Factually! with Adam Conover - Why the F#!@ Are We Are War with Iran? with Reza Aslan

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

What are we doing in Iran? No, seriously. Why? Call it what you will, but we’ve just gone to war for seemingly no reason whatsoever. In a bonus episode, Adam invites past guest Reza Aslan back on the show to make sense of what’s happening, how this will affect the people of Iran, and what this means on the world stage.--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Hello there. Welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. This is a special emergency episode of the podcast because you might have noticed that the United States is at war all of a sudden. And, you know, there's a lot of different things you can call a military operation. You can call it a limited strike on a target or whatever. But in looking at what the U.S. and Israel are doing in Iran right now, it seems pretty fucking clear. Yeah, this is a fucking war. And it's a big one.

We have deployed the largest U.S. military force to the Middle East in decades. We have bombed thousands of Iranian targets. And we have assassinated the country's entire chain of command, including their supreme leader Ayatollah Khomey. In other words, yeah, it's war. And, you know, the rationales for the war are changing by the day, distressingly. They are shifting as we speak. And right now, there are a lot of open questions.

We don't know how long this war will last. We don't know who's going to lead the country after it is over. And critically, we don't yet know just how bad things can get in the region. You know, America's recent history of intervention in that part of the world suggests it can get pretty fucking bad. So we need to ask, first of all, what the fuck is going on? Shouldn't we have learned about the insanity of this kind of intervention in this region following, you know, the disastrous war on terror? But critically, we also have to ask, what does this mean for Iran itself and especially the people of Iran? So in this chaotic moment, to help all of us make sense of it, I wanted to bring back on Reza Aslan.

He's a religious scholar and a writer who grew up in Iran, and he has been thinking and writing about the country and its relationship to America for decades. He last was on the show a few years ago when Iran was in the news for, you know, intense but less intense reasons than this. and he's back again. He's the perfect person to help us make sense out of the war and what it might mean for the future. Now, real quick, before we get into it, if you want to support the show, Patreon.com slash Adam Conover,

five bucks a month. You get every episode of the show ad-free. And if you want to come see me, soon I'm going to be in Hartford, Connecticut, in a couple weeks, then Sacramento, California, La Jolla, California, April 18th, taping my new special, Chicago, Illinois, and in May I'll be in Kansas, Sydney, Missouri.

Head to Adamconover.com, dot net for tickets. And now with all that out of the way, let's get to this important and timely conversation with Reza Oslo. Reza, thank you so much for being on the show again. Anytime, Adam. My pleasure. Rough time. How are you feeling about the news? A little stressed out, to be perfectly honest. Yeah.

You know, I have a lot of family in Iran, most of them in Tehran. Hard to really know exactly what's going on. Not a lot of information coming out of there. The phone lines aren't really up and running. Internet has been cut out. I think everybody's okay as far as I can tell, but I mean, the uncertainty is pretty stressful right now. Yeah, I mean, anytime there's missiles and planes and shit being lobbed at a populated country in any way. Very densely populated. I mean, Tehran is a densely populated city.

Yeah. What do you think about just jumping right to the geopolitics of it, the necessity of doing this at this moment, you know, when it's been. you know, decades of saying, oh, they're so close, they're so close to a nuclear weapon. Well, let's, you know, get through the bullshit a little bit. Yeah. Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. They're not even close to building a nuclear weapon. That's not my opinion. That's the opinion of the National Security Administration in the United States.

It's the opinion of the IAEA, the International Atomic Agency. It's the opinion of NATO. I mean, for fuck's sake, Ted Cruz came out just like the other day and was like, yeah, no, as far as I know, Iran's not even close to building a nuclear weapon. They aspire to, but they haven't done. I mean, it's hard to, it's hard to say it. Like, look, would Iran like a nuclear weapon? Fuck yeah, they'd like a nuclear weapon?

Why wouldn't they want a nuclear weapon? I mean, look, it's, if anything that the last two decades has taught us is that if you don't have a nuclear weapon, you'll probably get bombed and maybe occupied Iraq. If you do have a nuclear weapon, then we'll pour billions into you just to beg you to talk to us, North Korea. So what would you do if you were Iran? But there's a difference between desire and ability.

Yes, Iran does have a uranium enrichment program. Yes, parts of that uranium enrichment program is really opaque. Yes, they've been caught lying and cheating a lot about the nature and the size of that nuclear enrichment program. But to go from the enrichment of uranium to then bomb-grade material, to then the ability to deliver that bomb-grade material is an enormously complex and lengthy process. And every organization that has the ability or the knowledge to make a judgment about it has all said the same thing. Not even close. That's not why we went there. I mean, you know, we're hearing 15 reasons why. That's not why. Yeah, well, let's go to the other ones.

Yeah, let's go to the other ones. So this sort of imminent threat one, right? That's what I called the Israeli argument, right? For two decades, Israel has been saying any minute now. Iran, you know, is going to be an existential threat and it's going to, you know, create either a nuclear weapon or maybe even ballistic weapons that will then, you know, destroy Israel because Iran is not a rational actor. They're, you know, the idea of deterrence doesn't work for them. Yes, it's true that we Israelis have nuclear weapons, many of which are literally pointed at Tehran, right now. But, you know, with an irrational actor, that kind of deterrence isn't going to work. So there's nothing to do but to destroy Iran before it even has the opportunity to get

to a place in which they could threaten us. But that's not an imminent, even what you described is not imminent. Like, an imminent threat is like they're about to invade, they're about to launch, they have the nukes. Right. And so that's also bullshit. Yeah. It's been a decades-long stalemate.

