Iran: Neither East Nor West

>> Abbas Milani: Clearly they know that Mr. Netanyahu is absolutely itching for a chance to attack Iran. Iran is now very much, I think much more than many people publicly say, close to a bomb. They have been talking more openly than ever before about developing the bomb.

>> Vlasov Dobrhlib: Hello, my name is Vlasov Dobrhlib.

I'm a graduate of London School of Economics and I'm coming from Ukraine. Therefore, my question is in relation to that. To ask the question, I need to use two smaller cases of recent news. On October 7th, when the conflict between Israel and Hamas restarted, there are quite many news articles about the US trophy weaponry that Russia took on the front lines in Ukraine being used to conduct the assault.

And the second news were actually recently, a few weeks ago, there was news about Russian attempts to support and strengthen the Houthis as an asymmetric response to the US decision to allow Ukraine to strike Ukrainian targets near the borders. Therefore, my question is, in your opinion, how deeply are the actions of Russia in Iran are synchronized in the region?

>> Abbas Milani: That's a great question, I think. I think I have been worried about that alliance for at least 12, 13 years. And I wrote an article literally in 2007 where I said there is a new international being formed with Russia, China and Iran as its junior member. That alliance is now the subject of open discussion by NATO, by EU, and I think it's going to become even more problematic for the world.

And Russia is clearly unambiguously deeply influential in Iran. Mr. Khamenei is more than anyone responsible for what he calls the eastern look, the Islamic Republic, some of you might remember, came to power with the slogan neither east nor West. They didn't want Soviet Union at the time, they didn't want the US.

Now clearly they say we were wrong, we should go eastward. And they are trying to align themselves with China, Russia and North Korea, to a lesser extent, India, to a lesser extent, Hungary, to a lesser extent, are the one who hesitates which side he needs to be on, I think.

Iran has clearly decided, at least, Khamenei has not Iran. Khamenei has clearly decided he wants to go that way. Clearly, they have supplied drones to Russia. No country that I know of, not even China, has been unambiguous in saying that the Ukraine invasion by Russia was instigated by NATO and they have completely sided with Russia.

There are now indications that they're sending them ballistic missiles. I have read reports of Iran helping Russia recruit fighters from Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan that Iran used in Syria. They are now being hired to fight in the front lines in Ukraine where Iran seems to have miscalculated is that China doesn't seem to be as eager to accept Iran in its alliance as Russia is.

Russia is more desperate. China has more to lose. China seems to have decided that Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates and Qatar are a better deal than Iran. China just signed an enormous economic deal with them and basically has invested virtually nothing in Iran. Iran was hoping for $400 billion over 25 years.

I don't think they have even gotten 4 billion.

>> Azar: Okay, hi, my name is Azar. I am from origin, I am from Azerbaijan. My question is about the implications of recent political developments in Iran on the regime's attitude toward ethnic minorities in Iran. As you know, the recently elected President Pezeshkian is ethnically Azerbaijani Turk.

And during elections and even when he served as a member of parliament, he always defended rights of ethnic minorities and especially the education in native language. Do you think that Pezeshkian will be able to change something in domestic politics? And I think that he will compete in this process with Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, an Azerbaijan and Turk.

Do you envision any change in Iran domestic politics? Thank you.

>> Abbas Milani: Thank you very much. First of all, for those of you who might not know the context, let me give a little bit of a context. Iran has about 25% of its population who speak Turkish language. They're what we call Azeris.

Iran has another 10% that are Kurds, another 4, 5% that are Baluchis, another 2 to 4 million that speak Arabic. All of these minorities are almost all located in Iran's border areas. So Iran is very susceptible to secessionist movements and they have been often faced with tensions. So one aspect of politics in Iran has always been this tension between the center and the periphery.

What does it mean to be Iranian? What should be the language of Iran? Currently, the language of Iran is Farsi. The official language is Farsi. Till a few years ago, it was literally illegal for its people in the Azeri parts of Iran to speak Turkish, for Kurdish Iranians to speak Kurdish.

