Power Struggle in the Regime, or the Regime's Show of Power in War? (with Hossein Razzagh)

The conversation

An English translation of the interview, which is in Persian. It was made with AI from YouTube's automatic captions and may contain errors; the Persian transcript is authoritative. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

0:01 Hello, and welcome once again to another episode of the Emkan programs. Today we are joined by a very dear professor, a very dear friend, and a very dear activist and politician, Dr. Mohsen Sazegara. Doctor, welcome. — Greetings and my respects to you, Mr. Razzagh, and to all the dear viewers. What you said in introducing me is far more than I deserve. I am at your service, and if I can clarify anything, I am happy to. — Thank you, be well. Sir, let's talk about the most recent development. In our previous interviews with you, and in the debate we had with you, the discussion was mostly about issues in society,

0:48 about resistance, civil struggle, the opposition and dissident forces. Today let us ask you more political questions, starting with the most current issue: Mohsen Rezaei's return to power. I won't call him your former friend. Well, you were never friends and you always had problems with him. But as one of the founders of the IRGC, you know Mohsen Rezaei. Do you think his coming to office is going to change the situation or not? After all, through some process they decided he is more effective than Zolghadr and that it is better for him to be there. — Yes, well, look,

1:36 you and your viewers presumably know Mr. Mohsen Rezaei's background. Before the revolution, he, this same Mr. Zolghadr, Mr. Shamkhani and a few others made up the Mansouroun group, which, as I remember, did bizarre things. For example, they planted a bomb in the Khansalar restaurant on Argentina Square in Tehran in 1356 [1977], on the pretext that Americans frequented the place. In Khuzestan, Mr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi's father was one of the managers of the oil company, and they assassinated him. There were other things too, as I remember. At that time we, in

2:27 America and abroad, through the Muslim Student Associations or the Freedom Movement of Iran abroad, used to publicize and support the activists and the struggles inside the country, much as the diaspora does now. But when we saw what this Mansouroun group was doing, we did not publicize any of it at all. We said, sir, this is really suspicious. Who are these people? What kind of thing are they doing? Their actions were senseless and, in fact, discrediting. As for this group, I saw Mr. Mohsen Rezaei at the Refah School, from the very day we returned to Iran with Mr. Khomeini until the victory of the Islamic Revolution. He was skinny,

3:20 scrawny, and a student at the University of Science and Technology. A few people from their group had been introduced to Mr. Qotbzadeh and had gone to Syria for training, armed training. He kept asking, "Where are these kids of ours?" I remember saying, "Mr. Sadegh knows." He laughed and said, "Honestly, I don't know where they are either. I handed them over to the Syrian army so they could get very advanced training." In short, they came back a few months after the victory of the revolution. But this team, Mr. Razzagh, first went into the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution. They became one of the so-called "seven bald ones" that formed the Mojahedin of the Revolution. Even then this Mr. Zolghadr was known as a coup plotter,

4:11 a schemer. In fact, after Mr. Motahhari was killed, they imposed that Rasti Kashani on the organization as the Imam's representative. Then, with very orthodox religious positions, they turned against the organization's founders, who were mostly people from the prisons, like Mr. Nabavi, Alviri, Mr. Sadegh Nowruzi and so on. Mr. Makhmalbaf had left right at the beginning. They pushed that prison team out, practically dismantled the organization, and also entered the IRGC. While they were in that organization (I was no longer in the IRGC by then),

4:59 they took over IRGC intelligence. When Mr. Mohsen Rezaei was head of IRGC intelligence, his deputy was Reza Seifollahi. From there, little by little, they filled out their entourage, because many of the devoted, self-sacrificing young men were killed, mostly on the war fronts, like the Bakeris and the Hemmats, who really were... They were killed. As for some of the others, Davoud Karimi, for example, who was commander of the Tehran IRGC and also very popular, they even pushed him aside

5:47 and set up their own operation. In my view, the IRGC's deviation began here. It was supposed to be a people's army: of the people, for the people, by the people. They turned it into a sprawling, bloated organization, and that began with Mr. Rezaei's takeover. After the liberation of Khorramshahr, Morteza Rezaei resigned, because he too believed the war should end. He was commander-in-chief of the IRGC and has no relation to Mohsen Rezaei. He is now known as "the silent commander," and very bad things are said about him, including that he is involved in

6:36 narcotics. Morteza Rezaei, I mean. But he resigned and left the IRGC altogether. Mohsen Rezaei became commander in his place, and these people were really responsible for those extra six and a half years of war. In my view, they fooled Hashemi and conned him with "we'll go and take Basra." Hashemi in turn went and talked Khomeini into it, and they continued the war for six and a half more years, with all those deaths and losses. And surely you've seen that Mr. Hashemi, about two years before his death, in a dispute, pointed out that Khomeini had said these people should be arrested and executed because of the lies they had told him, and