Yeah. That has not changed. You know, Rubio came out, tried this now. The other day came out the other day and said, you know, we had, we had intel that Iran was going to imminently launch an attack. Literally the day before we started bombing Tehran, America and Iran were in a conference room negotiating the terms for, you know, a new nuclear deal. So, again, it's...

It's hard because we're in a situation right now where our government, the United States government, is full of morons and children. Yeah. And so everything that they say is nonsense. And then people like myself are tasked with this job of having to answer questions about like the policy implications of the president's, you know, war ideology. What fucking Ward ideology? He just like he woke up, scratched his ass and was like, let's bomb Iran. I mean, this is where we're at right now. I mean, it seems like the surrogates go on to give the explanation that most serves their audience, you know.

J.D. Vance, I saw shut up for a full 24 hours, May 48 hours. Didn't say anything. And then goes, oh, it's because of a nuclear, they have a nuclear weapon. Because for his wing of the MAGA movement, that's the only palatable answer. Can't be regime change or some. But to other people, they say, oh, it's because it's a theocratic regime that is, hates women. And so that's why we have to do it or whatever. It seems to do it.

It's a back justification based on the audience. So look, I mean, that's not going to. I see them doing this now because you're right. I think because the MAGA base has been revolting, which let's stop for a minute. Can we stop saying that? Yeah. This bullshit of like, oh, ooh, the MAGA base is revolting. No, it's not.

I mean, they'll complain and they'll moan. But as Trump himself said, MAGA is Trump. Yeah. Trump is MAGA. Yeah. So like these front page articles that because liberals love it. Progressives love it. They're like, ooh, ooh, he's going to, his base is cracking.

The walls are closing in. No, they're not. No, they're not. No. If anything, the MAGA, he wants to. The MAGA broadcasters will use disagreeing with Trump about one thing as a point of differentiation to increase their, like, well, I don't agree with Trump about everything. For example, this I had some questions about, but everything else I like.

No, I also lick his ass, but, you know. Yeah. Okay, so the nuclear one, they're trotting that out right now. Yeah. Maybe because they think it'll, it will appease the, the base a little bit, but it's not a good one. It's just not going to work. It falls flat on its face because even Republicans are like, I don't, that's not true.

And it's the same as Iraq. Like it's literally the same. It's weapons of mass destruction, which we went through. And in this case, they have not created the drumbeat of like, oh, we have fake satellite imagery or anything. They just said it. And the Republicans are like, yeah, it's not true. That's not true. The second one that you've heard a little bit more and it's not as successful because it's just hard to make sense of is Iran's ballistic missile program.

And it is true. Iran has a very sophisticated ballistic missiles program. but there's nothing illegal about a country's military having missiles. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's a thing that a military does. Now, you can say, yes, but those missiles are a threat to American interests. True. But that's still now preemptive war, which I thought we were like not okay with.

Israel has said those preemptive missiles are an existential threat to us. and I've already explained where they come up with that whole theory, right? And it's not a good one. It's not really working. And in any case, it brings up this other aspect, which turns out is probably the most factually correct, which is that Benjamin Netanyahu has been wanting to bomb the shit out of Iran for two decades. And for two decades, he has desperately tried to convince every American president going, back to George W. Bush to do it for him.

And every American president has been sophisticated enough to know two things. Number one, Bibi Netanyahu is a motherfucker and you cannot trust him for anything. Yeah. I mean, this guy is just, he's a bad guy. He's a bad, bad guy. And he will do anything to save his own skin. And, you know, you want to talk about Trump's, you know, a problem. I mean, this is a man who the moment he's no longer the prime minister will very likely go to prison for, you know, a whole host of corruption charges.

Yeah. And so he is desperately trying to save his own butt and his own legacy. And second of all, that every American president was smart enough to understand that while a bombing campaign in Iran might serve Israel's interests, there is no world in which it serves America's interests at all, economically or in the national security realm. Except that Donald Trump isn't every other American president. Yeah. He is a child who can be manipulated so easily. And that seems like that's exactly what happened. I mean, we are now understanding that the genesis for this bombing campaign began with what the New York Times is now saying was weeks of conversations between the U.S. and Israel, in which Israel was.

pushing and pushing and pushing for a coordinated bombing attack on Iran, which is again, something that it's wanted all along. It's not like they have some new information that it had to be done now. It's something that for 20 years they've been saying, any minute now, you know, we have to preemptively attack.

And it seems like what probably happened is at a certain point, Netanyahu convinced Trump that, number one, we're going to do it anyway, so you might as well join us. And number two, that this will be so easy. We'll just throw us, we'll just bomb, do a couple of bombs.

And then the Iranians will rise up and bring down their government and they'll put a giant statue of you in Tehran and it'll all be over. And again, when you are talking to a five-year-old, I have a five-year-old. I can convince her of anything. You know what I mean? And that's what happened. And then of course now we're, I think what you're seeing in a lot of the contradictions about what Trump is saying about, you know, how long it's going to last, what the consequences are, et cetera, et cetera, is reflective of the fact that he is waking up to, oh, shit, this is not what I thought was going to happen. And it's only going to get worse. Folks, this episode was brought to you by Alma.

