The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - The State of Play After the Iran-Israel War — with Karim Sadjadpour

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

Welcome to a bonus episode of The Prof G Pod.  Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in Iran and U.S. foreign policy. He joins Scott to discuss what triggered this latest conflict, how it might shape the future of U.S. diplomacy in the region, and what comes next for Iran. Follow Karim, @ksadjadpour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Kareem Sachapur a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace specializing in Iran and US foreign policy we discussed with Kareem what triggered the latest conflict how it might shape the future of US diplomacy in the region and what comes next for Iran. So with that, here's our conversation with Kareem Sajjapur. Kareem, where does this podcast find you? Kareem Sajjapur I'm in the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Peter Bauder Nice. And how long have you lived in D.C.? Kareem Sajjapur I've been in D.C. for basically the last two decades. I'd previously been based for basically the last two decades. I'd previously been based in the Middle East.

I'd lived in Tehran and Beirut, and I grew up mostly in Michigan. Interesting. So did your parents live during the revolution or did you live in Tehran after that? My family was one of the few families that came to the US before the revolution. My father was a medical doctor

and he immigrated to the. in the late 1950s. My mom grew up both in Iran and in Italy and they came together, they settled in the U.S. in the late 60s and I think they probably always thought they would one day go back to Iran. But then when the revolution happened, they stood put and I grew up mostly in the U.S. I spent years living in Latin America, in Europe and in the Middle East, but last two decades in DC. Surely a global citizen.

So let's bust right into it. For now, it appears the ceasefire between Israel and Iran continues to hold. Trump says the war is done. Give us your sense of the state of play, because I think one of the frustrating things about this conflict war is that I went back and I looked at headlines the first few days

after a war began or a conflict. And what they were reporting then was oftentimes just not accurate. And it feels even less, it feels like there's even less ferocity. Like, have we set the nuclear program back seven days or seven years? I literally don't know who to turn to.

So I'd be curious to just get your kind of appraisal, no mercy, no malice overview of the state of play right now as it relates to this war. Sure, Scott. So first let me give like one minute of historic context, which is that these two countries, Iran and Israel, in my view, are actually more natural partners than they are natural adversaries.

There's an ancient history of affinity between the Persians and the Jews. Cyrus the Great, the ancient Persian king, is revered in the Old Testament for liberating the Jews from Babylonian captivity. Prior to the 1979 revolution, the two countries had good partnership. Even now, if you look at them in contrast to most modern geopolitical conflicts like China and Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, there's no direct land or border disputes between Iran and Israel. The two countries, in my view, have, Palestine. There's no direct land or border disputes between Iran and Israel. The two countries, in my view, have complementary interests. Israel is a tech power. Iran is an

energy power. There's a natural basis for cooperation. What happened in 1979 was that Iran went virtually overnight from a US allied monarchy led by the Shah to a viscerally anti-American, anti-Israeli theocracy ruled by the Ayatollah Khomeini. And since then, there's basically been three ideological pillars of Iran's 1979 revolution. It's death to America, death to Israel, and the mandatory hijab, the veiling of women, which Khomeini called the flag of the Islamic revolution. So going now to the present, the latest battle between Iran and Israel may be over for now, but the war will continue so long as you have a regime in Iran whose entire identity is premised on replacing Israel with Palestine.

I bring a bias here here and my bias is that I feel like one of the biggest unlocks that Americans don't consider, it's not in their lexicon or their dialogue, is the potential for the Iran and America to be allies again. Because, and this is pure anecdotal evidence, I grew up in Los Angeles, I went to UCLA, largest concentration of Iranians,

I think outside of Tehran. I grew up in Los Angeles, I went to UCLA, largest concentration of Iranians, I think outside of Tehran. And several of my closest friends at UCLA were Iranian. And it always struck me, my comment about Iranians was they were more American than Americans. A love of education, a love of money. And I say that in a positive way, total capitalists, entrepreneurs, a love of money. And I say that in a positive way, total capitalists, entrepreneurs, a love of graduate education,

an appreciation for ambition and competitiveness. I just noticed that the most American kids we have here are Iranians. And when I see the lack of popularity of the Islamic regime or the Islamic Republic, what is your sense for whether or not when we took this military action, there's always a fear that you have a rallying around the flag when you're attacked.

