And codirector of the iran america project. The country that was friendly to the United States. The leadership in around feels rather strengthened by the show even though some of it was clearly orchestrated either regime. It was fueled and fanned by the shown but people have remarkable grief in favor of this general. People in syria and lebanon he may have been the institute grade or of a lot of instigator of a lot of mayhem. The regime feels strengthened. The iranian opponents of this regime , its probably the biggest demonstration against this regime ever in 40 years. The regime had to kill upwards of 1000 people, 10,000 people. They felt very threatened. Now i think they feel strengthened by this show of the now that the democrats have pulled their punch. My sense is that the demonstrations will come back, they are the results of rather remarkably bad economic situations, corruption, and cronyism. But so far right now, the regime is more powerful than it was 10 days ago. That mean, then, for the United States . Guest it means i dont think that the decision to kill soleimani was not thought through. Ramifications,al killing the official of another government i know the United States declared him to be a terrorist, but the parliament of iran Just Announced that the entire pentagon is a terrorist organization. They declared the entire u. S. Military to be a terrorist organization. It clearly doesnt give them the right to do any of this. The Iranian Parliament is a tool , otherSupreme Leader countries have serious parliaments. But im saying that if the rule hold, we going to cant make these kinds of judgments. Clearly had a lot of blood on his hand, i have no doubt. A lot of evidence of that. And he made it abundantly clear that his basic job in the world is to organize religious fervor in the middle east against the United States and, secondarily, against israel. He made no qualms about this. The question isnt was he a good guy and the United States shouldnt have taken him out. The question is, first of all, how do you go after somebody, what are the costs and consequences. Look at what has happened in iraq and their relationship with the United States. The United States has spent 2 trillion on this government to replace Saddam Hussein. A shiite majority in the government that voted to ask the that weretes forces essentially substantially responsible for this government staying power in the face of isis to leave iraq. These would have been i think protectable consequences if someone had asked me to go after soleimani in iraq, what would happen. I would have said many of these things would have happened. What happens now to the force in the arms that they supported in light of the new guest the soleimani deputy was appointed almost 24 hours after his death. He has been involved in many of the shenanigans. He was actually the person who helped organize the tens of thousands of afghan shiites and sent them to the area. I just saw tate of a very brave afghan woman, member of parliament, who said that soleimani since shiites into battle, 5500 have been killed. He was the commander, the person that organized it, might as well have been him who was defeated. I think they are going to go about their business, the thesess of creating proxies and using them against israel in the United States. Thate lacks the charisma soleimani had. He had a unique relationship with the Supreme Leader. Directly reporting to him. It was a very clear and affectionate relationship. Go back and look at the pictures. Nobody else i think in the leadership with whom he felt as close. Whose judgment he trusted. They are going to continue their work but it wont be as effective, i think, as it was, because of the personal aspect. Again, the Parliament Just yesterday increased the budget for the brigade to the tune of 200 million euros. But increased budget isnt going to mean that is all it takes. They have crossed some of their ability because of the personal contacts and personal relationships. Is viewed asimani a martyr, the set increase the potential for intensified attacks . Does that increase the potential for intensified attacks . Guest i would be surprised if it does anything other than what the Supreme Leader suggested. Was the executor of this policy, the architect of the policy was and still is khamenei. He has been the personal, direct. Ink, long before soleimani the head of has below in lebanon, saying that the dearest contact there was ayatollah khomeini. E is still in place while the effectiveness of the execution might have been diminished, the person in charge of this policy is in place. He has now decided, i think, that making that symbolic gesture of an attack on u. S. Bases, allowing the u. S. To know about it, intelligence picking up throughout it and evacuating as the decision to make symbolic gesture of revenge and then pulled out. Wisely, mr. Trump has decided to do the same. To begin to move on a process of deescalation. Our guest is the Stanford University codirector of the iran america project. If you want to ask them questions, 202 7488000 for democrats. 