Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Cracks in Iran’s Theocracy - a view from a former CIA officer

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

We have all seen the images of women in cities across Iran burning their headscarves and cutting their hair in public to chants of "Death to the dictator.". The protests began after the September 13th death of 22-year-old Masha Amini. According to reports, Iranian morality police had accused Amini of violating laws mandating women cover their hair. These events appear to have sparked a major public backlash against the Iranian regime. But how serious is the threat to the Iranian regime? Reuel Marc Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He was previously a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Earlier, he served as a Middle Eastern specialist at the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. In that role, he was focused on Iran targets. Among his many books, Reuel is the author of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy’s Journey into Revolutionary Iran and The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy. He has been a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, as well as a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Dispatch.

If the women of Iran and men can keep up the demonstrations, then I think the regime is going to have to crack down most severely. And that's going to test it like it's never tested it before. It's going to be a worse challenge than 2009 was. And the Supreme Leader said 2009 took the theocracy to the point of the abyss. We've all seen the images of women in cities across Iran burning their headscarves and cutting their hair in public to chants of, quote, women, life, freedom, and, quote, death to the dictator, a reference to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The protests began after the September 13th death of 22-year-old Masa Amini. According to reports, Iranian morality police had accused Amini

of violating laws mandating women cover their hair. Amini's family have alleged that she was beaten to death by these morality police officers. These events appear to have sparked serious protests across the country and a public backlash against the Iranian regime. But how serious of a threat to the regime is it? Well, I wanted to check in with one of the most astute observers of Iranian political and social trends, Roel Mark Grecht. Roel is a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank, the Foundation for

the Defense of Democracies. He was previously a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and earlier he served as a Middle Eastern specialist at the CIA's Directorate of Operations. In that role, he was focused on Iran targets. Among his many books, Royle is the author of Know Thine Enemy, A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran, and The Islamic Paradox, Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy. He's been a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, as well as a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Dispatch. This is Call Me Back. And I am pleased to welcome to the podcast my longtime friend, known, Ruel, for about two decades, Ruel Markarek, a former Iranian targets officer in the CIA's Directorate of Operations.

He's a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has a whole range of policymakers who work on Iran policy. They have him on speed dial. Ruel, thanks for joining the conversation. My pleasure, Dan. Okay, Ruel, before we talk about what's going on in Iran now, just for our listeners, you were an Iranian targets officer in the CIA's Directorate of Operations. At a high level, can you describe what that job is?

Well, essentially, my task, my primary task, case officers have a variety of them, but my primary task was to locate Iranians of interest who had intelligence information to recruit them, debrief them, recruit them, and send them back into Iran to recruit them, debrief them, recruit them, and send them back into Iran to run them. That's what case officers do. And you've operated all over the world? I operated primarily in Europe and the Middle East. I had the most fun possible in Istanbul,

I must say. It is my favorite city on earth. All right. Well, that's saying something. Okay. So I want to get into how we got here and where these protests are going. But can you just describe what is happening right now on the streets of cities across Iran? What are we witnessing? What is actually going on? Well, I mean, the immediate catalyst was the death of a Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, who had apparently a bit too much hair showing under her obligatory headscarf. She was seized by the Ghasht-e-Ashad,

which we call the morality police, and she was beaten to death in custody and uh this sparked outrage when did them when when was her death masami it was it was like in late just this month right earlier right i mean i right off hand i mean it's been about a week okay uh so uh it it initially sparked outrage in the kurdish uh community kurdishish Iranian community, and it spread all over. And it touched, I think, what can fairly be described as an enormous amount of female anger at the regime. We've known there has been female disgruntlement since the surprise election of Muhammad Khatami in 1997. Women really drove his election. No one saw that coming. And I think that time, the anger at the restrictions on women,

the double standards against women, has reached a boiling point. Now, it operates in a sort of a boiling pot. There are a lot of other factors. There have been a lot of other demonstrations where women's rights didn't rise to be the preeminent issue. We've had major pro-democracy demonstrations in 2009. We had demonstrations about price subsidies in 2017, 2018, and all of these demonstrations, you know, sort of rose up quickly to be anti-regime demonstrations. This one with Amini started out explicitly in favor of turning over the clerical dictatorship. And I just want to compare what's happening now to these previous uprisings. So the 2009 uprising, the Green Revolution, and there was one in 2017,