What's your sense of the Iranian, that kind of man or woman on the streets reaction to this military action? It's an important question and you know my view about this is that what tends to happen in these dramatic instances of you know military attack or or military conflagration with an external power is that it tends to accentuate Iranians existing political views. So if last week or two weeks ago you were a supporter of the government, and I suspect government supporters represent about 15 to 20 percent of society, it's not a popular regime, then you have even more fodder obviously to hate

America and Israel for the military invasion of Iran. If you were a critic or an opponent of the Iranian regime and you said, this is a regime which always puts its ideological objectives over the national interests of us and the well-being of the Iranian people, then you have even more reason to dislike the regime. I think in the near term what happens is that the regime has gotten kind of what I would describe as a temporary sugar high. But when the dust settles three months, six months, nine months from now, I think people will go back to living under this politically repressive, socially repressive police state, which has profoundly mismanaged an economy which, you know, Iran could be,

in my view, it should be a G20 nation. Under proper management, this is a country which has enormous human capital, as you were referring to, has enormous natural resources. It is not a country which just came to be in the 20th century. It has a 2,500-year-old civilization and identity. be in the 20th century. It has a 2,500-year-old civilization and identity. And I think Iranians will eventually revert back to that profound sense of discontent. And I'll give you a concrete example of that, Scott. You may remember in January of 2020, Iran's top Revolutionary Guard commander Qasem Soleimani was assassinated by President Trump. And many people then said, well, this is, uh, you know, the, the, um, country is rallying around the flag and there were mass protests in Iran. What happened two years later, two years later, there was a young woman called

Massa Amini that was detained and killed in custody for allegedly showing too much of her hair and that set set off massive nationwide protests in Iran, which persisted over six months and had the regime on its heels. So, you know, I don't doubt that, you know, many people took umbrage to the US dropping 30,000 pound bunker bombs, but ultimately, you know, vast majority of Iranians,

as I say, they want to be South Korea. They don't want to be living under North Korea. Let's talk about the next generation. So Khomeini, 85 year old theocrat. And the next level down, I got to be thinking when the Mossad is able to penetrate. I mean, people talk about how Israel rules the skies over Iran. I think what's probably more frightening for the leadership in Iran is it appears they rule the ground.

And what I mean by that is the signal I think they've sent is that on a moment's notice, an email to a secure device, to an asset spy on the ground in Iran, we can kill any of you. And I think Americans even have trouble relating to that. Imagine if all of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretaries of the Navy, the every five-star general we have in the Air Force,

within 30 minutes we're all murdered. And it's clear, okay, they can take out anybody. My question, I was, when I've been on corporate boards, my question is, the strength of a company is not based on the CEO It's based on do you have zero or eight people who could step into the CEO shoes? That's the sign of a strong corporate governance in a strong organization What do you think the next generation looks like in terms of the regime? And is this a house of cards with an 85 year old what happens when he dies?

Assuming he's not overthrown, he's an old man. What does the next generation look like? And is there a chill of what have I signed up for here? It's an important question. And, you know, Ayatollah Khamenei is actually now 86. He's the longest serving autocrat in the world. He's been ruling since 1989. He hasn't left Iran since 1989.