202 7488001 four republicans. For independents, 202 7488002. Before we take calls, you were in iran until 1986. What happened to bring you to the United States . Guest the atmosphere at the used university where i used to teach. The iranian leadership is almost all men, these gentlemen, women were deprived of top positions though they are 65 of college graduates. They decided to actually purge the university. They purged 40 of us from the faculty of 45. They brought me back after a year of throwing me out. Eventually they said you cant teach. I love teaching, i love my work. I realized i cant stay there anymore. Things were becoming increasingly fraught for my son, who was beginning to realize that this is a country in war. Remember, that was the time when Saddam Hussein in his brutality was attacking to run every night with missiles. I began to sense that my son was no recognizing the terror raining from the skies overnight. I decided to leave and have been here since. Our first call for you comes from the line for democrats. Terry, go ahead. Good morning. My question has to do with irans response to the assassination of soleimani. It appears that they were not goaded into doing something more than what they did. I say that as a naive person, but someone who does set common sense. We, the United States, the president of the United States is undergoing impeachment. His more would boost position to his base and to perhaps others than a war . The fact that they did respond in kind in a way that i think the president wanted kind of deterred the whole process of the United States taking another , thathat would be more would be more. Ill do respect to the president , he does seem to be somewhat narcissistic and megalomaniacal. He is somewhat of a dilettante. The fact that iran did not do made the more kind of president have to pivot. Take that andill let our guest respond. First of all, im not sure that the assumption in your question is right. I dont think that if the United States engages in a full regional war in the middle east, which is going to be a major human military and Economic Disaster for everyone, i dont think thats going to help him with his base. Part of what got him elected is the fact that he has been consistent on one thing. He wants the u. S. Out of these middle eastern wars, which he thinks are futile. He says we have spent 3 billion. Im not sure that that is correct. It is an old adage that foreign wars always keep the busy minds busy. Certainly, american politics right now is giddy with impeachment, polarization. One of your callers referred to it. Iranou are right, i think did show restraint in the reaction that it had. But you have to realize, the iranian economy, the iranian society, as i indicated, is very fragile. The iranian economy is very much ailing from corruption, incompetence, and added to that are one of the most remarkable and difficult set of sanctions that the Trump Administration has put on them. It has exacerbated an already exacerbated economy. Khamenei made the gesture, his base have been clamoring for revenge. On the other hand, he knew that if he attacked and killed u. S. , for example if you attacked a u. S. Base remember, he attacked and iraqi base that have u. S. Personnel. They could have hit one in bahrain. It is almost as close to them geographically as the space was. Then he would have awful war on his hands. He knew. All of the bombast, as some of you might have heard, if you attack us again we will take out , all of that i think is bombast. They knew that if they hit a u. S. Base, there would be full war. They didnt want a full war and i still dont believe that President Trump wants a full war. Host pittsburgh, kansas. Good morning. Caller good morning. We are not all ignoramuses here in the u. S. 26 years of the rule of the shot, enforced by some rock, trained by the cia and mossad in torture techniques. You know, a country like that, of course they only us but thats the only escape from that was in the mosques. You end up with a movement that is largely islamic. And when khamenei emerged, he was a deft politician who made sure that all the secular resistance was destroyed and we ended up with the islamic state. U. S. Is notw, the all powerful, either. The u. S. Has hollowed itself out in the last 40 years. We dont make hardly anything anymore. China is clearly the rising power. The israelis have an undue amount of influence over what goes on in the u. S. And trump is a tool of the israelis. Host on the topic of iran . That iran cannk come out of this positively . To say that iran is not democratic, clearly. The United States may not be democratic, its only barely democratic with similar pressures put against it. Host thank you, color. Guest you are absolutely right. The relationship doesnt actually begin and 53, though for 53 it is for many iranians is a pivotal moment. The u. S. , along with england, in the overthrow of the democratically elected and popular Prime Minister. Of course, recent declassified documents that have come from the United States detail the making it much. , more complicated, the situation, then it just being a cia coup. The caller is absolutely right. Think that the majority of the iranian people today are driven by that animus. That is what the Iranian Regime wants the world to think. In the shoeourself of an american, for example, who doesnt have a priority position , the average american would say that iranians responded by taking american diplomats hostage for 444 days. Iranians responded by helping soleimani organize Iraqi Shiites against u. S. Forces in iraq. That the majority of iranians are not driven by this kind of calculus. They, too, like the great majority of americans, arent ignorant. They know. And i think the way out of this mess is for iran to have a democratic government. People want to have a democratic government. The poll that was done inside of her run, not the kind of pull that you get from americans who ask iranians what they think. That every iranian knows that the phones and ron are all caps. But the phones the polls that were done inside of her run, less than 10 of the people are happy with the status quo. Those demonstrations came a year and a half after another round of demonstrations. The people in iran want change. The people in iran want to make the change themselves. They want to be the masters of their own sovereign domain. If the United States has a policy, i think, that helps the democratic process without interfering, without