and there was another one in 2019. What did those look like? And how were they distinctive or not from what's happening now? Well, I mean, 2009 was about a stolen election, and it was overwhelmingly focused into Iran, where you really had the middle class come out by the millions into the streets to demonstrate against a fraudulent election. Elections then still meant something in the Islamic Republic, and you always have to remember that there was a bifurcation politically. There was the theocracy, which really ruled, but separate from the theocracy, there was this controlled, managed democracy that people still had some hope, faith, might actually be able to change something. That, I think, had a near-death experience in 1999, when the first reform movement, the real reform movement, was crushed.

And then it sort of reappeared in 2009. And since then, I think democracy has been completely controlled. The leaders of the green movement have either been put in prison or gone into exile. 2017, 2019, I think this is turbulence that initially was caused by the dire economic straits in Iran. Part of that has been Western sanctions. Part of that, perhaps the great part of that, has just been incredible economic mismanagement and corruption inside of Iran. And this economic anger quickly accelerates and turns into political anger and sometimes rebellions. I mean, the demonstrations, particularly in 2019, I think in minority provinces where the non-Iranian populations are in a majority, actually turned into full-scale insurrection.

And the regime hit back very hard. We're unsure of the figures, but most folks accept the figure of at least 1,500 people dying, some of them by infillating automatic weapons fire. What did the—I mean, you follow closely the behavior of Iranian leaders, Iranian security apparatus. What did the Iranian leadership learn from 2009 and how did it impact how they deal with these situations subsequently, 2017, 2019, and then here now following Massa Mani's death in 2022?

I mean, that's an excellent question. I mean, in 2009, after they'd beaten back the worst of it, the regime actually brought together senior security officers from the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and they had a discussion about what happened and how do we prevent something like that from happening again. And we know about it because we actually have leaked tapes from that gathering. And basically what they came up with is that you have to hit hard and hit quickly. That happened in 2017 and 2019. They hit pretty hard and they hit quickly. And what's interesting now is the regime seems to be uncertain of what to do. And I think the primary reason for that is that it doesn't want to shoot

thousands of women and it doesn't want them bleeding out on the streets. The regime is in a real predicament because it may be required to shoot women to bring this to a conclusion. Yet doing that, I think, risks the pillars of the regime because on one side, women have a second class status, but on the other side, the very identity and pride of men is attached to protecting women. And the regime risks, I think, the whirlwind if it starts shooting women in large numbers. So where do you, I mean, play this out then for the next few weeks? Because it doesn't sound like the Iranian, it doesn't sound like the regime has a lot of good options. No, I don't think it does. I think they're probably going to try to wait this

out and see if the protesters lose steam. They're obviously going to assess their own security services. In 2009, for example, after the pro-democracy movement, the Supreme Leader engaged in musical chairs with Revolutionary Guard commanders. I think the reason he did that is because he discovered some of them couldn't be trusted. They've cleaned house in the security services, so they have a fairly ruthless, I think, group of individuals. The current president was selected by the Supreme Leader. He wasn't really elected for the simple fact that he's a reliable killer. So I think they've prepared themselves for at least the lethal part of this, where they lacked imagination, is I don't think they foresaw that they would have a nationwide movement led by women. That's tricky. So in 2009, during the Green Movement revolt the obama administration's engagement response was

shall we say slow moving yes why why was it slow moving and then i want to get to how the biden administration is responding today well i think uh president obama i mean he started sending letters to the supreme leader as soon as he got into office. I think he wanted to engage the Islamic Republic. I thought I think he personally thought through his what he thought his special charisma through his unique personal circumstances. First post-Western American president, that he could actually, you know, bridge the divide. And he wanted to deal with the nuclear issue, and he wanted to extract the United States from the Middle East. And I think those component parts really explain his approach to the Islamic

Republic and his hesitancy to back the green movement, the pro-democracy green movement. The same thing happened in Syria. If you go back and you look at State Department or White House commentary on the horrendous slaughter and war in Syria, you'll find the White House is capable of, you know, scolding Vladimir Putin for his role in killing so many people in Syria, rarely do you find harsh words for the Islamic Republic. And that makes sense. It's overlapping with the negotiations for what became the JCPOA 2012 to 2015. That's the worst time for the bloodletting in Syria. So their administration thought by, I think, by playing it safe, not engaging in harsh language, they would somehow have better relations with the Islamic Republic.