And you put yourself in his shoes right now. He's living in a bunker. We all have known 85, 86 years old. You have limited physical, mental stamina, and he's expected to lead this three-part war against the greatest superpower in the world, the United States, the greatest military power in the Middle East, Israel, and against his own population. He's doing that at a time when you mentioned his top military commanders have been assassinated in their own bedrooms or in their own bunkers. And so as you mentioned, this really slows down the wheels of state when it's a state which potentially needs to act quickly

to address an external or internal security threat. And when people get the notifications on their phones, they don't know if that's coming from their higher-up commander or is coming from the Mossad. So it's, in my view, what I would describe as a Swiss cheese regime. It has so many holes in it penetrated by Israeli intelligence. Now what happens after the supreme leader's passing? Ibn Khaldun, the great North African philosopher, is sometimes called the father of sociology. He came out with a theory decades, centuries ago, in the 13th century, which he called Asabia. And it's now known in kind of modern business literature. You may be familiar

with it as the power cycle theory. And essentially what he said is that empires are built and destroyed over three generations. The first generation, they have fire in the belly. They come, they build it. Second generation watched what the first generation did so they managed to preserve it. But by the third generation, by no fault of their own, you know they're soft, they're princelings, they're born in the palace, they weren't born with that fire in the belly. You know the example I commonly use and the American business context is Walmart, right? Sam Walton, through his drifts and grit, built this amazing company. The second generation has preserved it.

Now, his grandchildren were born multi-billionaires, so it's clear they weren't born with that same grit. But now going back to the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini is the last of the Mohicans. He's the last of the first-generation leaders in the Mohicans. He's the last of the first generation leaders in the Islamic Republic. And they don't have any great options for succession, in part because this is a society which

has thoroughly secularized over the last 46 years. The best way to secularize a population is to rule them with a repressive, corrupt theocracy, which is ruling from a moral pedestal. That's insulting to people in a way that living under your run-of-the-mill dictatorship is in some ways less insulting. Vladimir Putin doesn't have any pretensions of being God's representative on Earth, whereas the Islamic Republic's leadership, they have these pretensions of moral superiority. So the question is, does if the regime manages to keep it together

and they don't implode like the Soviet Union did, which is a big question, is the next strong man in Iran going to be wearing a turban and being another Ayatollah, or is it more likely to be someone from the security forces with a military or intelligence background? My sense is that even if they try to anoint a cleric as the next supreme leader, that person

is likely going to be a transitional figure, much like Boris Yeltsin was in the post-Soviet Union. And that if the system manages to keep it together, more likely we're going to see someone with a military and intelligence background, not someone wearing a turban. We'll be right back. 2020 marks 50 years since a trailblazer named Jan Todd decided to go to the gym with her little boyfriend. I had started going with Terry to the gym just because, you know, he's your cute boyfriend and you love him and you like you want to spend all your time together.

Not thinking about being an athlete at all. Jan told WHYY in Philadelphia there were no other women at that gym. It wasn't considered appropriate for ladies to lift weights. Some gyms even banned it. The idea of a woman having muscles was seen as somehow being somewhat transgressive. There must be something wrong with you if you want to have muscles. Anyway, feeling spicy that day, Jan squatted down and deadlifted 225 pounds, which is a lot of pounds.

She went on to lift more weights, set a bunch of records, model in magazines, and inspire other women to lift weights. More recently, millions of women have started, but why now? Answers on Today Explained, every weekday, in your feet. I want to outline a thesis to you from someone who's just obviously observing this from abroad and has a limited view into it. But my general, if someone said, all right, summarize what's gone on here, where you have someone who is literally running to stay out of prison. And the best way to stay in office is to get people to rally around the flag

in the current administration. And the easiest way to accomplish that is to go on a constant war footing, which results in whether or not you think it was the right idea to respond in Gaza, which I do believe absolutely was the right decision. And now most people, including, I think, a very large segment of the Israeli populace

and former prime ministers are saying, it has just gone too far. And then after diminishing or neutering the proxies of Iran, which is understandable, going in and convincing your ally to come in behind you, who comes in behind you, with what I would describe as what looks to me like increasingly a performative attack.

Now there's reports that the majority of the enriched uranium was transported out of these facilities and it was a little bit of a president, very focused on his image, jealous of the macho light that Netanyahu was basking under so came in with a performative attack, which then inspired a performative response. Where Khomeini ordered an attack on bases in Qatar and Iraq, and in my understanding is gave Qatar and US forces a heads up that this was about to happen such that he could flex and say, see, I responded, but not risk any real collateral damage that would inspire an escalation.