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That shipstation.com code factually. Shipstation.com promo code factually. Before we get into that and how it's going to get worse in Trump's decision making, back up for a second and just lay out for me, why is this something that Israel or Netanyahu wanted to do? I mean, I get Netanyahu. He's in a perilous domestic position

and any kind of conflict is going to benefit him for those, that narrow reason. But like, you know, just a brief, Brief on the geopolitics from Israel's point of view, why would they want to bomb Iran? They see Iran as an existential threat. Genuinely they do or is it a pretext? I think that there are facets of the Israeli government, particularly those around Netanyahu, certainly not in the military and certainly not in the intelligence apparatus, that truly do believe that Iran poses an existential threat to Israel.

Now, it is a fact that Iran poses a national security threat to Israel. There's no question about that. Iran really is setting itself up. It's part of its ideology is the kind of anti-Zionist, you know, idea that they are the sole country left, you know, with the Gulf in America's pocket now and with, you know, Lebanon neutered and with, you know, Syria dealing with its own issue. and Egypt under a military regime, Iran has kind of presented itself as the region's sole stopgap against sort of Israel and its occupation and repression of Palestinian people and land, et cetera, et cetera. And it is absolutely true that the rhetoric that comes out of Iran,

both the sort of institutionalized rhetoric, the anti-Zionism institutionalized rhetoric, and the sort of extreme nonsense that just comes out of the mouths of politicians and senior clerics about, you know, the destruction of the Zionist entity and about how Israel doesn't have a right to exist and all of that stuff just feeds into this narrative, this Shoa narrative, which is how a lot of Israelis talk about it, that even the hint of any kind of existential threat is enough to take seriously and to, wipe out as quickly as possible. So from the Israeli perspective, you know, this is, it's, it's emotion. Yeah.

And it's, and it's understandable emotion. They're saying all of these things. Right. And they've set each other up as implacable, uh, existential enemies. Yes. Now that said, you're not supposed to make these kinds of decisions based on emotions, right? This is to make, make them based on intelligence. And there is no.

confusion about the intelligence that is coming out of Mossad or out of the Israeli military, because they have been very open and clear about it. There isn't the kind of toe the line notion that you see in America, right, where like the military has to just say yes to whatever Trump says, right? Like if Trump says, you know, we had to bomb Iran because they were about to, you know, build a nuclear weapon and destroy Chicago, the military just says, Yes, sir. Okay. That's what we were supposed to do. That's not how it works in Israel, man. No, no. It is often the case that, you know, the head of the army in Israel will come out and be like, your prime minister is a moron and he's lying and that's not true. You know, and they do this so openly, right? And so we have we have seen repeatedly the military and the intelligence community in Israel constantly contradict, openly, publicly contradict and not anonymously, like put their names on it. Yeah. Bibi's notion that Iran is some kind of existential threat.

But Bibi knows how to really plug into the feelings of his base, right? That sense of threat around the corner and it works. Well, in that sense, a threat around the corner is almost like part of the identity at this point, right? It's like so deeply, you know, the state being under assault and constantly having to defend itself. And so to a certain extent, like having a war every now and again, like makes sense, like politically, I would imagine. Just for a second. I mean, look, a lot of, this is, we're getting into Israeli history, but a lot of the history of Israel has been this kind of self-ascribed image of themselves as a David facing, you know, a neighborhood of Goliath. Yeah.

And I understand that now that reality is nonsense. I mean, yes, there have been numerous wars between Israel and its neighbors. And in every one of those wars, Israel has decimated its neighbors in a few days. Yeah. Right. So, you know, they are the Goliath in that region, unquestionably. But I get it. And we understand.

And there's this notion that, you know, a country that arose constantly under threat. But let's talk about 2026. There's also October 7th as well on the event and like the psychological event. Which wasn't their neighbors. October 7th was, you know, Hamas. It was part of the, it was their occupied people. But, you know, look at the United States. We suffer a similarly, you know, a traumatic attack to the national psyche.

A couple years later, we invade Iraq, which is not, was not the cut. I see how that sort of thing happens. 100%. And the trauma is real. Yes. But in 2026, Egypt has a piece. deal with Israel. Syria has no interest in any kind of conflict with Israel. Lebanon, the Lebanese government, has a deal with Israel. The Saudis are like Israel's best friend. The Gulf countries

are, you know, have a peace deal with it. Israel has wonderful relations with its historical enemies. And so all that's left is Iran, right? So it, there is a large swath of the Israeli public that maintains that image of where the David and all around us is Goliath, except there's nobody around them anymore, except Iran. And so they really use Iran as a kind of negative pull as a mirror to define themselves. And the same is true for Iran. The Iranian government, which is a deeply ideological government, its ideology is predicated on two things. Number one, its own kind of position as the moral religious foundation of the state, which is nobody in Iran believes that anymore.

Like it's just that that idea has crumbled down into nothing, right? And then the other one is the one power that is standing up to the Zionist entity, you know, and it's Western imperialist backer. And that one still kind of works not as much in Iran and not because they don't believe it, but because they don't give a shit anymore. Like it's like, I can barely afford bread. Who cares? Yeah.

You know, about the Zionist entity. Like, I can't feed my children. Yeah. But it still functions as kind of a foundation of the ideology that sustains the state. So yeah, you're right. Both countries use each other as a mirror to kind of define their own. own sense of self. But in terms of like the literal reason to do it now, it seems to you to be like a war of choice

on the part of Israel. Like there was not in fact. If I, an immediate access. There's this long term animosity stalemate. No one's attacking each other. Let's get this over with right now. There is no immediate threat.

The threat that Iran posed, you know, a week ago to Israel was the identical threat that it posed a year ago. which was the identical threat that it posed 10 years ago, right? Like, is Iran a national security threat to Israel's interest in the regions? Yes. Yeah. Is it more so today than it was a decade ago? No, no.