7:27 Hashemi in fact threw it in their faces: "I didn't let it happen; I went and interceded." Anyway, after the war, Mr. Mohsen Rezaei stayed close to Hashemi, since he had been IRGC commander during the war. He knows power well. He is a man of the middle, and his weathervane works perfectly. They wouldn't even let this Khamenei onto some of the fronts. As Asgarowladi once told me, Khamenei's second presidential term was the low point of "Agha's" helplessness. During that second term he wanted to replace Mousavi as head of government, but Khomeini didn't allow it, and Mousavi had little

8:18 to do with Khamenei. He settled his affairs with Hashemi. Hashemi was commander of the war, and the IRGC and the rest were tied to him. Khamenei held a largely ceremonial post, which he didn't like at all, and Mohsen Rezaei and his people wouldn't even let him in or pay him any attention. Then fate turned. Mr. Khamenei became Leader after Khomeini's death, and one of his first moves was to remove Mohsen Rezaei as IRGC commander-in-chief, later on, that is. Khamenei never forgot this as long as he lived. As they say, that man neither forgot nor forgave anything, and he thoroughly blocked their way to getting anywhere.

9:08 For a period he was at the Expediency Council, and then Sadegh Larijani tripped him up there too. When they removed Larijani from the judiciary and put him at the Expediency Council, he found grounds to say this man must be removed as secretary of the council. So he was, so to speak, like a leftover piece of furniture, kept mostly in the parking lot. And surely everyone has seen it: he ran for president four or five times, I don't know exactly. The eternal candidate, Mohsen Rezaei, and each time he got maybe not even 500,000 votes. But the point is that even in his youth, when this Mr. Rezaei was in the IRGC,

9:55 I used to hear about him from the IRGC guys. I also had problems with him over exactly these things, because he wanted to impose this Rasti Kashani, a bizarre man from Qom, on the IRGC, and then they would come up with bizarre analyses. Mr. Rezaei says, you know, grandiose things. Even back then you'd be astonished to hear him say he would turn things this way and that. I remember that when Ahmad Agha appointed Abdollah Nouri as the Imam's representative in the IRGC, the first time Mohsen Rezaei offered one of these analyses, Abdollah Nouri hit back at him hard, said, "What nonsense are you talking?", and cut him down to size. Anyway, over these years

10:46 Mr. Mohsen Rezaei has talked even more, from after the war onward and especially since he entered politics. You see that he says things that would make a cooked chicken laugh. For instance, that we'll take Americans hostage and get a billion tomans per person, a billion dollars for each American soldier, and that's how we'll fix our budget. He has said lots of things like that. I've asked economists about him. His studies at the University of Tehran are a story in themselves, and so is the dissertation he wrote. In fact, he didn't really study at all. Simply by virtue of having been IRGC commander, he got a bachelor's, a master's and a doctorate

11:39 in something that apparently isn't good for anything. Sorry, this got long, but I thought understanding Mr. Rezaei's character would be interesting before we get to why he has now come to office. — Sorry. You said Mohsen Rezaei was one of the factors in prolonging the war. Well, we know that. Khomeini even wanted the IRGC commanders, including Mohsen Rezaei, put on trial. He had said they should be tried and executed, and this is also in Hashemi's memoirs. Now, in the middle of a war whose outcome is unclear, Mohsen Rezaei has come to office as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. That is, as

12:28 Ali Larijani used to put it, "I'm the one responsible for Iran's national security," and now Mohsen Rezaei has become responsible for Iran's national security. Is this for continuing the war? Do you think so? — No, look. In my view, to understand Iran's internal politics properly, we have to know these mafia-like gangs of power and wealth. Look, at the beginning of the revolution... If you want to understand politics in Washington, say, you have to know not just the two parties, Republican and Democrat, and the different tendencies within them, but also the lobby groups here, some of the influential think tanks, and Washington's networks of relationships.

13:20 One has to know them to see how a decision comes up and gets made, though of course those decisions ultimately end up at the White House, and the president is very influential. In Iran too, Mr. Razzagh, for some time now, in Mr. Khamenei's era, Iran became a complete kleptocracy, a government of cliques. At the beginning of the revolution, to understand the political struggle you could know, for example, the Freedom Movement and Bazargan, Mr. Motahhari's circle, then the clerics of the Islamic Republican Party, and a few leftists and rightists, or the groupings within the clergy. Then you would understand where these struggles were going and what shape they had. But now, for a long time,