This whole thing, this whole chapter, the word I would use to describe the last two weeks, performative. Your thoughts. So a couple of things. Number one, I've been teaching a class at Georgetown University for years in the Master School of Foreign Service. I always joke on the first day with my students that if you

really want to understand the Middle East, you're better off studying psychology than political science because so much of this region is shaped not by the national interests of states, but by the manias and political ambitions of strongmen. And in the case of this current war, America, Israel, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, much of what's transpired over the last few weeks is, I think, driven by the person of Donald Trump and his political imperatives, the person of Benjamin Netanyahu and the person of Ayatollah Khamenei. Not necessarily, as I said from the outset, the national interests of these places. Now, one framework I used to think about,

certainly the relationship between President Trump and Ayatollah Khamenei, there's a wonderful essay which the British philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote in 1953 which is called the Hedgehog and the Fox and he essentially puts human beings into two buckets. He said you know hedgehogs really have one big idea one great passion and foxes know many things they do many things and His example of the quintessential hedgehog was Karl Marx And his example of the quintessential hedgehog was Karl Marx. His example of the prototypical fox was William Shakespeare. Now, how does that apply to Trump and to Khamenei?

Ayatollah Khamenei is the prototypical hedgehog. He has basically one great passion, one big idea, resistance, resistance against America, resistance against Israel, deaths to America, deaths to Israel. Trump, on the other hand, is someone who, I don't think he knows many things, but he says many things. He's had a profound, I don't know what you would describe it. I call him the Jackson Pollock of foreign policy. He goes from one month ago, he was in Riyadh denouncing those previous administrations who engaged in military interventions

in the Middle East. He ridiculed them and he said there were nation builders who destroyed far more nations than they built and interventionists who had no idea about the reality of their own society. One month later, after Prime Minister Netanyahu had taken military action, as you said, Trump saw that it was perceived to be very successful. Netanyahu is getting great reviews on Fox News, and he wanted to be associated with that. I think we will look back years from now and Scott, you know, when you're watching these things in real time, in the Middle East, as we've seen, you know, if we were having this conversation in spring of 2003, we would say the Iraq war is, you know, a great success, right? We took out Saddam's army in three weeks. Five years later, things look very differently. So years from

now, things could look very differently. But I do think when the history of this war is written, much of it will be about the psychology and political calculations and domestic political expediencies of these three men, Netanyahu, Trump and Khamenei, rather than the interests of nation states. So another thesis I'd like to put forward and get your reaction to, I feel as if the unsung hero in this or the unsung force here is the Ukrainian army. What do I mean by that? If Russia had barreled into Kiev as Putin's generals were guaranteeing and immediately Ukraine fell and Russia held this perception and reputation as this fierce fighting force not to be trifled with to be very scared of

that Syria would not have fell and we would have thought twice as have would have Netanyahu and perhaps would have received more military logistical and perceptual support around its surface-to-air capabilities. And neither Israel nor the US would have had the confidence or the ability to do what they had done had Russia still been intact in terms of its actual and perceived power. Your thoughts? Well, I think that's one important data point among others.

I mean, the other important data point is what happened on October 7th, 2023, when Yahya Sinwar and Hamas invaded Israel, which turned out to be one of the most profound miscalculations in modern history, because they thought that that was going to delegitimize Israel and lead to its eventual demise. What we've seen in the last year and a half is exactly the opposite. Iran's leadership, Ayatollah Khamenei was the only leader in the world that praised the