This is something Bibi has been trying to do, as I say, for decades. And he just got, you know, a malleable president that said yes. I think to that point, though, Israel has a very clear agenda, a very clear desire. And it makes a lot of sense. Over and beyond the fact that B.B. Netanyi himself is about to walk into a parliamentary election, which, again, he just, all he does is lose elections. This is incredible. The Israeli parliamentary system is amazing. This guy just loses election after election after election, but he still stays as prime minister.

Yeah. Because all you have to do is get a coalition big enough. Yeah. To have the majority in the Knesset. And since he will form a coalition with anyone, with like the worst people on earth, he doesn't care. He always, he's the one who gets the coalition. So he just loses elections and stays prime minister.

But the second he's not prime minister, he is in jail. Yeah. So this, yes, was a calculation on his part. But what is the end goal for Israel? The end goal for Israel is to fully neuter Iran to get rid of those ballistic missiles, to destroy its military infrastructure. And sure, if they get regime change in the midst of it, fantastic. It's hard to even know what that even means.

But yeah, it's a very clear calculus on Israel's part. Like, all we really want to do is just reduce it to rubble and go home. Rubble is the word that came to mind, as you were describing, like, just blow it up and cut the country off of the knees. And you're not really technically allowed to just go around reducing countries to rubble. Yeah. So you got to get America to say, yes, that we'll do it too. Yeah. Not because that makes it legal or right, but because it makes it so that no one can do shit about it.

Yeah. I wonder if returning to Trump and how they're able to. able to convince him to do it. I wonder if part of the pitch, and I hate to be so reductive about it, but like, you know, the Venezuela operation was two months ago. And that to me looked like such a Trumpian thing because he's lacking power at home. He's drastically losing very quickly, you know, a support of the majority of the American public.

He's about to probably lose, you know, in the midterms. Or if history is any judge is what normally happens in midterms at any rate. And so he turns to foreign policy. He's got such this like personalized view of power. It's really all about individual people. And so the fact that he would go in and be like, hey, we kidnap the president. Everything else is the same. Yeah.

That like serves his interest. It also reduces his risk. And it sort of lets him go, hey, look, if you're a president or a king or a prime minister out there, guess what? America can just like, like, shoot a dart in your neck and like, you know, spirit you out of the country. that seems to be like the kind of way he would like to do business generally. And I'm wondering if, you know, if Netanyahu's pitch was like,

oh, we're just going to do one of those real quick. Absolutely. Just kill the Supreme Leader and we'll be done. And that's like what they did in the first day. And Trump was like, oh, the people will rise up and they'll do the thing. I don't need to worry about it anymore. Yes.

And it's so, I mean, you really hit it on the head. And it's so beautifully, put together because think about this. So Netanyahu very likely said, you know, we'll just kill the Supreme Leader and that'll be the end of it. And I know he said that because in the day since, as Iran is like picking the next Supreme Leader, Netanyahu very publicly just said, go ahead and pick him and we'll just kill him too. And here's the thing. Here's what I want to say about this, which is really important, is that whatever you want to say about Netanyahu, he is a very intelligent, unfortunately, very sophisticated man, unlike Trump, who's a fucking moron.

Yeah. He's a real operator. He's a real operator. And so Netanyahu knows something that Trump doesn't know, which is that the Ayatollah is nothing more than a figurehead in Iran. He is not the power in Iran. The power in Iran is this very complicated military, intelligence, economic industry that we call the Revolutionary Guard, the IRGC. And the IRGC, it's so hard to explain the IRGC to Americans. But like, imagine if the CIA, the FBI and the mafia and the military were one organization.

Right? A single organization. So they are the military apparatus. They are the intelligence organization. They are the sort of foundation of the police state. So they're sort of the not just international intelligence, but intelligence insofar as the homeland goes. But they also are this massive economic monopoly that essentially controls the oil and gas sector in and Iran. They control the concrete industry. They control the rubber industry. You can't build a thing unless you buy the materials from some company that is associated with the Revolutionary Guard. This group runs Iran. And they are more than happy to trot out one old man in a turban after another and

call that person the supreme leader and let that person be the sort of ideological rhetorical figurehead yeah sure have him do all the things you know that that he wants to do to maintain this sort of facade that this is some kind of you know Islamic country whatever the case may be who gives a shit um because they're the ones with the power you know who knows this is netting Yahoo. Yeah. And so again, like, you know, I'm, I've studied these people so much in my life that, you know, I sometimes I make it sound like I know what they are saying or thinking, but I do know what they're saying and thinking. And I, and I can just see it right now that that's exactly the message that he gave is that we lop off the head. Everyone will just, you know, collapse after that and everything will be great. knowing that what he was signing Trump onto was a months long war that would engulf the entire region, which is exactly what's happening now. And when you look at Trump and you listen to him talk over the last week, you can see in his eyes that he is starting to figure that out.

Wow. The, oh, this will take a couple of days. This will take a couple of weeks. Maybe it'll take a couple of months. Yesterday he was like, it's possible that the people who replace him might be worse. Like he's figuring it out in real time. And he is one of those people who, when there is bad news for him, sometimes he'll say it out loud in this weirdly blunt way. I kind of do appreciate that.

Yeah. It's sort of weird. Somebody asked him the other day, like, what's the worst case scenario? And any other politician would not have answered that question. and he was like, worst case scenario, let me think. Well, I guess that this war would go on for months and months and months and months and it would end up being worse than where we left it. You don't want that.

