Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are in this extraordinary world of ours. Here's hoping you're safe, sound, and above all healthy. I'm Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and welcome to Carnegie Connects, a series of conversations about issues of critical importance to America and to the world. Today we're talking Iran. And I just would like to make a point or two before we start. You know, history really rarely offers up events that could be considered quick or inexorable transitions to what we might describe as transformation. We were all told that COVID would fundamentally alter the world as we've known it. It didn't. We were also told that Putin's invasion of Ukraine would rearrange the international system in ways that were irrevocable and unchangeable. It didn't. October 7, people believed would somehow transform the Middle East, largely for ill, but some had hopes for good, still a work in progress. And we use — I'm guilty of this myself — we use words like game changer, which I hate, sea change, which frankly isn't much better, and the master of all phrases, inflection points. I just figure often it takes a lot of time to sort out whether the headlines of a given event become trend lines which actually end up being transformative.
And so where are we? Three weeks after massive protests in all of Iran's major cities through 31 provinces, a death toll — I don't know if anyone really has the numbers. I've heard figures from 4,000 to 12,000. You have a US president still threatening intervention, military intervention once military assets are in place. So what is it that we witnessed in Iran? What remains constant and what's changed? Are these protests truly leaderless and unorganized? And who's managing the day-to-day events in Iran? What's the role of the supreme leader in all of this? When we talk about divisions and fractures in the security and military establishment, what are we really talking about? What's the best role or the role the US is more likely to play? And finally, what I hear from most analysts, Iran analysts — I am not one — is that since the regime can't and or won't meet the demands and requirements of the protesters and it will continue to repress, it's only a matter of time before you do end up with some sort of transformation. And then of course, if that is the case, where are we going? I suspect that my friend Pythia, the famed oracle of Delphi, reading the tea leaves of golden trails, probably couldn't answer the last question. But fortunately today we have two extraordinary analysts, both friends, who will try. Let me introduce them briefly. Robin Wright, a contributing writer and columnist, has written for the New Yorker since 1988. She's a former correspondent for the Washington Post, CBS News, the LA Times, the Sunday Times, and reported from 150 countries around the world, which, Robin, is really quite extraordinary. She was a colleague of mine when there was a Wilson Center that was vibrant and active. And she was at the US Institute of Peace, Brookings, and also did a stint at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he focuses on Iran and US foreign policy toward the Middle East. If you haven't seen or heard from Karim in the last several weeks, you must — I'm not sure where you've been if you're interested in these matters. So let me welcome Robin, let me welcome you, and Karim, let me welcome you. Let's just start with a brief sort of situational awareness on January 28th, 2026, on the streets. Where are we, Karim?
Thank you, Aaron. So I'd say where we are today is that the protests are in retreat. The regime has used overwhelming brutality, as you alluded to. The numbers are unclear. I think the regime itself has admitted 5,000 people have been killed. Some independent estimates estimate that number to be several fold, as high as 13, 15, I've seen as high as 20. We don't know yet, but we know that according to the regime's own statistics, they've killed thousands of more people than were killed over the 13 months leading to the 1979 revolution. And that's pretty significant. Within a period of days they killed far more people than were killed by the monarchy in the run-up to 1979. I think many people in Iran, most people in Iran are waiting to see what the United States might do, both the regime and the protesters. As we all know, President Trump made numerous threats against the regime. By my account he had made over eight statements threatening that if Iran used violence against protesters, the United States was locked and loaded and help was coming. And so I think right now both the regime and society, protesters, are waiting to see when and if President Trump decides to make good on his word.
Yeah. But we're going to do more on that in a minute. Robin, to you, a sense of where we are early this week.
So, first of all, let me say how glad I am to be on this panel with two Middle East experts who are also both graduates of the University of Michigan.
Go Blue.
So I think that when we look at this moment, we need to put it in context that first of all, the revolution in 1978-79 took 14 months. In Iran, we've seen a series of protests beginning in 2009, but which have accelerated since 2017 over diverse issues. The economy in 2017-18, the women, life, freedom was over personal freedoms, and today you see it playing out really over the system. But each of these protests in the end evolved into calls for death to the dictator, down with the regime. And so we've seen this growing movement that we can't look at just in terms of what happened in the last month, but also in context of what's happened over the last, you know, eight, nine years and the steady rhythm over a lot of different issues. Now the regime still has the tools as it has used brutally, ruthlessly against its own people. But I think that is only going to at the end of the day backfire against it. But the system also, again, when we analyze this moment, we have to understand that the theocracy is rotting from within. It has become a tighter and tighter inner circle around the supreme leader who have detained and discredited and discarded many of its own kind in order to survive.
Long-term, you know, the odds are not in its favor. I've covered Iran and been there, I think, as many times as any other Americans since 1973. And I've watched as whether it's the turnout at Friday prayers where the crowd has grown grayer and grayer and older and older, or people going to Ayatollah Khomeini's home, the revolutionary leaders' home, where, you know, increasingly you find, except on national holidays when the mobilized people, crowds are very small and they're often Shiite pilgrims or foreign tourists. And this is a system that does not have the kind of support it needs to survive long term. It promised to help the oppressed, which was the message of the revolution, and the oppressed now are in worse shape in day-to-day living, in participation in the system, than they were under the Shah.