Hamas attack of October 7th. That led Israel and then Iran unleashed its other proxies like Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen to commence this multi-front war with Israel. And those proxies have been decimated the last year and a half. So that was also an important factor. But back to Ukraine and Zelensky. One of the most important observations that stayed with me over the years about geopolitics is an observation which Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoirs that he said, you know, before he went into government, when he became secretary of state to national security advisor, he was a professor at Harvard and he thought that history was driven by impersonal forces, you know, nations basically follow their own

interests regardless of who's in power. And he said after he served in government, he reached the opposite conclusion, which is that the individual profoundly shapes history. Academics oftentimes don't like this because they call it the great man theory of history. But I've also come around Kissinger's worldview that the individual has a profound impact on history. Leadership has a profound impact on history. And so your point about Ukraine for me, obviously the incredible resolve of the Ukrainian people is critical, but the person of President Zelensky is someone for me who has played an incredibly important role in the history of his nation. And we saw,

you know, just a year prior to that, and perhaps it was one reason why Vladimir Putin invaded, was that in Afghanistan, it was a country, a president who, he fled the country within 24, 48 hours and the entire system collapsed. So it just goes to, both in business and in politics and geopolitics, the importance of leadership. So I'll go even further afield. We had what was sort of a political earthquake with Zoran Mamdani winning the Democratic primary.

And I wonder how much of that is a new generation of American voters, quite frankly, very fed up with Israel. And that this was not only an outstanding campaign run by someone who really understood new media, representing youth, a pushback on the established democratic machine. What is your sense as you reverse engineer activities in the Middle East in terms of its impact on the US political landscape, what's happening both in Iran and Israel and the dynamics there. Do you think it will, how do you see it reverse engineering to what happens here in the United States?

So that's an important question. Let me react in a couple of ways. Number one, we've seen the impact that America's failures in the last two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan and the failure of the Arab Spring in 2011 to bring about democratic change, the impact that's had on American politics whereby it used to be that Republicans were national security hawks and more supportive of US military interventions. Now, a strong wing of Trump's base are, they wouldn't like the term isolationist, they would call themselves restrainers or non-interventionists,

but that's an important part of his political base now, including I would probably put in that category, Vice President Vance and people like Tucker Carlson. And so that is probably a majority view because it's also a widely held view on the left as well that America should just kind of stay out of military interventions, especially in the Middle East. Now second, with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, when I first started doing this work, Israel was a bipartisan issue in Washington. Whenever there was a bill in

Congress about Israel's security, it was oftentimes 99 to 1 or 99 to 0, one abstention in support of it. And that's starting to change a little bit. And as I said, it's not only on the left, it's more predominantly on the left, but even the folks on the right, as I said, that wing of the party like Tucker Carlson who say, listen, Israel is a strong country. We've been giving it many billions dollars of aid

over the years and it can take care of itself. We don't need to be fighting wars for it. The other important factor is how people consume media and news nowadays. And the reality, Scott, is you have, what, 15 million Jews living in the world between Israel and United States and diaspora communities and Europe and Australia, probably 1.2 billion Muslims. And so the disparity in terms of what is produced on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter about the news of the Middle East, especially when the images and videos are so dramatic and they appear very one-sided. And David versus Goliath, a Palestinian population

which has suffered perhaps over 50,000, 60,000 casualties now, and an Israeli prime minister who Israeli prime minister who is widely disliked even within his own society, let alone globally. And so I do agree with you that the Democratic mayoral primary in New York is an important signpost for any supporter of Israel in the United States. Because if you're losing New York City and so much of the political debate in that election was not about New York City, it was about Israel-Palestine, that is, in my view, if you're strong support of Israel, that's a five-alarm fire. You obviously, you teach, you're in DC,

you see kind of the human capital that goes into our foreign policy apparatus. I'm always see kind of the human capital that goes into our foreign policy apparatus. I'm always consistently impressed by the human capital that decides to go into US foreign policy and decides to not go into what would probably be much more financially lucrative careers. At the same time, our security apparatus right now, I would argue, seems sclerotic and just they can't even get their own story straight. What is your sense of the current state of our security apparatus and our foreign policy engine, if you will, as you