Now the regime is trying to change. Iran just had an election where a so called reformist was elected, clearly, in an engineered election masterminded by Khamenei. I written a piece in Project Syndicate. I wrote it before the election and I said, this is Khamenei's engineering. He needed an election that would not be a minority vote.

They needed to bring in people to vote. The trick to some extent worked and the person they picked is Dr. Pezeshkian who is a cardiologist, but is a cardiologist who seems to be much more at home with reciting the Quran or Nahj al-balagha medical text or political reality.

If you listen to his talk in his inaugural day, I think 40% of it was in Arabic. He was reciting Quranic verses. He was reciting Nahj al-balagha, which is a work by Ali, the first imam. So many people People think he might bring change. But already 10 days, 12 days into his new administration, those hopes are dissipating.

Clearly in Iran, in my view, power is in the hands of the IRGC, Iran Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, that's short for IRGC. They are the most muscular military force. They're also now virtually in control of at least 50% of the economy. They have become a corporate giant, an economic juggernaut.

And if you look at the name, it tells you something about their attitude. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, what is missing here? This is a military, this is an Iranian military? Iran, the name of Iran is missing and its flag is Quranic verse. It's a internationalist force, as they clearly indicate.

They and Khomeini, in my view, and increasingly I think, they have the upper hand because Khomeini without the IRGC would not survive. The IRGC with Khomeini might have an easier time to survive because they are not as ideological. They have become corporatist. They are running virtually every sports team, every entertainment, every major corporation, every major deal.

They bid on everything. We could spend a whole literally day talking about how remarkably pervasive their presence is. Economic presence, military. They have their own intelligence, they have their own ports of entry. Iran's past president said they have 14 different centers where they bring in commodities without going through the normal processes.

And Iran is under sanction and you can buy everything in Iran. They bring it and they sell it on the grain market at enormous profit. So they are the power in my view, those two. And Mr. Pezeshkian has very, very little power. Zarif, who was his biggest cheerleader, was literally forced to resign a week after he was appointed as a deputy president.

The right wing attacked him. They said he's pro American, his children have American passports. His son I think was born not far from here in San Francisco where he was an undergraduate.

>> Al Nalajani: Hello, my name is Al Nalajani, just graduated from Georgetown University. And I was wondering if you could evaluate how America's and the West's foreign policy towards Iran after the Second World War.

Like the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh and the implementation of the American-backed Shah, has potentially made or intensified Iran's kind of sense of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic nationalism. Potentially making Iran less open to cooperation with the West, thank you.

>> Abbas Milani: Very good question. I've actually written two books that try to partially answer that question.

One is called the Shah and the other one is called the Myth of the Great Satan. The Myth of the Great Satan is published by Hoover Press. Myth of the Shah by Macmillan. The notion that it was the CIA that overthrew the government of Mossadegh or the CIA and the MI6 and that sort of upended Iran's history, to me is a myth.

The CIA clearly did plan to try to overthrow Mossaddegh. That plan failed. That plan failed on August 15. I have discussed this in great detail. There are now literally thousands, thousands of archival material from the American archives. There is something called Foreign Relations of the us, you might have seen those.

These are documents of the US government that are declassified A few years ago. A thousand new pages about 1953 was published. So Mossadegh was overthrown in my view, because he lost much of his support at home and he had no alternative for what he was forced to face, which was sanctions, enormous amount of sanctions.

And he decided not to make a compromise, rather than making a compromise that would have saved, I think, Iran. So clearly the force that most helped overthrow Mossadegh, in my view, was not the CIA, it was actually the clergy. It was the clergy who supported Mossadegh till late mid 52.

And when Mossadegh wouldn't go along with them and their demands, their demands, for example, were forced hijab on women, Mossadegh said no. Their demand was to ban all Baha'is from government office, Mossadegh said no. So Kashani, who was the leader of the clergy, had other demands. He wanted to have a veto power over ministerial appointments.

