Tehran’s new reality

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 10th of March.

So glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. 

Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Up first: Iran digs in.

AUDIO: (CHANTING IN FARSI) Death to America!

Ten days after U.S. and Israeli airstrikes annihilated the regime, crowds gathered in Tehran on Monday to chant “Death to America.” They also pledged allegiance to the newly appointed Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ali Khamenei.

This comes after President Trump insisted the U.S. would take a role in appointing the new leadership of Iran.

REICHARD: What does the move signal for the conflict?

Here to talk about it is Janatan Sayeh. He’s an Iranian-American research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and he focuses on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic’s influence. 

Janatan, good morning!

JANATAN SAYEH: Hi, it’s great to be with you.

REICHARD: Well, how would you describe the phase of the war the United States is in currently?

SAYEH: We are swiftly arriving at the second phase. The initial phase that started in February 28 up until the second week of the war, more or less, has been mostly focused on taking out the military installation. The main mission there was to ensure that the regime does not have enough retaliatory measures. 

So I think quickly after that, the pivot would be how we can leverage the momentum on the ground, where there’s going to be some ground operations, I know the administration hasn’t ruled that out. There’re discussions about arming separatist groups. So that, in itself, tells you where you know the war is headed. It’s gone beyond just taking out military installations and really getting into the weeds now.

REICHARD: So let’s talk about what’s been accomplished so far, and then what are the challenges the U.S. faces. Let's start with what's accomplished so far.

SAYEH: Taking out, not necessarily all of them ballistic missiles themselves, because you're talking about thousands, but taking out their ability to launch them has been really significant. Taking out the launchers, launch pads. So that's been on the military front. And, of course, the decapitation of the leadership that has been effectively destroyed the command structure of the Islamic Republic. 

But that said, the next phase, or what's really remainder of that, is the personnel themselves. So we're hearing numbers, estimates anywhere between 3 to 5,000 military officials dead, which is not that extensive, because you're still talking about maybe 100,000 personnel remaining.

REICHARD: And then what are some challenges the U.S. faces right now?

SAYEH: It would be how they can leverage the momentum on the ground. Because we, I don't think Trump is going to pursue boots on the ground, at least not in an extensive way. There might be some covert operations that they want, want to secure nuclear sites or certain areas, but when it comes to the large-scale ground operation, that's going to be the main challenge, because you can bomb the regime from the outside and they'll still likely remain intact in the long term. 

So it comes down to how we're going to signal to Iranians if we're going to use our intelligence services to somehow arm Iranian protesters, or whether we think the repression capacity has degraded enough for us to move forward with messaging to the masses. So that, I think, is going to be the next phase that they should really look out for.

REICHARD: And what do we know about Iran’s military capacity right now?

SAYEH: We do know that they're definitely running out of missiles. If we look at the trajectory of how many they launched as days have gone on, we see about a 20%, if not more, decrease day by day. 

And as I noted, they've also taken out their launching capabilities. So we do know that they're increasingly losing their missiles, which means now they're switching to using more drones. They have plenty of more drones, they're cheaper to make, and as they're very expensive to intercept because you'd be using the same air defense systems, a lot of cases that you'd be using for missiles. But so far, it seems like we're using PATRIOTs to shoot down drones, which is really expensive, costly on us.

REICHARD: Janatan, I've seen reports that the U.S. is running through its supplies rather quickly. What do you know about U.S. ammunition supply?

SAYEH: So there's a few angles of looking at this. One, of course, is the supply for our own naval force, the other one is allies in Israel. So the fact that it's been a coalition that's been defending the southwest and west of the Middle East, southwest of Iran, against these regime aggressions, that in itself is sounds makes it more promising. 

Once the protests happened in January, the U.S. military had some time to really deploy enough forces to the region. But that said, it's not going to be sustainable for us to have this cat and mouse in the next month or so. I do think it's a matter of time until they effectively ensure that the regime cannot have enough retaliatory measures that would not deplete our stockpiles out there.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about this new leadership announced. Over the weekend, Iran introduced its new Supreme Leader: the previous Supreme Leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei. 

What does this choice of leadership tell us about Iran’s posture toward the war?

SAYEH: They could have went with other Ayatollahs, because the supreme leader has to be clergy. But the idea was that Tehran would elevate to certain camp to signal openness to the west. But they did it, and that in itself tells us that they're opting escalation over compromise. It would also tell us that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the main ideological and military apparatus of the regime, has again prevailed to shape Iran’s internal politics in its favor.

REICHARD: Now, if the U.S. and Israel say they cannot work with Mojtaba Khamenei, where do things stand then?

SAYEH: I think Mojtaba is a dead man walking as we speak. The idea that somehow you're going to be able to work with someone within the regime is not going to be feasible. These are still ideological individuals and institutions. I think executing a Venezuela model in Iran is not going to be practical because they're multiple pillars, most of them are armed. So the idea that you can, you can somehow use one against another, it's not going to play out as we want it to, which is why we need to be pursuing a more of a systemic, sweeping change, as opposed to just playing the internal politics of choosing one Ayatollah over another.

REICHARD: Now Janatan, President Trump has called on the Iranian people to seize the opportunity and retake their country once the U.S. completes its airstrikes. Are we seeing anything on that front?

SAYEH: Momentum has not died. We see Iranians chant against the regime officials and against the Supreme Leader's son. We saw security forces opening fire on them as they're in their homes. 

Now that the regime has lost a lot of its missiles, but still has thousands of personnel. Now they're switching their focus to really go after internal repression, go after crackdowns. They fire at buildings that are chanting, they set up checkpoints. The regime is preparing for a major large scale uprising. 

That said, Israeli strikes and American strikes have really destroyed a lot of the repression infrastructure, but again, not the personnel. It's not going to be easy task, Iranians know it, but you know, they've risen up before, and they have the willingness to do even more, because for them, it is now or never, and there's no way out but through.

REICHARD: Now Iran has warned for years that an attack on that country would spill over into a broader regional war. We do know that they've struck other nations… Are those predictions turning out to be the case?

SAYEH: The prediction of the regime internationalizing the war was, of course, accurate, but the implications of that is not what the regime thought it would be. They thought by dragging in different neutral states into the war they're going to somehow inflict more political cost against their adversaries, whereas in reality, we've seen a coalition be formed. When you look at Turkey and Qatar, two countries that wanted to mediate between Tehran and Washington, not stuck in the crossfire, they're increasingly turning against the Islamic Republic. 

So instead of dragging neutral entities into the conflict in its favor, it's actually creating more enemies by its irrational foreign policy endeavors.

REICHARD: Janatan Sayeh is an Iranian-American research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

Janaten, thanks so much.

SAYEH: Thank you for having me.

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