Yeah. But, yeah, it could have that. I mean, maybe you will. Yeah. He does kind of operate. Which is weird because when he's talking about himself, he's, I will win. Everything is great. He, like, refuses.

But for some reason, when it's in this other zone of possibility for him, he'll acknowledge it. But I take your meaning. Because like, so the Revolutionary Guard court, is this correct, correct nomenclature? IRGC. The IRGC. So there, in fact, is not a supreme leader of this organization. It's more closer, I think you'd say, the mafia is a good comparison to me because it's like, all right, you have a group of people. You have a social structure and a system that is exerting power that different people can come in and out of.

But all of those people, whoever's in the structure, are all going to protect the structure and the system, no matter who is in charge. As long as it serves their need. Yeah. And so Trump doesn't understand that that is a place that power can cohere. Like to him, it's all supreme leader. Personality. That guy must be the... Yeah, he's like, I'm the supreme leader.

I get it. Yeah. But he doesn't make sense to him. He doesn't understand. And that's why I think a lot of analysts, you know, who are now really saying, okay, you know, people keep talking about regime change. Well, let's talk about what regime change would probably, look like if that is the goal, which is not that the Islamic Republic falls apart and what replaces

it is this secular democracy that rises from the ground up and maybe, you know, the Rezapahlavi, the sort of entitled prince in exile goes back and becomes king again. Like that's a fantasy. That's an absolute fantasy. Very likely, if there is quote unquote regime change, what it would look like. is that the IRGC would, because they think it's more beneficial to them, step out of the shadows a little bit and kind of move to the forefront. And perhaps sort of make an argument that we, the military of this country,

are coming to the rescue of the people. We're going to pull down the Islamic Republic. We're going to string up all the mullahs, you know, on lampposts. And thank you, Trump. Thank you very much, Mr. President. You know, you did it. You did it. Great work.

And, you know, eventually there'll be elections. We will probably need, like, you know, a transition, a military transition. So we'll have some martial law. And then Trump will go home. He'll have himself a little parade. He'll give himself a little, you know, award or something, maybe a crown or something like that. And then Iran becomes Myanmar.

And then Iran becomes Egypt. And Iran becomes a military dictatorship. I have a question, too, if I might ask. Because we often hold Iran out as the sort of exemplar of a theocracy that is literally run by religious rule. and where decisions are made based on religious beliefs. You're saying to some extent this is a veneer. Yeah.

I mean, look, Theocracy is such a weird word. And sure, you could say that Iran is a theocratic authoritarian regime. That it's the ideology that it bases its authoritarianism on is a religious ideology that sees the state. as the moral foundation for the people, right? So that like their job isn't just to do what a government does, that their job is to do those things, but also to enjoin right behavior, right beliefs,

and to forbid false behavior and false beliefs. So you want to call that a theocracy? Sure, then it's a theocracy. But that's not how modern states function. Right? That is the veneer that allows for, for instance, certain top-down control over the population. It allows for the rhetoric and the propaganda, the ideology that sustains the state, like those things. And those things are important.

I'm not like denying those importance. But theocracy isn't what decides trade relationships. Theocracy isn't what decides, you know, military movements, you know, things like that. And so sometimes we just say theocracy, and we say that because what we want to indicate, as I was saying at the very beginning of this, is that Iran is an irrational act. Right. You can't talk to Iran.

God will tell them what to do, and that's what they do. You can't talk to Iran the way you would talk to any other authoritarian regime, right? Like, we have negotiations with North Korea. I mean, this is, you know, Kim Jong-un is a, is a sociopath, like he, who truly believes he is himself a divine figure. Yeah. Right. But, you know, we see it as a military dictatorship, kind of.

And so we treat it in those terms. Whereas if we just dismiss Iran as a theocracy, then there's, what's the point in negotiation? What's the point in diplomacy? They're not rational actors. That's why I bristle at the idea because Iran is a very rational actor. Like that's how do you think this government that is so profoundly unpopular and so incredibly hated by its own people has managed to stay in power for half a century? Right. It's not because they're all going to church and going, oh, we agree with these religious beliefs.

I really take the point that you're making because even with other religions, we are, you're talking about the social structure versus like the text. of the religion. And those two things are often quite separate. It's like even when they're fucking electing a new pope, right, who is supposed to be anointed by God or whatever, when you read the Associated Press, they're like, oh, well, the Cardinals got together and they voted. And here's how the Cardinals are selected.

And you're like, all right, there's a whole social structure that has nothing to do with Catholic orthodoxy. We want to go to Latin America now and maybe it's time for this. None of that has to do with the resurrection or the Holy Mary Virgin bullshit, whatever. All of this is to say it's important. It's influential. Yeah. But I think what we sometimes do is we think of it as the sole factor in the country's decision-making.

Right. And that is not the case. And so the power structure is really, I'm sure the clerics have a certain amount of power in the structure. But really the governing body is this non-religious IRGC. Yeah, let me, I'll tell you a quick story about the IRGC. And I think just understanding the history. history of this group. So in 1979, there was this massive revolution against the Shah. And there had been two other attempts at that revolution, you know, in various stages of success over the 20th century.

But in 1979, it finally worked. Why did it work? Well, for one reason and really one reason only, when the Shah told the military to open fire, the military said no. And they put down their guns, and they joined the revolution. That was the end of it. When Khomeini took power after the revolution, he realized no way he can trust the military. Like, what if the people rose up against him? And he told the military, shoot everybody.