Mossadegh said no. Based on archival material, contacts the American Embassy. He says, you guys want to overthrow this, I want to overthrow. Let's work together. And it is Kashani who I think brings the most powerful force. What I think helped the revolution wasn't my view. Again, I'm giving you my view.

This is how I've argued in the book. You can read it and disagree with it. But what really gave rise to the clergy was the Shah's policy of strengthening the hands of the clergy in what he thought was the most important fight of his regime. This was the Cold War.

And the Shah clearly thought that the left, the Tudor Party, Soviet Union, was its main threat. And thus the hands of the clergy were virtually open, left open to organize and mobilize. There is much written about how cleverly these people went. Khomeini and his associates went in creating an infrastructure in civil society.

Engineers, Islamic engineer groups, Islamist students, places to read. The war on special schools to train future cadres. It was a remarkable process and the regime, the Shah's regime, allowed it because they thought, as almost everybody thought that the Islamists don't have a claim to power, that the claim to power, the threat is the left.

If you go back and read for example some of the political descriptions of the Middle east in 1975, what you would find are threats about Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, the plo. There is no mention, none, not in Iran, not in Lebanon, nowhere of the Islamist. No one thought that they have a claim to power. 79 changed that. I don't know if I answered your question.

>> Nick Antusi: Hi, my name is Nick Antusi, I'm from London. My parents actually left Iran in light of the revolution and I wanted to build upon that and talk about how there was a. How the US government and also along with the British government were very involved in pre revolution and how they set up a lot of policy with regards to Iran in light of the.

A lot of the money that was coming with oil, a lot of the money that was coming in from Iran wanting to nationalize their oil and how that was a threat to the US. And do you think that this initial disturbance to Iran, and their own nationalization, and work on themselves, and their economy and then a lot of the protests to do with Magban Umrika and all the Iranians just now hating America and how that may have led to the current affairs and the current US Iran tension?

And then in light of the regime and supporting the regime.

>> Abbas Milani: Well, first of all, thank you. I don't think there is that much evidence supporting your claim that most Iranians hate America today. In fact, there's a lot of evidence to the contrary.

>> Nick Antusi: Sorry, at the time, now is-

>> Abbas Milani: At the time, at the time again, at that time there clearly was the perception. Again, let me give a little background. There is a perception amongst many royalists, many Iranian in diaspora. The Shah of Iran certainly believed that. He writes about it in his book Answer to History that the Islamic revolution was actually created by the US The US and Britain and they give different reasons.

Some say the Shah had become too independent. The Shah wasn't making. Wasn't playing with the US on the oil issue. The Shah was insisting on increasing the price of oil. Some say the Shah was becoming actually a superpower. There is a whole book, the crash of 79. It's a novel.

But many Iranian royalists think of this as serious history where the US Becomes worried that the Shah is becoming the superpower in the region. So they overthrew him. I find no evidence for that. There is a lot of evidence that the US and the Shah were very much in tension.

There is no President, no president in modern American history Since World War II that was as close to the Shah as Nixon. Richard Nixon knew the Shah from 1955. Richard Nixon was the only President, the only ex head of state that went to the Shah's funeral. Richard Nixon was the only.

The Shah of Iran was the only head of state that I know of that after Watergate actively tried to help Nixon, trying to get him. Nixon was needing a job. The Shah had a great deal of difficulty with Nixon. Nixon had a great deal of difficulty with the Shah.

Kissinger clearly was fighting. We have at Hoover now the archives of Iran's ambassador to the US at the time. There are many indications that there was tension with the US on the question of oil. The Shah insisted on increasing the price of oil. The US was trying to get the Shah to quiet down, but the US got what it wanted and it got what it wanted through Saudi Arabia.