And now let's fast forward to today. So first of all, where, can you kind of make the case for and against? I'm going to kind of bounce between the human rights issues and what's happening on the ground in Iran and the negotiations to get back into the JCPOA, because I do think they are linked in a sense in terms of how, to your point, how U.S. policy is reacting. Can you make the case for and against the Trump administration's decision post-Obama to pull out of the JCPOA? Yeah, I mean, I think there's an easy case to be made for that. I'm uncertain whether the case I would make for it is actually the case that Donald Trump believed in. I don't know. But, you know, essentially that agreement was based on substantial extortion of the United States for limited nuclear guarantees. And if you, I think if you go back and you read the writings of Ali Salehi, who was in charge of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, and he basically explained the entire strategy that

the Iranians wanted, which was we need time to develop advanced centrifuges. That's all that's important. We want to get away from the simple centrifuges, the IR-1s, get to the IR-2s, 4s, 6s, and 8s. And we need about eight to 10 years to do that. And once you develop advanced centrifuges, then you can't stop them. It's game, set, and match. And if you look at the JCPOA at overlap... Meaning the momentum gets going, right? Once they... If you have advanced centrifuges, you don't need very large cascades.

You can hide them inside of a warehouse. Once you allow industrial-scale uranium enrichment, there's no way the Atomic Energy Organization or Western Intelligence Service could possibly monitor the production of uranium at that time. It's just too large a scale. So Sully laid out a plan. The Supreme Leader accepted that plan. It was a good arrangement for them. We get this momentary pause, which they wanted anyway. And in exchange, they get hundreds of billions of dollars. But behind that was, I think, a firm belief by Obama that American engagement with Iran led by him would be transformative. That's a huge change now. think the folks uh and the biden just to be clear the thinking just to give them their due their thinking was if we treat them like a respected and respectable modern member of the international community of nations they will behave respectably and moderately. Yeah.

And only American engagement can kind of catalyze that entry or re-entry, if you will, the re-entry of Iran into the community of nations. By the way, these are not words I would use, but it was kind of the language I would hear at the time. Yes. I mean, I think it's essentially the Kissinger Doctrine on China applied to the Islamic Republic, that is, you satiate them with commerce and it induces what others would call moderate behavior. I don't think historically that worked very well. It was actually, that was once a view that was held about, you know, fascist Italy, Nazi Germany. It's a view that was held by China. China, I would argue, is more dangerous today than before.

And it's interesting, Hassan Rouhani, the former president who was there during the JCPOA, I mean, he was in favor of what he called sort of an Islamist Chinese model. That is, the Islamic revolution would be more powerful if it could bring in foreign commerce. The objective wasn't moderation. It was power. The Supreme Leader was dubious about this, though he entertained it and engaged it for a while because he feared that with any type of economic openness came the risk of cultural pollution. And that's why the Supreme Leader does talk rather not all the time about this idea of a resistance economy, that he thinks you have to be very cautious about engaging the West because they carry with them a disease that can undermine the Islamic Republic.

And I think he's right, by the way. And I think the women's movement inside of Iran is a function of the continuing westernization of Iranian society, particularly women. And a friend of mine, a Franco-Iranian scholar, Fakhad Haslur-Habak, published a wonderful book in 2009, which was about interviews with the daughters of senior clerics in Qom. I mean, these are the most conservative daughters of the Islamic revolution. So Qom, just for our listeners, is the religious epicenter, right? It's the center of the theocracy. This is where the theocracy was generated. This is a holy site.