And the military could again say no. And then the same thing would happen to him that happened to the Shah. So he created this new body, this kind of military on top of the military, an organization that sat on top of the military called the IRGC. And he essentially created the IRGC back in 1979,

1980, to more or less be his own bodyguard. Like basically their job was not to fight wars or, you know, all of that stuff. The regular military would do that stuff. Their job was to protect the clerical infrastructure, you know, of the regime. And then they just got bigger and bigger and bigger. Chomani died and some mid-level cleric, Chaminéi, the guy we just killed, came into power,

not has nowhere near the power or charisma that the previous guy did. So now the guys around him, like the Praetorian guards basically. Like that's the way to think about it. The guys around him started becoming bigger and stronger and richer. They started buying up industries. They started taking over. And now, certainly before Chaminé died, the group that was created to be the sort of bodyguard of the Supreme Leader was the power behind the Supreme Leader. The Supreme Leader was the figurehead that they would roll out.

Got it. Now, whoever the next Supreme Leader is, it doesn't really matter at this point. I mean, we're all like twiddling our thumbs. Like, who are they going to choose next? Who gives a shit? It doesn't matter. Very likely who they choose next is either going to. going to be a patsy of the IRGC or some nobody that.

I heard it's going to be Hamé's son. That's what I saw today. It's a whole other. We can talk about that if you want to. That's fine. It's not going to be Khomeini's son. And if it is, that is the end of the regime. So again, this idea of the Supreme Leader history, real quick, Khomeini invented the concept

of the guardian of the jurist, the idea being that in any society, the highest religious authority should have direct political control. Now, at the time, when he invented the concept, he wasn't the highest religious authority. There were grand Ayatollahs higher than him, but he's Khomeini. And so it was his idea,

and he's the head of the revolution. So when he named himself this position that he invented, nothing you could really say about it. He dies 10 years later. And now all the higher religious authorities were like, okay, well, if we're going to do this, then it's us. Like, we're the highest religious authority.

But because those highest religious authorities thought the whole thing was ridiculous and wanted to get rid of it, instead they chose this guy, Chomenei, who, as I say, was a mid-level cleric, not even an Ayatollah. You know, they just kind of named him

as the Ayatollah, and they put him in charge as the guy who wouldn't rock the boat. And it could be easily manipulated. If the next Supreme Leader is not even a mid-level cleric, which is what his son is, right? Yeah. Has never held any kind of office before.

Haminae, at least was president. You know, he was elected president a couple of times. Like, you know, he was, he fought in the war. Like, he was part of the revolution. Like, he had a little background to him. This entitled prick, his son, Muchtaba, is nobody. And his only qualifications is that he's the son of the, of the supreme leader.

Yeah. There's a lot that we could learn about Iran. We don't have time for it. But let me tell you one thing. Please. That is at the center of the Iranian psyche, which is an abhorrence for inherited rule. That was the whole fucking point of the revolution. The idea that you rule because your father ruled is so anathema to like Persian culture and history and idea.

Like, it's a whole, it's everything. If tomorrow we wake up and Moshtaba Khomeini has been elected to the Supreme Leader. I love the way you say his name. Yeah. Moshtaba. Yeah. You're like, if this guy, if this prick, this doucheback becomes the next Supreme Leader. Yeah.

I was telling you earlier, the sort of ideological foundation has already crumbled to nothing anyway. That's the end. Yeah. That's the, there's no way any cleric can look at any. Iranian in the face and say, oh, no, this prick was the highest religious authority. Yeah. You know, in Iran. That's it.

So, and I think the fact that I saw this in the New York Times like two hours ago, right, just in their scroll, right? And it just stuck with me. And so I blurt it out to you. On the drive here, I was literally speaking to the New York Times telling him this exact same thing. You guys. Well, it goes to show how little like any of us in the United States that

press or the people running our government, like understand about the actual dynamics that, that, you know, that to anyone who knows anything, it's so laughable. Before we run out of time, I want to first make sure we talk about, you talked about how this is going to grow into like a regional destabilizing conflict. And so just tell me a little bit about that. And then I want to make sure we talk about what you think is going on for the Iranian people and the expat community here in the United States. Look, Iran only has one way out of this thing.

And that is to make it last as long as possible, to make it as broad as possible, and make it as painful as possible. I mean, Iran knows who Trump is. Iran knows that Trump has the, you know, the attention span of a five-year-old, right? That he's just going to get bored with it. If it gets a little sticky or a little bit messy, if probably, prices start to go up, if inflation starts to rise, if the Strait of Hormuz can't open and allow what, a fifth of the world's oil to pass through, if midterms start to come around and the Democrats are using, it's all happening, then Trump will just walk away.

Yeah. We'll just walk away from it. He'll declare victory and say, well, I'm done. That was great. Everybody, time to go home. that's Iran's only hope. They're not going to defeat either Israel or the United States. Their only hope is to make this as long and as painful as possible, regardless of the consequences of it.

Iran doesn't want to bomb the Gulf states. Iran has spent like the past decade or so trying to build pretty good relationships with like Kuwait and with Qatar and, you know, I mean, certainly not the Saudis or any, you know, more like Bahrain. like a number of the Gulf states. The last thing that they want to do is start indiscriminately bombing Qatar's, you know, airport. Yeah. But it has no, in its view, that's the only answer here. From the view of the Revolutionary Guard, all we have to do is outlast Trump's notoriously short attention span. That's all we got to do.