14:14 gradually, perhaps over the past two decades, and especially since Ahmadinejad came to office, when it intensified and then continued, politics often looks like it is about political tendencies, but behind it are the interests of these power gangs, their networks and so on. I say this because Mr. Mohsen Rezaei is no longer that skinny kid from the University of Science and Technology. For a long time now, his son-in-law, for example, Ali Ahmadi, the son-in-law's brother, his younger son and others have been at the head of a trust, a group, that has its hands in

15:01 oil smuggling and petroleum products, plus a range of other activities. They have a backing, a gang, an entourage, like the rest of these gangs. Mr. Ghalibaf is the same way. Each of them is: Aziz Jafari, for example, is the same. And it isn't only the IRGC people. Take Mokhber in the Leader's office; he's the same. He has a following; he planted 200 managers in the country's oil sector alone. Mr. Ejei is the same too. As for these mafia-like gangs, we see the political tendencies. For example, we see and know the Paydari people. But if we look inside the Paydari faction itself, first, there are

15:52 several gangs within it, and second, many of these gangs speak through the Paydari people, or through the Kargozaran people, or through one faction or another. So to understand all this, knowing these gangs is essential. The second point is that this was Mr. Khamenei's style of management. For perhaps the past 15 years it was completely like this: politics for him meant keeping a balance among these gangs. He wouldn't let any of them get so big that it could turn on him, nor would he let anyone

16:40 suddenly crack down on another. Things had to get really bad before he would mobilize forces and eliminate someone, like Mousavi, for example, poor man, who wasn't part of any of these gangs. Engineer Mousavi was a clean man, and his biggest crime was that he was clean. Otherwise, intellectually, at the time he ran, he perhaps still had no disagreement with Khamenei himself. I don't know about Mr. Mousavi now. But because of his integrity, he couldn't be allowed in, to reach the head of government and upset the setup these people had spread since Ahmadinejad, which had grown like weeds. Both inside his office and outside it, Mr. Khamenei was constantly walking a tightrope among them, and he shaped and maintained his balance and his position within

17:32 the gangs' so-called games. And it's the same story, Mr. Razzagh, as far as I've observed. Fifteen years ago his father pushed Mojtaba forward to become the number two of the office and effectively prepared him to become Leader. Mojtaba set up that central office to place his people and get into the heart of things, and he set it up mostly with the intelligence-protection people. Mojtaba has behaved this way ever since. Now, however healthy he is, whether he has use of his limbs or not, whether he's conscious or not, I don't know, but

18:21 that policy continues in that office. Now let me come back to the Rezaei matter. Look, what I've heard is this about Mr. Zolghadr, who is himself a very apocalyptic person (whether he has changed now, I don't know). His biggest problem was apparently that in the votes in the Supreme National Security Council over this memorandum of understanding and so on, he was not only on the side of those seeking peace, but had also gotten somewhat close to Ghalibaf and was working with them. In my view, Mr. Mojtaba's policy, like his father's, is this: although Ghalibaf enjoys the support of Hossein

19:12 Taeb, has always stuck close to them and to the office, and has never let himself drift far from there, Mojtaba, like his father, doesn't want anyone to ever become too powerful. He doesn't want Ghalibaf to get too big, being both the negotiating counterpart with the Americans and someone people at home might say did a good job, with the government growing close to him, and so on. I think the replacement of Mr. Zolghadr was apparently opposed by Mr. Pezeshkian too. Since the president has to issue the appointment of the SNSC secretary, it can be two people: one the secretary of the secretariat and one the Leader's representative. But if the secretary is not the Leader's representative,

20:02 his relationship with the office is weaker. Pezeshkian apparently resisted somewhat, but from what I'm told, in the meeting he had with the Leader, the Leader emphasized, stated explicitly: "Not this man; I want to replace him." They gave Zolghadr a post as political adviser so he would step aside; he no longer has any executive role. And they appointed Mohsen Rezaei as secretary and the Leader's representative, or perhaps not as secretary of the council. His biggest characteristic is that his weathervane works well. He's a very good yes-man, and moreover he is on very bad terms with the Ghalibaf gang. They say people like Aziz Jafari, from that gang,

20:52 are also on very bad terms with Ghalibaf. In my view, to understand this affair we should look more at the balancing of the so-called gangs, which is the job of this Leader and the Leader's office, rather than at, say, a change of policy on war and peace and so on. — Doctor, there's an issue here. Let's go a little into the untold news and bring it into our analysis, and see whether the analysis you gave holds, because I see a contradiction. Let's see how it can be cleared up for me. Several months before the start of the 40-day war,

21:43 through a few people (you and I were among those few, a very limited circle of friends), we learned that Ghalibaf was one of Trump's options, and that they were negotiating with Ghalibaf under a scenario of Iran becoming another Venezuela. We had this information two to three months before the war began. It was the start of Dey, no, not the start of the war, the start of the Dey protests. No, actually it was Esfand 9. In other words, we had this information from Mehr and Aban. And well, in some places it also matched up with other things. How could it not?