It's where all the training is. And, I mean, you read it and you can tell that these women have become westernized. They are on that process. So it's not at all surprising that after the death of Amini, you had extensive demonstrations in Qom, let alone all over Iran. So if I look at Iran over the last couple decades, for the negotiations to get into the JCPOA,

then in the JCPOA, then a pause from the JCPOA, meaning the Trump withdrawal, then an effort to get back in the JCPOA. During all of this time, Iran has been subjected to tremendous volatility, right? They're welcomed into the community. They're welcomed to the community. They're on the outs, actually, from the community nations, and they're welcomed in. Then they're kicked back out. There's tremendous diplomatic pressure. There's tremendous economic pressure. There's the prospect now of coming back in you know with the with the renewed effort

to negotiate a new jcpoa it it strikes me that iran's the regime on the one hand seems very brittle to me and yet they seem very resilient like they've actually survived a lot of volatility and a lot of tumult and tremendous diplomatic and economic pressure. So which is it? Are they brittle or resilient or is it some kind of hybrid? It's a hybrid. I mean, you have to give the regime credit. The one thing they have going for them, and it I think may come actually from the clerical tradition, is they do debate amongst themselves. They are self-aware. For example, if I were to make a parallel, I don't think there is a parallel between the Shaw and the Savak and say what happened after the crushing of the pro-democracy green movement, where you had

these leaders get together and actually talk about all the hatred and the weakness, basically saying, why do they hate us so much? I don't think the Shah and the Shah's men would have had that level of self-reflectional confidence. So the regime actually does look at its own weaknesses. Now, it's not clairvoyant and there are limitations. And I mean, there's great irony. I mean, when they talk about corruption and they talk about corruption limitations. And I mean, there's great irony. I mean, when they talk about

corruption and they talk about corruption a lot, I mean, the people who are talking about corruption are corrupted. So the ironies and contradictions here are enormous. But the regime is, and because it also operates locally, you have mosques. Now people aren't going to mosques like they used to, but nevertheless, it does have a network where information does come in. They are well aware, for example, that women don't like to marry clerics anymore. I mean, that's a stunning thing. It's historically new, and that is certainly a reflection of the distaste for the theocracy, and a distaste sufficient to keep people, women, away from marrying men who would, you know, have all the credentials to make them more affluent and powerful, the usual things that are attractive. So the regime knows that it has

serious problems. Now, it also functions off a conspiracy, and it likes to believe, and I sincerely, that most of these cultural problems come from the West, and that the West is actually directly engaged inside the country at undermining them. victory. But to go back to your point about brittleness and resiliency, I would say it's certainly the resiliency is what's been most impressive, that they've been able to come back and overcome all these hurdles. At the same time, the regime has spoken for decades now about the unexpected spark, something like Omni, something they don't see coming that could just set off what they call a chain reaction of discontent. And it could overwhelm the security services. And it's important to remember the security services are not large. They started developing mobile units, riot control units in 1989 after a soccer riot that went wild in Tehran. But the numbers involved that are mobile, if you can move around the country, are pretty small. And they have a

problem that to use the local folks who are involved in the security services, it becomes more difficult when it becomes more violent because you're asking people to essentially, you know, thump their neighbors and even their families. So, you know, if one had to put a number on it, I would say maybe the regime only has 125,000 men in the security services that are reliable. That's not a lot when you consider that iran is now what over 80 million people so in terms of foreign actors who do you if you had to rank what what the iranian leadership fears most is it is it the u.s government is it escalation in its conflict with its sort of shadow operation and sometimes kinetic operation uh conflict with Israel? Is it the Saudis and the Sunni Gulf?

