, that is coming from the bottom up involving ideas coming forward, it seems that it's much more top down.

And so frankly, I think where we're at is it depends on who's gonna be in those rooms and who at the moment have had their stars rise and the president's eyes and what his media inclinations are gonna be. And thus far I think we have to say that it is perfectly prepared to do a deal with these guys if it is something that provides U.S. economic interests.

And until we see that differently, and until we see that they're prepared to risk that kind of access and business interest, I think we have to assume that remains their prevailing thought process when they look at Iran.

Ariane Tabatabai: What's interesting is that, you know, the president has been pretty consistent since his first administration, right?

That he would like to do a deal with Iran, and that if they do so, he would be prepared to help them prosper. So that is actually one of the few things that he's been fairly clear and fairly consistent on when it comes to this issue set.

Richard Nephew: And not just this issue set, but you also can look at the offer that was made to Kim Jong-Un about, you know, what it would take to potentially have, you know, North Korea be rich.

And it wasn't an end to the gulag system. It all came back to dealing with the nuclear issue. And again, I think you can make the same argument very much in the Iran case. If the Iranians right now were to say we will not restart a nuclear program, we will just maintain Bushehr, that's all we're gonna do.

I'm not even sure the president would insist on inspections of the tunnels at Natanz. And you know, that's a terrifying idea. You know, if you think about what the Iranians may be able to do with that material we've talked about, but it comes back to my mind as to whether or not he's as interested in that as have been previous administrations or whether or not he's willing to take the wins that exist and to let things be.

That's my inclination based on what he said.

Ariane Tabatabai: All right, Richard, thank you.

Richard Nephew: Thanks a bunch. Always good talking to you.

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