22:32 These things naturally come to one's mind. And then it all happened. The war came, they killed Khamenei, they killed Larijani, the earlier top figures had already been killed, and the government as a whole ended up in the hands of Bagher [Ghalibaf]. Before the Leader's fortieth-day memorial had even passed, he went and sat at the negotiating table with Vance. The understanding they wrote was truly unparalleled for the Islamic Republic, and they all still refer to it. Mohsen Rezaei himself has even said that if they return to the understanding and abide by it, we will return too. So should we think that such a scenario went forward with full coordination? And in the middle of it, did Mojtaba

23:24 upset the game, or did another gang? Because from what you said, I got the feeling that the gangs opposed to Bagher, meaning Mohsen Rezaei, Aziz Jafari and their people, are now coming to gain power, and that Mojtaba wants to replace Ghalibaf with them or set them against him. Or is it just the same balancing act Mr. Khamenei kept up, the son like the father? — In my view, look, first let me talk about Ghalibaf. The American expert apparatus, meaning the experts in the American institutions: in the State Department, the National Security Council, the Defense Department and also the CIA.

24:13 Nobody knows the CIA people, but those who are public come to the think tanks and give interviews, and you can see them. The truth is, Mr. Razzagh, they know Iran very well. Some of these people have worked on Iran for, say, 20 years, watching and reading night and day, and on top of that they have intelligence that we don't have. If you want to know this American expert apparatus's view on whether the Venezuela model can be implemented in Iran, you should watch Mr. Marco Rubio's testimony in the U.S. Congress when they called him in over Venezuela. Out of, say, an hour of discussion,

25:04 perhaps ten minutes or a quarter of an hour went to Iran, when they asked him about it there. Two expert apparatuses now stand behind Mr. Rubio: one is the State Department, the other is the U.S. National Security Council, in that building on the west side of the White House. Relying on these experts, Mr. Rubio said, sir, Iran is not Venezuela. Don't imagine you can replicate the model and install a Ms. Rodríguez. The Iranian government is more complex than that, and this model doesn't work in Iran. In my view, since in America the president ultimately settles the final picture, the one who had this idea and thought, say, if they strike Khamenei they'll bring Ghalibaf to power, was

25:55 Mr. Trump himself, and he hit a wall. That is, he didn't listen to the American expert apparatus. Of course, the people around him at the National Security Council table don't dare oppose him. Or even if they do, he makes the decision, and then, by custom, they say, fine, the president, the commander-in-chief, has decided, and we'll go and implement it. Perhaps the only one who strongly opposes Trump in meetings, from what I've heard, though not publicly, is Mr. JD Vance, because he holds a position Trump can't take away. The vice president was part of the president's ticket in the election; people voted for him, and the president

26:43 can't remove him. Trump replaces the rest in a flash if they go out and contradict him; in a meeting they might give their view. So my point is that the American expert apparatus had the sense to see this. Why wouldn't it? And actually, just as you say, when I was hearing all this at the time, I once said to an American friend, "Sir, Ghalibaf is one of Iran's Al Capones. He's a thief with a huge file against him, and he's notorious." He said something interesting: "It's not the first time we Americans have come to terms with corrupt generals." That's an issue among themselves, and he was right about it. In the '60s and '70s in Latin America they staged coups

27:31 and brought corrupt generals to power. Now the CIA doesn't do that kind of thing anymore, but... It's not the first time they've come to terms with a corrupt general. But that isn't the issue. The issue is that the structure of the Iranian government isn't such that you can come to terms with one corrupt general and think you'll push everyone else into a corner. But let's come to inside Iran, as I see it. Of course, look, I should also say that part of what I'm saying is guesswork, because I really don't have the kind of knowledge needed to know all these mafia gangs. One has to know them, know their networks, see where they have their hands and feet in everything,

28:20 where they have common interests and where conflicting ones. Only then can one understand how Iran's internal politics works: how they are enemies and friends with each other at once, and how the Leader's office, which tries to be the balancer of power, standing in the middle and playing with everyone, manages to do this. I really don't have that detailed information. I've tried hard to get to know some of them, and some of them we do know. For example, Shamkhani and his gang, certainly. True, Ali Shamkhani himself has been killed, but "Hector," his son Hossein Shamkhani, is alive and has a big backing behind him. In fact, their gang cooperates a great deal with Mohsen Rezaei's gang. Apart from both being from Khuzestan and