as you see the human capital going into it, whether it's, I would imagine it's less attractive right now, but I bring a bias to the table. But give us a sense for the strength or lack thereof of our foreign policy and to the extent you're comfortable talking about it, our security apparatus. So one place where I've always been very impressed by the human capital of our leadership is our military, especially our military institutions. In my view, these are great American institutions, West Point, Annapolis, the Naval Academy, and our top generals. I'm always impressed by the fact that presidents and politicians change, but there's a consistent level of excellence from

those top military commanders. And not only excellence in terms of their disilience and preparedness, but oftentimes their character. So I would rate them highly. I've also, over the years, I've been in DC for many years, so you interact with many different institutions, Pentagon, the intelligence community, state department. I think one of the challenges we have, and it's natural because the US government is an enormous bureaucracy. Getting talented people in is a challenge. For example, I'll give you some concrete examples. I have very talented friends of Iranian origin. One in particular was born and raised in New York City, would be a huge asset to the US government, wanted to serve in the US government. And for four years, he was waiting for security clearance, which never happened, never got

that security clearance. And the way they conduct these security clearances are totally antiquated where you have one person going and interviewing 500 different people and asking them questions. My view, this is ripe for disruption from a company like Palantir. That you know, it's hand over all of your computer, your social media and we can do this much quicker. So that's one example.

The other example is that the US Foreign Service, for example, you know, it's, you start off and you may go stamp passports in Bangladesh for a couple years, and then you're off to another assignment. The pace of professional advancement can be quite slow. It's not the same excitement as going and joining a startup, AI startup or Silicon Valley startup. So I think that people should feel that there is very high caliber people we have in government, but a lot of the best minds these days, government is less attracted. The final thing I say on this, Scott, is that, you know, I'll give you an example. We have probably in the US government, there's, you know, probably

upwards of a billion dollars dedicated to strategic communications. That is almost irrelevant. Now, when you have a president who is essentially tweeting or putting on truth social his foreign policy positions and ambitions, it's rendered virtually irrelevant. So that, I think there's a great sense of demoralization among many folks in government that the system isn't functioning like it used to be and like it should. We'll be right back after a quick break. We're back with more from Kareem. If you were going to make any bets around what's going to happen in the Middle East, recognizing this is almost an impossible region to predict, but do you have any general themes

or outcomes that you think are more likely than not? Let me venture a couple broad thoughts. Number one is that in my view, this is a region which is never going to experience real stability and security so long as you have a government in Iran whose organizing principle is death to America and death to Israel. As long as you have a government in Iran that, as Kissinger once put it, behaves as a cause rather than a nation-state because it's a huge country, Iran. It has enormous resources. And if it wants to spend all of its capital and talent dedicated to the business of destruction and destabilization, it can continue to do that. So that's one big

prediction. Second is that in my view, there at some point will be a reckoning in Iran. And there's a wonderful book on revolutions which a professor called Jack Goldstone wrote. And Goldstone likens revolutions to earthquakes. He said, you know, we know where fault lines lie, we know which countries are highly seismic, but we can never say with certainty when an earthquake is going to happen. That's true about Iran as well. This is a regime which, in my view, is like the late-stage Soviet Union. It's a zombie regime. It has a dead ideology. It survives with the repression. It's on borrowed time. At some point, there is going to be a reckoning inside Iran. But I can't

tell you when exactly that's going to happen, nor can you say for certainty what is going to be the outcome. We know from history that authoritarian transitions oftentimes don't end in democracy. Only in about one in four cases end in democracy. More often, it ends in another form of authoritarianism. But even if that's the case in Iran, you could have a system which evolves into a regime, which is our government, which is a nationalist government, much like the choice that Deng Xiaoping made in China

in the 1970s, put the national interests and economic interests before cultural revolution.. That is, in my view, the key to understanding the region. The final thing I'll say here is that a big question is Saudi Vision 2030 and to the extent to which Saudi Arabia succeeds and Mohammed bin Salman extent to which Saudi Arabia succeeds and Mohammed bin Salman succeeds in transforming his nation. And I'll tell you, I wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs about this last fall. That is a tall order for young man, modern leader to try to take what was up until recently very traditional society and rapidly modernize it. And I think it's in our

