Gregg Roman, Executive Director of the Middle East Forum, said Iran’s widening attacks are accelerating the formation of a broad anti-Tehran coalition that now extends well beyond the original U.S.-Israel military campaign. He argued that Gulf Arab states, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and several European governments are increasingly aligning against Tehran as Iran makes what he called strategic mistakes across the region. Roman also said Russia and China are unlikely to intervene decisively, because both powers will ultimately work with whatever leadership emerges in Tehran. In his view, Washington’s objectives now extend beyond dismantling Iran’s military capabilities to ensuring that any future negotiating authority in Tehran accepts U.S. conditions for political change. He predicted that the high-intensity military phase could begin to decline within weeks, but said Iran’s deeper transition away from the Islamic Republic would likely unfold over many years.
HOST: Joining us now is Craig Kafura, director of public opinion and foreign policy at Chicago Council on Global Affairs, joining us from Washington, D.C.. We also have Gregg Roman, executive director of Middle East Forum. Gregg, I’m going to begin with you. Given the fact that this theater of war has expanded, with newer allies joining in because of concerns that they are being targeted and attacked by Iran, where is this all headed? Are we looking at a scenario perhaps in one or two weeks from now where each and every country in the world will have to pick a side?
ROMAN: I think we’re looking at the possible evolution of a grand coalition that would make Norman Schwarzkopf putting together a coalition against Saddam Hussein in 1991 look small by comparison. We have Gulf Arab countries right now. We have the Turkic bloc, with Azerbaijan and Turkey. We have the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and France giving airfields to the U.S. military. Frankly, what started off as a war initiated by Donald Trump, the United States, and Israel is now turning into a regional conflagration because Iran is making strategic mistakes. And frankly, I don’t see the Chinese and the Russians getting involved because, at the end of the day, they’ll do business with whoever emerges out of Tehran when the ashes fall and we end up seeing a new power in place.
HOST: Let me take that to Craig. Would you agree with Gregg Roman that Russia and China will do business with whoever emerges and are unlikely to materially intervene, even though the strongest voices backing Iran are coming from Russia and China?
KAFURA: I think he’s correct, and we’ve seen this in the past. If you think back to when Russia invaded Ukraine, China had a long-standing warm relationship with Ukraine, but China has done essentially nothing to try to end that war. They have not tried to pressure the Russians. They have talked about wanting to facilitate peace in some of the same language you’ve heard in the last day or two from Beijing, but I really can’t see them stepping in and playing the kind of assertive peacemaking role that one of your previous guests was suggesting, simply because they will do business with whatever power or state emerges out of this conflict.
The other real issue is that we’re starting to see American public fears come true. In polling recently conducted while these strikes were happening, Americans feared that the United States launching attacks on Iran would lead to a broader regional war, and that fear was held across party lines. Now we’re seeing that begin to play out with strikes hitting various countries around the region. How exactly they’re going to respond is still a little unclear, partly because the political ends of this conflict seem very unclear. At first it was about Iran’s nuclear program. Maybe it was about their missile program. There has also been talk about denying them naval access or access to the oceans. And now there’s talk about Trump needing to be personally involved in selecting the next supreme leader of Iran. It’s going to be difficult for the Iranians to negotiate if the conditions involve other countries picking their internal political leadership.
HOST: Gregg, when Donald Trump says he wants to be personally involved in selecting the next leader, and that Mojtaba Khamenei is not acceptable to him, does that mean negotiations at the top would have to happen directly around leadership?
ROMAN: I think the president has been very clear about the aims of this war. It’s not just about the nuclear program. It’s not just about missiles. It’s not just about proxy forces in the navy. It’s about the individual who gives the order to pull the trigger on any of those programs. So if you look at the derivative product of any aerial campaign and the attempt to have a decapitating strike, of course the United States needs to be involved in who is going to be negotiating on the other side. Because if that person does not accept the conditions the United States put on Iran, which justified launching this war, my belief is that person would not be able to negotiate with the United States.
Because the U.S. has set these goals, whoever is sitting on the other side of the table must accept these goals as well. So in effect, before Trump even made his statements about Mojtaba, he was already saying we will decide who negotiates because we are dictating the policy that must be accepted. Frankly, we are now at a point where there are millions of Iranians, not just inside the country but also outside the country, who are saying: we will accept a leader that fits President Trump’s conditions, but that is not going to be someone in a hereditary line associated with the former ayatollah. I think the president is on the right path, and I think frankly we’re going to see an end, at least to the high-kinetic level of this conflict, a few weeks from now. But the real work begins over the next decade when Iran starts moving away from the Islamic Revolution and maybe more toward the country it was meant to be after World War II.
HOST: President Trump says he is not comfortable with Mojtaba Khamenei, but Mojtaba represents a religious succession model inside Iran’s clerical system. Is Trump misunderstanding how Iran’s system works?
ROMAN: No, I don’t think so. The velayat-e faqih system - what Ruhollah Khomeini put in place in 1979 - is a product of one school of Shia clerical thought: the idea that one person is responsible not just for the religious undertakings of a state but also the political undertakings of the state. I think Trump actually understands that the Najaf school of Shia thought offers a different governing model. And frankly, even with velayat-e faqih, you already have a parallel governing structure for municipal matters, oil, energy, trade, commerce, and civil society. Maybe Masoud Pezeshkian is the individual picked as an interim leader, but at the end of the day I think Trump has been very clear: there will be someone he negotiates with, but the system itself will change, along with nukes, proxies, and missiles too.