So make this last four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, make it as painful as possible as possible, just bomb everyone. Just launch our bombs out. And then try to, you know, see, I mean, look, we're already talking about the fact that these interceptors that the United States uses in order to blow these Iranian missiles from the sky, we're starting to run out. You know who else knows we're starting to run out? Iran knows we're starting to run out. So that's the strategy. Is it a smart strategy? I mean, I don't know. But it is the only way that they have to do this. And you know Trump, I know Trump. Everybody knows Trump.

Everybody knows that's exactly what he's going to do. Who's in charge of Venezuela right now? Do you know? I don't know. Yeah. I know. And you know what? I don't give a shit.

Do you give a shit? Does anyone give a shit? It's not a pressing concern for my day to day. Nope. Nope. So wait till May. Yeah. In May, no one will give a shit.

Trump will have moved on. Yeah. You know, and so for Israel's perspective, they understand this too. They understand that they've got a very short amount of time before Trump just see something flashing and, you know, like a monkey. What? Wonders off into the trees. Wonders off, yeah, and looks at the drapes. So Israel, their goal, again, isn't necessarily regime change.

Their goal is level as much of Tehran as human. possible before Trump says, all right, I'm done. Iran's goal make it as ugly and sticky and dirty and messy as possible for everyone, everyone in the region, even like I said, some of its friends, everybody, until everyone else is finally like, hey, Trump, like enough of this. And then in the United States, it's very clear that. We've got no interest in this conflict. Even now, 59% of Americans are against it.

Give it a week. Give it two weeks. Wait till gas prices are $8 a gallon. Yeah. And then, again, this guy, it's not like this is a place of belief or ideology. Second, the wins change, he'll change. And Iran knows this. So what are we going to get out of it?

Nothing. Wow. Nothing. Do you think that the, so forwarding ahead on that, that's the most likely thing to happen. That's what everybody thinks is going to happen. That's what Iran is pushing for. That seems to be in Trump's constitution. I mean, do you think we end up a year from now looking back at this and going like,

not that much changed? A bunch of people died. A bunch of Tehran was leveled. But, you know, Netanyahu got his domestic power out of it. Trump rattled the political foundations in America, a bit wasted a lot of money, killed a bunch of people, a bunch of Americans died. And that's kind of it. Is it a flash in the pan? Not only do I think that's what's going to happen.

That's what happened exactly a year ago. A year ago, we bombed Iran. Remember, we obliterated their nuclear program? I'm searching back in my memory. Not that you reminded me, this happened. One year ago, we bombed Iran. We bombed Tehran. We bombed their enrichment facilities with help from Israel.

We did this. And again, we don't even remember it. Wow. Yes, that's probably what's going to happen. That's not what the diaspora in the U.S. thinks is going to happen. I think that particularly here in Tarangeloas, you've got a lot of, Iranians who are blinded by their very legitimate, very understandable, hatred and anger towards this regime that has stolen their country from them, stolen their identity from them,

stolen their family from them, and who have been waiting for these bombs to drop for years, and who are now dancing in Westwood because they, truly believe that whatever comes next can't be any worse than what there is already. And I wish that that were true. But it's very likely not true. That whatever comes out of this will be far, far worse than what was there already. Because what's probably going to come out of this, should Iran survive? the way that we all think it's going to survive,

it's going to be far more repressive, far more of a police state than it was before the bombing. Of course it is. Of course it is. So it'll be more of an overt military dictatorship. Either it'll be an overt, explicit military dictatorship or it will maintain the structure that it is that has today

and be far more repressive towards its people because it just survived. this war between the U.S. and Israel. And by the way, it'll declare victory. It'll say, ha-ha, look at us. We did it. You know, Trump's back at, you know, whatever, building a ballroom and here we are, we survived, you know.

That's amazing. All three countries will declare victory. That's pretty good outcome for a war. Everybody wins. Usually how it works nowadays. That's great. Yeah. That's, that's, I mean, what are you even worried about then?

Look, is there, is there the possibility? that four years from now, that the Iran that we have will be a freer and better Iran because of this bombing campaign, it's possible. It's not impossible. There's a world in which either the military rule that I was talking about ends up being not so bad, you know,

and I think maybe if a lot of Iranians in L.A. were told, hey, would you take Egypt over Iran right now? Like a military dictatorship in which there are no rights and freedoms, but you can wear whatever you want to and you can watch whatever you want to. And there's investments and you have jobs, you know, would you take that? I think a lot of Iranians would say, yeah, I'll take that. Is that freedom and democracy? No, Egypt is a totalitarian state.

Yeah. But yeah, I think a lot of Iranians would be like. Yeah, I'll take that. Is it easier to go from a military state to something closer to a representative democracy than it is to go from a theocratic state to one? Yeah. I think so. You know, it depends on the military that's in charge. It's possible.

It kind of almost happened in Myanmar. It was close. It happened in Indonesia. Yeah. You know. People say Pakistan. Pakistan was a military dictatorship. and then it kind of morphed into a representative democracy,

but the military is still more really, really sort of the power there anyway. But they have elections and they have presidents and they have, you know, a civil infrastructure. Is that a possible outcome four or five years from now in Iran? It could be. It's possible. I hope so. But I think the idea that a bunch of bombs raining down indiscriminately in Tehran is going to necessarily lead to a popular uprising that will remove the religious

military apparatus of the state and replace it with an American-friendly democracy is a really appealing fantasy. Yeah. I mean, even just the structure of the IRGC that you talk about is it must be so embedded at every level of society that, I mean, much like the mafia. It's not something that you can decapitate because there's always going to be more of it, you know, embedded somewhere. This is the power structure of the entire society. And you know what?