Like what? One thing they don't fear the Saudis. Okay. Explain. I mean, they never fear the Saudis. I think quite correctly. I think they know the Saudis are inclined, as are the Emiratis, to bend over, to put it bluntly. That has been the Saudi and Emirati practice is to be quite Janus-faced about it. Sometimes say to us that, you know,

they want a hard line, but they're sending secret emissaries to Tehran saying, oh, you know, can we somehow work this out? I think without a doubt, it's the specter of American might that has always scared the Islamic Republic. Now they test that. All right. I mean, it's the specter of American might that has always scared the Islamic Republic. Now, they test that. All right. I mean, that's why Trump's decision to kill Qasem Soleimani that I think shocked John Bolton, because I think John had asked for it several times and had been told no, is that it's that type of action that, you know, sort of reanimates the fear that the great Satan might actually reach out and really hurt us. But it's the specter of American might that has caused them the most concern. It's Western culture that causes them great concern. Israel's there, but

it's, I think, several leagues down. Certainly the Israeli actions inside of the country against nuclear scientists, against the nuclear program, stealing the archives, that type of thing has spooked the regime. It's not clear to me that that means they're really fearful of larger Israeli actions. But what about the Israeli operations

against Iranian capabilities inside Syria? I mean, that's real stuff. Oh, no, it's real. It's real. I mean, it changed entirely the way the Iranians decided to deploy forces in Syria. So it had a substantial effect on Iranian strategy. Can you explain? What do you mean?

What changed? Well, I mean, the Iranians originally were going to develop large bases in Syria. They were going to bring in medium-range missiles in Syria. And aggressive Israeli action, mostly air raids, and the loss of a lot of Iranian material and personnel changed Iranian calculations. So they have to be more discreet about what they're doing. They can't parade around because the Israelis will kill them. So they had to throw away that game book and come up with a much more discreet game book. I still think it's a factor. I mean, if the Americans, for example, were to remove their forces from Syria that are in a very strategic spot on a highway from Iraq, you could have a reanimation of Iranian

attempts to bring literally truckloads of missiles over the border. But as long as the Iranians are blocked there, it's much more problematic, and they have to always watch out for Israeli air power. I don't think that has fundamentally affected their calculations with the nuclear program, but it certainly has affected their calculations for Iranian imperialism in the northern Middle East. So for an Iranian deal to come together in Vienna, a re-entry to the JCPOA, which I think I personally think is less likely, at least as we get closer to these midterm elections. It's tough now. Right, it's tough now. Because of the midterms?

No, I mean, I wouldn't be American centric. It's tough now because I think the Americans have probably have given, you know, almost everything that the Iranians have asked for. And still the Iranians have said no. So the principal problem is not Americans concessions, which I think have been fulsome. The principal problem is the Supreme Leader that I don't think he, he may not want to accept a new deal, even though the limitations on it are going to be quite limited. Also, because of the massive demonstrations following Amini's death, the reaction by the clerical regime has always been to circle the wagons. It trouble makes the regime harder. And so I think they become less likely to reach out. I think also the conspiracies are circulating already and they'll

view any further negotiations while these demonstrations are going on as actually a Western form of entrapment. That's surreal, I think, to the American diplomats who've been in Vienna, but that is how the Iranians do operate. So what do they gain by postponing or just shutting down any pathway to reentry into a deal? What do they actually gain? I kind of see what you mean with their mindset is saying the risk they're reducing, but it's not clear to me what they gain. Oh, I think what they, I mean, it depends. If you think that the Supreme Leader wants to build a bomb within a short period of time, then of course they don't want any delay in that process.

Also, they get the satisfaction, and this is a huge factor which people don't appreciate, they get a huge satisfaction of just telling the Americans to go pound sand. And they also, in their own minds, are punishing the Americans for their tergivisation, for the decision to withdraw from the JCPOA the first time around. And if you look at the deadlines on this, I mean, October 18th, 2025 is termination day. That's when they can build all the advanced centrifuges they want. So, you know, there isn't, one could make the argument, if you just think commercially, go ahead and do it because you're we're not going to change that that deadline and we're going to give them lots of money. So the commercial Western mind would say, just go ahead and do it because you can make a lot of money.