interests and US interests that he succeed. But you know we have the example of the Shah of Iran in 1979, also a modern leader trying to rapidly transform a society. And what we know from history is that popular tumult doesn't tend to happen when people feel most destitute. Popular tumult tends to happen when people's expectations have risen, but then those expectations are unfulfilled. It's called the J-curve theory or revolutions of rising expectations. So an ideal outcome, Scott, in the Middle East would be an Iran which transforms into something modern and a Saudi Arabia which succeeds in transforming and realizing Vision 2030,

a disaster outcome would be Vision 2030 failing and having an outcome similar to what happened in Iran 1979 and this current regime in Iran managing to kind of retrench itself and ruling for years to come. Let me be more direct. Isn't there a much greater likelihood of peace and stability without Netanyahu or Khomeini?

Aren't these two obstacles to sustainable peace in the Middle East? So I would add one more person there, which is the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, because what a lot of the Gulf leadership will tell you, especially, you know, even in Saudi Arabia, leadership will tell you, especially even in Saudi Arabia, Saudis will tell you that prior to October 7th, 2023, they were very close to doing a normalization deal

with Israel and that was in part why Hamas invaded Israel when they did to sabotage those prospects. And they succeeded because it became almost impossible for MBS to sell a normalization deal to its own people while Israel was bombing Gaza. But I think that Khamenei has to go. For Gulf countries to feel confident that the Palestinians are capable of presenting themselves in a cohesive way and having strong leadership, Mahmoud Abbas will have to go. And I think many would also argue that so long as Prime Minister Netanyahu is in power,

that that normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia is unlikely to happen. So, sort of a lightning round here, which is dangerous in geopolitics. Increased US intervention or additional US intervention more likely to happen or not happen? I think it's more likely to happen if we don't get a clear account of where Iran's highly enriched uranium is and we don't have access to their nuclear facilities, because they may actually say, now that you bombed us,

we're going to cut off access to the inspectors. In six months, do you think the attack on these nuclear facilities will be seen as having been successful, or that its success was inflated? You know, Scott, we, I think applied history is useful here. And unfortunately, over the last two decades, we look back at most military interventions in the Middle East as having done more harm than good. And, you know, I think there's a real danger that that could be the case with this one as well.

So we always like to end with, we have a lot of young people who listen to the podcast. And I think there's a real danger that that could be the case with this one as well. So we always like to end with, we have a lot of young people who listen to the podcast. It strikes me you have a really cool job. That you found something that you have this unique skill set for having been lived all over the world, understanding these cultures, obviously very intelligent, and work at this interesting, you know, this interesting institution, likely make a very good living, do really interesting things. Like, how did you get from an 18-year-old, you know, man,

what were sort of the pivot points? How did you find, how did you get in the seat you're in now? What were the seminal forces decisions that gave you the opportunity to kind of land where you are right now? Because I look at, I bet that there's a lot of young men and young women who look at what you're doing and think, you know what, that's just a really interesting,

rewarding way to make a living. How did you get from there to here? So had you asked me at age, you know, 13, what I envisioned for my work, I genuinely, this would have not been in the top thousand things I thought I would do because I had zero interest in the Middle East and zero interest in Iran.

You know, despite the fact that my parents are Iranian, it was not easy to, you know, you were not proud, you were not proud of growing up Iranian in the 1980s in the United States, right, in the aftermath of the hostage. Did you press pause there? The amount of outright bigotry against Iranians in the U.S. after the hostage crisis was staggering. I remember being in Westwood when I was at UCLA

and walking down and there was this, I think it was a disco called Dillon's. We had a disco and they put up a sign that said, Iranians not welcome. And fortunately our institutions held and they were forced to take that sign down, but that's how comfortable a retail establishment was of being that bigoted back then. I'm sorry, go ahead, Kareem. Kareem Rezaih You know, Scott, that wasn't my experience as a young kid because I grew up in a