29:09 having been in the organization together before, they have also worked together. In my view, overall, as I look at it, no, Mr. Mojtaba and the Leader's office... Rather than Mojtaba as an individual, it's better to speak of Khamenei's circle, the office. The office itself is a balancer of power. The Leader's office's policy is not to tear up the memorandum of understanding. It may say certain things to gain concessions, or to quiet the hardline sections inside the regime and on the street and parts of the Paydari faction, who also have their own gangs. But their overall policy is not

30:01 to wreck this memorandum. In my view, the slogans being raised (America must leave the region, they must pay war damages, do this, do that, dismantle its bases) come more from the hardliners. They say some of these things too, but in the end, as they say, they stretch the rope but don't break it. Putting Mohsen Rezaei in Zolghadr's place is not so much about affecting foreign policy and the memorandum. As I said, it relates to the domestic issue. Let me give you an example: Mr. Mokhber, who apparently holds no position at all now,

30:49 not even at that executive headquarters. After Raisi was killed, Mr. Mokhber, who had been first vice president, no longer had a post, and he is no longer head of the Headquarters for Executing the Imam's Order. But Mr. Mokhber is a man with a gang and an entourage. He publicly congratulated Mohsen Rezaei on becoming SNSC secretary. I mean, what business is it of his to offer congratulations? In my view, Mokhber's gang has one foot in the office and can exert influence there, and the backing behind him is partly connected to Raisi's backing as well. They have ties and cooperation with Mohsen Rezaei,

31:38 and they wanted Zolghadr replaced. That's how it is. In my view, with these games, this gentleman has in fact been able to keep himself in the middle. As I said, I don't mean Mojtaba personally. In that core circle there is also Asghar Hejazi, who is connected to the intelligence apparatus. I don't know who now heads the office's military bureau in place of Shirazi, but that is also one of the very important positions, since all the armed forces are connected to it. Then there are the office's economic sections, which control half of Iran's economy, and the sections dealing with the Friday prayer leaders and so on. Their policy in that office

32:29 is still the same policy carried out in Khamenei's era: don't let anyone grow beyond a certain size and turn on them, and never let the reins slip out of the office's hands. I think, in any case, they want to cut Ghalibaf down somewhat, especially since what the Americans said raised the suspicion that America might, as a next step, want to strengthen Ghalibaf more and more and bring him to power. In this regard, let me finish my point: I'm reminded of the hostage-taking period. From some point on, everyone knew the hostage-taking was pointless, but the government...

33:18 Bazargan had also fallen by then, and they knew they had to end it; it couldn't go on. After all, we were holding 50 American diplomats hostage. But from some point on, the fight was over who would make the deal with the Americans and get the credit for it, because that person's hand would grow stronger in Iran. On one side were Beheshti and that Islamic Republic Party faction; on the other were Banisadr, Ghotbzadeh and the like, or the non-clerics of the Security Council, sorry, the Revolutionary Council, such as Bazargan. And for that reason, whoever went to make a deal, the other team would undermine him, and then they would put pressure on Khomeini. In the end Khomeini, with all his pomp and grandeur and with everyone afraid of him, was stuck in the middle of them, with

34:07 each one pushing from a different side, so he got himself off the hook. He said, "Let the Majlis decide." That alone set the matter back six months, and later the Majlis made its decision and put it on Rajai's government. What I mean is that the situation now has become much more complicated, and in these respects this war is very much like the story of the hostage crisis. (Interviewer:) This point you made raises a question for me, and let me ask it now, since it comes from your last point. It has always happened like this, especially since the Rouhani government, when the Islamic Republic's official policy became reaching agreements, negotiating, and making peace with the world. It seems that whenever an agreement was about to be reached,

34:55 whenever negotiations were about to bear fruit, the group opposed to the negotiating team made a lot of noise. Of course, they apparently didn't block it outright; they made noise and tried to blow the negotiations up. Several propositions have always been put forward here, and I want to know your view. First, that they are after their share of power: if this group, say the Reformists or the moderates, go and negotiate, they will have secured their own survival and we will lose our share of power, so guarantee our share first and then go negotiate. That's one. Second, that it was a matter of personal rivalry: why should Jalili, say, or why should Rouhani

35:45 negotiate? I should go and negotiate. Why should Raisi, or I don't know, Zarif negotiate? I should go, my team should go and negotiate. So these were personal rivalries and personal fights: why you, it should be me. Another issue is that the opposing group had ties with Israel, with Israeli extremist groups, which themselves were always against any kind of negotiation and agreement and sabotaged them all. What is your view? (Sazegara:) All of these are correct, Mr. Razzagh. In my view, look, you've put your finger on a very good point. The biggest problem the rivals had with Rouhani and Zarif was