Right. Aaron, if I could just say one thing to buttress — I 100% want to buttress and second everything Robin said. And one thing I neglected to say, which I should have said in my introductory remarks, is one of the reasons we don't even know, for example, a clear death count is that the regime has shut off all communications inside Iran. So the internet is shut down, cellular communications have been shut down, satellite has been shut down. There've been brief periods in which people can communicate with the outside world, with one another, but this is a population which has had 1% connectivity over the last eight, nine days. And so this is a typical move by the Islamic Republic to shut down all communications, put a digital blanket over the nation and kill people in the dark.
I want to drill down in a minute on both the demonstrators, the protesters and the regime, but you've both watched these demonstrations over the last two decades. What feels the same to you and what would you identify as unique and unprecedented? Karim, let's stay with you for a sec.
So what's different about these protests, as you alluded to, is that they are everywhere throughout the country, places that we've always thought of as regime strongholds. Cities like Qom, for me that was quite eye-opening, the birthplace of Ayatollah Khomeini, people were chanting 'Javid Shah', long live the king. And that's another difference of these protests, is that in past protests we definitely heard slogans like 'death to the dictator' or 'forget about Palestine, think about us'. We haven't heard such a large number of protests evoking the monarchy and Reza Pahlavi, or, you know, what the monarchy represented for Iran. And so I think that's definitely been a distinction. And as Robin alluded to, the sheer contempt and intensity and ferocity of these protests — there is no confusing the fact that this is a population which, in my view, I would argue 75 to 80% of the adult population, as a conservative estimate, are really done with the Islamic Republic. They really have no belief that this is a system that can be reformed. And again, I think Jack Goldstone, who's written a wonderful book about revolution, says that, you know, one of the things that you do need for a revolution is that you need to have kind of a common oppositional narrative against the regime. And I think that does now exist in Iran, and that oppositional narrative is patriotism as an antidote to Islamism. And I think that's why you hear the name Pahlavi evoked commonly.
Patriotism as nationalism?
Yes, I mean, and again here we can go into discussion, and I always recommend to people the wonderful essay that George Orwell wrote many years ago on nationalism, patriotism. You know, there's positive aspects of that, love of nation. As we've all seen throughout, especially 20th century history, you know, nationalism can manifest itself in ugly ways as well, almost a fascism. And so I think that this is going to be one of the really important debates in Iran's future. And you were right to say from the outset, Aaron, that none of us can predict events in Iran. But one thing I would feel fairly confident saying, Aaron, is that 10 years from now it's very unlikely that the organizing principle of Iran remains death to America and death to Israel. I think it's far more likely that the organizing principle of the country becomes nationalism. But that's a big question, you know, is it a positive patriotism like Orwell cited or, you know, a negative nationalism?
Right, no, fascinating point. Robin, to you on contrast and continuity.
So I think one of the things we've seen is the disillusionment with the system, but the reality, hard reality, that there is no viable alternative. This protest is much like the Arab Spring in that people know what they are opposed to. That's been clear, increasingly clear, but the reality is they don't have an alternative, an organized alternative. They don't have a common goal. They don't have a leadership. Someone made a very interesting remark about the fact that there are several potential Mandelas among the young, but the reality that there's no African National Congress, which of course was the party that operated for many years against the apartheid government in South Africa. And it's true that there isn't the kind of cohesion among the protesters that would give an alternative. And frankly, I do not believe that Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah, is a viable long-term alternative. I think one of the reasons his name has been invoked is because there isn't an alternative. But I think those inside Iran want to be the ones to determine their future, not those outside the country. And I think, you know, there clearly the fact that there are people inside Iran talking about Pahlavi makes him an interesting character at this juncture, but I don't think he's a long-term alternative. I'll just make one other point. The rule of political science is that you need 30% of the population to support an autocratic or authoritarian regime. You need the 30% to man the military, to support and run the bureaucracy, and to either bribe or pay taxes to financially support the regime. And I wrote a piece quoting a political scientist in Iran we all know who said, you know, 80% of the population doesn't support the government and it's probably, you know, down to like 15%. And that has been, in my experience, increasingly true. And so the regime is clearly in serious trouble, reflected by the fact they've had to use force and that they had to offer — it said it will provide leniency to anyone who turns themselves in over the, you know, the current three days. And that shows the desperation, they can't control what's happening long term on the ground.
Let me ask you, you know, you both know the protest movement. It's an authoritarian system, but Iran has a tradition of a vibrant sort of political culture. There are no wizards pulling the strings behind the curtain. But does it surprise you that over time these demonstrations remain leaderless, that the regime's penetration of the country is such that discrete cells, even informal organized cells, wouldn't have developed? That's my first question. Second, there are no former presidents of Iran, no political figures who haven't been either muzzled, marginalized, or somehow imprisoned. I mean, decades later, there's no internal coherent alternative. And why is that, Karim?