And can I say one last thing? Please. Let's close this up. Because you bring it up. It's a perfect way of putting it. So what is the lesson here, right? So we're talking about an Iran in which the regime apparatus is so permanently embedded into every aspect of society. Yeah.

government, politics, economics, everything, that not only is there no real extracting it, but the extracting of it would require the decapitating that entire apparatus, right? And if that's the case, right, if it's not about losing a war, it's that you and everyone around you get strung up, there is no losing a war. You fight this thing to the bitter, bitter end. How did we get there? Well, we got there because of a five-decade policy from the United States. For five decades, our answer to Iran has been the same thing, containment, isolation, sanction, that if we just starve them enough and contain them enough and isolate them enough, eventually they'll collapse and the people will take over. But that's not what happens.

It happens. History has shown us repeatedly that when you isolate a people and its country, you don't change the behavior of the leaders. You embed those leaders even further into place so that they are impossible to move and so that the people themselves are utterly dependent upon them. If tomorrow the IRGC goes away, a lot of Iranians starve because they are absolutely dependent. on the economy that has been established by the IRGC. And yes, it's an unfair black market economy and all that stuff. But it is what it is. It's where you get your bread. Yeah. You know?

Because they were contained and couldn't make connections with anybody else economically or... Look. A tyrant stays in power by isolating his people from the rest of the world. And we have done the tyrant's work for him for five decades. Do you have any... I just want to talk about the Iranian people themselves who we often hear that they do not love the regime, that they remember what it was like before the regime. You know, what do you think they might be thinking now? And, you know, is there any hope for the future for these folks, you know?

Yeah. Well, first of all, about seven out of ten Iranians were born after the revolution. It's a very, very young population. So a lot of them don't remember what it was like. But they know enough in the culture. No, they know enough, right, to know that what they have is unsustainable. And even those who might support the ideology of the government have been suffering economically so much that even they recognize that it's unsustainable. Everybody knows that this regime is unsustainable.

that its only hope of maintaining power is maybe an American and Israeli bombing campaign, which then what does that do? The thing that you must know about Iranians, number one, you're 100% correct. They load this regime. They would like nothing more than to just, you know, drag these mullahs out onto the streets by their beers and to beat them to death. Like that's what they want. Like I don't want to pretend otherwise. That is a fact.

at the same time, Iranians, unlike the population of a large swath of the Middle East, have a deep connection to their national identity. This is a profoundly patriotic nation. The sense of the Iranian identity predates the concept of the nation state by 3,000 years. And that notion is very easily stirred. when it comes to facing a threat from outside forces. Right. Right.

And even so, like, it doesn't, you don't have to be Iranian. If you are pulling little girls out of the rubble of a blown up school, do you think that your sentiment will be towards the ones who drop the bomb? Yeah. You could hate your government. as much as you want to. But in the face of this kind of wanton massacre, it's perfectly natural to think that far from rising up against their government,

that the Iranian people will rally to their government until at least the bomb stopped falling, certainly. So I don't have a lot of optimism for the short term. What I do have optimism for, actually, is for the longer term, because I really do believe that the people themselves are going to be the agents of change. Will this either support or deter the trajectory of change in Iran? It's hard to say. I think maybe in the short term it'll deter it, but in the long term it's possible that it could actually support it. But I do believe that this bomb.

if it did anything at all, it slowed down the possibility of profound change in Iran, which I think most analysts said was more likely than ever. And again, because of the things we talked about at the beginning, because of the fact that this government had utterly failed its people, that the ideology around which it based its entire survival had been rejected, even by the most pious Iranians. They don't see this government as like the found of Islamic morality.

And then, most importantly, by a fully collapsed economy. Yeah. Right? You put those three things together and you have the possibility of profound change until Israeli bombs start falling.

Yeah. And then where is the conversation after that? What are we talking about here? Reform? What are we talking about? You know? Economic liberalism?

There's no conversation here. I was on this phone call with the New York Times. They were asking me, are there any moderate voices that could possibly, you know, rise up out of this? Moderate voices, there are bombs falling on schools.

Yeah. You think someone's going to stand up and be like, maybe we should talk, you know? Like, that's not what happens at war time. It's the New York Times. Anything could be happening and they could be asking about moderate voices. Like that's all they care about is moderate voices.

It's what a fucking- Think about 9-11. Yeah. Okay? I know it was a long time ago. Think about what happened to this country after 9-11. Why do you think Americans are different? You think Iranians are different?

Yeah. You think Iranians, when faced with that kind of attack, are not going to revert to nationalism and patriotism? Why would you think that? moderation became extinct and everyone either rushed to the administration side or there was a small anti-war left that sustained and were completely had voiceless for like a decade. That's right. What a fucking tragedy that like. It is a fucking tragedy and that's what everyone needs to understand.

The rah-rah supporters of the president, the Iranian diaspora dancing in Westwood, the, you know, foreign policy analysts at the at the, at, at, you know, the Brookings Institution and all the think tanks, this is a fucking tragedy. There is nothing good about it. Thank you so much for laying it out for us, man. That's really clarifying. I can't thank you enough. And I hope the next time that there's news about Iran, we can, it'll be better. Or maybe we can talk about something else, like, Sammy, come on the show.

I really love having you on. We'll talk about like Iranian movies and like pop music and stuff. I would love to do that. so much for Conan. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you once again to Reza for coming on the show. I hope you got as much out of that conversation as I did. If you did and you want to support the show, head to patreon.com. slash Adam Conn over five bucks a month.

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