36:36 the fear that the credit for the JCPOA would go to them, and then, God forbid, people's situation would improve too, and these people would gain the upper hand within the regime. Their faction, backed by the Reformists and the moderates, would gain some strength; the people especially would be satisfied, and then the others would keep falling behind. Khamenei himself had this concern too, meaning he tried to keep Rouhani from getting too big. I even heard back then that some of Rouhani's entourage, out of stupidity, started saying that he could become Leader, just like Khamenei himself, who went from president to Leader. They even spread this in opposition circles, and the intelligence people and this same Hesamoddin

37:26 Ashna and others were behind it; they played these games. For that reason they put pressure on Khamenei, and Khamenei wouldn't allow it either. It wasn't his habit to withdraw his support quickly, but he himself kept pulling the rug out from under his feet. Khamenei did the same thing even with Ahmadinejad, who was his own pet. In Ahmadinejad's second term, when he was starting to kick back a bit, one of our friends related that he saw him in Ahmadinejad's own office. Even though Ahmadinejad knew his office was bugged, because the president's office was always bugged and Khamenei was after it (I remember this from Khatami's time too), he said Ahmadinejad held up his hand toward Khamenei's picture and said, "I danced to every tune this jerk played, but

38:17 you can't work with this man." And look, he was telling the truth. None of these heads of government could work with Khamenei, because he played exactly these games and kept himself in the middle, with the instruments of power in his hands. So the first point you made is completely right. The credit for ending the war, for a good agreement, say, and then for people's situation improving, must not go to them, so that people say, "God bless Pezeshkian, this Pezeshkian fixed things," and Araghchi, and now Ghalibaf has been added to them. In fact a triangle is now in play, and again they are drilling holes under them. These

39:04 hardliners, these political rivals, had no qualms about saying that Pezeshkian, Araghchi and Ghalibaf must resign. Ettela'at newspaper wrote a good piece on this. So that is one point: this tug-of-war, and the Leader's office goes along with these people. The second point is what we discussed before: the issue of money. Now, as the saying goes, as if that weren't enough, there's this too. These fights have existed since the beginning of the revolution, undermining each other in politics, but now they are thoroughly soaked in money. One side's interest lies in sanctions, in oil smuggling; the other side's interest lies in lifting sanctions. This one wants to become, say,

39:53 the hero and bring projects to the country, the other won't let him, and so on. As for the third point, I completely agree with you. We must not underestimate the role of foreign powers' policies. Israel showed... You know I'm very wary of falling into the trap of conspiracy theory, of believing that foreigners make everything happen. But this much can be said: Israel infiltrated Iran's apparatus so deeply that on the first night of the 12-day war it killed, what, 16 to 18 IRGC commanders in their beds. Or this time, from the very first day, they struck and killed the Leader

40:44 and the whole Supreme Defense Council and all the rest, and showed that they have a hand in many things. So for an intelligence apparatus like Israel's that can have that much intelligence penetration... Militarily, this war may go one way or another, but isn't the reality that the Islamic Republic has suffered a heavy intelligence defeat? Without a doubt, its intelligence failure in this war is truly unforgivable. And for an Israel that has had the upper hand like this in the intelligence confrontation, in my view, it's not a very hard job to get under the skin of the hardliners and needle them, say, in a very revolutionary guise. As

41:33 the saying goes, too much leftism ends up on the right. Surely the person won't come and say, "I'm pro-Israel." He comes in the guise of a hardline revolutionary. In fact I'm again reminded of that Ettela'at article, which wrote exactly this. It wrote that those who say these things, whose aim is to push aside Pezeshkian and the others, are doing exactly what Israel wants. And in addition to Israel, and honestly even ahead of Israel because of its influence in Iran, we must not forget Russia, and one step further back, we must not forget the Chinese. The Russians, look, for years all doors have been open to their country. The Russians, after all, their intelligence apparatus...

42:23 The Cold War ended and the Eastern Bloc lost, but it turned out after the Cold War that the Eastern Bloc had won the intelligence war, to the point that a deputy at the American FBI turned out to be a Russian agent, someone who was responsible for the Russia file, for Russian spies in America. And the Russians, true, they are tied up in Ukraine, but for years, from the Leader's office to the IRGC to Iran's intelligence apparatus, whose people trained in Eastern Europe and in Russian agencies, from the nuclear projects to the missile projects to all of Iran's air electronics, the so-called control of Iran's electronic warfare, the Russians have dominated them. They've had people everywhere. The Russians also play the Iran card. The Chinese play it too,

43:17 because this is America's rival. As for Israel, the Russians have always had good relations with Israel and still do, and beyond a certain point they won't go; one and a half million Israelis are of Russian origin. But the fact that America now, with a foolish president like Trump, has been drawn into something where its foot is stuck in a pit, these two are very happy about that, because they stand at the head of the so-called bloc of authoritarians, which share a common goal: confronting capitalism and Western liberalism, and Western democracy. So what I want to say is that I agree with you on this point too. Among the factors we are examining to understand these shifts and Iran's domestic politics, we definitely