deciding who the next successor is supposed to be, it can help. To me the only way we will have peace in the middle east, the leeway we will have an iran that is lawabiding is for the iranian people to take over. I think that you were right to say the 1979 revolution was not supposed to create theocratic despotism. It was supposed to be a democratic movement. I have written about this. I have written a book on the shaw that describes this process in detail. Because of the strength of the religious network in iran, deafness, khameneis as suggested, he eliminated it all. People still want that democratic secular society, where man and woman are equal. Where a jew, a christian, and iranian, an infidel, they have the rights of citizenship. For iran doesnt engage in terrorism. I think that is what the majority of the iranian people want. To me that is the hope. Anything that delays the process is to the detriment of the region and the United States. Host we have a viewer on twitter saying that this guarantees iran develops a nuclear weapon. Is that a reality . Guest they have made two moves in the stretching. They are no longer abiding by the deal signed by the Obama Administration, the trump called the worst deal in history, it had flaws but i had critical support for it. I said that this is better than anything else out there. Iran withdrew from that and said that we are going to enrich uranium. Iran also is in the process of making a decision, maybe, to withdraw from nonproliferation treaties. Introduced to the parliament yesterday. To give you, again, a sense of shiftedian politics has , the person that introduced the bill had been seen as a moderate critic of the regime. He was the person that had most , ton criticized policies the extent that criticism is allowed in the parliament. He has now introduced a bill to have iran withdraw from mpt. Is it likely that they will go running towards the bomb . I dont think thats impossible to predict. I think they might be very well tempted. There were people in a run long before this, long before the hit on soleimani, from within the regime who said that if we had to bomb, the United States would be treating us the way it is treating north korea. Remember, north korea had several bombs. In the last few years, the last three or four years of the Trump Administration north korea has behaved at times very aggressively. They have not stopped their nuclear program. I am almost verbatim quoting papers in iran. They said that if we, too, had developed a bomb, they wouldnt be making these threats to us, treating us the way they treat north korea. So, any discrepancy that exists, and there are discrepancies that exist between the u. S. Treatment of north korea and the u. S. Treatment of iran is being used in a run by radical elements to say we should go the north korea away. There is evidence in the past to suggest that khamenei, the Supreme Leader, who has traveled to north korea, one of the few places he has traveled to, said that this is not a bad way to run a country. There is a proclivity to become a north korea when these demonstrations happened. Of theut down 95 internet. In other words they became almost as close to an isolated country behind the digital iron curtain as north korea was. So, these problems, i think, need to be considered when any decision is made about iran. Host missouri, democratic line. High. thank you for taking my call. I cant hear anything. Host you are on with our guest. Go ahead with the question or comment. Caller the comment is that we are giving the president too much credit for having a strategy for what hes doing. ,very country, iranian also they want democracy. Everybody wants freedom of speech. Freedom to go and come as they please. People who say they voted for the president , his constituents, who think that he is the leader of the free world when his previous administration, eqs referring to, tried to bring world peace by helping other countries. He tried to make our allies stronger and tried to show our adversaries that he could be fair and we would have a world of peace now. The people who still say, which i dont think the majority of americans are for trump. I dont even think its 20 . But whats coming on the air, and im listening to this man speak of a democracy in iran and america, all over the world, which we want world peace. We dont want a war. Leave it there. To the idea of potential democracy in iran, what was that around the religious hold in the country . I think it would take a to aition from this regime more democratic iran. This transition is not easy. Because, i think, of three factors. This is a brutal regime that still has the power to do violence against its people, as they showed. Killing upwards of 1000 people, thats not a joke. 10 days, 10,000 people would live bullets. People that were just demonstrating for economic grievances. The second is that they still have some base of support. This regime i think has only 10 that are satisfied with the status quo. Thats a very dedicated 10 . A 10 that is gaining economically anonymously from this regime. This is the 10 living lives of luxury beyond their wildest dreams. They are not quite a give up easily. Third, the reason the transition to democracy is going to be a little more difficult is iran is not in a vacuum. Iran is now befriending china. Iran is befriending russia. Iran just organized a joint Naval Operation for the First Time Ever in history in the persian gulf with china and with russia. Iran has just released a naval base in the persian gulf to russia. Navyinvited the chinese into the persian gulf. Very soon you are going to have Chinese Naval ships, Russian Naval ships, u. S. Naval ships, British Naval ships, Japanese Naval ships, all in the persian gulf. What is common between china, russia,