community, a very friendly community. And you know, my father used to tell us from the time we were small, my father emigrated to the US in the late 1950s and he loved Iranian culture. He was a great patriot, Persian patriot, but he also loved the United States. From the time we were small, he would tell us, you live in the greatest country in the world. The reason why I think he said that is the reason why a lot of immigrants have, because they have something else to compare it to. It wasn't that they took it for granted. He had lived in a different context, but you know, I grew up with no interest in, in, in the Middle East and Iran because, you know, what did it represent?

It was Ayatollah Khomeini and burning American flags, death to America. I was interested in basketball. I went to university of Michigan. I played soccer there. Um, and for me, what happened was, you know, I started to University of Michigan. I played soccer there. And for me what happened was, you know, I started to get experiences living abroad. I lived in Mexico as an exchange student when I was in high school. I spent my junior year in college in Italy where, as I mentioned, my mom grew up. Then when I was

22, I received, I won an essay competition from an organization which I believe is still around. I would recommend young people to Google it. It's called the Circumnavigators Club. This was 1999 and I won a scholarship, a grant to travel around the world to actually circumnavigate the globe. My research project in 1999 was called the Internet's Impact on Global Communication. One of the places that they wanted me to go, I had actually no interest in visiting the Middle East. And up until then, I had not been to Iran because the war with Iraq had happened and I would have been recruited into the Iranian army. So I never had gone to Iran, but I went to Egypt. And I loved Egypt. That was an eye-opening experience for me. I became really enthralled in the Middle East after that. Then I worked at National Geographic. That was my first job

out of college. It continued to fuel my love of adventure and the world. Then I spent the summer of 2001 in Iran, my first summer there. And I lived with my 99-year-old grandmother. I traveled all over the country. It was a wonderful experience. And then fast forward about a month later, September 2001 was my first semester in graduate school, studying Middle East affairs. 9-11 happens. And it then became kind of very clear to me that this is something I wanted to dedicate my career and my life to in part because as you said from the outset, Scott, Iran is a nation

with enormous potential. It should be a G20 nation and America and Iran should be natural partners. They are not natural adversaries. So for me, that is what has fueled my passion. And I remember when I was at Michigan, I was a classmate of Tom Brady in undergrad. He was the first guy I met in freshman orientation.

And we had a biology professor who said to us on the very last day, I was meant to be pre-med but I failed my pre-med classes so I went into political science and I had this we had this biology lecture. I didn't remember much about the class but I just remember the last the thing he said on the last day of class he said you know so I don't cliche that if you find something you're really passionate about then you'll never have to work a day in your life. And he said, you know, sometimes I'm waiting for calls from the lab, you know, for pending experiments, and I'll leave my lawnmower going. You know, I just forget about it. I'm so passionate about it. And, you know, this

career, it can be very emotional. You're constantly talking about repression and war and very hard topics. But it's something which at the end of the day also provides real meaning. So what I'd say to people is going abroad is if you're interested in a career in international affairs, that's one way to distinguish yourself, get ground experience. It's important to learn other languages and master those languages. And then final thing I'd say, Scott, is that I think it's critical for young people to read books, read history. Those are the kind of the macronutrients of kind of a great scholar or analyst. If you're constantly just reading tweets or watching TikTok videos, that's,

you know, nourishing yourself with candy and it's not going to sustain you or distinguish you, distinguish you from your peers. Read books. Kareem Sajjapur is a senior fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in Iran and US foreign policy. Kareem, right away we thought we were getting so many policy. Kareem, right away we thought we were getting so many muddled messages about what to believe or not believe around this conflict and your name came up independently from different sources two or three times. So whatever you're doing, you've established a reputation as a real honest broker. So well done, very much appreciate you coming on and hope that you'll join us again.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Scott. Love being with you. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thanks for listening to the Proffesgy podcast from the Vox Media Podcast Network.