44:08 must take the foreign factor into account. In my view the Israelis are definitely present in places and stirring things up, and we must not forget the Russians at all. This Mr. Hossein Shariatmadari of Tehran's Kayhan newspaper, shamelessly the Kremlin's spokesman, honestly, sometimes he makes the Tudeh Party of the 1320s [1940s] look good by comparison. Sometimes he shamelessly says, for example, that whatever opposes Lavrov's statements is treason; he talks like that. And he was one of the ardent champions of this war: close the Strait, and let's go close Bab el-Mandeb too, because that's Kayhan's line. Now, it's true that Hossein Shariatmadari no longer has his former influence in the core apparatus of power, but this is yet another point. But

44:59 I completely agree with you. Besides political rivalries, financial interests and gangs, this other parameter, the foreign one, especially the Israelis and the Russians, must not be forgotten. One step back, of course, there are the Chinese, and there are also the Arab countries, which have tried to establish a foothold at the top of the apparatus, and there are the Americans. (Interviewer:) Okay. I don't want to proceed on the basis of conspiracy theory, because, as you say, if one wants to believe in conspiracy theory, one eventually runs into a great many contradictions in history. But if we think that Bagher [Ghalibaf] was an option, which, well, he was. An option, after all, that

45:50 has now become evident; this is no longer theory. Isn't your analysis that Bagher couldn't manage to pull things together, that he couldn't be that general who could stage a coup? The Americans wanted that Islamic Reza Khan he himself had been promising since '84 [2005], but he wasn't even worth the nail of Reza Khan's little finger, someone able to sort out this chaotic mess. And now other groups, other individuals are entering, among whom, I'd say, maybe Ahmadinejad, for example, becomes... (Sazegara:) Yes, Ahmadinejad comes up too. Ahmadinejad is, after all, an option: let's hand it to Ahmadinejad, let Ahmadinejad pull it together. He has a gang. Ahmadinejad too,

46:38 over the years he's been around, he's also a cunning operator. They've stolen money and they have a gang too. Look, all of them are like that. Ghalibaf was really not the one who could lift that weight. As for the comparison with Reza Khan, I'm not concerned with him personally, but the conditions are not those conditions. Reza Khan became Reza Khan in conditions where... Of course the British, General Ironside, shaped that coup, because the British Foreign Office, Mr. Curzon, was opposed. But the country had fallen apart. After the First World War there was essentially no government; in every corner someone was running things, and the only ready military force that could in some sense be called the state was the Cossack force, a single

47:29 Cossack division. They backed Reza Khan in that division to become its head, and from there they did these things. Our country's situation now is not the situation after the First World War. True, this regime now has fragmentation and chaos within it, but on the whole it is cohesive, its apparatuses function, and especially, apart from its military and police forces, its intelligence apparatus functions. It is one of the strongest intelligence apparatuses among these dictatorial countries, among the five-and-some autocracies. Set China and Russia aside, but Iran's intelligence

48:17 apparatus, for repressing the people, I mean, and stifling society, is still intact. So the idea that you could dig Reza Khan himself out of the grave, bring him back to life and put him in Ghalibaf's place, he couldn't play the game that could be played back then. (Interviewer:) Yes. Now, there was that extraordinary talent, and the country had fallen apart, whereas now it hasn't fallen apart. On this point especially, Mr. Sazegara, what Reza Khan did was truly a great achievement, when you consider the conditions. The country turned out to be more fragmented than Mr. Ironside imagined, and he himself later wrote in his memoirs

49:05 that he turned out to be a very shrewd man, perhaps more capable than history thought. (Sazegara:) Yes. An illiterate man who had come up from the street, grown up amid foul cursing, worked in an eatery at 12 or 14 and been knocked around, but he was tough and quick. Then they called him Reza Shastir, and later Reza Maxim; he became a very skilled machine gunner and proved himself in battle. But later, when he entered politics, he turned out to be such a shrewd and cunning man that he knocked down all his rivals in politics, who were far more experienced and bigger than him. Modarres: in the end his power

49:55 reached even Modarres. He arrested him, killed him, had him assassinated. He had Eshghi assassinated. Slowly, slowly he gathered allies in the Majlis, people like, what, Malek o-Shoara Bahar and Mossadegh and, I don't know, in short he finished them all off. Reading that history, you really understand he was a very shrewd man, much shrewder than the British and Ironside imagined. I don't know how much talent Mr. Ghalibaf has in these matters, but the conditions are still not those conditions. Look, this is one of those miscalculations. I've noticed that monarchists especially are prescribing a dangerous idea these days, on top of the two

50:46 big mistakes they made. One was the Dey affair [January], when they thought the regime would be finished in a week, finished in two weeks: go, go, seize the city centers, attack government centers, and so on. Then came prescribing this war and propagandizing as if, once this war happens, it's all over: America and Israel will go and crush the mullahs, say. Now they are drawing an even worse conclusion from these two: all right, the people can't do anything anymore, nothing works with this regime, we have to take up arms and become the French Resistance. As if this were France under Nazi occupation, and America and Israel were the Allies.