So Aaron, I used to — when I was based in Tehran many years ago, I was an analyst with the International Crisis Group. I used to sometimes, on several occasions, attend anti-government protests just as an observer. And it is an incredibly intimidating atmosphere when you leave your home and you see, you know, five thousand, many thousands of men holding machine guns in some cases. You know, roads are blocked, highways are blocked. And so this is — so just to emphasize the point that when you see therefore thousands, tens of thousands, probably collectively millions of protesters as we saw at some point throughout the country, that's very significant because each of these people protesting knows that they're taking the ultimate risk. They're risking their life. Now, the Islamic Republic is now essentially a regime which is set up not to govern. It's not really governing anymore. It's just set up not to collapse. So all of their economic, military power is focused on their own citizens. And, you know, one of the distinctions between this regime and the Shah's regime is that many of the Shah's political and military elite had studied in the United States and Europe. And so when the going got tough in 1978, they could remake their lives elsewhere in London or Los Angeles. Whereas the Islamic Republic's political and military elite, especially Ayatollah Khamenei, have much more provincial backgrounds. They're probably after North Korea the most isolated, friendless regime in the world. And so their mentality is kill or be killed. And what we haven't yet seen inside the Islamic Republic are Yeltsin-type figures, right? Figures that belong to the regime who have broken away in a meaningful way and saying, you know what, this ship is sinking, I'm going to jump off and I'm going to join the opposition. And that's partly due to the fact that Robin alluded to earlier, that the regime is just like an onion, right? It's purged so many layers over the last two decades that when it's such a narrow regime, essentially a one-man rule, the rule of one, there are few Yeltsins. The Yeltsins have already kind of in some ways been purged from the system. But, you know, as we've all talked about, what we haven't also seen are at least publicly splinters within the security forces. And so that is essentially what is keeping this regime in power for now. Robin.
Yeah. The one problem is that some of the most outspoken figures like Narges Mohammadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, are in jail and it's very hard for them to mobilize. She's been incredibly brave in making statements, you know, attacking the regime. So, you know, the idea of creating cells — the government is so penetrated. You know, people are afraid to talk on the phone. I remember on one of my trips, I was told, take your SIM card out of your phone so that they can't tap into what you're saying. But if you take your SIM card out, there's suspicion that maybe you're doing something that you shouldn't be doing or that's anti-government. So the penetration is so deep. I think one of the interesting things about looking at Iran today and its fragility is that it's not just isolated regionally. You saw the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today talking about the threat from the United States. And I think the Iranian government is feeling both domestically and on the international stage deeply threatened. And Araghchi said Iran would strike with everything it had if it was attacked by Israel and/or the United States. And so you feel at this moment they feel existentially challenged, the whole idea of a theocracy, of Islamic rule, as never before. And so it's not just what's happening inside the country. It's the regime's perception of itself right now. And I'll just make one other comment. When you ask where are the leaders, you look at President Khatami, who was a reformer, was elected in 1997, held office for eight years, and how he was considered a reformer, and he's now banned from speaking to the Iranian media. He's banned from being quoted, banned from travel overseas, his passport confiscated. So even at the highest levels, Iran, the theocracy is limiting everybody's ability to challenge it from within.
Yeah. You know, you make a fascinating point, Robin, a paradox, that the regime does perceive an existential threat. It didn't respond to Israel's 12-day war or to Trump's decision to strike three nuclear sites. But it responded in a sort of performative fashion by striking Qatar. But you have to factor in that desperation, that notion that these are existential stakes should be considered. I want to get to this in a minute. If the United States decides, the president decides that he wants to deploy some sort of military force against Iran to back up his social media comments, who's running the railroad? Karim, you've pointed out many times an 86-year-old leader, supreme leader, physically and perhaps mentally and emotionally not up to the challenge. Is he still exerting the kind of influence that we would have expected in days past?
Aaron, I think that this is one of these questions that we will know obviously much better years from now when we have access to what happened. My sense is that obviously at age 86, his mental, physical capacities are far more limited. His ability to micromanage the government, the country as he has been doing for decades is much more limited. There were reports that have come out over the last few days that one of the people that was leading the brutal crackdown was Ali Larijani, who's kind of a, you know, almost a special envoy for the leader. There's no way of corroborating that. We obviously know that Israel took out perhaps as many as a couple dozen top military, Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders last June. And so the system has been pretty thoroughly penetrated. There's some reports that only five people are in direct contact with him. That's how paranoid he is. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he's living under a protected bunker right now, given a lot of rumors that the United States or Israel may choose to personally target him. So that is a big question, you know, how much can this 86-year-old possibly be leading this brutal crackdown and how much is he reliant on the Revolutionary Guards. And that's why, just emphasizing Robin's previous points, I call the Islamic Republic a zombie regime because it has a dying ideology, dying legitimacy, dying economy, and dying leader. And that's why, you know, I feel comfortable — I never feel that comfortable making predictions about Iran, but I feel comfortable saying that this status quo is totally unsustainable.