There's a whole book written about this based on archival material. Ford archive, the Nixon archive, Schoolcroft Archive, you can clearly see that the US went to Saudi Arabia and said the Shah isn't playing ball, we need the price of oil to stabilize. But for me to think that the US and or Israel, because another theory is that Israel was part of this theory and England was part of this theory.

The notion that Israel, United States, and UK, we think they have a better deal on the horizon than the Shah of Iran is unimaginable. And there is no evidence in the archive, there's none. The US and the UK decide that the Shah can't stay. You know what time, we can almost pinpoint the day in October 78.

Till October 78, clearly the US was trying to find a way and UK was trying to find a way to keep the Shah in power. So to me that argument, although it's convenient argument and the reason many, I don't know your parents, but many in Iranian diaspora like to say this happened because of the US and because of the UK is because it absolves ourselves from the responsibility we were responsible, we in the opposition.

I, I can speak for myself. I was a radical student, Berkeley, going against the Shah, praising Khomeini in ways that to today I read the stuff that was written at the time. I'm ashamed of how stupid we were. If we blame it all on the US and on the UK or on Israel, we absolve ourselves of responsibility.

And the royalists like to do that because they absolve the Shah of responsibility. Again, to go back to your question, if you actually look at the archives, the Americans are trying to tell the Shah from 1965 almost incessantly. Actually 1957. Eisenhower is the first one who begins it to to tell the Shah you need to open up the system, otherwise a danger lurks on the horizon.

The normal radical leftist, cold War, even Iranian nationalist Mossadegh narrative is that the U S supported militarist, despotic regime of the Shah. Actually, if you look at the evidence, the US did sell the Shah much weaponry. Iran was probably the biggest customer, but the US was also behind the scenes.

Incessantly telling the Shah that you need to open up the system, that there is a tension on the horizon. In the Shah book, I have a letter from the Iranian Embassy. An American official whose name doesn't appear there basically predicts the revolution. This is 1974. He says, tell the Shah. There seems to be trouble. The Shah on the margin, his handwriting is there. He said, tell these stupid Americans. Where do you get your information? I think the leftists have influenced the state department are feeding them these ideas.

>> Aditi: Thank you for your talk. My name is Aditi and I'm a medical student from King's College, London.

I have a question about what you mentioned earlier, that the assassination of Ismail Haniye has been quite an embarrassment for Iran, but also Iran is keen to avoid any international conflict. And therefore, what do you think is the most likely response that they will have? And what will this mean for relations in the area, but also with the us?

Thank you.

>> Abbas Milani: If my reading of what is coming out of Iran is correct, first of all, they keep writing in Iran about different characters, different forces, different personalities, begging Iran not to attack. If you know the clergy, you know that when they leak this, that means that's what they want to do, they want to find a way out.

Clearly, they know that Mr. Netanyahu is inch absolutely itching for a chance to attack Iran. Iran is now very much, I think, much more than many people publicly say, close to a bomb. They have been talking more openly than ever before about developing the bomb. Israel will use any attack, I think, that Iran makes on Israel.

And they have now openly said, even if you don't kill citizens, if you attack us, we're going to hit you. Iran doesn't want that. But Iran also, as a government that has been embarrassed and the embarrassment, Haniyeh isn't the only embarrassment. If you think about the ways that US and Israel have taken the war to Iran, you can absolutely see that Iran sees itself in a defensive mode.

First, Trump took out absolutely the most powerful man after Khamenei. No one thought the US or anybody else would go after Qasem Soleimani. And the Iranian regime said, we'll do this, we'll do that. Basically, they did very little. They let the Americans know that they're gonna hit a base and the base was essentially emptied.

Now they are trying to find a way out of this, but they have to show some response. Just today, they said this morning, they said, if there is peace in Gaza, we won't attack. So clearly, we know that they have let the Americans government know the Biden administration, that if there is a ceasefire, we wouldn't attack.

All of these, to me, indicate they really don't want, but they want to show that they are brave and are engaging jihad. I think he's standing up means I'm finished.

>> Abbas Milani: Thank you.