51:36 They strike, so the war must continue to weaken the regime, and we, on the ground, take up arms, carry out assassinations, become, say, like the French Resistance. This analogy is completely false, and they only send another group of young people to their deaths, and of course it leads to more bloodshed. Those who have the ability and the guts may do it, but they forget one thing: this regime is far from that state. Or the identification they make, for example with Reza Khan, saying Reza Pahlavi will become that. I've even heard that some of his entourage have said, "I'll become Foroughi," and so-and-so will become that. You know, these historical analogies are wrong. These

52:26 are fallacies of analogy, so to speak, and they lead nowhere. The country's conditions are not at all those conditions. We're far from them, and God forbid we ever reach them, because in the conditions in which Reza Khan, backed by the British, staged a coup to sit on the throne and bring security to the country, one third of Iran's 8 million people died, either of famine, or of typhoid, or of the Spanish flu, the so-called Spanish influenza. People were at the end of their rope, everything was in disarray. It was no joke. Back then, 85 percent of the country lived in villages that were entirely outside any political conflict, and the villages were self-sufficient; economically they

53:15 didn't need anything from anywhere. Majd, the historian, estimates that more than 2 million people died. Now imagine a country of 92 million, with 75, or 70, million in cities, where even the small towns are no longer self-sufficient and everyone's economy is interconnected. If the regime collapses and falls apart and they turn on each other, first of all these very gangs would turn on us. These same people who are now undermining each other in the city, shouting in the streets, this one beats someone, that one makes arrests, this one curses, they have armed backing and mafia gangs. They'd turn on... These eulogists who were killed: I have no evidence, but don't rule out that they were struck down and killed in these internal fights among them.

54:04 Now the police say they were terrorists and we caught them, I don't know. An anti-regime terrorist would have to be really foolish, amid all this rabble, to go and kill a regime eulogist; there are hundreds of them. It's like the things the Mojahedin did before 1360 [1981], killing grocers and spice-sellers based on a wrong analysis. So what I want to say, Mr. Razzagh, is that the whole concern of people like me is that we end this war as soon as possible, so the country's economy can be saved from this catastrophe which, as Dr. Nili says, is the last station

54:51 before hyperinflation. Inflation has now become chronic, severe inflation, and the next stage is hyperinflation. Even as things stand, if everything continues as it is now, the country's liquidity of 18 thousand thousand billion tomans will reach 25 thousand thousand billion tomans by the end of the year. But it is possible that, with the continuation of this war and the destruction, it will pass 30 thousand thousand billion tomans. You know what that means? The inflation people are now experiencing on food, which is in three digits, becomes four digits, and everything collapses. Then come unemployment, hardship, misery, and it keeps getting worse and worse, the situation keeps deteriorating, and that

55:41 catastrophe that must not happen will happen. Therefore it is in the interest of the country and the Iranian nation that calm returns, and that we return to pursuing our demands within the framework of civil struggle, civil resistance, and on that path pursue our main project, which is democracy, secularism and modernity. Otherwise it's as the poet said: "I fear you will not reach the Kaaba, O Bedouin, for the road you are taking leads to Turkestan." (Interviewer:) Our program's time is up, since our programs run at most one hour and we're close to an hour. I want a promise from you that in the coming weeks we'll be with you again,

56:29 because at the end of the discussion you raised a topic I wanted to bring up now, but opening it up would take us deep into civil resistance and historical analogies, because the subject of the Resistance takes a lot of time. Exactly, since you mentioned the French National Resistance movement, I wanted to get into it. I'll just say this as a prelude for the next session, which we've agreed to devote to this. As it happens, I myself have read and researched this to some extent, and I think it would be a very good idea for us to form civil resistance cells, similar to the civil resistance cells in the French national movement, the French National Resistance movement. They weren't all armed. (Sazegara:) No.

57:17 (Interviewer:) Likewise in Poland: some of them were armed, and another part did civil work, providing aid, even under wartime conditions. If we can form these civil resistance cells, well, very great things can be done. This ties in with ideas you've also had, which we won't discuss here; in the next session we'll have detailed discussions about civil resistance, civil struggle and society. Thank you, Dr. Mohsen Sazegara. Thank you for your kindness and for the time you gave us, and I wish you good health. (Sazegara:) Thank you for your invitation, thank you very much. Likewise.