What do you care? You're still going to get the bomb. I don't think the Supreme Leader thinks that way. And I think if he were going to concede he would have already done so not concede, I should say if you were going to accept Western concessions and if you were going to if you put it a little naughty

if you were going to allow President Biden to surrender he would have already allowed him to surrender so I'm skeptical that the regime even wants to reenter this, that they think it's better for them to just tough this out. And as an observer of Washington as well, what do you make of the role that Russia would play in any final deal, that they'd have to kind of be one of the custodians of the agreement? And how do you empower Putin in that role, given... I don't know. I think it's a moral headache, if nothing else. I mean, the notion that you're going to allow the Russians to take possession of highly enriched uranium, it's problematic.

You know, that is certainly the direction they were going at. It actually may be a factor. I think the Supreme Leader might say, I don't want to give any highly enriched uranium to anybody anymore. I mean, I think it's fair to say Putin has always used the Iran negotiation as a vehicle to enhance his power and sway with the West. I don't think he has really, he doesn't really care about the Iranian nuke. I think he originally actually thought it was going to be an Israeli problem and that the Israelis were going to solve it militarily. That hasn't happened,

but I do believe the comments of European officials who met with Putin, who said that, you know, basically, you know, this wasn't an issue for him. All right. So before we wrap, where, if you had to look in a crystal ball, and I won't hold you to this, where do you think things are a year from now on the Iranian street and in our negotiations or not negotiations, non-negotiations with Iran? Well, I mean, if the women of Iran and men can keep up the demonstrations and that they don't lose power, then I think the regime is going to have to crack down most severely. And that's going to test it like it's never tested it before. It's possible it could crack. It's possible. I mean, I am uncertain in that equation if they actually have to kill thousands

of women, whether the regime can do that and survive. It might be able to, but it's going to be a worse challenge than 2009 was. And the Supreme Leader said 2009 took the theocracy to the point of the abyss. So, and I think this time around, if it gets bloody, it's going to be even worse than that. I don't foresee in a year's time any meaningful nuclear agreement or any nuclear agreement at all. I mean, the calculations are baked in there with the JCPOA. So all the problems are coming at us like a railroad train. And I think the Americans have not had honest discussions about it. The left, the American left, has wanted to believe you could get away through this problem through diplomacy and punting the problem down the road.

I think the American right has, part of it has wanted to go that direction. Part of the American right wanted to believe that sanctions would solve the problem. I think both sides need to have honest discussions now of, okay, if you really want to stop or have a chance of stopping the Iranian nuclear program, you're going to have to use military force. That the timelines no longer make sense. I mean, the only thing that the Iranians might not have developed is an Iranian, is a nuclear trigger. And the Israelis were saying six months ago that, you know, they thought they could do it in 18 to 24 months. Now that tells me that the Israelis don't have an asset inside who can actually tell them. That's a guess. It may be a very good guess. It might be a bad guess.

The Americans have more or less accepted that figure. So if you use that calculations, there's no way on earth, unless you're really lucky, that the regime is going to collapse within 18 and 24 months because of economic pressure. It might collapse because of the women in the streets. It's possible. Not likely, but it's certainly possible. But you don't have a lot of time to deal with this issue, so you need to have the debate of, all right, are we prepared to engage in another significant military action in the Middle East? And if we're not prepared to engage it, then why in the world would we reward them? Why would we reward them for moving forward with a nuclear program,

at least try to maintain the sanctions, because we know they are convulsive inside of Iran. And more importantly, we haven't been blamed. I mean, in 2019, 2019, massive demonstrations. I mean, everybody in the world hated Donald Trump, except in Iran. I defy you to go in there and find a chance or protest saying down with the Americans for the sanctions or down with Trump. I think that tells you a lot about the internal dynamics and where the hatred is going inside of the Islamic Republic. Well, we'll leave it there. You are, as always, on the All Things Iran, a very clear thinker, but also a very informed analyst, given your background and given the sources you have and keep up with. So we appreciate you coming on, and we will definitely you have and keep up with.

So we appreciate you coming on and we will definitely have you back. My pleasure. That's our show for today. To follow Ruel's work, you can track him down on Twitter at Ruel, R-E-U-E-L-M, correct, G-E-R-E-C-H-T. You can also track his work down on the Foundation for Defense Democracy's website. That's F-D-D dot org. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.